#write like a egyptian

[average-riot]

Piece I did for a fanfic I'm writing called Fire in Cairo <3 It's still not out but I'm jus so proud of this piece so I had to post it cuz gosh...

[inamindfarfaraway]

The Exorcists’ Masks of Virtue

The vast majority of Exorcists in Hazbin Hotel have a notable design element that other angels don’t: their masks are missing an eye. Specifically, the right eye.

I believe this is a reference to the Bible, Matthew 5:29. Jesus says, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”

He’s being hyperbolic. Mr Free Healthcare was not pro-mutilation. What he means is that you have to be willing to make sacrifices to prevent sin. The context of the eye metaphor is him condemning adultery and warning that even something as easy, casual and small as a look full of lustful intent can lead to further, worse sin if you don’t notice your sin, hold yourself accountable for it and do the work to not let it influence your decisions. This will probably be hard. It could be very, very painful. Changing your perspective can feel as horrible as plucking out your eye, so many people can’t bring themselves to do it. But although it won’t feel that way in the moment, it’s healthier for our general wellbeing in the long run to abandon traits and behaviours that damage ourselves and/or others.

(You may notice that Jesus’s teaching that you can have sinned, redeem yourself by giving up sin and thus escape damnation is the founding principle of the Hazbin Hotel. You may also notice that it contradicts everything the Exorcists believe.)

The Exorcists seem to follow this idea of painfully excising badness for the sake of the greater good devoutly to the point of placing it above teachings like ‘Thou shalt not kill’, with their job being to remove sin, in the form of sinners, to protect Heaven. Hence the missing right eyes. They’re a declaration of moral righteousness and inability to stumble.

But the truth is that the Exorcists all have their right eyes. Their flawlessness is a facade. Underneath, they are untouched, think themselves morally untouchable and, as shown by their horror and outrage when even one of them is killed, would much rather be physically untouchable too. This perfectly represents their complete unwillingness to acknowledge their own faults, let alone improve. They are never the ones who sacrifice. They force the sinners to sacrifice and don’t compensate it with any salvation. They metaphorically rip out the sinners’ eyes, but still condemn their entire bodies as inherently, permanently sinful. So they’ll just have to do another Extermination to get the other eyes! And another one to cut off their right hands! And so on until there’s nothing left.

The only exception to the rule is Vaggie, both in appearance and character. Her mask has the left eye crossed out instead. Even before her expulsion, she’s set apart to the audience as an Exorcist who has the capacity to, shall we say, see a different side of things. Her mask having its ‘sinful’ right eye reflects her understanding that the Exorcist worldview is wrong.

When she almost kills a demon child, her hateful vision clears. She discards the part of herself that’s an unquestioning, merciless agent of death, terror and grief… and as punishment for what Lute perceives as treacherous weakness, gets her eye plucked out.

Of course Lute leaves her with only the ‘sinful’ eye. It brands Vaggie forever as the inversion, a perversion, of what the Exorcists are meant to be.

You know, all this talk of eye removal in the Bible reminds of another line - ‘an eye for an eye’. Adam directly quotes it in “Hell is Forever”. He uses it to frame the Exterminations as Old Testament-style punitive justice; the sinners did harm and so they receive it. But putting aside the debate about how ethical the concept of revenge is, the entire point of taking an eye for an eye is that it’s proportional. The punishment fits the crime. If someone cuts your eye out, you shouldn’t murder their whole family in front of them and then slowly disembowel them to death. That would be the sin of wrath. You should just make them pay without excessive pain or collateral damage. This is the fairest form of revenge.

The Exorcists don’t do that! The Exterminations aren’t proportional to the wrongs of all they hurt, nor was Vaggie’s brutal punishment equivalent to her extremely mild insubordination. Lute literally takes Vaggie’s eye, and more, after Vaggie does nothing to her! That’s the opposite of the phrase! Adam and his soldiers are wrathful and cruel, deriving satisfaction from others’ suffering. But they just can’t stop going on and on about how disgustingly evil the sinners are, in total hypocrisy… despite some of the sinners being far better people than the genocidal Exorcists are… it’s like they’re obsessed with specks of dust in the sinners’ eyes when they have massive logs stuck in their own. Oh hey, that’s in the Bible too!

[nums-bird]

Have you ever sat down and thought long and heard about a piece of fiction, specifically a visual piece of fiction that has such complex character writing,such diversity,such an interesting route taken in generally mythological characters that you are just like,wow, it's probably my favorite piece of fiction then you remember "oh wait,it fucking has incest and rape and unnecessary amounts of porn" yeah that's me with Ennead

[antaresr]

Ok, but listen (and welcome back to another crazy analysis that I came up with out of nowhere because I had a lot of free time)

The Ishtar as representations of the Egyptian gods.

Bastet's mission was to protect the home and symbolizes the joy of living, as she is considered the deity of harmony and happiness. She is the personification of the warm rays of the Sun, she is the representation of femininity and elegance.

Marik was supposed to be the leader of the clan and protect it, but he wanted to be happy and be out of the tombs, he wanted to live, he wanted to be under the sun's rays, plus his hair is blonde, a color associated with the sun, He is handsome, he is masculine and elegant.

Plus his eyes look like cats' eyes if you ask me, with his outlined like the stripes of tabby cats.

But he was traumatized and filled with anger and wanted revenge, so he created Yami Marik.

She was a symbol of strength and power. She was considered the goddess of war and revenge, but also the goddess of healing, she was the protector of the pharaohs and guided them in war.

In some cases she was considered an ally and protector of Ra, since she killed those who dared to confront or attack the divine or earthly monarchy.

She had an insatiable bloodlust, to such a degree that she did not distinguish between allies or enemies.

Like YamiMa, he is powerful, the representation of Marik's fight and revenge, he protected Marik from everything that could harm him to keep him safe, he caused death/coma to those who stood in the way of Marik's wishes (Jounouichi , Mai, Rishid, his father).

Plus we've all seen the thousands of references to YamiMa's hair to a lion's mane and both YamiMa and Sekhmet have many names.

And YamiMa only calmed down when he saw Rishid.

She represented music, dance, joy, love, sexuality and maternal care, and acted as consort to various male deities and mother to their children. These two aspects of the goddess exemplified the Egyptian conception of femininity. She served as a wet nurse for the king and his court, and in this way she fed all the people of Egypt since the prosperity of the country was closely linked to the health, well-being and stability of the king.

She was part of the divine entourage that accompanied Ra as he sailed through the sky in his boat.

Rishid was a fundamental part of Marik's upbringing, he was like a father to him, replacing the biological father as a wet nurse, he wanted Marik's happiness, he loved him like a brother and took care of him like a father, he took the punishment when Marik and Ishizu came out of the tombs, and he wanted to take Marik's place in the ritual to avoid the pain and trauma it would cause him.

He was also part of the Ghouls to continue with Marik, after leaving the tombs, we can assume that he was the one who was in charge of maintaining his mental and physical health.

But his role as a father was also slightly overshadowed by Ishizu.

She is typically depicted as the generous and selfless mother, wife, and protector who puts the interests and well-being of others before her own. She was considered the divine mother of the pharaoh, who was identified with the god Horus. She as well as the most powerful sorceress Egypt ever saw. With this power she managed to save her son Horus, but she also became the patron goddess of people who practiced magic.

Ishizu is the selfless mother who fulfills the role assigned to her, fulfilling her duty to the pharaoh was important and almost a priority, however when it came to her brothers, mainly Marik, she did not mind leaving her duty relegated in favor of hera brother's well-being.

Just like Isis, she sought help from humanity (Yugi and company) to unite the pieces of her brother and return him to normal.

She is feminine, selfless, protective, maternal, she took care of Marik when they were children, stopping living her own childhood so that Marik could be happy, she helped him see what it was like outside the tombs because that is what he wanted to do.

Furthermore it is quite clear that she is Isis when we remember that her past life in ancient Egypt was called that.

[walking-existential-crisis]

ok so I was thinking about how since Eridians live for much much longer than humans (I think the book said 600 human years?) and since Ryland would have obviously died on Erid what would they do with his body? (because obviously they're not just gonna keep it there) Would they bury/cremate him? Would they give him Eridian funeral/ do to him what they do to Eridians who have died?

Also, since Ryland must have known he was going to die there and would die long before Rocky, would he have gone over what he'd want to happen to him after he died? Would he donate his body to science for Eridian doctors to study?

and what happens during Eridian funerals anyway? What do they do to their companions/loved ones when they pass away?

AHHH SO MANY WHAT IFS!!! SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!

[rat-presenting]

Cis people with deadnames are either some of the chillest, coolest people you know or the guy from your old job who did coke with the teenagers on staff to align their chakras and says with a straight face nobody is worthy of his inner thoughts so he never shares them.

[dewwydelcra]

So, the first time I got the stardrop fruit was from Elliott (after marriage uwu) but since i'm new to the game I had NO IDEA what was going on because I was expecting coffee or something, BUT I thought this man gave me a uh “magic plant” at 6am I WAS SHOOK! 

artistic rendition, because this is exactly what happened (more or less)

AND MY NON-QUESTIONING ASS JUST ATE IT??? (for Elliott, of course without hesitation).

and i'd do it again 😎

(moments caught on camera, because i didn't know how to screenshot) 

i didn't know the favourite thing slot was supposed to be food related so, farmer knows what human lore/fanfiction tastes like

look at his kyoot aahh, calling me honey, chu❤️

[fitzrove]

Not elisabeth not rudolf affaire mayerling but a secret third thing (historically accurate journey to the east musical where most of the songs are about shooting various birds and the finale is about arson)

[theythemclockenjoyer]

please tell me they did not give the author with very racist and homophobic past who realied on stereotypes and whitewashing in her book another story about another culture she knows nothing about

[bijoumikhawal]

idle curiosity: does anyone I know have any recommendations for researching Buddhism from a more practical perspective, as opposed to the often philosophical/secular one presented in a lot of English texts?

[justtorzaplease]

When you die, you are judged based on how many people you killed. You smirk, smug, knowing your hands are clean. But as smooth, sandy hands examine yours, you feel your breath halt, flecks of blood slowly rising in a sickening display of death and love and hate. A little girl who saw your comments online, dead. That boy, only a year younger than you who had begged you for help as his bully chased him, dead. The kid in home group, face bloody and bruised because you passed on a rumor, dead. Those millions of victims worldwide, who suffered because you stood by and watched, doing nothing to help them, dead. Actions have consequences. But so does doing nothing.

~

Bystanders do more harm than good.

[swagging-back-to]

the most unrealistic part of steven universe is that the zoomans speak and understand modernized english.

[ava-does-dumbassery]

It is done!

A lot of our knowledge of ancient Egyptian gods comes from spells, which sometimes record narratives or pieces of narratives as historiolas, but a lot of the time just give us lists of gods that it’s kinda hard to infer a personality from. Which is why I thought it would be fun to go through some collections of spells and track how many times certain gods are invoked alongside another certain gods, and to see if those patterns could say anything about that god’s relationships to other gods from. Because my autism compels me to make bar graphs, and it especially compels me to make bar graphs that I can use to make headcanons about my blorbos.

What counts as gods being invoked or referenced together is kinda subjective sometimes, but it’s the general patterns that are important with this so not counting some things that maybe should have been counted is probably fine. I thought I’d do Set first for this, because I think his position in the pantheon is really interesting and also really seemingly contradictory at times.

What we’ve learned from these charts is that most of Set’s social life is just him muttering evilly in front of a brainstorming board that has “ways to murder Osiris Horus” written on it. (/joke)

For some gods I thought it would be interesting to track how many of the references implied a negative relationship between them and Set, so I kept track of how many references specifically implied a negative relationship (things like saying that god and Set acted in opposition to each other, or that Set wronged them in some way, or just that they don’t like each other) as well as just the total number of references. On my graph this reflected by having the number of those references be coloured red, and all the other references that were just neutral and didn’t imply anything (or sometimes very occasionally implied a positive relationship) are blue. The gods I did this with are Nephthys (because she’s his wife but it doesn’t seem like their marriage is that happy), Nut (because she’s his mother and the epithet “son of Nut” is used for him a lot), and Horus and Osiris (because I read somewhere that Horus is sometimes portrayed as working with Set, but that Osiris and Set are always portrayed as enemies, and I wanted to see if that was true or not). In the Greek Magical Papyri this also includes Helios because he was sometimes synchronized with Horus. So when gods other than those gods don’t have red parts on their bars, that doesn’t mean the text didn’t imply they don’t like Set, it just means I wasn’t counting it, but if a deity like Nephthys has an entirely blue bar that means there weren’t any negative references.

My copy of the Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky days is weird, in that a lot of the mentions of Set sound a lot more like they should be about Apophis. I can’t tell if that’s some weirdness with the text, since it’s supposed to be from the New Kingdom which I’m pretty sure is before a lot of Apophis’s traits started carrying over to Set, or if it’s some weirdness with this translation and they translated everything about Apophis as being about Set for some reason, or if it isn’t actually weird at all and I’m just thinking of this wrong. Like, there’s a part in it where it calls Set the son of Nun, and I can’t tell if that’s a misprint of Nut’s name, or if Set actually was sometimes called the son of Nun and I just don’t know that, or if that’s actually not Set at all and just Apophis committing identity theft.

Fun individual things I found while doing this: In the Pyramid Texts there’s a spell that implies Set drank Osiris’s blood, a spell in the Greek Magical Papyri has Nephthys show up riding a donkey, which I think is really cool, and a spell that’s in the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead says Horus and Set kissed on New Year’s Day one time. Also there’s a Coffin Texts spell that says Horus gained Set’s strength and used it even more than his own, which is the only reference I’ve seen to the events of the Kahun fragment so far outside of the actual Kahun fragment.

The Greek Magical Papyri has a lot of references to elements of Christian or Jewish religious elements alongside Ancient Greek and Egyptian religious elements, and it brings me great sadness they never showed up with Set because it would have been absolutely hilarious to get to put “Gabriel (the angel)” or “Jewish/Christian G-d” on my Set chart.

Doing this was really fun so I think I might do another god soon. Probably Anubis because he almost never shows up in any myths and I’ve heard a thousand different versions of who his parents are supposed to be.

[lilliekun]

Hi tumblr, hi twisted wonderland fandom, 'tis be my first post on this website that I never thought I'd make but given the recent reveals about chapter 7 I HAD to make one

Spoilers alert maybe ?

So they apparently revealed Sebek's grandpa's name to be something along the lines of "Bauru"

Bauru seems to be a shorter version of the name Baurusuchus, which is a genus of crocodilians from the late cretaceous

And, also, it happens to be one ancestor of another genus of ancient crocodilian, called Sebecus

[zuhuraha]

how are y’all gatekeeping writing egyptian ocs now shut the fuck up 😭

[breaksvinecharcoal]

Nut

I came upon her a solid dark night,

There she lay, an illuminating piece of light in the smog,

A woman curled up,

Nestled up, on the outer edge of a land of legends.

 Her resting yellow body was speckled with fine grains of sand,

An ancient river outlining her chest,

Trickling down towards further mysterious lands,

Carrying along whispering currents of ancient languages, stories, waters.

 Breathtaking skyscrapers took place upon the curves of her breast,

Rising steadily, up, and down, about bones of an unforgotten city,

Animals, birds, the inhabitants of the giantess; calling to their home.

 I looked up and saw stars which illuminated the figure,

Dappled her in affectionate, warm light.

Pieces of twinkling garnet, gold, lapis,

Stitched upon the darkest velvet,

Geb smiling down on his bride,

An Ancient smile communicating in words of an older world.

 Otherworldly vessels, otherworldly creatures, circulate through her waters,

I saw to vast seas, seas flowing between her sleeping fingers,

Water richly to and from further distant lands,

Rushing, crashing against her sides.