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eternal-evergreens · 2 months

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may I request a yandere hajime kashimo x fem reader or yandere gato x fem reader if you haven't read the manga yet

｡⁠*ﾟ⁠+*⁠.⁠✧ "Arc Flash" ｡⁠*ﾟ⁠+*⁠.⁠✧

Post format: drabble

Paring: Yandere! Hajime Kashimo x Fem! Reader

Word count: 1.3k

Warnings: major injury, slight gore, period-typical misogyny (nothing from Hajime), cross-dressing, forced marriage

You were once one of the strongest sorcerers of your time, though your days of glory have long since passed you by.

You were twenty-five when you fought what you thought to be your last battle. Twenty-five when you sustained a life-altering injury. Twenty-five when you lost it all.

Hajime Kashimo. Your childhood friend turned sour. Endearing when you were children, his fixation on you began to verge on unnerving as you entered adolescence. By the time you had entered adulthood, it had bloomed into an obsession from which you could not escape.

“Let’s get married,” he told you on your eighteenth birthday. He wasn’t asking for your opinion. If you wanted to get out of this, you’d need a better excuse than ‘I don’t want to’.

“I can’t,” you said flatly, luggage in hand. You needed to get going before noon, and he was blocking your only exit. “It’s a tradition in my family for sorcerers to go on a pilgrimage of strength once they enter adulthood. You know this.”

“I’m not like them,” you say. “I need to get stronger.”

“The girls usually choose to get married instead, though.”

“You don't even have a technique!” You pause.

That's not quite true, though he has no way to know it. You never told him about it, after all.

“...Even more reason to get stronger.”

You do have a technique, but you've only just recently discovered it.

“You won’t need to get stronger once you’re under my protection.”

Most sorcerers become aware of their technique around five or six…

“And what if someone attacks me while you’re away? I’m going. End of story.”

…but it's a different story if their technique requires the use of a medium that is hard to come by.

“When you come back, then,” he says. You give a vague indication of agreement, and he lets you pass.

Corpses aren't exactly common playthings for a child, after all.

Most pilgrimages of this type end after a maximum of three years. However, returning was never something you planned on doing. Your family scorned you for not being a meek and obedient daughter, and Hajime had chased off the only friends you had. There was nothing left for you back in the village. The pilgrimage was largely nothing more than an excuse for your escape.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it was all for show. You were’nt lying when you said you wanted to get stronger, after all.

Within just a year of your departure, rumours of “The Masked Sorcerer” began to circulate around Japan. Despite the growing fame, you weren’t worried about being caught. After all, [First] [Last] was a female sorcerer of humble origins with no innate technique, completely different from the Masked Sorcerer, an anonymous male who possessed a mastery over corpse manipulation.

After seven years of independence, you thought you'd never see anyone from your past ever again. But perhaps the years of separation had worn on your memory; you seemed to have forgotten that Hajime was a junkie for battle.

It was a relatively simple attack from behind. So easy to dodge that you suspect it was meant more as a declaration than a genuine attempt on your life. You reach for your katana, prepared to take your assailant down in one blow, however, a familiar voice freezes you in place.

“You’re the masked sorcerer, right?” He asked. “I've been looking for you.” Hajime lunges for you, his cursed energy crackling around him. You jump to create distance, narrowly avoiding a collision. Snapping out of your momemtary stupor, this time you don’t hesitate to unsheathe your katana and swing it down in one fluid motion. At the same time, you summon a horde of skeletons to join you in battle. Skeletons don’t make for the strongest fighters, but bones are the most resistant to electric conduction. That makes them perfect for fighting against Hajime’s cursed energy.

“So this is corpse manipulation!” Hajime exclaims, leaping out of your sword’s path. “I’ve never seen anything like it!” Your skeletons swarm him, each armed with weapons made of bone. Hajime releases a surge of electricity, but the skeletons hardly react. “Not bad.” He grins. “You even accounted for the special property of my cursed energy. However,” Hajime drops his staff and raises his arms to his chest, making a hand sign you recognise instantly. How could you forget? You were the first person he showed it off to.

“Hey, look at this! I just learned how to make explosions!” Hajime, age twelve, told you, guiding you by the hand as he ran with you across an open field. “[First], [First], look!”

“I’m looking, I’m looking,” you say. Hajime smiles, letting go of your hand to free up his own, he places his left palm over the back of his right hand, making a sign that resembles a butterfly’s wings. “How does it work?”

“So you take a bunch of electricity like this to create a sort of field, yeah? Then you pulse more electricity through that field, and then…” In a second, the tree standing to your left explodes as if struck by lightning, its stump catches on fire, and its branches fly out in all directions, many of them also on fire.

“Woah! That’s amazing, Hajime!” Hajime puffs out his chest with pride.

“I’ve even thought of a name for it!” He tells you. “I’m calling it—”

“Arc flash.”

In no time at all, the force of the explosion rips your skeletons apart, leaving nothing left between you and him. You lunge forward, katana in hand. He readies his staff to block your attack, and the two of you exchange blows with lightning speed.

“What’s your name?” He asks. You don’t answer. Your voice would give you away. A current passes through your body, shocking the nerves. You lock up, and Hajime reaches to remove your mask. In a flash, you sever his arm. But the damage is done. In an effort to protect your identity, you gave it away instead.

It’s Hajime’s turn to be frozen now. He looks down at the stump of his arm as blood gushes from the cleany cut arteries, then he looks back to you. “That was…”

New Shadow Style: Simple Domain.

By creating a small domain around your body, you’re able to automate your movements, attacking and reacting to attacks faster than you ever could on your own.

It’s not something you came up with, but, having no innate technique to rely on, it was basically your signature back home.

Shit. You messed up.

“Let’s change the rules,” he says, healing his injured hand and picking his staff back up. “If I win, you’ll promise to marry me, just like you did back then.” No point in hiding it now, you figure. You rip off your mask and throw it to the ground.

“And if I win, you’ll die where you stand.”

“Deal.” The two of you launch towards each other in a blaze of fiery passion. You fight well, but it isn’t long before you burn through all of your skeleton reserves. Regular corpses, though stronger, are more suceptible to electric pulse, and don’t last much longer. With nothing but melee combat left at your disposal, it was only a matter of time before a well-placed electrical current sent you out of commission.

That bastard. He targeted your spinal cord on purpose, didn’t he?

“Partial paraplegia,” the doctor said. “It means that while you still retain some form of movement in your legs, it will be quite difficult for you to ever walk again. And even then, only for short distances.”

You wanted to kill him. That good-for-nothing husband of yours was just about as bad as it can get. But a sorcerer’s word is their pride. So you agreed to go back to his residence as his newly disabled wife, though the humiliation and shame just might send you into an early grave.

“Well,” he says, grinning as he wheels you out of the office. “Guess you can’t run away anymore, huh?”

#yandere jjk #yandere jujutsu kaisen #yandere x reader #yandere hajime kashimo #hajime kashimo #hajime kashimo x reader #yandere jjk x reader #jjk #jjk x reader #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader

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noneatnonedotcom · 27 days

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the meaning of Jaune's heraldry

so this one will be a short add on to the penndragon campaign I'm doing with jaune continuing on from his father's story of becoming the king scar. Some minor things will come up later. jaune's manor is in Pitton, I rolled random attachments to it to see just what it would start with and how it would effect the arc family in it's development.

the manor started with an abbey and a twenty foot statue made of stone with the caption I am forever. (they got the roll twice and take both option on the table) I'm flavoring the statue to be a giant cross that no one really knows the origin of. The important thing is that these two buildings increase the humility and spirituality of the people who live there. secondarily I rolled for random weird things on the property and got pilgrimage sight. this will come up later but it basically reduces the upkeep of the abbey because people keep showing up and leaving offerings. during Roland Arc's time as lord of the manor, he expanded the abbey to include an almshouse(to increase the generosity of the residents), a hospital (for merciful increases), and some Mellisarium (bee-keeping villages that increase the energetic trait of the people who live there) since Roland wanted to avoid dangerous situations I did limit the number of things he could build (not getting ransoms for building things like walls or anything like that.) but I did let him roll the random adventures table a couple of times before I sent him off to pasture. he, I kid you not, rolled "your manor becomes a pilgrimage sight" four fucking times! so I just decided that Pitton Abbey became an extremely important holy sight for British Christianity.

British Christianity btw holds that Jesus came to Britain as a boy and taught the druids thus adding the druidic knowledge to the logos. ie it's Christianity but Druidism is its base of knowledge, not Rome.

so the Abbey pays for itself through pilgrimage, no idea what for if anyone has any ideas let me know. the almshouse is paid for with the honey from the Mellisarium and all these things together mean that jaune's getting a check to almost every virtue in British Christianity. so that's neat

now then his heraldry actually adds into this because his standard is a rainbow in gold with argent background.

rainbow: luck and peacefulness, also mean that you were present for some mythical feat.

gold:

Symbolizes, Wisdom, Constancy, Faithfulness, Glory, Great generosity Often used to signify nobility, honor, and prestige

White (Argent) Symbolizes: Truth, Innocence, Purity, Sincerity, Peace

argent and Or shields are often used with holy connotations so jaune is basically heir to an extremely holy place and it's reflected in his personality and the personality of his entire family. any daughters are given to the Abbey to be nuns and often placed in charge of the lands (brittish christanity had the lords who owned the churches assign leadership to them) if anyone has any ideas on what exactly happened at Pitton to make it a mecca for Brittish Christianity let me know. but the core take away from this should be that Arcs are famous not for their skill at arms but for their strength of faith and character. also for being naturally loveable (it was their random trait gives a +10 to flirting meaning jaune's sitting at a 25 out of twenty on flirting) any ideas for what miracle happened to the Arcs? because literally everything about them points to something extremely important for the entire brittish isles, maybe something to do with the giant cross statue? @howlingday @thatorigamiguy @heliosthegriffin @weatherman667

#jaune arc #fantasy #knights are cool #rwby au

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canmom · 8 months

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The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, 000-012

Or, what if that mural was the heart of a web serial.

I'm reading The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, thanks largely to the enthusiasm of @azdoine and @lukore on my dash over the last few months.

This is absolutely not gonna be a liveblog in the level of detail of the great Umineko liveblog project. Rather I'm gonna be aiming at something like the comics comints series or those occasional posts on anime. Or indeed what I wrote about Worth The Candle last year. I must create a robot whose purpose is to watch to see if I start writing detailed plot summaries and hit me with a stick labelled 'remember you have a job now'.

That outta the way, let's talk flower!

youtube

No, not that flower!

I will start with an anecdote. When I was at university, I ended up attending a talk by court alchemist senescence researcher Aubrey de Grey, who at that time did not yet have a 'sexual harassment allegations' section on his Wikipedia page. The main thing that struck me at the time was his rather spectacularly long beard. But I did listen to his talk about ending aging.

de Grey's schtick is that he, like many people in the transhumanist milieu, believes that medical technology is on the cusp of being able to prevent aging sufficiently well to prolong human lifespans more or less indefinitely. He believes that the different processes of aging can be understood in terms of various forms of accumulating cellular 'damage', and that these will begin to be addressed within present human lifespans, buying time for further advancements - so that (paraphrasing from memory) 'the first immortals have already been born'. He has some pretty graphs to demonstrate this point.

At that talk, one of the audience members asked de Grey the (in my view) very obvious question about whether access to this technology would be distributed unevenly, creating in effect an immortal ruling class. de Grey scoffed at this, saying he always gets this question, and basically he didn't think it would be a big deal. I forget his exact words, but he seemed to assume the tech would trickle down sooner or later, and this was no reason not to pursue it.

I'm sure de Grey is just as tired of being reminded of how unbalanced access to medical technology is in our current world, or the differences in average life expectancy between countries.

So, I was very strongly reminded of de Grey as The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere laid out its major thematic concerns and characters. I was also put in mind of many online arguments in the transhumanist milieu about whether it would be a good thing, in principle, to end death.

In particular, of course, comes to mind transhumanist Nick Bostrom's short story The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant, in which death is likened to a huge dragon that demands to be fed trains full of humans every day. In the story, humanity's scientists secretly build a giant gun to kill the dragon. Naturally, despite all the doubters and naysayers who foolishly feel obliged to justify the existence of the dragon, the gun works. Bostrom's imagery is incredibly heavy-handed (particularly the trains à la Auschwitz), but just in case you didn't get it, he also spells out the moral explicit at the end: basically, every day not spent putting resources to abolishing death is adding up more and more bodies to the pile of people who don't get to be immortal.

So far, Flower seems to be shaping up to be a critical intervention into that milieu, with a much more grounded view of death and a much stronger model of society - admittedly not a high bar but it's going good so far!

At the time of writing this commentary, I have read the prologue and first two six-chapter arcs, namely Mankind's Shining Future (1-6) and Pilgrimage to the Deep (7-12).

the general shape of things

We are introduced - from the perspective of sardonic, introverted Su, who is going to be the protagonist of our time loop - to a group of brilliant young medical wizards, who have just been invited to visit the headquarters of a secret society whose mission is precisely to abolish death. Su's grandfather was some kind of controversial luminary who was expelled this organisation, and he also did something to her, which is giving her some kind of ulterior motive to find her way into this society.

We know pretty much from the outset that this is a time loop scenario: Su has been explicitly given the opportunity to replay the scenario in the hopes of find an alternative outcome, by some kind of presently mysterious parties. This first part is the 'control' loop, i.e. probably more or less how things went down 'originally'.

I believe Umineko is an explicit inspiration for this story, and the influence is pretty evident. But parallels with the Locked Tomb series, especially Gideon the Ninth, are also quite noticeable. @lukore spoke of it as the STEM to Locked Tomb's humanities, and I can already kinda see it, although we haven't got into the real meat of the scenario yet. This story began serialisation four years ago, making the two works roughly contemporary. The latest chapter was published in the last couple of weeks - no idea if I've arrived just in time for the ending!

Stylistically, it's generally pretty heavy on dialogue and long asides. The characters are a bunch of mega nerds who love to have big philosophical and political discussions, but their dynamics are well enough realised and their dynamics clear enough that it can double up as naturalistic characterisation. So far, the discussions have been interesting to read.

Below I'm going to make some notes and comments on various elements of the setting and story. In a followup post (because it got too long) I'm going to talk a lot about entropy. Perhaps you will find this interesting!

the world

The first few chapters are dedicated pretty hard to exposition. We find ourselves in a distant-future setting - one in which it seems reality has totally collapsed and then been rebuilt using magic, creating a somewhat oddball universe which lacks things like the element iron, and also electromagnetism. This seems like it would have pretty severe implications for just about everything!

However, the 'ironworkers' have, after producing a series of trial and error 'lower planes' that didn't quite get it right, landed on a fairly close approximation of how things used to be on the old world. Though by 'fairly close approximation' I mean like... it's a bowl-shaped world and the sun and stars are artificial lanterns. But still, there are humans, and they seem to work more or less like we're used to humans working, apart from the whole 'magic' thing.

So, an alt-physics setting. Praise Aealacreatrananda, I love that shit.

While electromagnetism might be out, the more abstract physical principles like thermodynamics still apply, and the humans of this universe have managed to find analogues to a number of things in our world. Instead of computers, they have 'logic engines' which run on magic. Horses seem to have made it in, so we get delightful blends of historical and futuristic concepts like a self-driving computer-controlled horse-drawn carriage taxi.

The biggest difference is of course that in this setting, magic - more on that in a bit - has solved most medical problems and humans routinely live to around 500. The setting is ostensibly a semi-post-scarcity one, although a form of money exists in 'luxury debt', which can be exchanged for things like taxi rides, café food and trips on the space elevator.

Politically, we are told that the world has enjoyed a few hundred years of general peace, broken in living memory by a revolution which put an end to a regime of magical secrecy. There are lots of countries, and an alliance overseeing them.

There's a few other oddities in this world. Something called a 'prosognostic event' can happen if you see someone who has the same face as you, and whatever this is, it's bad enough news that everyone is constantly reminded to veil their faces in public and there's some kind of infant 'distinction treatment' to mitigate the risk. Given that, in the regular world, nothing particularly bad would happen if you ran into a long-lost identical twin, it suggest there is probably something a little fucky about how humans work in this world!

There's evidently a fair bit of effort put into the worldbuilding of fictional countries and historical periods. The important elements seem to be roughly along the lines of:

our world is currently in what they call the 'old kingdoms' period, which is poorly remembered;

next up comes an 'imperial' period of high transhumanist shenanigans in which society was ruled by 'gerontocrats' who got exclusive access to the longevity treatment, but this all somehow led to a huge disaster which destroyed og earth;

the survivors built the Mimikos where humanity currently lives using magic and created some kind of huge iron spike that holds the universe together; there was subsequently a 'fundamentalist' period in which a strict cutoff point was put on human lifespans and a lot of the wackier magic was banned;

now we're onto a new era of openness following a small revolution, while the major political structures remain largely intact.

Writing a far-future setting is hard, because trying to deal with the weight of history without the story getting bogged down with worldbuilding details is a fiddly line to walk. The Dying Earth series of Jack Vance might be a relevant point of comparison. Vance leaves the historical details vague - there are endless old kingdoms and strange artefacts and micro-societies for Cugel and co. to stumble on. Far more important than the specifics of history is establishing the vibe of a world that's seen an unimaginable amount of events layered on top of each other and is honestly a bit tired.

Flower makes things a bit more concrete and generally manages to make this work decently well. I do appreciate the asides where Su talks about, for example, the different architectural styles that layer up to make a place, or the way a technique has been refined. It establishes both that Su is the kind of person to notice this sort of thing, and also helps the world feel lived-in.

the names

The story doesn't do a lot with language. The story is written in English, and the narration will occasionally make reference to how things are phrased (e.g. how divination predates the suffix -mancy). We can probably make the standard assumption that this is all translated from $future_language, with the notional translator making a suitable substitution of whatever linguistic forms exist in that language.

The characters are named in a variety of languages. Our main character's full name is Utsushikome of Fusai. We're told that this is "an old name from Kutuy, and means something like 'mysterious child'" - so Kutuyan is one of the languages spoken in this world. It's blatantly got the same phonotactics as Japanese, and indeed if I search up 'Utsushikome', I find an obscure historical figure called Utsushikome-no-Mikoto, wife of the Emperor Kōgen; she has no article on English Wikipedia, but she does have a brief one on Japanese wiki. Just as Su says about Kutuyan, 'Utsushikome' is written 欝色謎 in Japanese, but it relies on archaic readings of those characters and wouldn't read that way in modern Japanese. We could perhaps assume a good old translation convention is in effect where Kutuyan is replaced with Japanese.

A lot of characters have Greek names, as do various setting elements. One exception is Kamrusepa, or Kam, who is named for an ancient goddess of medicine worshipped by the Hittites and Luwians. I know basically fuck all about Hittites and Luwians but it's a cool little nod to mythology, and it won't be the only one!

I'll run down a list of characters and my comments about them in a bit. But many are named after gods or other mythological figures.

the magic

Most of the divergences come from magic existing. Certain humans are 'arcanists', who are able to use the 'Power', which is a magic system with a highly computational flavour. Thanks to Su's expositional asides, we know that an incantation is something like a short program written in cuneiform with the ability to gather information, perform maths, and manipulate particles. An example we are given is a spell called "entropy-denying", which is the following string of cuneiform:

"…(𒌍𒌷𒀭)(𒌍𒁁𒀭)𒅥𒌈𒆜𒈣𒂠, 𒋢𒀀𒅆𒌫𒃶,𒈬𒊹."

We're told that spells always start with phrases ending in 𒀭, and end in 𒊹. Beyond that, I'm not sure how far the author has actually worked out the syntax of this magic system - probably not in too much detail! Seems like the kind of thing it's better to leave vague, but also she seems like kind of nerd who would (positive). It's conceptually a reasonable magic system for a world where more or less realistic physics applies.

The use of unusual scripts for a magic system isn't that unusual - the old European occultists who wrote the [Lesser] Key of Solomon loved to write on their magic circles in Hebrew, and in modern times we could mention Yoko Taro's signature use of the Celestial Alphabet for example - but the specific use of cuneiform here seems like it might be a little more significant, because a little later in the story the characters encounter a mural depicting The Epic of Gilgamesh, which of course was recorded on cuneiform tablets. Remains to be seen exactly what these allusions will mean!

The magic system is divided into various disciplines defined by the different ways they approach doing magic, with the disciplines breaking down broadly along the same lines as the modern scientific disciplines. For example, our protagonist is a thanatomancer ("necromancer" having become unfashionable), which is the discipline dealing with death; she's specifically an entropic thanatomancer, distinguished by their framework viewing death as the cessation of processes.

Magic relies on an energy that they refer to as 'eris' (unknown relation to the Greek goddess of strife and discord). We are told that eris must be carefully apportioned across the elements of a spell or shit blows up, that it can be stored, and it accumulates gradually enough that you don't want to be wasteful with it, but so far given little information about where it comes from.

Magic in this story generally seems to act as a kind of 'sufficiently advanced technology'. It's very rules-based, and used for a lot of mundane ends like operating computers or transport. Advancement in magic is something like a combination of basic research and software development. But the thing that makes it a magic system and not merely alt-physics is that it's at least a little bit personal: it must be invoked by an individual, and only certain people can operate the magic. We're told a little about how wizards are privileged in some societies, indoctrinated in social utility in others, and expected to be inconspicuous in the present setting. It's not clear yet if you need some kind of special innate capacity to do the magic, or if it's just a matter of skill issue.

With one exception, our main characters are a gaggle of wizards, and exceptionally skilled students at that. They're at an elite institution, carrying high expectations, even if they are themselves fairly dismissive of the pomp and ceremony. They have grandiose plans: Kamrusepa in particular is the main voice of the 'death should be abolished' current.

the cast

We're entering a cloistered environment with high political stakes hanging off of it. Even if I hadn't already heard it described as a murder mystery, it would feel like someone will probably be murdered at some point, so lets round up our future suspects.

Su (Utsushikome) is our protagonist and first-person POV. She's telling this story in the first past tense, with a style calling to mind verbal narration; she'll occasionally allude to future events so we know for sure narrator!Su knows more than present!Su. She's got a sardonic streak and she likes long depressing antijokes, especially if the punchline is suicide. She will happily tell us she's a liar - so maybe her narration isn't entirely reliable, huh.

Su is more than a little judgemental; she doesn't particularly like a lot of her classmates, or people in general, and generally the first thing she'll tell you about a character is how well she gets on with them. She introduces the theme of 'wow death sucks' in the first paragraph, but she is, at least at this point, pessimistic that anyone will manage to do anything about it for good.

Her magical specialisation is entropic thanatomancy, roughly making processes go again after they working coherently.

Her name is a reference to an obscure Japanese empress, as discussed above.

Ran is Su's bestie from the same home country. She is generally pretty on the level. She likes romance novels and she is pretty sharp at analysing them. She will cheerfully team up with Su to do a bit or bait someone else when an argument gets going.

Her magical specialisation is Divination, which is sort of a more fundamental layer of magic, about gathering information by any means. In medicine it's super advanced diagnostics.

Her name is too short to pin down to a specific allusion. Could be one of a couple of disciple of Confucius such as Ran Geng, or a Norse goddess of the sea.

Kam (Kamrusepa) is the de facto class prez and spotlight lover. She's hardcore ideological, the story's main voice of the de Grey/Bostrom death-abolishing concept so far - I think she straight up calls someone a 'deathist' at some point. She loves to tell everyone what she thinks about everything, and getting the last word.

Her magical specialisation is Chronomancy, so time magic. It's described as secretive and byzantine, but also it can do stuff like (locally?) rewind time for about five minutes. No doubt it has something to do with the time loop.

As mentioned above, she's named after a fairly obscure ancient deity of healing and magic.

Theo (Theodoros) is a fairly minor character. He's scatterbrained and easily flustered, he has a similar background to our protagonist, and he's not great with people. His name is shared with a number of ancient Greek figures, so it's hard to narrow it down to one allusion. I don't think his magic school has been mentioned.

Ptolema is a cheery outgoing one, someone who Su dismisses as an airhead. And she is at least easy to bait into saying something ill-considered. Her specialisation is applying magic to surgery. As a character, she tends to act as a bit of a foil to the others. Bit of a valley girl thing going on.

'Ptolema' is presumably a feminised version of the renowned Greek philosopher Ptolemy.

Seth is the jock to Ptolema's prep, and our goth protag Su doesn't particularly like him either. ...lol maybe that's too flippant, I may be misapplying these US high school stereotypes. To be a little more precise then, he's pretty casual in demeanour, flirty, likes to play the clown. He specialises in Assistive Biomancy, which revolves around accelerating natural healing processes.

Seth is named for either the Egyptian god (domain: deserts, violence and foreigners) or an Abrahamic figure, the third son of Adam and Eve granted by God after the whole Caim killing Abel thing.

Ophelia is someone Su describes as 'traditionally feminine' - soft-spoken, demure etc. (Gender in this world appears to be constructed along broadly similar lines to ours). Indeed we get a fairly extended description of her appearance. Her specialisation is Alienist Biomancy, which means introducing foreign elements to healing (not entirely sure how that differs from the Golemancy mentioned later).

Ophelia is of course a major character in Shakespeare's Hamlet, best known for going mad and dying in a river.

Fang is the only nonbinary member of the class, noted as the most academically successful. They're not on the expedition, but the characters discuss them a little in their absence, so maybe they'll show up later. It seems like they have a bit of a rebellious streak. Their magical specialisation is not mentioned.

Fang is a regular ol' English word, but I gave it a search all the same and found there's an ancient Chinese alchemist of that name. She is the oldest recorded woman to do an alchemy in China, said to know how to turn mercury into silver.

Lilith is the teenaged prodigy in computers logic engines, and Mehit is her mother who accompanies her on the trip. They've got a big Maria and Rosa (of Umineko) dynamic going on, with Mehit constantly scolding Lilith and trying to get her to obey social norms, though in contrast to Maria, Lilith is a lot more standoffish and condescending to the rest of the gang. Lilith specialises in 'Golemancy', which means basically medical robotics - prosthetic limbs and such. She spends most of her time fiddling with her phone logic engine, and will generally tell anyone who talks to her that they're an idiot. Sort of a zoomer stereotype.

Lilith is named for the Abrahamic figure, the disobedient first wife of Adam who was banished and, according to some Jewish traditions, subsequently became a demon who attacks women at night. There may be some connection between Lilith and the lioness-headed Mesopotamian chimeric monster Lamashtu, which I mention because Mehit is an Egyptian and Nubian lion goddess.

'Golemancy' is probably playing on the popular fantasy idea of a 'golem' as a kind of magic robot, but given the Jewish allusion in Lilith's name here, I do wonder a little bit if it's going to touch on the Jewish stories of the Golem which inspired it - a protective figure with a specific religious dimension.

There are some other characters but they're not part of the main party on their way to the function, so I won't say much about them just yet. Also it's entirely possible I went and forgot an entire classmate or something, big whoops if so.

the events

In true Umineko tradition, the beginning of the story narrates in great detail how the protagonists make their way to the place where the plot is going to happen.

To be fair, there's a lot of groundwork to be laid here, and the characters' discussions do a lot to lay out the concerns of the story and sketch out the setting, not to mention establish the major character relations. A murder mystery takes a certain amount of setup after all! There's plenty of sci-fi colour to be had in the 'aetherbridge', which is a kind of space elevator that lifts you up to a high altitude teleporter network. (It's technically not teleportation but 'transposition', since teleportation magic also exists in the story, with different restrictions! But close enough for government work.)

They go to a huge space citadel, which is kind of a transport hub; some cloak and dagger shit happens to hide the route they must take to the mysterious secret organisation. They find a strange room with a missing floor and a mural of the Epic of Gilgamesh, albeit modified to render it cyclic. What does it meeaaaan?

The idea of a secret society of rationalists is one that dates back to the dawn of ratfic, in HPMOR. It was kinda dumb then, but it works a lot better here, where we're approaching the wizard circle from outside. The phrase 'Great Work' has already been dropped. I love that kind of alchemical shit so I'm well into finding out what these wizards are plotting.

the dying

A lot of the discussions revolve around the mechanics of death. Essentially the big problem for living forever is information decay. Simple cancers can be thwarted fairly easily with the magic techniques available, but more subtle genetic slippages start to emerge after the first few hundred years; later, after roughly the 500 year mark, a form of dementia becomes inevitable. It's this dementia in particular that the characters set their sights on curing.

One thing that is interesting to me is that, contra a lot of fantasy that deals with necromancy (notably the Locked Tomb series), there appears to be no notion of a soul in this world whatsoever. The body is all that there is. Indeed, despite all the occult allusions in the character names, there is very little in the way of religion for that matter. Even the 'fundamentalism' is about an idea of human biological continuity that shouldn't be messed with too much.

Su distinguishes three schools of thought on death, namely 'traditional', 'transformative' and 'entropic'. The 'traditional' form attempts to restore limited function - classic skeleton shit. 'Transformative' sees death as a process and uses dead tissues together with living in healing. Su's 'entropic' school broadens this 'process' view to consider death as any kind of loss of order - a flame going out as much as an organism dying. At the outset of the story, Su has discovered a 'negentropic' means to restore life to an organism, which she considers promising, even if for now it only works for fifteen minutes.

This is an interesting perspective, but the devil is in the details. Because processes such as life or flames, necessarily, result in a continuous increase in the thermodynamic entropy of the universe. And yet this idea of death-as-loss-of-order does make a kind of sense, at a certain level of abstraction.

Elaborating on this got rather too long for this post, and I think it can stand alone, so I'm going to extract it to a followup post.

the comments

As is probably evident by the length of this post, I am very intrigued by The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere. The setting is compelling, and it seems like it's got the willingness to bite at the chewy questions it raises instead of acting like it has all the answers, which is I think one of the most crucial elements for this kind of scifi. I like how unabashed it is at having its characters straight-up debate shit.

Of course, this all depends where they go with it. There's so many ways it could be headed at this point. I hear where it's going is 'dark yuri' and 'Umineko-inspired murder mystery', so that should be really juicy fun, but I do end up wondering what space that will leave to address the core theme it's laid out in these first few chapters.

Overall, if this and Worth the Candle are what modern ratfic is like, the genre is honestly in pretty good shape! Of course, I am reading very selectively. But this is scratching the itch of 'the thing I want out of science fiction', so I'm excited to see where the next 133 chapters will take me.

Though all that said, I ended up writing this post all day instead of reading any other chapters or working, so I may need to rein it in a bit.

#fiction #web serials #the flower that bloomed nowhere #tftbn #sff

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ryin-silverfish · 5 months

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Hello ryin! I saw in a recent post of yours that you dislike the "class warfare" reading of the Havoc in Heaven arc in JTTW and would honestly love to hear more about your thoughts on that! Your takes have been really interesting.

Thank you!

My biggest problem with the "class warfare" reading is, first and foremost, what it has been historically used for.

Like, after the Havoc in Heaven opera and movie came out, the propagandists absolutely ate it up; SWK was associated with Mao Zedong and used to promote Mao's personality cult, and soon after, the White Bone Spirit story would be interpreted as this fable for the Sino-Soviet split.

Whereas Havoc in Heaven was intended and viewed as a metaphor and love letter to the victory of Chinese revolution, the White Bone Spirit story was interpreted in the context of the horrific fuck-up that is the Great Leap Forward, where the party were starting to doubt its leadership, and the path to the future seemed an uncertain and arduous one——much like the pilgrimage.

So, in the new twist on the "class warfare" narrative, Tripitaka and Pigsy became the poster-boy for "party members who were easily captivated by revisionist ideas" and needed to see how wrong they were, the WBS became the personification of Khruschev, imperialism, capitalism, revisionism...you name it, and SWK the Mao expy who could do no wrong yet was unfairly blamed by everyone.

Came the Cultural Revolution era, SWK would then become a sort of hero and role model for the Red Guards, smashing down all that was considered archaic and backwards, tearing down older authority figures and perceived "class enemies" alike, all the while emboldened by Mao's saying that "To rebel is justified" (造反有理).

Yeah, no, fuck that shit.

Terrible historical baggages aside, it is also a reading that reeks of presentism, and Lin Geng, a renowned professor of literature, had done a thorough takedown of the "SWK as peasant rebel" idea in his 西游记漫话.

Namely, it neither fits the circumstances of Havoc in Heaven, nor SWK's backstory and motivation. He's not rebelling because his monkeys are oppressed by the Celestial Realm, he's doing it because he feels personally slighted.

His mindset is also not that of a traditional peasant; compare and contrast that with Zhu Bajie, whom the author argues is very much peasant-coded in terms of his obsession with going back to Gao Laozhuang, his rake, and his comedic ignorance that stems from urban stereotypes of rural farmers.

To paraphrase Lin Geng, "Not all rebellions and rebel narratives in Chinese history are peasant ones, and we shouldn't just cry 'peasant rebellion metaphor!' the moment we saw a rebellion in fiction."

Lastly and more personally? This reading also tends to remove SWK's depth as a character. The representation of the Mind can be both heroic and flawed, capable of great feats and fuck-ups alike, but the representation of The Revolution has to be heroic and his opponents, whether celestial or demonic, must be evil oppressors and political boogeymen.

Like, the demons in the novel are representations of the mental obstacles a person will face on the path to Enlightenment, but they are also capable of being funny and very human characters, and not all of them wanted to eat Tripitaka.

The Celestial Realm is a satire of the imperial bureaucracy, sure, but the novel is also a product of its time and cannot magically promote 20th century ideas of revolutions and political reforms 500 years before they were a thing. Besides, SWK can still get help from them on the Journey and their relationship is more complicated than "oppressed rebel and oppressors".

And that's exactly why I dislike the "class warfare" reading: it creates a simplistic opposition of good and evil, and tries to squeeze the work into a narrow political framework that is neither nuanced nor accurate.

#journey to the west #xiyouji #jttw #chinese history #chinese literature #sun wukong #JTTWR has a pdf on his website about JTTW and PRC mythology-making #Lin Geng's book doesn't have a translation but can be found on WeChat read #Transforming Monkey also has a chapter that talks specifically about SWK's transformation into a revolutionary hero

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rotzaprachim · 2 years

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one of the most interesting aspects of andor to me is how i think it didn’t decision to alter character timelines so much as make the decision to alter- or rather, cut open and interrogate- the entire timeline of the rebellion, in ways that have fascinating implications for the entire worldbuilding of the starry wars. one of the lingering uncertainties of “andor” comes from the refusal to play any of the cards of the Rebel Alliance as the plucky good-guy army, for whom Joining the Rebellion is as straightforward as enlisting and getting a uniform, who can show up and do army things at any moment. as the episodes build and build and build and the tension and power of the imperial army grows higher, the Rebel Alliance just.... doesn’t appear. there is no Secret Base for Luthen to take Cassian too, only a tiny group of guerillas in the highlands. there is none of the famous iconography of the Rebellion- no orange flight suits (though boy does andor give a new cast to that color choice), no rebel armed rebel bases, no x-wings go swoop in at the last moment. as I watched Andor I felt the lingering stone-drop realisation: the Rebellion, as we know it, simply does not exist. what we get is a hyper-isolated, fragmented rebellion in its infancy, tiny groups and intellligence operations so low on cash that the theft of a single sector’s payroll or access to a single wealthy woman’s family funds. Cassian can’t join the rebel alliance, because it doesn’t exist yet.

And that’s one story. that’s a far, far more complicated story, and a more difficult story to exist within, than the plucky rebel army versus big empire narrative star wars has been living in. how do you join something like that? it really isn’t that easy. BUT! here’s the thing. BUT BUT BUT. andor complicates that further by showing, over and over again, that even if that rebel alliance can’t swoop in and save the day, that even if the number of *official* Rebellion members is a tiny fraction down to their last resources, organised rebellion is, in fact, possible. and it already exists. it exists everywhere, in numerous forms. it is both non violent and violent, and it is often the work of *civillians,* because the fundamental conditions of war, occupation, and totalitarianism make, politicise, designate everyone as a soldier. looking back on andor, there isn’t a single arc that isn’t made possible by some form of organised, collective rebellion. cassian couldn’t have escaped from ferrix if ferrix didn’t already have a system of pounding metal in order to spread the word, if salman and wilmon paak didn’t get set to banging metal, and brasso didn’t weld weights to the police squad car. the rebels couldn’t have pulled off the aldhani heist if hundreds of local aldhani hadn’t continued their cultural rites and kept coming on that pilgrimage even as local imperial agents actively worked to prevent it- because existence can be rebellion, because the continuation of cultural and religious traditions under oppression can be rebellion. the crowning point of the season, for me, is the prison break at narkina five, the five thousand prisoners knowing that there’s only one way out, and that’s by running, shooting, killing, by climbing out together. the series ends on an entire local uprising as a town’s funeral march turns into a riot against armed, shielded cops.

And it all leads into these much more nuanced things that Andor is saying about the natures of both oppression and resistance. Because it isn’t giving the (individualist, and somewhat defeatest, but sure damn repeated) narrative that rebellion against authoritarianism is about a few Englightened individuals - the luthen’s, the aldhani rebels- versus the mass of Sheeple who just take it. Are thankful for it. That there’s just the Special ones who see the light, and those that.. Haven’t. Nor are there the essentialistly Good Pure Rebels who have all the Right Ideas in a nice Color Coded Format, who have fought Purely and Totally for the Rebellion From the Start, versus the bad guys The structures of empire don’t work like that- they make huge numbers of people complicit because of the way they stack and tier and turn subjugated people against each other when so few individuals, actually are in charge, and they make the alternative to complicity be nothing but death, in horrific ways. The people in Andor have dirt on their hands. It’s about what they do now. The X-wings can’t come to save Cassian from Narkina. The prisoners have to climb their way out. No one can give the Aldhani rebels backup. Only Luthen and Cinta and Vel can come to Maarva’s wake, and when the fighting comes, it isn’t even about them, anyway. Andor asks what happens when there isn’t the golden saviour, the Good Guy army coming in for us, and makes the case for rebellion as something intensely collectivist and intensely local, that rebellion and rebels exist before our very eyes, in more complicated ways. It’s what makes the show both brutal and brutally hopeful - for one of the first times, watching star wars, i get the sense viscerally that better worlds and forms of existence are possible within the star wars world.

As for cassian, the arc I hope they’re going for, and i really do think are going for, is not that he joined the rebellion as we see it in rogue one. It’s that that rebellion as we know didn’t exist yet, and that his arc will be about helping to stitch together the various forms of rebellion that already exist, everywhere. I think we’ll walk into Rogue One now not seeing Cassian as Mon and Draven’s hand- already fascinating - but as one of the rebellion’s quiet powerbrokers and kingmakers whose a big part of why they’re there to begin with.

#andor #screaming crying vomiting blood over this show forever and ever #cassian andor

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c6jpg · 24 days

Text

natlan 5.0 brain dump

i did this in a lot of small chunks so i already forgot all of my detailed thoughts so i'm gonna try to keep it brief

general environment/exploration:

first off music and scenery is 💯💯💯

i particularly like how much wildlife there is and i really love the saurian gameplay (for me its hydro > dendro >>>> geo)

i feel so awful every time i accidentally kill a capybara they should be immune like the rhinos

it makes sense that there isn't "one huge city" like the other nations since natlan is composed of tribes, and each tribe looks like it gets a decent amount of attention, but i was still kind of disappointed by how small the stadium of the sacred flame feels in comparison for being the "main" area. i feel like they could have done a lot more with it

archon quest:

tldr; it was... not good? or at least very underwhelming? especially coming off fontaine/sumeru which had incredibly strong opening acts

act 1 was particularly like. whatever. felt more like a kachina story quest that rolled right into a mualani (but npc-focused) story quest

like for how important the pilgrimage is it just felt so. underwhelming and anticlimatic. yes yes i know kachina is precious and everyone loves her but i wish we spent less time doing kachina support group and focused more on the pilgrimage itself like can we at LEAST see some of the other playable characters participating instead of just hearing about it in passing

literally was soooooooooo fucking annoyed with the entire atea plotline. i wrote a whole rant in my first write up but basically that entire arc only existed so that they could bring back the purification plot device which WE HAVEN'T SEEN SINCE MONDSTADT

i was just incredibly annoyed with how that was all handled lol atea is also just such a non-character how am i supposed to care about her. she didn't even die in the end!!!

also mualani's tribe's whole thing being super stereotypical hawaiian tourism left a really bad taste in my mouth i wanted to get out of there as fast as possible

act 2 was weird because like. i felt like they were saying a lot of things that were like "this is a serious national crisis" but it didn't... feel that way? and a lot of the lore itself was pretty glossed over

i think a problem with the natlan story is that you need the first acts to set up the stakes but we just spent the first act gallivanting around with kachina/mualani and then when they DID get to the "main problem" in act 2 it just info dumped so hard to the point that i. didn't care?

pacing in general just felt all over the place

the only investment they gave us is through caring about kachina and i guess hating the abyss/not wanting a nation to be destroyed on principle but idk. especially with the "nah we gotta wait for the last 2 heroes first" the stakes are Not there for me

reminded me of when nahida was like "yeah i needed you to figure this out for yourself bc if i told you directly your head would explode." but at least that one was fun/could just chalk it up to nahida being cheeky and didn't like. prolong the plot for too long

SHOW US DON'T TELL US DAMN IT. i might just have recency bias but i genuinely feel like natlan might be one of the worst cases of telling and not showing as far as archon quests are concerned

also capitano's appearance felt so random LMAO he really showed up, said some cryptic shit, got his ass beat, and then left. at least the cutscene was cool?

chasca girl i'm shaking crying throwing up somebody get that girl a full pair of pants and brown contacts PLEASE

i find it interesting how detailed/fleshed out chuychu (chasca's sister) is, both in terms of design and personality/character. it kind of felt like they originally intended for her to be playable but turned her into an NPC instead

also citlali is definitely some kind of faruzan situation where she's old but young looking

night kingdom was cool i guess nothing really to say here. i am very interested in the wayob lore though especially in regards to how it ties into the rest of teyvat/why natlan has particularly weak leylines

i feel like mavuika's younger sister might also become relevant in the future... in a bad way. like the insistence to not being forgotten/seeing mavuika again, the fact that mavuika doesn't "really" know what happened to her. also she also got a pretty unique npc model. or maybe she won't be brought up ever again idk

in general that whole reminiscence sequence with mavuika was like. fine but again you just info dumped the shit out of me i have no emotional attachment to feel anything about whats going on right now???

also we all know that was fucking ororon at the end with capitano like lmao come on. but im willing to bet both he + chasca are the last two heros bc like. who tf else do we have left LMAOOO

capitano was supposed to be cool but he's just giving goofy villain right now. sorry capitano fans they flopped so hard with him in this act

#0.txt #genshin spoilers

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theshenami · 4 months

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On the remarkably consistent childhood friends to lovers romantic trope in the Final Fantasy series

Following my playthrough for FF7 Rebirth, I have been thinking about romantic tropes in the FF series more broadly. The stories that have romantic relationships that develop between the main cast (or at least guest party members) seem to all follow the childhood friends (or, at least, childhood/family connections) to lovers trope. Just wanted to list the examples I can think of that follow this paradigm. (Disclaimer, I have never completed FF6, so cannot speak to that game).

FF3: Ingus and Sara grow up together in Sasune castle, and become a couple at the end, with Ingus declaring that he will follow her anywhere and stay by her side. This is the well-known trope of the knight and princess falling in love.

FF4: Cecil and Rosa grow up together along with Kain, with whom they are in a love triangle. Kain sort of runs off in the end because he can't deal with the other two being together at the story's end.

FF7: I know, it's really the only debatable one due to the narrative and affection mechanics of the OG, but the plot clearly shows that Cloud and Tifa have harbored romantic feelings since childhood, and they are obviously a couple raising a family together in AC and DoC. ToTP and OTWTAS delve further into their feelings, but are really just the devs clearing up things they did/could not get into in the OG. The remake trilogy adds more depth to the relationship as well, since Square couldn't really use tone of voice or body language in the OG to express the clear romantic chemistry and tension between them in the first two trilogy entries. In fact, it is so obvious that other characters and party members actively bring it up (Marle, Johnny, Yuffie, Barrett, even Aerith at times).

FF8: This one is a childhood/family connection one, as Squall and Rinoa's parents had a unresolved love story. It's a bit of stretch, I know, but it does loosely fit in with the other couples' arcs.

FF10: Similar to FF8, this one involves Tidus and Yuna having a connection through their fathers' having been comrades during Yuna's father's pilgrimage 10 years prior to the main story. Yuna even goes so far as to state that it must be fate that brought them together, during their voyage from Besaid to Kilika. It is worth noting that this one is a two-fer, since Wakka and Lulu are also childhood friends who become lovers, especially if you incorporate the 10-2 subplot in which Lulu is literally pregnant with Wakka's child.

FF12: This one only hints at two childhood-friends-to-lovers couples. Basch and Ashe have history as it seems he was a knight in the Dalmascan military when they were both younger, and their history is hinted at rather than directly addressed as in other games. It is suggested that they may develop romantic feelings some time after the main story ends, but are both bound by duty to be apart. Vaan and Penelo fit the childhood friends to lovers trope much better, but their relationship is only ever implied: Balthier constantly teases Vaan about Penelo by calling her "your girl" multiple times (which Vaan never refutes), and the final scene of the game is literally Vaan returning to her as he says "I'm coming Penelo".

FF13: Snow and Serah are the childhood friends to lovers couple here, and they do end up together in the end if you ignore the two sequel storylines.

FF15: Noctis and Luna start off as childhood friends destined to have an arranged marriage, but they develop strong romantic feelings for each other despite being apart for several years (yet again, by tragedies befalling their families/homes), and are reunited in their love both in adulthood and in the afterlife.

FF16: This one is another two-fer, with the obvious pairing of Clive and Jill growing up together and having romantic feelings as children, then being forced apart due to tragic circumstances (anyone sensing a theme here?), only to be reunited and fall in love as adults. This one mirrors FF7 quite a bit, complete with the memory loss narrative elements where Clive and Cloud both forget about the key roles they played in their respective childhood tragedies, only to rediscover the truth while on a journey of self-discovery where they battle with their own subconscious to rediscover their true pasts, with their childhood love interests at their sides. As a bonus, Jill also goes through her own journey of self-discovery at Drake's Breath with Clive at her side, much like Tifa does together with Cloud in the Lifestream. The less prominent pairing is Dion and Terence, who mirror the FF3 arc of Ingus and Sara, with the knight and prince (rather than princess, bold move SE) declaring their mutual love by story's end.

Please let me know if I missed/misrepresented anything, and I hope you find this remarkable consistency in the childhood-friends-to-lovers trope in the FF series as interesting as I do.

#cloti #cloud x tifa #tifa lockhart #cloud strife #final fantasy rebirth

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sketching-shark · 1 year

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If you were put in charge of making a JTTW movie/TV adaption from start to finish what direction would you have the show go?

*SHAKING AND FROTHING AT THE MOUTH FROM THE THOUGHT OF BEING IN CHARGE OF MY OWN ULTRAVIOLENT BODY HORROR-ESQUE JTTW ADAPTATION* Oh I am so normal about this prospect anon.

But in all seriousness I think I would DEFINITELY want it to be a lengthy animated tv adaptation because there's so much rich backstory and plot in the og classic that a movie length doesn't really let you delve into, AND because the wild transformations and different entities seem like they would be best conveyed in the limitless possibilities of animation! Like just imagine how terrifying a havoc in heaven would be where the Monkey King is shown taking FULL advantage of every single one of his abilities (as-you-will cudgel size transformation, tons of monkey clones, transformation from one creature to another, invulnerability, truth-seeing eyes, transformation into a three-headed six-armed towering monstrosity to fight an Erlang Shen who does the same, etc.). In addition, I also do think that the length of time it took for the pilgrims to warm up to each other and for Sun Wukong to go from a practical and ruthless yaoguai warlord to the Buddha Victorious in Strife is an important part of what makes Xiyouji the classic that it is, and this is all something that I think could be well captured in a lengthy animated series.

I know for sure that I'd want to spend a good amount of time on Sun Wukong's transformation from a relatively innocent stone monkey to the most viciously powerful of the yaoguai warlords to a sincere Buddhist, especially since the very understandable fear of death for himself and his loved ones seems to constantly be a driving force behind a lot of his actions. I think seeing the transformation of the monkey from loving and wanting to protect a relatively small group of people (47,000 monkeys & his friends) to extending that active love and compassion to individuals of all sorts, both human and yao, could be a really cool arc for the Monkey King too. This is especially so as it raises the interesting question as to whether compassion and love can end up being destructive if it's only offered to some but not others, and what atonement for past violence might be.

Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing also present a potentially fascinating case of dealing with disgraced deities who start off by considering their time on Earth and time on the journey a punishment before they eventually come to develop genuine compassion for the mortals they encounter. Stories about a fall from heaven leading to the fallen ones developing greater empathy for those who were once literally below them is my jam, and I think these other two pilgrims could offer a neat way to explore that! Also I want to note that I'm fully on team "Zhu Bajie is constantly complaining that he's hungry and tired first because of his own appetites and then as a way to get the other four self-destructive idiots to stop and take care of the basic necessities of life." For sure I'd also add in that potential hint noted by others that breaking a vase during a banquet had a precedent of being used as a signal to start a coup, thus explaining why Sha Wujing's punishment on Earth was much worse than Zhu Bajie's. And one simply can't do without the indication that it was everyone's favorite Friar Sand who had eaten eight of Tang Sanzang's reincarnations! He may be one of the pilgrim group's straight men, but he also spent centuries as a cannibal <3.

Also yeah hard agree with others that both Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing start off the pilgrimage pretty terrified of Sun Wukong because they saw him at his violently worst in heaven. As a treat :3

I think I'd also have Ao Lie spend more time outside of his horse not just so that he can be a dragon-ish guy as well as an actual dragon, but also so that we can get more insight into how his transformation from a destructive prince to a humble steed changed him. I think it also would be cool to spend a little more time on the dragon kings and how, for example, it does raise some uncomfortable questions about their whole deal if Ao Lie could commit arson & destroy a pearl and be punished pretty brutally while Ao Guang could run a weather-based protection racket for centuries and get a 12 year old to kill himself and yet they all seem to be cool with that :[

I'd also want to make my adaptation one that deals more with the aftereffects of the absolute bullshit the pilgrims go through. For example, it's pretty rare to find an adaptation out there that gives full weight to the stuff Tang Sanzang went through, and while it is understandable why and can be funny to characterize him as one of the "straight men" of the pilgrim group or as the weepy useless guy who falls off his dragon horse all the time, I've literally never encountered an adaptation that for example has him react at the age of 18 to his mother committing suicide after Xuanzang went through so much to try and help her, or him having to see both of the human companions he started the journey with get eaten alive by yaoguai. I'd want to make Tang Sanzang more of a dynamic character than he is even in Xiyouji itself, and I do think delving into this background--you knowing, showing why exactly he does in fact have good reason to be suspicious and even hateful of yaoguai and perhaps more secretly certain humans (his mother was after all brutalized for years by a bandit chief)--would be good to deal with in showing Tang Sanzang's journey to enlightenment. And for sure I'd want to make Tang Sanzang a little more like the historical Xuanzang in having him both be a master translator and a canny rule-breaker; I think that having the story follow history in that Xuanzang was in fact forbidden from going west in search of Buddhist scriptures but went anyway, for example, would be a good path to follow. Might give him an interesting point of relation and sympathy to SWK as well, in that both of them would be challenging authority to do what they think is right.

I do think that this all could also make for a really interesting point of tension and later comprehension between Tang Sanzang and SWK, where you would have the monk and the monkey on the same journey for very different but in some ways similar reasons (Tang Sanzang wants the scriptures because he sincerely believes that they will save countless souls, SWK wants to finish the journey so that he can go back home and protect his monkeys). Like Tang Sanzang would be starting the journey at age 28 and after going through some pretty intense trauma, but having lived in a monastery for most of his life wouldn't have much of a sense of what dangers the world contains as SWK, even though he is determined to complete the journey no matter the cost to himself. SWK, on the other hand, would be starting the journey after the bitter defeat in heaven and the anguish of 500 years in solitary confinement, and would likely be enraged about everything he lost but would still be operating under the terrible elation that came from his vast violent power. As someone else once put it, it could be a similar dynamic to a late middle-aged triads boss having to watch out for a beginning grad student lmao. So you'd have a lot of tension between SWK and Tang Sanzang's world views, with the former thinking that violence is a perfectly acceptable way to solve problems or get what you want, while the other abhors violence of all sorts, and they'd both have plentiful reasons to criticize the other.

While the film The Monkey King 2 is far from the best JTTW retelling out there (though it is one of my personal favorites lol), it also has this pretty great and rare scene for JTTW retellings that I feel I'd like my own retelling to somewhat emulate. Here, Sun Wukong saves Tang Sanzang and a bunch of little kids from the violent actions of a king, but he's only able to do this because the Monkey King is more powerful than the king and is able to legitimately threaten the king with death if he goes back to his vicious ways. Tang Sanzang does get Sun Wukong to spare the king, but the king then directly calls the monk out on the seeming hypocrisy of his mission. I forget the exact words, but the king's accusations were basically about how Tang Sanzang is a fraud and a liar because for all that he preaches peace and forgiveness he wouldn't be able to make it anywhere, he wouldn't be able to save anyone, he would have in fact been killed long ago if it wasn't for Sun Wukong's power and willingness to violence. And I do think in a lot of ways this is the crux of a lot of interesting questions that Xiyouji brings up even if it never provides one solid answer: that we all want to be relieved of suffering, and yet what do we do in a world where violence is something we both constantly suffer from as well as commonly inflict upon others?

I guess ultimately I'd want this to be a retelling that really focuses on the many forms and roles of violence in the shaping of a society, what the consequences of this violence often is, and what might be done to create a more just and peaceful life for all.

I'd know I'd want to spend a lot of time on SWK getting back home to Mt. Huaguoshan and finding it this burned-out ruin with the vast majority of his family dead or otherwise gone, only to realize that this was done by heaven in retaliation for the war and his havoc in heaven in a true case of mythological M.A.D. I feel like this, as with other scenes, would be a good way to bring up Xiyouji's frequent refrain that "for the strong there's always the stronger," and how the devastation that violence and warfare wrecks on a landscape, even if it seems awesome and justifiable at the time it's being waged, leads to horrific problems that don't go away even after generations and which could very easily be turned against you and your loved ones. I've said before that one of the things that I like about the Monkey King is that he almost always has a very clear reason for doing what he does, and I think this would be a great arc for it to really and painfully hit home that ultimately violence does not exist in a vacuum, and, especially when you care about so many, it ultimately serves to create a world where your own loved ones can easily become the next who will suffer. Yet even here the complexity of the situation doesn't stop, because while SWK is able to vastly improve the lives of his monkeys by doing everything he can to restore Mt. Huaguoshan back to its former fecundity, he also protects them by well killing 1000 human hunters who had been going after them for years. The violence may never stop, but neither do the efforts to make the world a more peaceful place. And as it is, no one can live by the sword alone.

Just some sketchy thoughts anon, but I hope you like what I'm laying out :)

#anon answered #jttw retelling #some studio hire me #please #also haha man skimming through it I got surprised all over again on how violent JTTW is #still!#lots of instances of people loving each other and trying their best as well #sun wukong #monkey king #tang sanzang #zhu bajie #sha wujing #ao lie #bai longma #violence

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loyaltykask · 3 months

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Chapter 47

@journeythroughjourneytothewest

I do like how Wukong deadass is serious about having both Daoism and Buddism being respected he ain't playing

Wukong makes the pilgrimage sound so cool He legit the one making poetry throughout the story nothing can convince me otherwise, he always has had a way with words

People keep calling them ugly like leave them alone they are very handsome to me

I also like the idea that they all ran like the wind on purpose to scar the old men. They seem like they would get the kick out of it

I KNEW THEY ENJOYED IT

Laugh at the monks running around like headless chickens

Bajie: Yes yes Baldy will have 1, the short one will have 2, 8 for the tall one and I'll have let's say 20 BRUH

We love to see the mutuals grow

I didn't notice before but in the GoldFish Demon arc the village they have the same name as Sanzang's family name! Neat!

Got to get those bbs out

Wukong no, you can buy children just to sacrifice them that is not the issue here

Wukong really said: If I die, I die, what about it?

Love to see he just don't care anymore, like he above be worried about death

Wukong: We shall help! Bajie: ..... We? Are we French now or something?!

#jttw #journey to the west #book club

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prettyboykatsuki · 8 months

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would you be comfortable sharing your bg3 ocs with us? i LOVE hearing and seeing other peoples ocs so much it inspires me to make them too

u always write reader personalities so amazing so ik ur ocs are just as good <3

WAH. YES. THANK U FOR ASKING. a lot of my ocs start out as fun self-inserts and then become... Something else. for bg3 in particular i normally play as my insert so they have the same face HEKJSDKJ. but they are ocs and they look diff in my brain i just dont care to change the face

oh my good GOD this is so long im so sorry. i guess this is my intro post for them now.thank u for asking me.. i love you... humbly presenting my little guys

CW FOR IMPLICATIONS OF INCEST (?) sort of in nyx's story. its complicated!! other than that just canon typical angst + drug use.

i have two main charas i consider more oc than insert. THE FIRST ONE IS MY BELOVED DARLING GIRLTHING SOULIKHA

goes by soul in camp, mid/late twenties, she/they pronoun haver, true neutral alignment, istj + 5w4

motifs ; black oleander, darkness and shadow, bones but not blood / decay, teals and purples and blues.

close with marisol, lae'zel and wyll. thinks astarion is a little sad and gets annoyed at mystra trying to demand death of gale.

she is a cleric of kelemvor and sacrificial survivor of a myrkul death cult. she escaped nearly dying at the age of 7 bc kelemvor saved her from near death.

she is not from baldurs gate!! she is from the outskirts of omorath but after escaping she lives on the streets.

the second time kelemvor comes to get her (nearly died in an alley) she becomes a cleric and returns to the city. joins the tower of skulls in omorath and does most of her work taking care of the diseased and guiding people in the fugue plane.

a Doomguide and part of a doom clergy.

she is originally darker skinned / tan but turns grey using her powers. when she blushes she becomes her original color lol

she ends up closer to baldurs gate on pilgrimage. she meets marisol (lambs oc) her best friend there.

she is a cleric of kelemvor, the god or judge of death. she tends to wear like a plague doctor sort of uniform and is very attached to a necklace she has that she prays over!! in general she prefers to be covered because she normally is response for helping the diseased as well as the deceased.

always wearing gloves for the same reason ^ special gloves that she has with her even after the kidnapping on the ship.

her personality is very blunt 😭and straightforward but never mean. she is just super direct and a little clueless about social cues... VERY HONEST LOL.

her main story arc is around her parents! like i mentioned she is a cleric of kelemvor but she spent her childhood in a death cult. in act one she hears rumor of a tiefling couple who worshipped myrkul being seen kidnapped on the towers to moonrise. in act two, her major scene, you have the choice on whether or not to kill or rescue her parents.

soulikha as a character puts her duty as a cleric above all else, even herself. she never expresses her feelings, never complains, just does as she believes is of expected to her. it gives her identity. up until this point, it's very rare to see her break down. this is the first scene where she makes a decision for herself

she also believes part of her job is assuring the people suffering die with the dignity and honor they deserve. part of this is because of her upbringing.

she also believes admantly in people dying when they are supposed to. as a cleric of kelemvor with particular favor of her god, she can hear whispers and regrets of death. the shadowfell lands are hard on her.

her main romance partner is karlach

her main romance with karlach has to do with touch and intimacy.

soulikha normally has her face covered and her body so if she were an origin and romance companion chara they'd be surrounding them but in her story she is dating karlach

karlach is soulikhas first love. they are tragic to me. soulikha is constantly telling karlach it's not her time and they often talk about death. she has a line to karlach:

"i will be there. when your soul burns brightest in the fugue plane, i will lead you. till the end of your life and in mine. my hand will find you. you will know its me."

she is shorter than karlach a bit. their whole romance is soulikha saying over and over that she knows karlach is bound to die, and comforting her through that.

but after the actual end of the game, soulikha cries for the very first time and begs karlach to live. it's the first time she ever says the words "i want you to live.) very heartbreaking

their ending is opening. ultimately soulikha wants to stay with karlach. they promise each other to live. the ending varies depending on other stuff but YEAH.

her bad ending is letting herself become myrkuls new chosen so karlach can have her heart back. fucking AWFUL ending gkdjsd theyre so sad.

OKAY. NEXT. IS MY OC NYX SORRY ABOUT THIS MOUTAIN OF TEXT.

this is nyx! no last name, he/him pronouns preferred, any fine. neutral evil allignment, late twenties. entp + 7w8

close with astarion + minthara. fond of jaehira. thinks wyll is fun and likes karlach. neutral to shadowheart and halsin.

nyx is not from baldurs gate either, explicitly from the city of calimshan, in manshaka. son of a common whore, born in a pleasure house.

tiefling with the blood graz'zt. this is relevant later. fdkjsdk.

learns music from the musicians in the pleasure house. naturally gifted. starts composing his own music at ten when one of this mothers regular customers gifts him a cli' lyre, enchanted with magic

has a complicated relationship with his mother. his mother is a prostitute but also very addicted to drugs. she wasn't motherly and often made advances on him when he grew up into puberty. his only family. when she was coming down the high, he would play her music to fall asleep.

practiced a lot on his own, other musicians taught him other instruments. very talented. most of his music and songs were about his one true love, roxana

roxana was another child of the house. they grew up together. she wasn't particularly talented but she was soft, kind, and beautiful. they both knew she would end up staying in the house, but nyx did try to protect her from customers when they were both underage.

roxana is full blooded human. she has a tattoo of roses down her spine that nyx dedicated one of his songs too and got matching trellis tattoos for. his most popular song.

his composition reached far and wide and he was offered many times to leave the pleasure house to perform. but he loved roxana and she often begged to say with him - so he never went. for her he'd do pretty much anything.

spent most of their lives together as lovers. first kiss at 13, lost their virginity to each other at 16/17, when they are in their early 20's nyx saves up to propose.

nyx is betrayed by roxana, though nyx by default does not care if Rrxana were to take lovers.

because of nyx’s upbringing and roxana’s work, all nyx had ever asked Roxana for was to keep no secrets between them

(growing up, roxana was naturally meek and often was in dangerous situations. Both because of this and because of his mothers commentary after she’d invited him for sex (“let’s keep this a secret between us,”). nyx had asked Roxana to never keep things from him, if she could.)

roxana ultimately chooses another man over nyx, one she’d kept a secret. she’d told nyx that she couldn’t be with him anymore. That she wanted more from life, and that she would go with her new lover to see greater sights.

“I loved her. Beautiful like a rosebed. I was a fool, of course. Only a fool forgets that the first rule to pick roses is dethorning them, lest they make you bleed.”

nyx sets off for college the same night. packs his belongings, says by to the pleasure house. his mother kisses on the cheek. he doesn't tell roxana about this

after that he commits to a life of debauchery at the college of swords. many flings and makes more music but never gets tied down despite peoples offers and efforts.

very charismatic in general and good at behaving in slimy and manipulative ways fhfksd. acts in self-interest.

very weak to soft and gentle women (hung up on his ex.... rip)

never ever mentions roxana by name even as an origin character. a lot of his story is about getting him to open up. he has a confrontation with his ex in act 3. his story is similar to astarion

in act one he hears rumor of a beautiful prostitute in the city who works the cities leaders and follows this. his main decision is meeting roxana again and deciding whether or not to forgive or save her

(you learn through the course of his story that roxana was never particularly good or honest to him, though it's not easy to figure out. the best ending to for him to save her but not take her back, the worst is dying for he)

his primary love interest is lae'zel !!

they have a silly and funny relationship at first. it starts as a sex thing but their tent is next to each other. lae'zel likes calling him a jester but loves his voice too.

he likes that she's very different from the women he dates. she's very harsh towards him but he also trusts she would never lie to him. he comforts her through the situation with vlaaktih and she in his story helps him realize that not everyone is out to betray him. he wants to love her and does.

he is SO affectionate towards her act three. she is constantly pissed she has romantic feelings for local emo clown

lae'zel having no propensity for manipulation and also being very honest is really refreshing for nyx. they have a minor age gap fdkfskjd

at the end of the story - nyx encourages lae'zel to travel and save their people. he makes a life for them in the city and writes hundreds of songs about her in her absence. they raise a gith child together

I HAVE MORE TO SAY BUT THIS IS PAINFULLY LONG. SHOWS YOU THIS ANDRUNS AWAY. PLEASE ASK ME QUESITONS IF U LIKE I LOVE ANSWERING Q'S FOR THEM. THANK U

#return to sender #oc: nyx #oc: soulikha #incest mention #KIND OF ITS COMPLIATED!!! BUT SAFETYT

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the-monkey-ruler · 1 year

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What caused wukong to regress back to hyper violence before the six eared macaque arc?

Nothing in particular. Perhaps it was that this particular burglar was also bringing shame upon his family, after their father who gracefully housed all of them that night. Not only housed them but also tried to save them as well. Only for that son to spit in his parent's faces and still try to kill him in their own home.

Wukong has shown multiple times in the story that he puts a lot of weight on what it means to be loyal to family. When trying a Princess was fighting with whether she should choose her demon husband or her father, Wukong said something like you could have more husbands but only get one father. And also how when Sanzang tries to get alms for everyone else Wukong says that he should be the head of their family group on the pilgrimage and how Bajie, Wujing, and he should be the ones to take care of him, not the other way around. Not to mention him being a patriarch of a family as well, having thousand of subjects that he sees as grandchildren and can't imagine what kind of pain a father figure could go through when a child betrays a father like that.

There are all just ideas but... these could be some ideas on how Wukong could have taken offense of seeing how this guy was just not taking the hint to give up... and lost his temper just a wee bit.

Have to say that cutting off the head part and presenting it as a trophy was more likely reliving some war-lord days for sure.

#anonymous #anon #anon ask #jttw #journey to the west #sun wukong #xiyouji #ask

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lennnypooh · 5 months

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Sister Act (1992)

Directed by Emile Ardolino in 1992, Sister Act is a comedy film starring Whoopi Goldberg as Deloris Van Cartier, a lounge singer who witnesses a murder and is placed in protective custody in a convent. Disguised as a nun, Deloris clashes with the strict Mother Superior (played by Maggie Smith) but ultimately helps transform the struggling choir into a musical sensation. Along the way, Deloris finds redemption, friendship, and a sense of purpose. The film combines humor, music, and themes of empowerment and sisterhood to deliver an uplifting and entertaining story.

Deloris' backstory in Sister Act reveals a poignant journey from her childhood in a Catholic school to her adult life as a singer in Reno. As a child, Deloris attended a Catholic school, presumably imbued with the teachings and traditions of the Church. However, for reasons undisclosed in the film, she ultimately departed from that environment, symbolizing a rupture in her connection to her faith and the Church.

Years later, Deloris finds herself pursuing a career as a singer in Reno, embodying a lifestyle far removed from her religious upbringing. Her departure from the Church as a child and her subsequent immersion in secular pursuits represent a thematic departure from spiritual values and community ties. However, the narrative arc of Sister Act intricately weaves Deloris' return to the Church into its storyline. When Deloris becomes a witness to a crime and is placed in protective custody in a convent, she is forced to confront her past and reconcile with her roots. Through her experiences within the convent, particularly her involvement in revitalizing the choir, Deloris undergoes a profound personal and spiritual transformation.

The film eloquently explores Deloris' initial apprehension towards convent life, juxtaposed against the urban landscape of San Francisco. This juxtaposition serves as a metaphorical reflection of societal disarray, wherein the Church stands as a beacon of hope amidst urban decay. Deloris' transformative impact on the choir symbolizes the catalytic force of individual agency within communities undergoing profound change. Through the medium of music, both Deloris' internal pilgrimage and the city's socio-cultural metamorphosis converge, highlighting the transcendent power of artistic expression to inspire collective renewal and redemption.

What are the social aspects within the film’s narrative that align with the film’s songs?

The social aspects within the film's narrative align with the film's songs in several ways. 1. Empowerment and Self-Discovery: Many of the songs in the film convey themes of empowerment and self-discovery, mirroring Deloris' journey as she finds her voice and purpose within the convent. Songs like "I Will Follow Him" and "My God (My Guy)" reflect Deloris' transformation from a self-absorbed performer to a woman who finds fulfillment in helping others and embracing her newfound community. 2. Unity and Sisterhood: The film's songs often emphasize themes of unity and sisterhood, echoing the bonds formed among the nuns despite their differences. Songs like "Hail Holy Queen" and "Just a Touch of Love" celebrate the camaraderie and support found within the convent, highlighting the importance of solidarity in overcoming challenges. 3. Redemption and Forgiveness: Through songs like "Bless Our Show" and "If You Wanna Be Somebody," the film explores themes of redemption and forgiveness, emphasizing Deloris' journey towards redemption as she confronts her past and seeks forgiveness from both herself and others.

How do the historiographies of previously recorded songs inform audience relationships with the musical’s narrative and performers?

As for the historiographies of previously recorded songs, they inform audience relationships with the musical's narrative and performers by adding layers of familiarity and nostalgia. Many of the songs featured in Sister Act are well-known hits from the 1960s and 1970s, such as "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March and "My Guy" by Mary Wells. These songs evoke memories and associations from the past, connecting audiences to the film's setting and characters on a deeper level. Additionally, the use of familiar songs allows the film to play with audience expectations and reinterpret these songs within the context of the narrative, in this case changing love songs into songs praising God, creating moments of surprise and delight.

What musical genre/style drives the film’s score, and how does the genre/style (re)define the film as a musical?

The musical genre/style that drives the film's score is primarily gospel, with elements of soul and R&B. This genre/style redefines the film as a musical by infusing it with a vibrant energy and spiritual resonance that complements the themes of redemption and sisterhood. The use of gospel music not only adds authenticity to the setting of a convent but also elevates the emotional impact of key moments in the narrative. Furthermore, the incorporation of soul and R&B elements reflects the diverse backgrounds of the characters and contributes to the film's infectious sense of joy and celebration. Overall, the fusion of gospel, soul, and R&B genres in the film's score creates a dynamic musical experience that enhances the storytelling and leaves a lasting impression on audiences.

Deloris' journey of rediscovery and reconciliation mirrors the larger theme of redemption and the cyclical nature of faith. Deloris' return to the Church symbolizes not only her individual reconciliation but also a broader exploration of forgiveness, belonging, and the enduring power of faith to guide one back to their true self. In essence, her departure from and eventual return to the Church serve as a narrative framework through which the film explores themes of identity, redemption, and the enduring journey towards spiritual fulfillment.

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#Youtube

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