Matthias, What Was Your First Reaction To Louis? Did You Immediately Dislike Him?

Kazuscara | A Ghost of a Memory

Part 1/?

Also hbday to scara ♡

Saw this theory on twitter about Al’s possible colourblindness when he arrived in hell as a deer demon. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

And the urge has come for me to write a haikaveh fic where kaveh, alhaitham, cyno, and dehya wind up in the past during king deshret’s reign and it gets revealed that Alhaitham and Kaveh are the reincarnations of King Deshret and the Goddess of Flowers respectively

They take this as well as you think they would

From: [[Number 1 Rated Salesman1997]]

H-HEY! NAME'S VOX, [Right]? PLEASURE TO MEET Y OU! ME I'M SPAMTON, EV3RY BUDDY 'S [[Number 1 Rated Salesman1997]]. ME I [Think before you] Y OU'RE TRYING TO COPY MY ACT, SHMUCK…

AND THAT TV FOR YOUR [Face]? HAHAHAHAHAH, HOW STRANGE! EV3RY BUDDY [hopefully never know] THAT [The] COMPUTER IS [The] WAY TO GO!

From : voxtech@voxmail.com

To : [[Number 1 Rated Salesman1997]]

Email Subject : Re : (no subject)

evEr since M4mm0n started mass producing these [[FIZZ BOTS]] i' VE Been geTting not only shit t0n amount of [[ADVERTISING SPAM MAIL]] but the [ Bitchy Robots ] themselves S3emingly got a mind of their own. Useless Pricks. imagine being a mindless puppet on some [Silly Strings] !!!! 🤣🤣🤣 Pinocchio Looking Ass.

Link 🖇️ [ Hyperlink Blocked ]

hey, tell your boss to get his production in check alright. [[HELL'S ECONOMY]] is shit as it is already.

CEO of Voxtech.

PLEASE STOP YES I KNOW HE TALKS LIKE SPAMTON IM AUTISTIC GET OUT OF MY HOYSE - 📺

" Thanks for your crossbow, boy. "

thank you tiktok comment

i decided to do this trend but as Winnie and Auggie from Cold Front because someone's comment gave me the idea!!

How morbid is it that I kind of want a sequel / aftermath timeskip of Married in Red where Da-jeong is found out to have framed Bok-su, which leads to that university taking Bok-su back into the program, and Bok-su not only gets her life somewhat back together, but she also ends up getting a boyfriend/girlfriend who becomes her fiancé(e) and then they get married?

Basically, Bok-su getting everything that Da-jeong had (and almost had) but lost in the end.

People I met for a few moments that live in my head forever.

Ok, Childe as a wuxia/xianxia trope. It's honestly a bit embarrassing how well this fits.

(blame @a-yarn-of-purple-prose for this post and if anyone here is a wuxia fan feel free to correct me, I'm new to the genre)

Wuxia is a Chinese martial arts fantasy genre you are all familiar with. An adjacent genre is called xianxia, "immortal heroes", it ramps all the fantasy elements up to eleven and skews tropes a bit (we'll get back to that).

A common trope is some kind of unorthodox school/sect or technique, allowing to achieve greater power without the usual decades of training. It could be straight-out evil or just revolving around chaos.

Such a martial school is usually called an evil/demonic sect (sect is more like a clan in that setting, not the modern concept of sect) and their techniques tend to drive practitioners to insanity. Either because they are inherently corrupting or because getting too much power without growing as a person is really not the best thing for your mental health. They are also often cast from hp points.

And then there's the archetype of a demonic sect heir. The best pupil or simply someone who has inherited a lost art. Proud, always greedy for more strength, often noble in some weird way.

*points to our calamity of a boy*

Common elements of such stories include:

Falling into some weird realm or meeting a weird person who teaches the hero a Forbidden Technique

Learning a technique too quickly through some sort of magic/alchemy/memory manipulation

Some people are so singular in their pursuit they become insane (走火入魔)

Ambition bad, loyalty and family good

Conflicting loyalties, generally a conflict between a chosen path and personal weaknesses/attachments (could be both ego and familal love, and this is more of a xianxia trope)

Fits like a horoscope so far but wait.

There's a very interesting case of Korean murim genre (their version of wuxia) where sects are less varied (I recommend this post for a basic introduction) and we get three paths:

Justice/Righteous/Orthodox/Light — theoretically they keep the Evil Faction at bay, and protect innocent people, but usually are corrupt to the core

Evil/Unorthodox/Dark — these try gaining as much power as possible and attempt ruling the whole world

Demonic Cult — usually dont take part in evil and justice battles, follow their own code of conduct based on their religion, value strength above all else.

(I'm sure there's a similar distinction in wuxia too, I just can't find it in the deluge of lore)

"Demonic" is closer to "pagan" or "heathen" than Christian idea of demonic here, their beliefs are often based on Zoroastrianism and worshipping a sacred flame. Do you remember all the Persian themes used for Khaenri'ah? And Surtalogi being the flame on Surtr's sword in Norse mythology. I also had the impression that Genshin gnostic references are based on the Zoroastrian-flavoured branch of Gnosticism.

In murim the trope of demonic sect heir is called "heavenly demon" (I believe, a more correct translation would be "supreme heathen"), they are utterly badass, live for the glory of battle, seem more like forces of nature and follow a very strict honour code often conflicting with normal human ethics.

(do I need to spell it out)

TvTropes also says this about Korean stories:

(do I need to spell it out pt.2)

I'm not sure why a Chinese studio would focus on the Korean version of this trope but I'm sure something like this exists in China as well or maybe there's a popular manhwa that inspired authors.

Xianxia extends the fantastic element further, focusing on Taoist concepts and practices and adding all kinds of magical realms (celestial, demonic, etc) and magical beings and making immortality achievable. I still need to read more about it but if I understand that right, demonic heir trope turns into a demon prince in this case. An actual visitor from the demon realm or a practitioner who achieved immortality through dubious means.

These are fae-coded in a way very similar to Childe and have a certain nonchalance towards things most humans would consider traumatic. They are simply not bothered by them, having a different set of morals or faring from a realm that is much worse.

Our boy isn't that (he's still very much human) but he's aesthetically coded like one, same as Scaramouche is yokai-coded, despite not being a yokai.

So. When people say Childe's arc is a reference to Journey to the West, it's not entirely untrue, JttW is the classic of xianxia genre and Childe does belong to the same genre. He, however, is not Sun Wukong but a different, darker trope.

This also explains why he has that "shonen anime protag but not quite" vibe. Shonen was heavily influenced by wuxia but this trope never quite made it to anime or maybe never became popular enough. It's not a deconstruction, it's a different story. Or perhaps a deconstruction of that different story.