#idk i just think that there are several elves that -- were it not for Circumstances -- could have gotten along with mairon. in another life.

[hirazuki]

Headcanon time! 

We don’t know too much about Maedhros’ extended stay in Angband other than it was a bad time, but like. I like to think that Mairon was an increasingly frequent visitor to Thangorodrim, and outside of his capacity as torturer, because: 

One, this is a Top Quality™ prisoner. Someone of Mairon’s sharp intellect wouldn’t be able to resist the promise of potential worthwhile conversation. I interpret the silmarils as a kind of addictive substance, with Melkor becoming progressively more obsessive, reclusive and distant after acquiring them and his relationship with Mairon thus gradually changing, leading to Mairon becoming more independent and effectively in charge, yet lonely. 

And two, they would have so much to talk about and like... not bond over, obviously, mostly because one of them is chained to a cliff face, but just have a certain unspoken understanding pass between them, as Feanor’s son and Melkor’s heir; two people who are, essentially, at the head of their respective forces at this point and have had their lives and relationships with others irrevocably changed by these jewels. I can imagine Maedhros picking up on this, even through all the blood and pain, and being like “haha, you think it’s bad now? Brace yourself, it’s only gonna get worse, source: personal experience.” And kind of flipping their relationship on its head, making Mairon the one who is tortured and a prisoner, despite being physically free and in a position of power. 

ANYWAY the gist of it is that I love them both dearly and so I think it’d be neat if they interacted more

(edit: full video is here!)

[ansu-gurleht]

theres something almost poetic about high elves living in orsinium. idk maybe is just me but they came from the same stock. The orcs were once aldmer just like them. It's almost like they've come home again. Finally reunited after so long

i like this, but it really is so much more nuanced than this, i think.

mainly, there’s the question of if you can even consider it a reunion if they’ve been separated (and in the case of the orcs, changed) for thousands of years and developed in completely different cultural directions. this point has multiple facets:

don’t you think several orcs, despite the fact that they themselves are “pariah folk,” resent altmeri presence in their home, even if they were minority refugees? no doubt conspiracies about them being undercover thalmor operatives would abound. 

it’s too easy to give too much credit to the orcs, just because we love them. they’re just as capable of the same evils and prejudices as any other race. they are not always perfectly adherent to the principles that founded them. i think that in many orcs’ minds, regardless of status as “outcasts,” orcs are still held above all others. there is no doubt a conservative faction in orsinium that reflects this belief. 

(this post turned long so uh.......clicky)

however, i think that there may be a feeling of some kind of ancestral victory or pride in having altmer fleeing to orsinium for safety. 

imagine the reverse scenario: orcish (or dunmer, even) refugees flee to summerset, and are somehow (however unlikely) taken in and “accepted”. these two races, whose inceptions were based in a profound rejection of the high elven society, would no doubt feel despair. after all their ancestors fought for, they have been forced (even by circumstance) to return “home.”

a good real world analogy for this would be finally moving out on your own, ready to be independent, to get away from your parents, but having to move back in with them a few months later. 

i suppose, in this imaginary scenario, that there’s an argument the reverse could happen, or at least coexist: their time displaced in this abandoned ancestral home might strengthen their resolve and belief in the principles that guide them. especially for the orcs, who would no doubt feel completely alienated from altmeri society, and often treated no better than the goblins the high elves have been known to enslave. 

now, this imaginary reverse scenario to altmer living in orsinium isn’t quite equivalent. perhaps its real-world analogy would be your parents having to move in with you, and finding out that you’re actually independent and doing well for yourself, despite disavowing all of their rules and beliefs and ideas of success.

the altmer have always been a rather uptight and mopey people (except for when they’re all “we’re better than all of you”). i’m sure the mopeyness would follow them, but their self-proclaimed superiority would wear thin. if the loss of divinity from creation was the first major loss, this loss of home and values would be the second (or perhaps one in a series, i’m no expert on altmer lol).

think of how some of these altmer must surely feel: they have had to flee their homeland for the den of monsters. aside from memories of the united empire of the late 3rd era, many may have never met an orc. now they live among them, are sustained by them, often subservient to them, these things less like mer and more like goblin-ken. of course not all feel this way, for surely these refugee groups reached some sort of consensus to escape to this city. but it must come as a great shock.

and, as i said, many orcs, even if not outright resentful or distrustful of the altmer, likely at least look down on them. “this is what your folly has wrought” and that sort of thing. of course, Not All Orcs, y’know. i’m sure a lot of orcs are fine with the altmer, and support them as fellow outcasts. whether worship in the 4e orsinium is of mauloch or trinimac matters little: mauloch would say “support the refugee,” trinimac would say “these are my people too, i am like them.”

but sadly, if real world history is anything to go by, it’s not impossible that those anti-altmer sentiments could develop into a nationalist movement, perhaps spearheaded by some brash new king. i’ll assume that’s not the case, but the point still stands: orcs are still mortals and capable of the same sins.

it’s interesting to wonder how exactly the cultures would interact, though. would the refugees ultimately become mostly absorbed into orsimeri culture? would they be able to maintain a subculture in orsinium? would they serve as a counterculture, perhaps reinvigorating trinimac worship? would they end up as separate as possible until they are able to return to their home, post-dominion? i’m not really sure! but there’s a lot of really fun options to play with, i think.

[hoopyfrood]

so my review for disenchanted is... it's fun. it doesn't go anywhere amazing, but there's some fun jokes and some fun characters. its an enjoyable watch with some characters that keep you watching, though i kept wanting them to wring more out of each episode, there is so much potential for a lot of the side characters.

as for characters, most characters aren't really fleshed out, so i didn't feel much connection to most of them, i only really care about luci tbh and bunty is sweet. i'm interested to see what happens with queen oona but seeing as most of her appearances have been small jokes or short appearances, idk, i'm not holding out for much development for her.

bean is good, in theory, though there's not much to her. they have a stereotype of what a non feminine woman is and keep falling back on it, falling back on her being drunk or high somewhere. we don't learn about her childhood, her education, her hobbies, her aspirations. her storylines revolve around her dad or elfo, mostly, under the guise of being about her journey.

some side characters become more interesting, like the kings advisor, odval, although i wish the secret society had been more than just a quick joke. others remain flat and uninteresting, clearly plot devices, not even offering jokes that are that good. i liked getting to learn more about bunty, and the king has some funny moments, but a lot of characters are forgettable. luci is a great break from the repetition or obvious storylines, he's unpredictable and chaotic and kept me watching. he's two steps away from being a fourth wall breaking character, narrating the events in his own way. love eric andres dry tone, luci is a great character i'd love to learn more about.

the pacing of the episodes is a bit random, there's no real connection between most of them and they don't always flow well, sometimes it felt like people's opinions and decisions changed randomly just to keep the plot going. the last episode repeated the same scene several times. the reccuring plot involving luci didn't really grip me and didn't go anywhere really, and has now been overshadowed by the plot of the last episode. i am interested to see where that goes, but i do wonder if the people who sent luci will get a moment to shine and be relevant again.

people keep comparing it to futurama, to the simpsons, but i don't think that gets us anywhere. it's made in a different era, set in a different era, made in different circumstances than for tv viewing. the voice acting is great, it's fun hearing familiar voices, and luci is reminiscent of benders carelessness (also reminds me of paul from the film paul which is a fave of mine), but it's a very different story. there are some weird vague mentions to things like feminism and gender spectrums but they fall flat, i felt unsure if they were being played as a joke or a reference and what the point of them was. there's also that random mention to cultural appropriation, speaking of which, the only two characters of colour are side characters, one completely just a plot device, with ambiguous race and not much depth. seriously guys? you put in elves and gnomes and lizard people but racial diversity was just too hard? put down the d&d handbooks and start being creative.

okay, i'll mention elfo, but briefly. he's annoying. i'm saying it, everyone else seems to be saying it, but what the fuck. it's not his obliviousness and naivety that's annoying, that could've been used well, but it's his crush on bean. i'm not invested, i don't care, it's not interesting. i really don't feel bad for this lil guy fancying a woman out of his league. they tried to give us a different female hero but still went with the 'poor nice guy who she ignores' trope? she deserves what leela and lisa didn't get with the guys chasing after them: the freedom to say no and have it stop. it added nothing to the plot, it became his whole character arc instead of learning to be bad and explore a new place. i'm glad nobody else seems to like him or the idea of him and bean ending up together. seriously, it's so overused, esp in groenings works. i just didn't have the patience to care about him any more as soon as i saw where it was going. bean escaped his advances, but barely, and suddenly she really cared about him despite being ambivalent earlier. the time progression didn't seem real enough to amount to that much character development, the time passage wasn't even clear, it just felt like ten episodes and suddenly luci and bean really cared about elfo all of a sudden. can't relate.

ok, elfo out of the way, what did i enjoy? the scenery, the banging theme song, the good one liners, every character john dimaggio voiced, that one time luci got captured that was quite fun to watch, the whole talking cat thing, uhh, some other stuff. seriously, you can enjoy watching it and not feel too bored, it's just the repetitive tropes that get a bit dull. i kept watching for the potential, a lot of the time. hoping for things to go farther than they did. the earlier eps are fun, the later ones i felt had odd pace and sudden character development/change and a lot of repeated content.

in the second series i want a lot more from these characters. they tried to fit in like three plot twists when most people would have preferred more character exploration, more believable development between bean, elfo and luci as friends. a lot of the episodes were bean and friends get drunk, fuck stuff up, go back to see the king. i don't want more of that in s2. i expected more depth to the plot seeing as multiple writers were involved in gravity falls, but it's ok if it's just fun too, but decide which you're going for because atm i'm not sure how seriously to take the twists or not.

i'd love to see more of hell, learn more about luci. i loved the mention of him having a 9 to 5 job in hell, there's so much that could be explored there, and robot hell was a blast in futurama. seriously, bring back dan as the dancing devil, that'd be fun. i'd have rathered luci having odd jobs from the devil than having two random people apparently controlling him but doing absolutely nothing at the same time. in s2, recycle the tired tropes into something new. throw out the 'old hooker' trope and put in more three dimensional women. get rid of the 'strong female character' idea you have in your heads and actually write a real female character. please, god, get more female writers, i can tell when a woman is written by a man and it's boring. i feel they need to let shion takeuchi have more involvement because i bet she'd do a better job with a lot of these elements but alas she's literally one of only three women on the team with any major involvement, and it shows. it's a show centred around a female character yet it's mostly all decided by men. it's 8 men to 3 women as far as i can tell. and only one person of colour, afaik. it really shows. i'm not surprised, but more people should be pissed off about this. ridiculous.

don't do anything with elfo he's fine where he is just leave him there. bring back tess the giant i want to know more about her. please let oona and odval have a friendship where they bitch about the king and have medieval scrabble nights or something. let literally any women interact with each other without hating each other or talking about men. give bean a girlfriend. don't give pendergast any more screen time people are obsessing over him for some reason and he doesn't deserve that. let the queens be friends or something. let them date. too many women hate each other in tv i'm tired. ramp up the goddamn puns i know u have more stored somewhere and the scenes of shop names etc are fun. have bean learn to drive a horse and cart or get a job she's good at or learn a new skill or make a female friend or something more than having her get drunk and fight her way out of a situation with no real consequences. ok i'm done.

[i-am-the-inksinger]

hello, it is I, annoneth! (idk I tried to riff off of annatar with questionable results. Anywhoooo) I am here to ask if you have any broad headcanons about Valar, elves, or peredhil in terms of how they differ from humans. more questions to follow I'm sure, but that will do for the moment. happy december!

Greetings, Annoneth! Please don’t convince me to create rings of power and then torture me to death when I decide to keep them to myself. It’d make a mess everywhere.

Broad headcanons! Eru help us all, we’re gonna be here a while.

Concerning the Valar:• They are all huge nerds. To a one. Not just about their respective dominions, but also about the races of Men and Elves and even Dwarves. And especially about everything these races create and bring about. The second the Elves were discovered every single one of them flipped their lid. Some of them are known to nerd out over completely mundane things like tunics and baskets because, “YOU made this one, so it’s still unique and special!” Others fangirl hardcore every single time a child of Ilúvatar expresses a desire to study under them. It’s not even dignified in most cases. Tulkas especially is known to bounce excitedly in place and clap his hands together when nerding out.

• I do not for one second ship any Valar with any elf. I just don’t see the Valar as being interested in elves in that manner - less because they’re at all unattractive, and more because the Valar look at elves the way parents look at a child they’ve tried to have for years and almost gave up trying to conceive at all.

• I do think the Valar in general have and enjoy having sex. Depending on which pair exactly, they may not have incredibly kinky sex, but they do have… sometimes ridiculous amounts of it.

• I don’t think the Valar need to eat at all. When they do, it’s usually because they just enjoy the way food tastes - or else they’re trying to be polite. They each have a favorite food, though.•• Same theory applies to drinks. Unnecessary, but so delicious.

In regards to Elves:• Regardless of their description in canon, they’re as a rule all the sort of people you would think of as “fey.” Whether it’s a cheerful kind of fey with bright laughter and not-quite-civilized humor in their eyes; a dark and foreboding fey marked by a swift temper and an unusually cruel sense of justice; a quiet, almost listless fey wherein the elf in question is sometimes calm to the point of seeming unresponsive to their surroundings, even while actively engaging in an activity that requires a great deal of attention; or some other kind of fey entirely, for someone as capricious as an elf it isn’t a matter of occasionally being in a fey mood. Compared to what a human would call normal and natural, elves are always just a bit… odd.

•• It’s most pronounced in the elves specifically noted by canon to be fey or otherwise unusual of mind. Those elves are picked out and labeled that way because they are so very off that even other elves find them unnerving, which means they would likely register as outright deranged to a human.

•• Finrod was no different. If anything, he was just the best able to figure out what humans found so unnerving about him and then tone it down enough that they were put at ease.

• Elves are social creatures - bordering on pack animals due to their fey nature. Antisocial tendencies and behaviors will always register as unnatural and potentially dangerous to them, and an elf who notices such behaviors in any friend of theirs - even if the friend isn’t an elf - will do absolutely everything they can think of to break their friend out of that pattern. It’s simultaneously cute and annoying.

•• Similarly: Fury unnerves and frightens them. Too much of their history was made dark at least in part by elves and other people and creatures gripped in the throes of their own blind rage. If you want any elf to avoid you for several days or weeks, throw a tantrum that culminates in something being broken.

• The vast majority of Elves - regardless of their specific culture or heritage - have absolutely no qualms about public nudity insofar as how “decent” it is. They do, however, find it intolerably foolish to wander about completely naked while in hostile territory, even in the comparative safety of a keep or fortress.

• You don’t have to have long hair for an elf to find you attractive - any head of soft, well-kept hair has a decent chance of attracting their attention. Long hair is only a bonus; after so many centuries of battling the Shadow, and especially with stories like the fall of Gondolin in mind, long hair is something of a mark of confidence and martial prowess - especially when it is worn loose or partially braided.

•• That said, braiding your hair completely - or tying it back at all, if it’s too short to braid - is considered a signal that an individual is ready for some sweet, sweet lovemaking.

In regards to the Peredhil:

• BEAUTIFUL HALF-BREED CHILDREN. PROTECT AT ALL COSTS.

• They will always bear a heavy emotional and mental burden, no matter their disposition or circumstances. They are elven and human in equal measure; even when they choose their fates, their hearts remain the same. They are filled with too much joy and wonder and determination, and know too much of grief and uncertainty, for it to be any other way. They feel as deeply as an elf, and as swiftly as a human. Only their human blood allows them to endure grief in greater measure than a pureblooded elf - and most are not so sure that is a blessing.

• Of all the races of Middle-earth, it’s the peredhil who have the most massive (and most frightening) appetites. Hobbits have their many meals and love of good food; dwarves have their boisterous feasts and borderline rude table manners; elves stress eat for days on end. Nobody can match a peredhil who’s gone more than five hours without a snack - and it’s suicidally unwise to attempt to get between one and his or her food.

• Everyone would call a peredhil fey. The humans would see in a peredhil the same odd, almost wild streak as their elvish cousins, often laid bare during times of great excitement or stress. The elves, meanwhile, would notice a decidedly human tendency towards calmness and constancy of temper - something just as odd to the Elves as bouts of unbridled fury or stubbornly antisocial behavior.

• There is no one in all the world who finds life and living things more beautiful or more miraculous than a peredhil. They are possessed of too much of the wisdom of the elves, and too much of the wonder and curiosity of humanity, for it to be otherwise. The simple acknowledgement of life and its bounty robs them of their breath and all sense of time and purpose, and it doesn’t stop as they age - it only becomes a softer, quieter reaction within them, easier to hide and work through as the years progress.

•• The upshot: They all squee over baby animals. Every. Single. One of them. Even Elrond.

[icewindandboringhorror]

I have a question about your fantasy worlds. Are there the same type of illnesses (mental and physical) as in our world or is it something that's different between each species/race?

me, whenst getting a question about anything vaguely related to fantasy stuff:

This isn’t something that I’ve thought about too broadly (in the sense that usually I think about illnesses for each species as I’m making them, rather than on the large scale of the entire world as a whole) but I can give some general details about it so far ,,

(this actually isn’t too long, and is much shorter than my other posts where I ramble about stuff, but I guess I’ll put it under a read more anyway just because I’m not sure about whether the length of it would be annoying to people who don’t want to read it or not lol) 

——————-

MENTAL ILLNESS

The humans of our world (earth) and the humans (and other humanoid species) of Nanyevimi are generally pretty similar, at least in terms of brain structure and some other biological things. Though the worlds aren’t connected at all (since.. Nanyevimi is an entirely separate fantasy universe lol…), humans and other creatures in my world I guess  just happened to evolve under somewhat similar circumstances, as the worlds are fairly similar to one another, at least in certain environmental and atmospheric ways and stuff. (also obviously just.. as an earth human, when creating a fantasy world I’m going to base humanoid creatures there kind of off the humanoid creatures that already exist around me lol) 

Though, in Nanyevimi, modern humanoid species have been around much longer than earth humans have been on earth**, and also magic and stuff exists in that world, so since they’ve had much more time to evolve and outside factors influencing them that are different than on earth, obviously they’re not all EXACTLY the same. While some are very close (like a human or an elf from Nanyevimi could probably be understood well by a regular earth human doctor or something, since physically they work nearly the same), others (especially older or more magical species) may not be as similar to us. 

**( Though most history in Nanyevimi any further back than 2million years is pretty much lost due to the Mysterious Time Gap, there are still a few scattered remains of ancient things. The already advanced* state of society 2million years ago when modern records ‘’begin’’, implies that though the details of it are lost, there definitely would have to have been years of development before that time. So most people assume advanced* humanoid life (magical species like Jhevona and elves and etc.) has been around in Nanyevimi for at least 3-4 million years, and earlier less evolved forms of them (maybe more animalistic forms, similar to how some primates are with humans) have been around even longer. So they’ve had a bit more time to change and split off from each other, and have more diversity than humans on earth do among themselves (though obviously that’s not the only reason, since.. there are a lot of things like magic that also influence their evolution being different from human’s evolution on earth, even if they occurred in environmentally similar ways and etc. ) 

*(“Advanced” in the sense of having complex communication and social structure, etc. Even 2 million years ago there were obviously huge cities and trade routes and advanced transportation technology and elaborate government systems and religions and cultural traditions and etc. etc. like what we see in the modern human realm today. Which again is why obviously civilization in Nanyevimi is older than 2million years, even if records stop at that point, all those things don’t just spring up out of nowhere lol, just nobody seems to remember what came before them.) 

ANYWAY, 

basically most of the brain parts and functions are fairly similar between humans and many supernatural species. Supernatural species are more likely to have variation in physical areas other than the brain, such as  having extra organs (or less), different skeletal frames, different limb structure, processing food in a different way, different patterns of hair growth, horns, other anatomy things , physical changes that vary due to magical properties, etc. 

But the brain structure in most cases will be fairly alike between all (earth humans, nanyevimi native humans, elves, jhevona, etc. While there are some recognizable differences , definitely in terms of structure and parts present it’s usually very similar between them), thus for the most part, mental illnesses in their world actually would be quite similar to ours, as the minds of supernatural creatures don’t operate too differently than our own and still have many similarities in their responses to things and the general way that the brain works.  

Though of course, this is something that varies by species, as some have mental illnesses that would be very specific to their own kind/people who experience the same things due to their species, such as groups with very unique psychological experiences, or etc. 

Like for example, due to inherently being open vehicles for spirits most of the time and also having the rare ability to create their own pockets of reality, the Verrucalt likely have some mental illness classifications that could be unique to themselves as it would be hard for the diagnostic criteria to apply to any other group since the problems would be so specified and unique.  Or they could maybe have the same diagnosis that a human has but in a very specific way, such as a severe phobia but specifically centered around their constant loss of control of their bodies to spirits or something that wouldn’t be applicable to any other species (especially not humans who don’t even have any remotely similar abilities), since by nature they are literally unable to experience the same scenario as the Verrucalt. 

And an extension of that would be that it could also vary by skill set some, and not just species (though a majority of abilities or one’s inherent powers are at least partially determined by their species). So like perhaps due to the unique nature of their situation, those who do soul magic commonly could have issues specifically related to that, like a very recognizable collection of symptoms that seems to occur only in people who use this type of magic, that may or may not be recognized as an illness but is debilitating to their functioning and exists solely due to their specific circumstance or things that only people who do that type of magic would be able to go through and have resulting issues from. 

Like maybe people who practice soul absorption (extremely rare) have a specific name for the mental symptoms and trauma that results from essentially merging the souls of others with your own having your minds connected for a while as they fade away inside of you, etc. Which literally just wouldn’t be applicable to anyone else except for those who have had that precise experience. 

–( sidenote: Though of course a lot of this depends on how specific you want to be with classifying a mental illness, and how broad you want to keep the criteria. Like usually diagnostic criteria are not extremely specific to situation (kind of like how OCD is a broad label, even though every person with OCD has their own unique obsessions and compulsions and way that they experience that, and there are some trends in what those may be about,  there’s still not like, multiple entirely differently classified disorders solely depending on precisely what your obsessions/compulsions are about or something, they are all just classified together under the broader label of ‘OCD’), so I might be being a bit over specific here, at least when viewed through the lens of human mental health knowledge. But I think given the lack of broad connection in the supernatural realm and how isolated smaller cultures and groups can be, they would have their own classifications for sometimes very specific things. 

Like for example, Jhevona who practice dream magic having their own label for basically ptsd that is SPECIFICALLY ptsd relating to trauma experienced during the course of being in a dream realm. As they personally experience that differently than they would in waking life, and perhaps conceptualize it differently , and feel it necessary to make a distinction between the two.  Even if in our world we would look at it and just say “those are the same thing, they both just fall under the label of PTSD”. 

idk  I try not to view their cultures through much of a lens of my culture (though obviously I still do, some element of framing from your own references is inescapable) so I don’t want to just say “oh well idk if the mental health system in my own country of the USA on the planet of the Earth would make a distinction between those things then they should be the same for elves as well”. When I really think in some cases, especially in isolated groups, it wouldn’t make sense for them to all conceptualize their health systems in the exact same ways. But I still wanted to clarify just in case anyone reading this would be like “but wait aren’t you being overly specific with mental illness classifications?”, like probably, in the context of our world,, but for an isolated group of demons only pulling from their own culture with their own specific innate magical abilities and own unique experiences, idk , they would probably make some distinctions that we wouldn’t.  ))–

But yeah, generally, a majority of humanoid supernatural creatures are prone to most of the same mental illnesses that humans are, though the way they conceptualize it and the rates of them will vary drastically by culture/species. Despite some more global areas, most groups and cultures are still quite isolated in the supernatural realm, and there is no real centralized mental health system, so  each group of people with a common experience (so mostly same species, or sometimes same ability set) would possibly have large differences between the way they conceptualize the same idea or the language they use even if they’re talking about the same thing. Or like mentioned above, they may draw more or less separations of specifics (like one culture would consider two similar sets of symptoms to be completely different disorders, and another group would perhaps classify them as both falling under the same thing, etc).

 But classification differences aside, their brains are pretty similar so they are prone to just about all of the same things humans are, with perhaps the addition of a few specialized mental illnesses resulting from their unique experiences that humans could never experience. 

Similarly,  depending on the species,  some mental illnesses may be more common while some may be nearly non-existent in the population,  just depending on the genes and especially environment they are in as a group.

 Like for example disorders seen in those who have been through repeated severe trauma would likely be pretty common in the Avirre’thel , mostly in the older generations, given the many periods in their past involving nearly constant violence coming from the Fanyin Elves, and also the unique issues of their immortality.

They can’t die and they’re mostly unable to pass out from pain alone, so like no matter if a gang of elves is beating you and your friends to ‘death’, you just have to live and experience it, and then you have to lay there for days/weeks in the woods in excruciating pain, just sitting there alive waiting for your own body to regenerate to the point that you can walk again, hoping they don’t come back and find you and attack you a second time,, etc etc.

 Being unable to die, means you’ll often live through things that are meant to kill you or would have killed you. Not that dying is a good thing, but just that you’re living through tons and tons of experiences that most people would never have to live through, because for them, the experience would have reached an end at this point (even if that end is death).. But since that’s not an option you just have to keep on living through it. You could get violently “murdered” and have your limbs ripped off and be burned alive 3 times in  just the span of a month and you’d still stay alive and mostly conscious through all of it, now retaining the details and memories and trauma from the entire experience. 

Also, not dying means longer life span, so where most people only have like 100 years or so of experiences to deal with, you’ve got thousands of years.  Where most people would die during being attacked, or die naturally at a fairly low old age, you just continue on forever, accumulating more and more (potentially harmful) experiences, with no break between them. You could probably go 70 years without having too much bad happen to you, but every extra year you live is another year something could happen, and by the time you get to like 700 years old it’s almost definite you’ve been through something traumatic at least once. Which obviously you wont remember every experience in your lifetime perfectly, but the longer you live, just statistically, the more time you have to experience harmful things and live through them now being affected by them, especially if you’ve spent those thousand years in a mostly hostile climate where elves are trying to burn your village down all the time and shooting your children with arrows for funsies.

 So anyway, the implications of the high amount of adverse experiences they’ve been through  due to their environment, in combination with all of this being nearly inescapable for them (you can’t just die and have it be over with),  would probably mean a much larger percentage of the population suffers from a variety of  trauma related symptoms and illnesses than other groups would on average.   

Whereas,  a group like the beach dwelling Verrucalt (as they are unaware of their hunted status and living in pretty much complete peace) would likely not experience hardly any of those same issues, given they’ve never had many conflicts in their environment and do not have much violence or even interpersonal conflicts culturally (like even abusive relationships and etc. are hardly even a thing, given their culture and also the small number, it’s easy for everyone to keep an eye on everyone as a community). It’s rare that a beach  verrucalt would experience really much trauma in their lives in general (especially since they are largely not as affected by the spirits as other verrucalt seem to be, and have their own way of rationalizing it/dealing with it culturally), aside from maybe accidental injuries or having a loved on die or something (and even then they would likely have a very strong and caring support system to help them cope with it), but definitely not on the scale of like widespread turmoil and violence etc etc. They’re a tiny isolated community with strong social connections and practically no outside or internal conflict, so they’d probably have much lower rates of trauma related symptoms than average. 

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So like anything, it would vary some by population, but in the supernatural realm it’s just that population is much more likely to be dependent on what species you are (due to general isolation),  so the rates of particular issues in a population, and the issues (and issue classifications) themselves, would be likely to vary by species and cultural environment, as well as unique abilities or experiences a group may have. But other than that, they’d be similar to us in most basic ways at least. 

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PHYSICAL ILLNESS

Physical illnesses on the other hand would be much much more varied, given that the biggest thing supernatural species vary in is parts of their anatomy and etc, which is why they may have many more diseases unique to them . Like a human could never get a Jhevona disease featuring infection of the horns, because humans don’t have horns, etc etc. 

Also, given that species in the supernatural realm are too genetically different usually to even breed, diseases are pretty much determined by species, as it would be really rare for a demon disease to show up in elves, or a vampiric disease to affect a ythrili, at least not in the same way (like if virus or something even did rarely hop species, it may be totally nothing to one group but devastating to another, etc.).

This is part of why, outside of EXTREMELY isolated populations, most people in the supernatural realm are pretty educated on species to species interactions (usually not ALL species because that would be A LOT of info, but at least how interactions would work with their OWN species and others that are significant (such as a species who’s blood they would be deathly allergic to or etc.)). 

With so many different groups there is a lot of potential for harm (such as most people in one species being carriers of an infection that doesn’t affect THEM but that would make an elf extremely sick, or a certain subspecies of demon having blood** that if a mere drop of it is ingested could make a vampire violently ill for years or etc) 

**(Blood is weird but thought to possibly contain magical properties or something because it seems to be a Big Thing in the supernatural realm, like blood of certain species can be helpful or harmful to you depending on the species you are. Whereas in the human realm it seems like, most blood is just blood..like you’re not going to drink some dog blood and drop dead on the spot or drink a monkey’s blood and suddenly feel more energized than you’ve ever been in your life. But with supernatural creatures (especially magic capable ones, which is why it’s thought to be a result of magic properties but not scientifically confirmed by anything scholars can detect) a lot of their blood can have specific combinations of interactions (MOSTLY harmful) depending on what species you are and what species the blood is from and how it comes into contact with you (like some blood is only harmful if ingested (like eaten), some is only harmful if mixed (like if you had an open wound and somehow got another persons blood in it), and some can be harmful even externally (like just having a drop of their blood on your skin could be harmful (though this is more rare)). 

Though still, the realm is kind of isolated so you usually only know about the species you come into contact with or the ones near you (like an isolated moth species down in the south wouldn’t know how they react to the blood or diseases of a species of northern elf they’re never even heard of in their lives). But even most isolated groups go out of their way to obtain some amount of information, at least about the people they’re most likely to come into contact with, and are usually very very cautious about letting outsiders in but especially about breeding or coming into contact with blood or getting close enough to them to catch a virus or something

 (which is part of why the supernatural realm, despite having such a wide variety of people and technology and magic and things that would make it easy for people to communicate, tends to be so isolated and inconsistent (like one area using glowing flowers exclusively for lighting and you go maybe 200 miles north and this other group has advanced electrical grids and then 1000 miles away from there people are just using fire and steam for everything, a little while further and people just use their own magic for lighting, etc. ) , since there have been many times in most groups where outsiders came in and things Didn’t Go Very Well (mostly like illness and etc.). Though most groups are not hostile to outsiders or harmful towards them, they do tend to be very cautious and distrusting about it, which gets in the way of trade or attempts at globalizing certain technologies and ideas. 

~(side note:  most people are okay with this. Like it’s not like there’s huge movements to globalize things, other than having the few central global areas and hubs of trade and stuff. Due to species differences and how large cultural gaps and stuff tend to be, most people, even in more global areas tend to have a cultural belief of like “well they’re not doing anything harmful to anyone and seem to be happy how they are so why intervene and try to introduce our own way of doing things”.  Though there are some groups who feel the opposite (many elves are bad about this, especially Fanyin and their allies),  I’d say a majority of cultures in the supernatural realm do not hold  ‘assimilate others to our ways’ as a high cultural belief or moral standard, thus even if it weren’t for the diseases and more biological basis for isolation, they would likely stay fairly separate anyway, aside from occasional trade and maybe intervening if some group is murdering people or something. There are not many attempts at globalizing technologies in the first place, etc etc etc 

(though it’s hard to know if this belief is naturally occurring or if the ‘just let other do what they’re doing as long as it isn’t harmful’ mentality being culturally common is in some ways actually a result of it often being historically bad to enter random groups because of disease (so like people who like to get in other’s business end up catching weird diseases and die, while those cultures who prefer to leave others alone don’t get into the same issues with genetic incompatibilities or viruses they have no immunity to and  end up surviving to pass on the ‘hey why not leave people alone’ mentality etc. etc))~

So anyway, diseases and physical illnesses can vary a lot between groups, and occasionally can end up being harmful to other groups if spread..But this isn’t much of a problem, since most groups in the realm are fairly isolated and have little contact with other species or cultures to begin with, and on top of that, most species are too different from each other for their illnesses to even be applicable to others . A majority of groups in the realm are so different they can’t even breed with each other, don’t have much in common culturally, live on different time scales (like an immortal species living next to a species that only lives 300 years), so aside from usually having a base knowledge of whether species around you are harmful to interact with or not (if the blood or naturally carried diseases of your neighbors can kill you, etc.), the health and physical aspects of other groups/species aren’t going to affect you much, unless they’re somehow applicable to you as well. 

Though supernatural creatures can still technically have some conditions that are also common in humans, it just depends on their anatomy specifically. Like some Jhevona don’t have digestive tracts so they likely wouldn’t get like, human digestive issues or whatever, but they do all usually posses hearts which function mostly the same ways as human hearts, so a heart attack or other heart condition could be something that a Jhevona may have, just like humans do. 

There are a lot of species specific health problems though,  but I haven’t planned a lot of them out yet lol. Other than like, the ‘glass sickness’ in the Ythrili , and I have mentioned that due to the deals with the ancient demon during creation with the originals, the Avirre’thel/vampires do have a lot of disease in the population (as I think that was one of the curses/cons to their agreement with the demon) but I haven’t planned many of them specifically, other than maybe mentioning that thing where they often grow too many extra fangs (like wisdom teeth but Worse) and have to have a lot of surgery to remove them lol.   

It’s definitely a Thing that all species will have their own unique health conditions or common complications, I just, don’t have many established examples  because I haven’t written that far for some of my species lol ! 

But yeah, most diseases in the supernatural realm are species specific, or specific to only a few species, which is why it’s really common for doctors to be specialists only within a certain group (such as treating elves exclusively or etc.). Though there can be broader range healers, especially people who do healing magic. Usually with higher level healing magics, what you heal isn’t dependent on your knowledge of their anatomy and is more of a general repair spell, so expert magic healers can sometimes deal with a huge variety of smaller illnesses or surface injuries and such, regardless of species. Though there are still many injuries that would be too complex/take more magical energy than most healers have/require some extensive knowledge of the species’ anatomy  in order to fix, as healing magic is not uniform or broadly applicable for all injuries at all, just many, and depends heavily on skill level or exact nature of the magic.  And especially in global areas, there are many doctors who specialize in as many species as possible to know about and treat all forms of diseases and injuries even in those with totally different anatomy or etc. 

But for the most part, medical systems are centralized to the people they are related to. Like in Navyete (where the Avirre’thel live) most doctors are vampires or demons specializing in vampiric or demonic conditions, because those are the two largest populations in Navyete (though of course also some doctors for humans and elven refugees coming in from Fanyin)... but like if you’re like a Ythrili or something and you end up in Navyete somehow, you’d have trouble getting medical care, unless it’s a more simple injury that could be helped with regular healing magic. Diseases and other physical ailments and general illnesses tend to be heavily specific to a person’s individual species. 

Though there are many broad conditions (like most everyone can get broken bones or heart conditions or a brain injury), every species is going to have a lot of illnesses and especially viruses and diseases and such that are specific to one group or a few similar groups and not anyone else.

 Sometimes there can be slight variation within a species (like between sub-species or etc.), but that usually has more to do with differing rates of health issues than having different health issues entirely (like maybe one sub group within a species has like slightly higher immunity to something than the rest of their species, but wouldn’t have their own specific diseases that don’t affect the rest of the population). 

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SO YEAH,,, uh,, the main point I guess is: Yes, technically species in the supernatural realm can have some of the same mental and physical illnesses as we do in our own human earth

but:   

Mental illnesses are the most similar, though still have some amount of variation by species or other classifications of similar experience (and will be conceptualized very differently depending on culture)

and 

Physical  illnesses CAN be the same  as ours depending on the species (like whether they have the same body parts we do or not),  but do tend to have much much more variety, and health conditions are usually specific to species and their own unique genetics and anatomy (and will also be conceptualized differently by each culture). 

Hopefully this makes some amount of sense and isn’t just me rambling forever, like usual when I feel the need to do too many side tangents lol, sorry for this being so long (and despite it’s length I still feel it’s too basic.. like I should have more specific examples of health conditions planned out but I don’t so it feels Incomplete lol… curse me for not having like, an entire list of supernatural health conditions on hand > : U ) ! But hopefully it answers the question well enough ! If you have any more questions, feel free to ask! Thanks for giving me an excuse to talk about things I like to think about too much lmao