tira miss u cake….

Warning: in stars and time spoilers under the cut

THE 9-5 (´°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥ω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀)

(You clutch your chest and try to catch your breath and forget!!!)

⊹ ࣪ ˖ ｡˚ ⋆

Rereading is wonderful because why did I forget about this little detail. Apparently they have chewing gum in the TEK world! A quick google search tells me the first chewing gum was patented in the late 1860s, which is interesting. Since TEK takes place in a fictional world and not on Earth, it’s hard to compare technological advances and eras.

On the same note, the reason why I went back to the earlier chapters in the first place was because I remembered that Nagyunn bought a magazine of Najin:

Which is interesting because having Najin’s picture on the cover and such (as magazines are) implies the existence of technology able to capture a person’s likeness and print it out. Either that or it is hand drawn and then printed, which is viable (unlike the possibility of every copy being hand drawn, because that is simply not plausible and entirely impractical/not cost efficient).

The extent to which the technology in TEK has advanced is unclear; there are magical scrolls distributed among the knights that are used for communication, and they seem to work like a messaging app or social platform on a phone (not sure if they have other applications or uses because we’ve only seen knights scrolling through chat logs or receiving an announcement/message).

But the question is… how long have they been around? They clearly don’t have actual scientifically made cell phones, as is common in fantasy worlds with the existence of magic, but Wild Dog Fidorance seems inept at communicating through the scrolls (I don’t have the screenshot sorry) as if they’re something new. Of course, it might just be because they don’t seem to be in the use of the common people, which would mean that those who become knights would not be accustomed to them growing up, but… I don’t know. Sure, Qilin and other knights, as well as Nagyunn, get the hang of it quickly, but that doesn’t mean it’s been around for a long time. In Nagyunn’s case, he didn’t even know they existed until he met the magician.

So, we know there must be a device used for printing copies of something, there is a magical device that is used by knights to communicate, and that somehow magazines with pictures are printed in color. Is there some device, likely magical, used to take pictures? Is someone meeting with people like Najin and having them pose for hours to capture their likeness? Who knows.

So right now, I see three possibilities!

I’d have to reread Gilgamesh for any hint of electricity, but I doubt there will be one. In the United States, the electrification of homes occurred in the late 19th century, which is somewhat close to the invention of commercial chewing gum. However, as I previously mentioned, it’s hard to draw a connection between timelines of technological advances of our world and that of a fantasy world.

Plus, in one of the last chapters of Gilgamesh (spoilers ahead), we see a flashback to when Kandentia met Tludia roughly 8 years before the events of Gilgamesh. There, Kandentia makes a comment about a wad of magical papers for starting (camp)fires that are supplied to the knights. The way she says it implies that this is also not a commercial item for the common people, which seems to be expected of magical items in general. Of course, a lot can change technologically in 8 years! Our age of technology in the real world is proof of this, as well as the work of geniuses like Regia greatly accelerating and changing the world of magic.

On the other hand, I’m considering the possibility that the author meant 기린 as in “giraffe” rather than Qilin, due to the mistranslation across cultures that occurred some centuries ago. This is a rather lame possibility, though, because… come on. Qilin is just way cooler. Also, I want to trust the translation team with this one.

That aside, the myths!! I was thinking of vampire bats (for some reason), which I realized were named *after* vampires, meaning that the myth of vampires had to exist before they were named. In other words, if vampires didn’t exist, “vampire bat” would not be a possible name for a knight. Of course, it could always be that if “vampire bat” were to be used, it is just for us as the audience to understand what kind of bat it is, and that it is named something else in the language of TEK. There’s also that a knight would probably simply be named “bat” rather than a specification like “vampire bat”.

Of course these thoughts sent me into a spiral of researching the history of the myth of vampires. I didn’t thoroughly read everything I found (it was 3 am) but I do want to bring up what I did find: creatures similar to vampires have been described in several myths across cultures around the world, whether as some sort of demon who feasts on newborn babies, or whatever else. The common idea of a vampire today is quite new and also largely influenced by depictions in media, but if creatures similar to vampires have naturally come about in so many separate places, it’s not wrong to assume this might happen in the TEK world. In other words, maybe there is an animal called a vampire bat!

Sorry about the vampire bats. It’s really not that important; I don’t know why I had to do all that. The point was supposed to be myths and animals, not vampire bats. But this was the example. If human nature inevitably leads to the creation of myths, it’s not out of left field to think that maybe the TEK world has many similar to ours. Not only that, but many myths involving creatures and monsters are produced by fear, another recurring feature of humans! What humans are afraid of can change throughout time and depending on the location, but other fears last, and leave a mark. The fear of death is an easy example. If the fears that created monsters like vampires exist in the TEK world (which they probably do), then the monsters created must exist in a similar fashion in the TEK world as well.