#personifications

[allykatsart]

You know the saying! No one hates Tumblr more than Tumblr...

Continuation/Finale of This Little Arc! As much as we love to put AO3 on a pedestal, there's literally no such thing as perfection. Tumblr does have flaws both IRL and in story. I'm not here to shy away from them, but I won't let them define me.

Tumblr is more than just the staff and the site, it's the people on it, the community that stayed even after everyone else moved to Twitter. It's the funny memes we share, the old posts we dig up, the holidays we celebrate. It's a living breathing history. Good or bad, I'd argue it's worth keeping around.

[chloroformcurry]

Finally redesigned my AH-64 Apache gijinka + her trying to rear naked choke my Chinook gijinka

[earlgraytay]

One of these days I want to do that project I've been noodling around for decades that's just "all the parts of Hetalia's concept and fanfic scene I find compelling without any of the real world stuff that makes it fraught and potentially really icky."

Secondary world dieselpunk fantasy with people who are the personifications of... lands? Countries? Kindreds, tongues, peoples? Nations? States? Which is it? Does it matter which it is?

If you are one of these nations, you are immortal as long as whatever-it-is-you-are endures. You cannot die in a way that matters. You can be blown to bits, and you will wake up in a crater a week later. You can- and want to- fight alongside your humans, if there is a war, and work alongside them if there is a peace. You want to keep them safe.

You are also fully expendable. As you can't really die, you're frequently assigned to suicide missions. (If you're not assigning yourself to them in the heat of battle.) You've been through more trauma and pain than you care to remember. If you're an older nation, you've probably got several hundred years of PTSD that you've never worked through, and are reacting to things accordingly.

You're the personification of your people. That means you have to reflect them. Your opinions, your ethics, your most intimate personal relationships- even your tastes in music or aesthetics- are expected to change at the drop of a hat. (Do they actually change with your people's opinions? Or are you just a very good actor?)

You likely (especially if this is WWII-era dieselpunk) have a terrible, unreasonable boss. They might see you as a pet, a toy, a surrogate child, a living weapon, or a testament to the success of their horrid personal philosophy. You spend way, way, way more time with your boss than any normal human would, and spend most of your energy trying to curb their worst impulses.

In wartime, you're an unspecified petty officer- not high enough in the ranks to attract anyone's attention, but high enough to do some good. In peacetime, you're a mid-ranking civil servant with a position that would normally be given to someone's useless nephew. You do a lot of Unspecified Paperwork.

You're part of the worst club in the world. Nations know nations, whether from proximity or a sixth sense, and you've spent a lot of time talking to each other at diplomatic events, casually or otherwise. You're friends, in a way. You could stab each other in the back at any moment, based on what your shitty fucking bosses want you to do. Most of the older nations treat that as an occupational hazard; the younger ones (especially the more idealistic ones) still get their feelings hurt over it. Some of your bosses - the old-fashioned sort, Kings and Queens- think that an alliance between nations is tantamount to a marriage. (Is that how you feel?)

This is all incredibly compelling stuff and would be way more fun to play with in a secondary-world setting where any Unfortunate Implications are A) there on purpose, B) thematically relevant, C) not treating real world atrocities as angst fuel for fic.

[deathlessathanasia]

I saw an interesting post in r/greekmythology asking if the control of the gods over their physical or abstract domains comes from their authority over the minor gods and daimones who represent and personify these domains, rather than a direct, magical manipulation like we imagine nowadays.

For example, Zeus controls the sky because he has authority over the Anemoi (Winds), the Nephelae (Clouds), and the Cyclopes who build lightning-bolts; Poseidon controls the sea because he has authority over the nymphs and the tritons who embody the several aspects of the ocean; Aphrodite controls love because she has authority over Eros (Love), Peitho (Persuasion), and the Charites (Graces); Ares and Athena are gods of war because they have authority over Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Terror), Eris (Strife), and Nike (Victory); and so on. And whenever a god wants to control an aspect of nature, they would command the personification of that aspect to do their bidding, like Hera telling Hypnos to make Zeus sleep in the Iliad, or sending Iris to tell Lyssa to inflict madness on Heracles.

What do you think of this interpretation? Do you think authors ever make a distinction between gods whose names are common nouns in Greek (Nemesis, Eros, Thanatos, Hypnos, the Moirai, Nyx, Dike) and the gods whose names are proper nouns, like the main Olympians?

I'm not sure about this.

It's true that these gods have power over lesser deities who do their bidding, but should that be considered meaningfully different from them having power over the aspects those beings represent? What is the difference between having authority over the Nephelai and over the clouds when nephelai are literally the clouds themselves? In Book 5 of the Odyssey we have this scene of Poseidon causing a storm: „So saying, he gathered the clouds, and seizing his trident in his hands troubled the sea, and roused all blasts of all manner of winds, and hid with clouds land and sea alike; and night rushed down from heaven. Together the East Wind and the South Wind dashed, and the fierce-blowing West Wind and the North Wind, born in the bright heaven, rolling before him a mighty wave.” This doesn't look to me like he has no direct control over the sea and only over other sea deities. He also doesn't need someone else to cause floods (as he did after he lost the contest over Attica with Athena and over Argolis with Hera), dry rivers, or create new sources of water (the salt spring on the Acropolis of Athens and the spring of Amymone) for him. There are also countless examples where Aphrodite can do by herself the same things Eros does; she is a sex and love deity in her own right (such matters are often simply called „the works of Aphrodite”), just as Poseidon is a sea god in his own right and Zeus a sky god who gathers the clouds, produces rain, snow, thunder and lightning.

As for Hera ordering Hypnos and Lyssa to do what she wants, this may represent a different sort of thing. Sleep and madness don't belong to her sphere of influence, so she needs to bargain or coerce them into doing her bidding. But not even this is so clear-cut, since in other versions she drives people mad herself and I can think of one instance in which Aphrodite needs to bribe Eros into making someone fall in love even though in other accounts she makes people fall in love herself. It is honestly impossible to make any universalizing claims about Greek mythology. There will always exist at least one source that contradicts the point you want to make.

Regarding the distinction between personifications and other deities, it's hard to say. I guess it can exist if one looks for it but it is unlikely to hold true all the time. For one thing, gods whose names aren't common nouns can still be perceived in a similar way to personifications: the name of Ares is sometimes used for war itself, of Aphrodite for love/sex, of Hephaistos for fire, etc. (and not only in the case of philosophical works where all the Olympians are identified with concepts or natural elements like this).

[xialite]

I am giving some orgs the colours they deserve…yayyy

[mask131]

Since we are all about demons, sins and hell, I want to share this little aside I stumbled upon while doing unrelated historical research. After the post about Pastoureau's book, now here are demons within picture-books for young kings!

This illustration comes from a book that François Demoulin created for future king François Ier (François the First), "Dialogue à deux personnages par lequel un homme apprend à vivre honnêtement" (Two-characters dialogue through which a man learns to live an honest life). This 1505 book is, as the title says, a set of morality-centered discussions meant to work as lessons for the future king.

This illustration was part of the section showing the prince the many dangers of gambling and playing games as a whole. You can see there demons giving cards to kings and cardinals (aka the higher-ups of the society), plus a preceptor who abandons his job of teaching youth (the kid with a book, that he ignores) to rather play dice (with a well-dressed man that might be an insert of François himself).

Outside of the human and demonic characters, you also have various allegories in this scene, with symbolic sizes. You see "The Great Hope" of the gamblers, the tallest of the allegories yet wearing a fool's outfit (the hat and the yellow-and-green coat) ; next to it is the Brief Joy caused by the gains of the game (the tiny blue-clad woman), and facing them is the Pain caused by losing (the black-clad character on the other side of the table).

You can also find some of the Seven Deadly Sins roaming the room, two to be precise. Ira, Wrath, and Avaricia, Greed, whose presence in a gambling room don't need much explanation. The last incarnation is Dread, which remains at the door of the room and is here to teach the following dual lessons: gamblers leave all their fears at the door and this is a bad thing, because a wise person will stay out of these dens and keep a fear of gambling. (Note that Pain and Dread look directly at each other, acknowledging each other's presence)

You can also note the fact that the table is here presented as green. Today green tables are common because greed is associated with gambling per se, but in this illustration the choice of green was a negative symbolism: the color was used in its meaning of "uncertainty", representing how players took a risk and endangered themselves by taking decisions over a table literaly representing unstability.

[dr-george-ordell]

So I just saw a post about the theory that Ali was simply a personification of Arabia and that has me thinking now as a Hetalia fan....

[jukeboxpony-moved]

Art Fight friendly fire for @bamsara of their characters, Arson and Misdemeanor. Arson is their laptop personified, and Misdemeanor is their desktop PC personified. They’re older brother and younger sister.

Bonus transparent version.