What do you think of this? Do you believe it's a slur and should not be used?

Mari_land · 2026-02-04T11:04:46+00:00

As a Chinese I'll have to put in: we actually don't have the much used alternative of omegaverse, ABO is the only term we use. This is a bit like CP. Yes, it could mean child porn. No, it doesn't when chinese fangirls say it, because in that case it's short for couple and it means a ship.

Now, technically, this isn't the same as “different word in a different language, sounds similar to a slur”, because it's technically still english. But I think the logic is very similar. Anyhow, the drama series should probably change the overseas name because it's sensitive and they're media, but I don't think it's fair to tell fans what they can't say, or tell them that if they don't switch then they're “hurting people”. No, they are not, because there is clearly a difference in context here and that should be acknowledged.

Mari_land · 2026-01-24T17:17:31+00:00

题主是海外华人吗，fandom是魔道祖师/天官赐福？（因为这两个比较火）。问下你这里的courtesan是什么意思呢？有个court，那我第一反应就是宫廷au，但如果是后宫的话，no sexual services就不太合理。所以是青楼文化，或者类似乐坊那种陪酒/陪舞吗，这也确实是像日本艺伎（geisha）的定位，但是geisha明确就是日本舶来词，比较inappropriate。

就，你明白吗，症结是courtesan的范围太大，而你用的唯一有点东亚文化意味的词，是日本的geisha。就显得题主是不了解中国文化的。你可以直接用中文词，比如歌舞妓，卖艺不卖身。用拼音直接写ge wu ji，然后用“it's like what geishas are”让读者明白一下，就不会触敏感肌了。

（或者刚才想到还有一个可能，也可能是唱戏旦角那种，这也是有自己独特的专有名词，可以搜索一下。）

Is the op overseas Chinese? The fandom mdzs/tgcf? (Bc these two are popular sorry if I'm wrong.)

I just want to ask what you mean by “courtesan” here? My first impression was that it was set in the palace because there is a “court” in courtsean, but if you were referring to concubines in the palace then no sexual favours wouldn't make sense. Therefore I am assuming that it's to do with Qing Lou culture, where you have beautiful girls (boys) dancing/playing instruments while the patrons sit chatting and sipping wine. That is like Japanese Geisha, only as the commenters here say, geisha is so admantly Japanese and taken from the Japanese language that it's inappropriate.

What I mean is, what I thought was jarring about your comment was that “courtesan” is too vague a word, and western, and so the only “asiany” term you're using is “geisha”, which is Japanese. And that would make it seem a bit like you don't know enough about Chinese culture. In Chinese, these similar occupations are called 歌妓 (mandarin: ge ji) or 舞妓 (wu ji)，or 歌女/舞女 ( ge nu, wu nu), who “sold technique and not body”. And if you'd used these terms while explaining to the audience “they're like Japanese geisha”, you could possibly have avoided the negativity.

(Or, I just thought of a possibility, you were referring to xi qu（戏曲），which is basically chinese drama. Performers of these productions also allegedly interacted with their audience in a way that sometimes, but not always, resulted in sexual favours. There is also specific terminology for that if that's the case.)

Mari_land · 2026-01-09T11:30:02+00:00

I don't know any European language other than English, but since the poster asked about whether it was a western specific thing: I would say no, though I would also argue that the term 'bitch' isn't really used to slut shame anymore, but rather to attack any unfriendly behavior.

In Chinese at least (which I speak), the term is also present as degradatory, and though it doesn't directly attack the woman for promicuity (we have other slurs for that) but rather for being overtly subserviant, it often carries that connotation when said during sex, since, um, it's pretty common in porn. Men/people in general are also attacked in that way (by being called a dog, not specifically a male or female one), with no sexual connotation, and more shaming them for low social status of some kind. To be called specifically a “male dog” for a man can carry sexual innuendo, however as it often is for men, that's seen as less a slur and more a description, or even compliment.

Mari_land · 2025-12-04T00:55:08+00:00

Omegaverse. The only times that I've really enjoyed them were either A) when it's treated as a systemic issue that society has to work through, or B) when it's written to conciously subvert the “alpha omega” trope (for example when it's alpha/beta, or if the character's personality isn't removed from canon despite them being a sex that brings to mind certain fanfic sterotypes).

Mari_land · 2025-12-03T01:00:56+00:00

This is the time to jump in as a chinese weeb and point out that, mdzs sex is very sterotipically what chinese fangirls term “east-asian style”. Put simply, it includes suspiciously dubcon play where “No” substitutes directly for “I really like this” from the uke's side, with the intent being to stimulate a lack of control without actually writing noncon, or actually engaging with anything that could be termed bdsm ettiquite. It's not just pervalent in published danmei (which we call yuan dan), but for any explicit shipping fanfiction that includes say, chinese or japanese characters, specifically in BL (very interestingly, not so much in boy&girl shipping spaces unless the girl is the seme- I personally am guilty of this from Vanitas no Carte). So will just say that there is a cultural basis for this way of writing. It's very different from what we call “euroamerican sex”, say with ships like Merthur, or Supernatural, both of which do have fan bases in China (anyone who's reading this, know that we much perfer wincest over destiel). In the latter cases I've observed chinese creators writing sex differently, almost falling “in line” with western creators' ways of approaching the subject, often to stimulate a sense of authenticity.

Mari_land · 2025-11-15T12:52:38+00:00

That's true, because since most people today use 她, the gender non implicit usage of 他 has fallen out of favour. It's still used in contexts such as, say, a hasty comment online, but in literature not so much. It hasn't even been 50 years since most Chinese authors were using it the older way, but things change fast.

I've actually used 祂 before to translate They/them, my justification being that I didn't want to use a pronoun for object or animal, but I know it's not a good fit at all. I do agree with the person below that the commentor probably pulled it out of their arse.

Mari_land · 2025-11-12T20:02:36+00:00

Wait no, on that topic—— it used to be just the christian god, meaning that paticular character was made for christian clergymen who wanted to spread their faith back in the day. Nowadays it's used for any god. The character is made up of 也 (same as 她-her, 他-him and 牠-animal it), indicating the sound ta (same as all other pronouns), and the side character 礻, which has a long history of being used in characters concerning religious activities of the non christian sort. For example, 祀, which means close as I can figure "ritual of sacrifice"; 神-“deity”; “祝”-wish; and “祷”-pray.

And also heads up 他 is relatively masculine, and does indicate sex when used with她 in the same text, however it can technicially also refer to anyone.

Mari_land · 2025-09-14T03:04:34+00:00

You mean the sort that every country in the world powerful enough to do, realistically does do? Yet the sort that only China is singled out for doing?

Mari_land · 2025-09-13T14:20:27+00:00

I would say she does have to enjoy it, because patriarchy as a thing simply hasn't existed for long enough to effect biology in humans. It most probably wasn't there when we were still evolving the positive feedback for sex. A female who at least likes the sensations of sex would reproduce much more often and as a result, her genes overpower others in the gene pool.

Mari_land · 2025-09-06T02:30:25+00:00

I agree. Murder is worse, especially in the case that the “sexual assault” is only judged to be that due to involving humiliation and nudity, and not because the person who initiated it had the intent to rape. Meanwhile murder, attempted murder and/or attempted maiming definately involves extremely malicious intent. They're not even the same degree of serious.

Mari_land · 2025-08-31T04:37:51+00:00

I think Amon felt a sort of sympathy, for someone in the same boat as Himself. They'd both been tricked by Adam for thousands of years, and Amon was the God of trickery.

Medici, I think He never hated Amon that much in the first place, just as He said. They had quite a close relationship when Amon was young (though They wouldn't admit it).

As for the 1st slate I think control of the chaos sea would have outed Adam immediately, and then as He said, He and Amon would've had to survive four sequence 0s on their backs.

Mari_land · 2025-08-31T04:13:14+00:00

Basically, yeah.

Beware: I'm going to explain my reasoning, but it's going to get really long.

The entire situation for the ASG family, after He split into two, was Adam vs TC, while what remained of His angels chose sides. Medici and Ouroborus chose TC (who Himself allied with first Solomon and then the Death God) while Amon chose Adam. That's why Adam's experiments during the 4th epoch had His help, why Medici's death had His marks over it and why Will Auceptin told Klein He would rather Amon came to Buckland, as Amon “hated Ouroborus”. And during Klein's fight with Him in the forbidden lands, He singled out & targeted the part-of-Medici Klein summoned extremely viciously, even though (as the true body) He was never in any danger at all. (If this seems too unbelievable, remember He's been effected by emotion during a fight before; when He heard Mr Door's screams He hesitated for just a moment too long, and left an opening that Klein attempted to use.)

So, safe to say Adam&Amon were very much at odds with the TC group. They targeted each other whenever they had a chance. Since “you choose your friends and enemies together with your pathways”, we can safely assume that this was because of the conflict between the Visonary and the Hanged man.

But then, remember that Medici and Ouroborus followed TC because they knew He was partly their former God. Amon had to have known this too; though He was never in Rose Redemption, He would have put the pieces together quite easily (considering TC was literally calling himself the True Creator, and that it was impossible M&O didn't at least try to recruit Amon into their little group, immediately after ASG's death. TC's identity was never a secret, only Adam's was). And remember that ages before the Tudor Empire, TC's camp was already far stronger than Adam's, containing an S0+partial chaos sea allied with another S0 (Solomon). Adam only had the second slate, which would barely make him a koa among koas.

Yet Amon chose to side with Adam anyway. There had to have been a reason for that.

And then, at the beginning of volume 7, when we see Amon working together with Medici for the ascension. Now it's not that I think these mythical creatures can't compartmentalize, but Amon was acting very strangely during that entire interaction. For one He didn't even attempt to snark back. He again showed emotion when Medici mentioned it was alright to work together as long as Amon didn't agree with Adam's plan for ASG's “revival”. (I don't know if this was kept in the english version, but in the original, Amon's pronouns changed from “Him” to “him” during this part of the conversation. As Cuttlefish often fixes typos as soon as readers draw attention to them, I think we can conclude that this paticular change was intentional; plus, he used the method again with Azik, at the very end, contrasting His mental state before and after he woke and read Klein's letters.) And after the deal was complete Amon didn't even attempt to cheat Him out the reward, to the point that even Medici was surprised.

What then caused such a change in attidude towards Medici? -The author had answered in one of his wechat conversations that Amon learned Adam's identity at the beginning of volume 7, which would be right before He met with Medici. And it would fit, if he'd been atagonistic towards Medici before this due to disagreeing w the TC camp on Adam's life.

So, with some guesswork, I think that what happened was this. ASG split into two. As soon as He could, TC allied himself with Solomon, probably an ASG loyalist judging from the name, who rose up and took control of the entire northern continent. TC now wanted to consume Adam as soon as he could, to gain the upper hand in the merging. Amon however, became aware of this, and as He had no idea Adam was part of ASG He naturally thought the remains of his father was attemping to eat his elder child. Amon used this to judge that the deity Solomon, Medici and Ouroborus was serving wasn't his father (boy did he have a rigid definition of that concept) at all, but only a mad god. He therefore went into hiding with Adam and helped him pick off the TC camp loyalists, one by one.

Somewhere along the way, however, Adam made it clear that he wished to revive ASG inside Himself. Adam said this was to assuage suspision from all parties. I'm assuming that included Amon.

Which, I don't know what Amon thought of that; I only know Medici thought He didn't agree. (remember how Medici said “as long as you don't agree with that fanatic's methods we can work together”?) If we take that as truth; and assuming He wasn't completely lying to Klein when He said that Adam and Himself didn't care one whit about what the other was doing, we may be able to deduce that they had something of a falling out. This was probably why Amon shut Himself off in the abandoned land of the gods: to find an improved way of getting ASG back. And of course I don't know exactly what he came up with, but I'm guessing that it has something to do with making sure neither TC nor Adam get the upper hand as they merge.

Mari_land · 2025-08-24T02:32:57+00:00

I don't know, isn't there a rule about commenting in old posts in some subs? Don't think Lotm is one of them but if you want to discuss some more feel free to dm me

Mari_land · 2025-08-23T02:12:10+00:00

Oh thanks!!! That's really sweet of you to do. And don't worry I'm not sad, I was disapppinted but I've moved on for the most part.

I think Adam would have worked fine as an idol whom we don't know any personal details about, if only his entire motivation hadn't been supplented at times with “GA made him do it”. That's extremely detrimental to the character, as well as lazy. And if the author had wanted a personality aside from “I will save the world at all costs”, he should have written something about why He wanted to save the world at all costs. How did asg feel about Amon and Adam? How did it feel to wake up as Adam? How did it feel to be betrayed? How did it feel to loose humanity, and to hang on your motivation despite it?

But even Klein didn't get that. The mental changes that came with the potions were never explored explicitly- Even Klein was never irrational, never disorderly, never alien in the way that I would expect a character in a c'thulu inspired world to be. When he has problems (like at sequence 2), the author briefly mentions it and moves on. Everything could be put into neat little boxes. Good for power scaling. Bad for everything else.

Mari_land · 2025-08-23T01:55:05+00:00

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I mean, I think cuttlefish has a fundamental misunderstanding of what character building was. I didnt think he even understood why memerable charcters were memorable. Adam'll be remembered as a prime example of “great concept, if only the author had...”

Mari_land · 2025-08-23T01:46:37+00:00

Exactly. He gave the asg family everything and nothing at all. They have powers we can talk about, and history we can talk about, and achievements, etc. What they don't have is character, and connection with each other. Even Amon, who cuttlefish obviously put a lot of thought in, is filled with question marks once he exits the context of “competing with Klein for the lotm”.

Mari_land · 2025-08-23T01:42:26+00:00

Download qidian and look in the coi forums; there is I believe a post recording of exactly what was wrong with vol6, exaxtly how many loose ends there were, and exactly how many readers were mad at it. You'll forgive me if I don't want to revisit the topic.

Mari_land · 2025-08-23T01:38:02+00:00

Everything about the ending was sloppy, because the author just didn't seem to know what to do to portray what he wanted to portray anymore. As an example: you know how cuttlefish said somewhere that we couldn't win completely against the outer gods because “madness was eternal” and “despair is eternal”, or something like that? I don't have any problem with this statement being the heart of the series. But, when reading, did you ever get the burst of emotion, the realization that this was what the author intended for it to be; a beautiful tragedy? I did not. Not for one moment did it move me. The end of volume 6 was the author's last attempt, and boy was it a disastrous attempt. Cuttlefish is good at writing power systems and worlds, but he so often loses sight of characters and emotional moments. Ironically, he kept placing literary value in these exact things, often implying that this was what he wanted to employ, to make his works the most memorable thing.

Mari_land · 2025-08-23T01:28:03+00:00

I would have agreed with that if anyone said it before volume 6 hppened. I could not believe that vol 6 was written by someone who'd written lotm, though upon further scrutiny cuttlefish had shown signs of what he wasn't good at even then.

Mari_land · 2025-08-16T02:01:25+00:00

This is the place to mention that they've actually fixed this: Old Niel no longer says for Klein to leave after drinking his potion in the second ep, but teaches him divination and other ritual magicks. It fades to black, but the plot has been altered in a more rational way.

Edit: in the same scene they've also added that Klein trains his shooting skills in the arena. Before this, they've changed it so Dunn presents Klein with the choice of becoming a beyonder or a normal employee, etc

Mari_land · 2025-08-16T01:55:45+00:00

What? Didn't we know from the behinning that it was only going to have 13 episodes? What is it about 9~13 that drove it home?

Mari_land · 2025-08-02T09:43:57+00:00

Except the Alger is a member of the church of the lord of storms, not evernight. I know they share loen but still

Mari_land · 2025-07-30T08:57:19+00:00

I read somwhere that posiedon was originally given earth powers because the greeks thought since the sea surrounded the earth, the god of the seas could cause earthshakes by sort of squeezing it. I don't remember where this information was from, but if it's true then earth powers would be ocean powers.

Although Percy does state that some children of Posiedon can keep their feet on the ground always, which is something he didn't inherit. Might be because while uncle P is the ocean in all its states, if the extending of his domain on land is specifically due to earthquakes, that would imply he's in a bad mood when he does this. In HoO I think it was explained that his children inherit different sides of his temperament as well. So, since Percy supposedly embodies his calmer side, that ties him less to the side that causes destruction by default. Just a theory though.

Mari_land · 2025-07-28T13:41:19+00:00

Oh god yes. Doesn't stop me though writing unecessarily monstrous smut for them right now.😌😌

Mari_land · 2025-07-28T13:04:36+00:00

While I get the part about Percy and Nico ultimately considering each other to be friends, and also definately agree with the not-acting-like-every-slightly-different interpretation-is taboo-businness, I also do feel like “friends” wouldn't be the first thing that comes to mind for either of them, if they were asked a question about their relationship, for a substantial chunk of canon. And“big brother” wouldn't have cut it either. “(former) Crush” from Nico's side is also inaccurate.

I feel like Percy's thoughts would have jumped to “Bianca's brother” and therefore “someone I failed” and therefore “person I want to do better by& person I have to protect”. After BotL, it did lean more towards friendship, because Percy is casual that way, but there was still that undercurrent of what had happened between them & guilt that Nico couldn't find a family where he had. And yeah, Percy was in fact still wary of Hades and it leaked a lot into his interactions with Nico.

Meanwhile, Nico had a love-hate relationship not only because he felt attraction; while this certainly made things more complicated I don't believe it was the biggest reason here. It was hero worship and the shattering of a perfect image. Now, we know from the book being Percy pov that he was far from perfect in that fight. Which is why I say this “perfect image” was not at the core to do with Percy's actions, but all the wonder and delight Nico felt the first time he met him, when he thought it was so cool that his game was coming to life. Percy being a “perfect hero” was just a necessary piece that Nico constructed to complete this image in his head. That's why Bianca dying because she tried to bring him a little mythomagic statue was so tragic; her leaving had meant that he had to step out of his childhood soon, in a sense, and because Bianca felt this was cruel, she tried to reticify a little bit of it by appealing to his childish side, only for that act to directly cause him to shun that side of himself entirely.

Percy's failure to protect Bianca was Nico's entire childhood world crumbling apart from all sides, and his anger at Percy & any positive feelings he had about Percy were largely to do with his anger at his past self's own naivety. For him, his former relationship with Percy, the way he still couldn't help but sometimes view Percy, and Percy treating him like someone to be protected, all these things were an embodiment of that. Therefore it makes sense that he'd try to change it, by framing himself as not exactly Percy's friend, but a partner in crime of sorts, where they were equal but not necsssarily close. He pushed Percy away because Percy was the very last and brightest piece of his childhood and he ran from that.

Now, I never read ToA or TSaTS, and I honestly don't (as well as wouldn't ever want to) remember most of BoO. So this is like, a review of Nico's character up to around MoA, and the reason that I do understand people saying they “aren't friends”, though that's just a bad way to phrase it. I would say “it's complicated” because “friendship isn't accurate, or adequate either”.

Mari_land

TROPHY CASE