kira yukimura is electric. (electrocutie) wrote in blackpoint, @ 2014-02-02 11:03:00 |
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Entry tags: | commander shepard, helen magnus, isaac lahey (au), kira yukimura, lydia martin, mccall, stiles, tali'zorah vas normandy |
So, to make up for my utter uselessness yesterday, I did some research! As usual, most of it is probably totally irrelevant (but super badass), but I know Drunk Kira mentioned some soul/firefly stuff to Scott the other night, so I thought I’d follow up.
Basically, I looked for fireflies in various legends and mythologies to see if anything stuck out as useful. Here’s what I found! I bolded anything I thought seemed particularly interesting.
There’s an African myth that tells of a beast called an Adze, which is a vampire that takes the form of a firefly unless caught. In human form, it attacks and eats your organs. In firefly form, it sucks blood and spreads disease. Preferred victims are young people, and victims become a witch possessed by the Adze’s spirit.
There’s a Filipino myth on the origin of fireflies that says that they learned to carry torches so that they could navigate the dark night and ward off predators. This could potentially play into the possibility that the firefly people are protectors, which might explain show!Mr. Argent’s mask.
Similarly putting fireflies in a positive light, there’s an Apache legend about a Fox who stole fire from fireflies and was punished by not being allowed to ever use it for himself. Show-me has that fox shape around her, as seen by Scott, so perhaps this one is relevant at putting some sort of wedge between foxes and fireflies as enemies.
There’s also a good bit to do with death. Japanese culture believes that fireflies are the souls of the dead. Also, there’s a place called Hotaru-Dani, which means Firefly Valley, where souls are believed to depart the world. There’s also an old European legend that said that fireflies flying into a window were a symbol of approaching death.
There’s another Japanese myth that involves a woman dreaming that she was a firefly, which could be an interesting tie to the nightmares and things.
Now, I found it totally interesting that the substance that’s found in many fireflies that causes the light emission is called luciferin. Lucifer, obviously, has Biblical connections as a fallen angel and lord of hell. But, as Lydia totally could tell you and I learned from googling, lucifer is also a Latin adjective meaning “light-bringing.” Translated to Greek, it means “bringer of dawn.” Obviously, these shadow creeps have a demon thing going on, so I thought was an interesting connection.
I also looked into the tattoo just a little to see if I could find anything on backwards numbers in legend and mythology. In Guaraní mythology, the third son of the original humans, called Japeusá, was a liar and a trickster who wrote backwards to confuse and take advantage of people. He died committing suicide by drowning himself. (And was resurrected in the body of a crab, which apparently explains why they are cursed to walk backwards.)
Okay. Sorry. TL;DR.