Latest Posts by lowkeyspawnofloki - Page 3

that fucking fish that i hate!! finally decided to finish him, i got lazy on the coloring and didnt knew much wat to do so yeah

enjoy the fish~ :>

Silly Billy

WE MUST FIGHT, BROTHERS

Round 3

Traditional chinese jewellry, diancui点翠. photo by 动脉影.

These are old jewels in museums so they were made of kingfisher feathers during their times. In modern times kingfisher are animals under first-class state protection in china so diancui点翠 craftwork has been replaced by others such as shaolan烧蓝, dyed goose feather, particular blue paper and blue silk.

So You Want to Read More about Chinese Mythos: a rough list of primary sources

"How/Where can I learn more about Chinese mythology?" is a question I saw a lot on other sites, back when I was venturing outside of Shenmo novel booksphere and into IRL folk religions + general mythos, but had rarely found satisfying answers.

As such, this is my attempt at writing something past me will find useful.

(Built into it is the assumption that you can read Chinese, which I only realized after writing the post. I try to amend for it by adding links to existing translations, as well as links to digitalized Chinese versions when there doesn't seem to be one.)

The thing about all mythologies and legends is that they are 1) complicated, and 2) are products of their times. As such, it is very important to specify the "when" and "wheres" and "what are you looking for" when answering a question as broad as this.

-Do you want one or more "books with an overarching story"?

In that case, Journey to the West and Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen Yanyi) serve as good starting points, made more accessible for general readers by the fact that they both had English translations——Anthony C. Yu's JTTW translation is very good, Gu Zhizhong's FSYY one, not so much.

Crucially, they are both Ming vernacular novels. Though they are fictional works that are not on the same level of "seriousness" as actual religious scriptures, these books still took inspiration from the popular religion of their times, at a point where the blending of the Three Teachings (Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism) had become truly mainstream.

And for FSYY specifically, the book had a huge influence on subsequent popular worship because of its "pantheon-building" aspect, to the point of some Daoists actually putting characters from the novel into their temples.

(Vernacular novels + operas being a medium for the spread of popular worship and popular fictional characters eventually being worshipped IRL is a thing in Ming-Qing China. Meir Shahar has a paper that goes into detail about the relationship between the two.)

After that, if you want to read other Shenmo novels, works that are much less well-written but may be more reflective of Ming folk religions at the time, check out Journey to the North/South/East (named as such bc of what basically amounted to a Ming print house marketing strategy) too.

-Do you want to know about the priestly Daoist side of things, the "how the deities are organized and worshipped in a somewhat more formal setting" vs "how the stories are told"?

Though I won't recommend diving straight into the entire Daozang or Yunji Qiqian or some other books compiled in the Daoist text collections, I can think of a few "list of gods/immortals" type works, like Liexian Zhuan and Zhenling Weiye Tu.

Also, though it is much closer to the folk religion side than the organized Daoist side, the Yuan-Ming era Grand Compendium of the Three Religions' Deities, aka Sanjiao Soushen Daquan, is invaluable in understanding the origins and evolutions of certain popular deities.

(A quirk of historical Daoist scriptures is that they often come up with giant lists of gods that have never appeared in other prior texts, or enjoy any actual worship in temples.)

(The "organized/folk" divide is itself a dubious one, seeing how both state religion and "priestly" Daoism had channels to incorporate popular deities and practices into their systems. But if you are just looking at written materials, I feel like there is still a noticeable difference.)

Lastly, if you want to know more about Daoist immortal-hood and how to attain it: Ge Hong's Baopuzi (N & S. dynasty) and Zhonglv Chuandao Ji (late Tang/Five Dynasties) are both texts about external and internal alchemy with English translations.

-Do you want something older, more ancient, from Warring States and Qin-Han Era China?

Classics of Mountains and Seas, aka Shanhai Jing, is the way to go. It also reads like a bestiary-slash-fantastical cookbook, full of strange beasts, plants, kingdoms of unusual humanoids, and the occasional half-man, half-beast gods.

A later work, the Han-dynasty Huai Nan Zi, is an even denser read, being a collection of essays, but it's also where a lot of ancient legends like "Nvwa patches the sky" and "Chang'e steals the elixir of immortality" can be first found in bits and pieces.

Shenyi Jing might or might not be a Northern-Southern dynasties work masquerading as a Han one. It was written in a style that emulated the Classics of Mountains and Seas, and had some neat fantastic beasts and additional descriptions of gods/beasts mentioned in the previous 2 works.

-Do you have too much time on your hands, a willingness to get through lot of classical Chinese, and an obsession over yaoguais and ghosts?

Then it's time to flip open the encyclopedic folklore compendiums——Soushen Ji (N/S dynasty), You Yang Za Zu (Tang), Taiping Guangji (early Song), Yijian Zhi (Southern Song)...

Okay, to be honest, you probably can't read all of them from start to finish. I can't either. These aren't purely folklore compendiums, but giant encyclopedias collecting matters ranging from history and biography to medicine and geography, with specific sections on yaoguais, ghosts and "strange things that happened to someone".

As such, I recommend you only check the relevant sections and use the Full Text Search function well.

Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studios, aka Liaozhai Zhiyi, is in a similar vein, but a lot more entertaining and readable. Together with Yuewei Caotang Biji and Zi Buyu, they formed the "Big Three" of Qing dynasty folktale compendiums, all of which featured a lot of stories about fox spirits and ghosts.

Lastly...

The Yuan-Ming Zajus (a sort of folk opera) get an honorable mention. Apart from JTTW Zaju, an early, pre-novel version of the story that has very different characterization of SWK, there are also a few plays centered around Erlang (specifically, Zhao Erlang) and Nezha, such as "Erlang Drunkenly Shot the Demon-locking Mirror". Sadly, none of these had an English translation.

Because of the fragmented nature of Chinese mythos, you can always find some tidbits scattered inside history books like Zuo Zhuan or poetry collections like Qu Yuan's Chuci. Since they aren't really about mythology overall and are too numerous to cite, I do not include them in this post, but if you wanna go down even deeper in this already gigantic rabbit hole, it's a good thing to keep in mind.

doing my duty as the fish lady enjoyer 😔

creechur Searchlight design by @sleepyeule lmao we love fish yuri in this house

By observing this rabbit you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not observing this rabbit on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this rabbit will not be seen through the eyes of Anish Kapoor.

i love. .. demon houseband and 2 braincells peak lord 

The robes are hanging on for dear life

When I tell you I snorted!

scrooge in that new 2022 netflix scrooge movie is confirmed heterophobic

18 month old walked up to me during my lunch break, climbed into the chair beside me, and began monologuing in the most articulate and confident gibberish I’ve ever heard

little guy had things to SAY

have two eggs 🥚🥚

wh,, what does this mean 😰😰

Who wants to see my cat totally brave and not at all scared at the vet

have an egg 🥚

Much appreciate 😌😌😌

found the killer post again bc i lost it

IT REALLY IS, IT REALLY IS STORED IN THE HUNTER.

What's he gotta be so attractive for, huh?!?! And I love the way you draw him!!! The different attributes he has show so differently between each drawing, it's incredible - you somehow manage to make him look unique but like the same person drawn by the same creator, and its! So! Cool!!

You're so cool

TOH S3 spoilers

gender is stored in the hunter, holy shit

your honour i love him (*´∀`* )

*screams* ♡♡♡♡♡

*sweats* ha.. is it. is it hot in here? or is it just me? *sweats harder, pulls at collar* ha, ha.. you're sexy.

i think it's just you my love, you really light up the room and light sources tend to be pretty hot ;3

spiderman and do cock in: punctuation troubles

I dreamt that there was a new meme that went, “If I dids it, I dids it. If I didsn’t, I didsn’t.” There was a third line, but I forgot what it was.

NO STOP IT YOURE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SMOOTH AAAAA *melts*

*sweats* ha.. is it. is it hot in here? or is it just me? *sweats harder, pulls at collar* ha, ha.. you're sexy.

i think it's just you my love, you really light up the room and light sources tend to be pretty hot ;3

its a good post, your honour

I feel like this needs to be said:

You may not like Dad for One; you make think Hisashi is a two bit villain, a deadbeat, a scientist, some top hero commission guy or even an ordinary man.

But let's be real, out of all those possibilities, out of all those speculations. Every theory that tries to decipher who the Mysterious Hisashi Midoriya could be...

Dad for One is the only one, that has the most solid. Canonical. Evidence behind it.

And even if you hate the theory, you can't deny that.

Be DFO true or not, the utter lack of Midoriya Hisashi in BNHA is just goddamn weird.

It would be one thing if BNHA was a series where we rarely see parents or they rarely had major roles. However, that's not the case. Not in the slightest. Obviously there's the Todofam everything. We've seen both of Bakugou's parents. We've seen maternal grandparents in the cases of both Shigaraki and the Todorokis. We've seen the parents of secondary and tertiary characters.

But we haven't seen the father of the protagonist a single time?

It's made all the more weird because Hisashi is supposedly alive, yet also Inko never seems to speak with her husband. Every single major parental decision in Izuku's life that we've seen as of him being at UA? She's the only one making them. You'd imagine something as important as say, potentially yanking your kid out of his high school would be something you'd discuss with your husband, but no indication that happened (like say her making a comment about needing to tell Hisashi she'd changed her mind after speaking with All Might). We've got no pictures of him in the apartment. Izuku, when thinking about people he cares about at one point includes goddamn Endeavor, but not his own father. When he almost dies he thinks of his mom and All Might, but not his father.

And Izuku does latch onto like, any adult man who seems to show vaguely paternal or mentor...feelings(?) towards him. Dadmight is a trope for a reason. He treats Gran Torino as a borderline grandparent figure (which speaking of, where are Izuku's grandparents? Though that long term could be revealed to be a result of the Quirkless diagnosis, that they cut Inko and Izuku out of their lives). Again, does actually weirdly latch onto Endeavor more than you'd expect (which is to say, at all) .Like that could simply be a result of Hisashi being overseas and a non-entity in Izuku's life.

So like...why is that? What is going on with Midoriya Hisashi that Horikoshi won't even reference him properly in the manga, just in like outside stuff (including a comment at one point about how Hisashi would be revealed, rather than introduced which is an...interesting word choice.) Does he eventually plan on revealing that Hisashi all but walked out on the family due to Izuku's Quirklessness, only sending them back money? Does he plan on DFO? Is there something else? Am I overthinking shit because it's almost 2am and my brain won't shut up?

I don’t remember where I got this image from, all I know it’s a website that has a article talking about Japanese desserts, I saved it for art reference.

(Edit: Apparently there’s a tagging limit so I couldn’t tag every dessert in this image, fucking Tumblr -_-*)

Boring old werewolf instincts:

Sexual jealousy

Constant aggression

Rigid hierarchy

Must win sports

Homophobia And Sexism Is Normal™

Eat people

Cool new werewolf instincts:

There is no five second rule

Corvids are friends

Hang out as a pack

Karaoke

Gotta pee