HYPOXEMEDUSAMEDEA SIN DOSSIER
("hypoxemia" meaning "low oxygen in the blood")
Description: Dark shaman of great power.
Identities/Aliases: Ha Pak Shim, Breathless One, CoreanBlackMagicWoman@medeasin.com, formerly known as Nikki Teen.
Affiliations: Former leader of defunct task force known as The Breathtakers. Still maintains contact with Sai Onassis and Edward Ema from that group. It is believed that Neil Plazia may have been her mentor during her teen years when she was first afflicted with the "sin-byong" or "shaman's calling."
(Hypoxemedusa as former leader of The Breathtakers. Drawn 1993.)
Abilities:
1) Walking Dead - Unlike most Corean shamans, who can heal or mediate between the living and the dead, Hypoxemedusa can actually animate the dead, to some extent. She is shunned by the shaman community just as shamans are shunned by modern society.
2) Aura - wreaks of sickness while being unexpectedly alluring to many.
3) Teleportation - via smoky miasma.
4) Tentacles/tubing - able to strangle, entwine, suffocate, or gas the unwary.
5) Razor-rimmed hat
Weakness: Decades of heavy smoking and/or dabbling into the darker arcana of shamanism have taken their toll on Ha Pak Shim's (Hypoxemedusa's birth name) health. She has become a pulmonary cripple who relies on her life support devices and magic to function. Pan-scanning has revealed that her insides are filled with more cancer than normal tissue and may actually be animating her as well. She still smokes (which is dangerous around her oxygen masks).
Myrrh Mar's Progress Notes: "My seonsaeng (teacher) always said - never wrestle with an octopus."
(Hypoxemedusa in her younger years. Drawn 2003.)
_________________________________________________________________
DRAWING COMMENTARY
My Notes: I guess this would be my late Halloween drawing. She's named after a common medical term called "hypoxemia" which means "low oxygen level in the blood." This can be caused by any number of lung problems. In this case, severe emphysema or lung cancer. The pinky finger on her left hand has a pulse oximeter attached (reads oxygen saturation levels).
The feathered hat and beads are typical Corean shaman (called "mudang") garb. The mask over her right shoulder is an actual Corean dance mask as is the protection scroll (called a "pujok") over her left shoulder (I copied the same symbols from an actual scroll in a book for it -- cool, eh?). Shamans or mudangs were often asked to write them to protect from evil spirits or for good luck. Red (ink) and yellow (paper) were believed to be protective versus evil.
The tri-gram symbol in the center of Hypoxemedusa's chest was one of the eight original symbols of the Corean flag, which was later reduced to four symbols. It is the Chinese symbol for "wind" ("sonkwai"), and is a "negative energy" symbol as well.
Shamanism is said to be the oldest religion in Corea, but shamanism was gradually ostracized as it conflicted with the newer "religions" of Buddhism, Confuscianism, and finally Christianity. There are some interesting articles about shamanism and its function as an expressive outlet for otherwise repressed women in Corean society, since mostly women were shamans. It is said there were two types of "mudang" -- those who were afflicted or possessed with "sin-byong" (or the calling) and those who were born into it. The afflicted female was often mentored by an older female shaman, in a "spirit mother-spirit daughter" relationship.
Today, there are still practicing shamans in Corea, mostly seen during cultural celebrations. (More interesting info is on this page.)
.
