In case anyone was wondering, Mei’s halloween costume is called a ‘Jiangshi‘ and it’s probably one of my favorite cultural monsters. :D The Jiangshi is also known as ‘the hopping vampire’ and I first ran into it on a game called Ragnarok Online.
While often mistaken for a zombie, it is in fact a vampire (despite the fact that it’s a reanimated corpse) and is typically dressed in garments from the Qing dynasty. They move only by hopping around (hence the name) and often have their arms outstretched forward permanently, both due to rigor mortis. They also feed off of the life energy of their victims (much like Mei in overwatch), which is where the vampire comes in, although the Chinese claim that the slavic vampire had no influence on the Jiangshi.
You can stop a Jiangshi one of several ways, from apparently sucking their held breath out of them, which causes them to turn into a normal, lifeless corpse, to throwing rice and small objects in it’s path, which will force it to pick up and count each grain. (Counting vampire. Hmm..)
The weaknesses of a Jiangshi include the blood of a black dog, a wooden sword made from a peach tree, a hen’s egg, glutinous rice (by extension of its use in the attempt to draw poisons from a living body), and the urine of a virgin boy. (Yikes)
They’re controlled by the talisman that’s placed on their heads, and like a western vampire, anyone who’s life force is drained by the Jiangshi becomes a Jiangshi themselves.
Here’s a few examples from pop culture you may recognize as a Jiangshi.
Nightwalker Heartless from Kingdom Hearts
Lee Pailong from the Shaman King manga/anime.
Hsien-Ko from the Darkstalkers fighting game.
Thanks for taking a look, I know the Jiangshi isn’t a very popular monster in western culture and I know a few people have been curious about her new Halloween Skin so I thought I’d make this post. :D
I’m glad there’s a post about this. I once cosplayed as the one from Ragnarok and could never remember what it was called.
Who’s got a game going I need to roleplay this goblin slunt.
I never did like the “big nosed” goblins from popular media or the “black girl short stacks” designs from WOW. I was trying to make a character who still looks ugly as a goblin but still a bit cute and I overshot and just made her cute instead.
Big Mouth is only a shitty show because the Hormone Monstress doesn’t have as much screentime (so far). She’s genuinely the most interesting, most attractive and perhaps most frightening character in a show that’s not really about her. The Hormone monsters are just side characters really that pop up randomly when the kids have a conflict and really it should have been about them going from kid to kid since it’s confirmed several times that all the kids have met them before.
I remember in the early days, when the fandom was just a recurring thread on 4chan’s /co/ board, where we thought the show would be canceled at the end of the first season with Hasbro failing to ever capitalize on the show’s potential. Now here we are with seven seasons, a comic book line, a spin-off series, and a movie that just came out.
I wouldn’t call MLP a life-changer, but on top of seven years of pretty solid entertainment, I certainly made a lot of amazing friends thanks to it. And I guess I did learn a little about myself as well. I feel like I could write something a lot more in depth if I wasn’t so drained.
So yeah, thank you Lauren Faust for starting something great, and thanks to the showrunners, comic artist/writers, and everyone who worked on the movie. Stay awesome. c:
It’s honestly the best fandom I’ve ever been in and I would gladly spend 7 more years in it
