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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!

Red Regent

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Posts posted by Red Regent

  1. Posted

    On an unrelated note, timezones are awful. I made a friend in Hawaii a few days ago, and I just now realized that our timezones are really hard to work with. By the time I wake up at like 10-11 AM in the morning, it's already like 4-5 PM in the afternoon. That means in a given day, I only have, at best, a 5-6 hour window to talk to them. Which is a darn shame because they're cool.

  12. Posted

    1 minute ago, The Old Hack said:

    ...feeling a bit crushed right now. Otherwise I am fine! <shoves boulder away>

    Excellent Excellent!

    (Also I wanna DM you but you seem to have... a full inbox.)

  19. Posted

    My apologies. I keep forgetting this site exists,

    So for the last 2 weeks I've been obsessively playing Sunless Sea. It's one of them Roguelike RPG thingies set in an underground environment with more than a few nods and homages to the Lovecraft Mythos. So you know, Go insane, eat you crew and whatnot. What was amusing was what happened a while ago:

    While on a return trip on my banged up and barely afloat starter ship the Sea Beggar I was caught in a winter gale. Engine is slowed, and fuel consumption skyrockets. Not a problem since i had plenty of fuel on me at the time. Bad news was I was on my last rations and the nearest port (that I was aware of considering the map was still mostly unexplored) was probably 20 minutes away. It isn't all gloom and doom though; I managed to find a giant jellyfish with a human face on it. Even my peashooter for a main armament on my ship can kill it, and we did and just in time too. The hull was at 4/75, and the crew were starving. I wasn't out of the woods just yet as I got a bad roll and instead of getting rations that I could use, I ended up getting a "Strange Catch". Now Zee life (that is to say the various animals that live in the subterranean ocean called the Zee) isn't necessarily completely inedible but "strange catches" are a 50/50 shot.

    My crew were starving, so we'd basically try anything once. I opted to have the crew eat the strange catch in a bid to stave off hunger. So one of my intrepid deckhands puts on her brave-panties and eats it. The game then described what happened next; the strange meat was cooked about as well as we could at the time, she sat down and took the first bite. She paused for a moment, composed herself, courteously excused herself from the table, went below deck, and promptly threw herself into the ship's furnace and burning to death. Her dying words were apparently "Better to die than taste that again!"

    What's funny was that immediately after that we ran into some pirates and sank them and managed to get several crates of food, so her "brave" sacrifice ended up for naught. What a typical day in the Zee I guess... 

    The Old Hack reacted to this

  21. Posted

    1 minute ago, CritterKeeper said:

    Just make sure you avoid the equivalent of making them sparkle.

    WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY ! *applies steamroller offscreen*

     

    Also yes that will work but I have a few other alternatives, though this one will take a fair bit of legwork. The Aswang Project is an archiving website that focuses on pre-colonial mythology and folklore of the Philippines and has done extensive work in their research; they mix everything from word of mouth of native peoples, a backlog of historical documents written and produced by other archivists from decades of study, and applies geographic, anthropological, and historical context for these things. I'd like you to observe how they disseminate say, a Tikbalang for example.

    I really love how they do it because they do it in stages:
    1. Preliminaries: Where they tell you what the creature is, it's physical traits, and its most well known mannerisms and attitudes
    2. Contextualization: By studying the anthropological and historical background of the home country they begin to piece together the creature from bits and snippets from different time periods and watch it slowly evolve into the horseheaded man-beast that it is today
    3. Modern usage: Some of the consultants are also authors of local literature and they give their own examples of how they used the creature in their stories
    4. Summary: Where they basically evaluate the historical and cultural significance of it, talk about how modern writers are beginning to see the value of the beast, and what it means for the greater scope of Philippine, Asian, and World Literature as a whole moving forward

    I was lucky to come across the site and the links to it and I'm certain you'll find something similar to the site's equivalent for Chinese or Japanese lower mythology (which is what you should concentrate on if you're looking for beasts and monsters), and considering (especially for Japan) how well documented their mythology is, I think it'll be easier for you to track these down.

    As a matter of respect and I guess awareness I'd suggest you try to track down the cultural and historical backgrounds of the creatures you'll end up borrowing for your literature. Libraries and other sources are gold mines for this information so best start looking there. Also try to find modern interpretations of them in local media; which I admit will be considerably difficult since there are language barriers, but I'm certain they'll still be found. In fact considering how Japan uses its creatures and iconography so often in anime and manga, I think any of those interpretations will be suitable for the task at hand.

     In my own work in researching these things I've come to the conclusion that to borrow a mythical creature is to take a part of it's culture's identity and history; the Tikbalang wouldn't have a horse's head if not for Hindu influence; it wouldn't be demonized if not for the Spanish and the introduction of Christianity; it wouldn't have the common name of Tikbalang if not for the consolidation and homogenization of the creature in the early 20th century by anthropologists and historians; and nobody would probably care about it today if not for a shift towards indigenous stories and beliefs in the 90s which still resonates until today. You'll notice that those talking points I brought up are a very short summary of my country's history (Pre-Islamic/Pre-Colonial Era, Spanish Colonial Era, American Colonial Era, contemporary era) which is why some people can get understandably angry if these are misused; not only is the creature misrepresented, but also the culture it came from.

    Understandably this will take a lot of reading on your part if you're unfamiliar with the culture you're borrowing from, and your [reader's] millage may vary on how good or bad your interpretation is. I personally believe you don't need to have encyclopedic knowledge of the creature and it's background to talk about it but as a matter of respect and to generate real, tangible cultural enrichment, I'd highly advise at least bringing what you know about the creature and it's background up to acknowledge its roots.

    The Old Hack and Drachefly reacted to this

  23. Posted

    On 4/22/2017 at 4:34 PM, The Old Hack said:

    Alternately: find someone with a good appreciation of Asian cultures. Ideally someone Chinese for Chinese creatures, Japanese for the Japanese ones, et cetera. Consult them for their takes on your ideas. Pay close attention to them, they are the experts. We have at least one Filipino poster here, they should have their own take that is just as important.

    You rang, good sir?

    Well actually now that I've read some of the posts here I can I guess throw my own two cents into this. My best advice is to deffer to people you may know of from the Asian countries/cultures you wanna get material from and observe how they use their lower mythologies and bestiaries in local literature. For example in the home country you can just take the most well-known interpretations of a certain creature, and pretty much just go where you want with it as long as those base traits are acknowledged and respected. I'll get into more detail upon request.

  24. Posted

    This is a rhyme I made on the spot

    it's a stream of conscious thought

    words and ideas I've gone and caught

    for in them is truth that is sought

    Or something or other. Pancakes.

  25. Posted

    OOC: Where did I leave off again? Something about a confrontation?

    Also Spoony makes me sad; he hasn't been producing videos like... at all for almost a year now and while he hasn't lost his touch when he made that last Reb Brown review... idk he's just been so... caustic lately in his live-wires, like moreso than he was during the Final Fantasy VIII review. I miss the guy.