#instead of editing them

[littleeyesofpallas]

Not to be a weirdo and go all anime tiddy detective(again...) but I've been seeing my awkwardly salvaged Gigi/Senjumaru post getting notes, and among other issues i have with how that post wound up I do feel like I didn't actually articulate my characterization of Senjumaru's design very clearly.

Kubo's got certain sensibilities about his character design. Usually i get fixated on his love of dramatic "crazy face" and the fandom at large fixates on that one big breasted body type he knows the fans love, but he also has a pretty robust cast of modestly proportioned girls. That being said, he walks a line on that, and is very deliberate in making sure to always remind everyone that his small breasted characters do still have a noticeable chest. It's a little weird but it's pretty specific because you'd think it would be easy enough to let their silhouette flatten out for the sake of simplicity, or speed, or just because sometimes a camera angle won't naturally emphasize the bust, yet time and again he stays consistent on it in a way that predicates intent.

Also worth noting in the context of things here, Isane sort of implicitly binds on account of otherwise conflicting omake details vs her strict canon appearances. Unohana implicitly binds due to her traditional style of dress that fundamentally includes flattening out the chest silhouette. AND YET in the face of those facts they're still drawn to show distinct curvature to the chest line. Rukia, Hinamori, and Shino are all generally infantilized as a part of their design aesthetic, Rukia passing as a 15yo, Hinamori being demure and doll-like(ala her name), and Shino being part of an expressly younger generation than the heroes when she's introduced. They're still drawn with noticeable breasts: moreover there is every opportunity to just entirely lose their silhouettes to the featureless blackness of the shinigami uniform, and Kubo goes back in with the white ink anyway. SuiFeng and Hiyori actually both nearly dodge this by wearing clothes that do actually obscure their body shape, but then Kubo seemingly compensates for that modesty by giving Sui Feng her sideboob outfit when she throws off her haori(and its apparent attached sleeves?), and giving Hiyori almost out of place cleavage(well, that and almost constant midriff shots)

Point again being that these are characters with distinctly small breasts, for whom one should imagine no one would be up in arms about being drawn without some subtle bumps in theri chest line, and yet Kubo still does not miss the detail...

So with that intentionality in mind, the fact that he then went out of his way to... I don't want to call it "cleverly"... but eh... """cleverly""" avoid drawing attention to Giselle's chest by putting her in an oversized top, and even changing its design around the sleeves, and subsequently part of her silhouette(she was slightly curvier, and her outfit was less fluffy in her early appearances?), as her "reveal" chapter got closer, becomes a noticeably meaningful choice. In particular in proximity to the "reveal."

And you know who else he seemed to have taken similar care in how he drew? Shutara Senjumaru. And granted, as i prefaced this whole post with facetiousness, not as insulation but as disclaimer, this is a ridiculous angle of approach. it's a ridiculous premise. the evidence and logic underpinning every step of it is dumb, but in spite of any of that, Shurata's silhouette jumped out and grabbed me from her very first appearance. The line from her neck/shoulder down to her waist is unlike how he's drawn any other flat chested/small breasted shinigami. And that comes in conjunction with the rest of her aesthetic:

She is dressed like something between a Geisha: high class personal entertainer, a Tayu or Oiran: a high class prostitute, or a Kabuki actor who could likely be playing a character styled after or explicitly in the role of either.

Obviously her most striking feature is the bizarre headdress, which appears to be made of kanzashi[簪]: a rather broad category of hair accessories typical of geisha and oiran.

She appears to be wearing two exaugurated pins to create the shape of a crescent moon with what look like they would be the sort of hanging elements of a bira-bira kanzashi; meaning that each of those vertical bars hanging from the underside of the moon would be free to swing back and forth from a connecting link or chain(s).

The radiating golden bars from the top I assume would be a kind of hanagushi hair comb, again with obvious exaguration given its size.

And the under hanging radiance being something like miokuri.

It also gives off super distinct vibes of an art movement that I hate that I cannot for the life of pinpoint right now... I want to say it was Spanish colonial(???) that used to specifically carve halos in this style, not as a round solid disc, but as a series of geometric rays... I hate to say that the thing I always think of is how Death Note borrowed it for its pseudo religious imagery. (although I guess the French did it too a bit during the reign of King Louis the XIV, but i always associate it with the mexican art of catholic saints, but I'm not even sure if I'm thinking of the right thing.)

In any case those are motifs or themes that we never get to see explored. boo...

Shutara is however kind of unexpectedly underdressed for a super powered clothier. Her one exterior cloak thing is as bas I can tell not anything real, even ignoring its defiance of gravity. If she were an oiran you would expect more layers, and the distinctive thing i don't know the name for that they hold in front of them and conceals their hands... She does however have the unmistakable oiran raised shoes.

And finally her makeup is a little vague but with relative consistency she's been depicted as extremely pale, which strongly suggests white makeup, typical of unfortunately all three aesthetic culprits, thus not actually narrowing the reference down at all.

Taken then with her theme of clothes and costuming in proximity of theater, the power of clothes/costume and thus presentation and roleplay, Kubo's super distasteful conflation of Giselle's transgender identity as some kind of "disguise" or "deception," kabuki using onnagata --male actors specifically trained in female role performance and upheld and even coveted at times throughout history as an apex of femininity, even above and beyond that of ciswomen-- the fact that Senjumaru is just straight up a masculine name, etc...

Like i said in the other post about all this, which i'm reluctant to even link back to, without any further elaboration it's impossible to say what this actually means for shutara as a character, and any inworld logic that applies. I don't think she is supposed to be a literal actress, like she has some personal history of professional theater training and performance.

That feels like it should be obvious. But understand that while all of this was a pain in the ass to try and lay out explicitly, it's something that, knowing all these disparate factoids already, I didn't actually have to think about at all when I first saw Shutara. I just clocked her as a queer woman immediately. It felt super obvious.

But now for my due diligence.(i actually totally thought there woudl be more of it at first...) Because as confident as I am in my theory, even I can recognize that it is not without holes. For one, entirely outside this pattern is Liltotto, who is actually very consistently drawn without the otherwise ubiquitous indication of AFAB breasts I point out otherwise. And she is certainly given no particular trans coding the way I associate with Gigi and Shutara.

i was going somewhere with this and i forgot... i think i though there dbe a bigger string of tangents to go off and when there werent my brain just kinda fizzled out without drawing a conclusion...

[odetokeons]

♱ Nosferatu (2024) dir. Robert Eggers ♱

+ bonus

[mari-lair]

AU where everyone except Siffrin gets stuck in a time loop.

inspired by this lovely art

[krysmcscience]

Call this the Whoopsie AU (it's barely an AU)

I mean. Narinder never explicitly SAID the Lamb would stay dead... :3c He probably should have been more specific. >:3c

Part Two:

Well. The Lamb tried, but...sorry, Nari, the crown hates you now. Shouldn't have been so quick to lend it out, I guess. :D

Aaaand Part Three:

'Isn't he just adorable?' -The Lamb, probably, while their followers smile and nod and internally scream at the brand new hellcat they now have to share living space with...

Anyway, nothing says 'Dead To Me' like following a person around to loudly remind them of how dead they are to you. Right? Right. Narinder's got this all figured out. <:]

[tizeline]

Oh? What's that? Ya'll want the next part of TSAU's story? Well fuck you you're getting this fucking thing instead.

[noirandchocolate]

‘Because she likes people,’ said the witch, striding ahead. 'She cares about 'em. Even the stupid, mean, drooling ones, the mothers with the runny babies and no sense, the feckless and the silly and the fools who treat her like some kind of a servant. Now THAT’S what I call magic–seein’ all that, dealin’ with all that, and still goin’ on. It’s sittin’ up all night with some poor old man who’s leavin’ the world, taking away such pain as you can, comfortin’ their terror, seein’ 'em safely on their way…and then cleanin’ 'em up, layin’ 'em out, making 'em neat for the funeral, and helpin’ the weeping widow strip the bed and wash the sheets–which is, let me tell you, no errand for the fainthearted–and stayin’ up the next night to watch over the coffin before the funeral, and then going home and sitting down for five minutes before some shouting angry man comes bangin’ on your door 'cuz his wife’s havin’ difficulty givin’ birth to their first child and the midwife’s at her wits’ end and then getting up and fetching your bag and going out again…. We all do that, in our own way, and she does it better'n me, if I was to put my hand on my heart. THAT is the root and heart and soul and center of witchcraft, that is. The soul and center!' Mistress Weatherwax smacked her fist into her hand hammering out her words. 'The…soul…and…CENTER!’ Echoes came back from the trees in the sudden silence. Even the grasshoppers by the side of the track had stopped sizzling. 'And Mrs Earwig,’ said Mistress Weatherwax, her voice sinking to a growl, 'Mrs. Earwig tells her girls it’s about cosmic balances and stars and circles and colors and wands and…and toys, nothing but TOYS!' She sniffed. 'Oh, I daresay they’re all very well as decoration, somethin’ nice to look at while you’re workin’, somethin’ for show, but the start and finish, THE START AND FINISH, is helpin’ people when life is on the edge. Even people you don’t like. Stars is easy, people is hard.’ She stopped talking. It was several seconds before birds began to sing again. 'Anyway, that’s what I think,’ she added in the tones of someone who suspects that she might have gone just a bit further than she meant to.

--Terry Pratchett, "A Hat Full of Sky"

[aquanutart]

I was talking and I mentioned that I have my old Game Boy and original Pokemon cartridge. I said, "I think they still work."

I was told, "The internal batteries on the Game Boy cartridges have run out. They're all dead."

"Oh," I said, trying not to show how crestfallen I was. I felt like I was losing nerd cred for not knowing that, although I never kept up with that type of info anyway. I'm here for the fantasy and imaginative aspects of games, and tend not to follow the competitive or technical details.

I tried not to feel anything as I went home. If they were real animals, I reminded myself, I would have had to say goodbye long ago.

But like so many other people, Pokemon was my childhood. It was all I thought about and dreamed about, and the closest thing I could imagine to heartbreak was the knowledge that they weren't real. I spent nearly all my time writing longhand self-insert Pokemon fanfiction--far more than I spent actually playing the game. My Pokemon were with me in my imagination wherever I went. I started playing Pokemon Blue when I was 5, and the last time I had played it was probably when I was 9 or 10. I remembered I had turned it on again one more time after that, not to play it, but to look at my childhood Pokemon.

It was during high school, after a move overseas that completely upended my life, and I was struggling with the crushing blow of being taken away from everything I knew and trying to make sense of anything (least of all adolescence) in another language. All I wanted was to go back to childhood and have everything go back to how it was before.

Seeing my Pokemon, just as I'd left them, had comforted me. I had looked at their stats pages, taken photos of them with my digital camera (that I don't even know if I still have), and then turned it off without doing anything.

That was probably 9 or 10 years after the games came out. It had been a long time since then. I had long since taken the AA batteries out of my Game Boy Color and left it untouched. I didn't even have AA batteries anymore.

It had worked then. But now it had been 27 years... I thought about not trying to turn my cartridge back on. As long as I didn't turn it on, I could believe my Pokemon were still there, the way I remembered them.

On my day off, which happened to be Pokemon Day, I googled and read that some people on forums and Reddit were still able to play their original Pokemon games.

Then... it was possible. I went out to buy toothpaste. At the store, I asked where I could find AA batteries.

It was a big thing for me to be able to go to the store and buy things myself. When I moved at age 13, I felt like something went wrong with growing up. It was difficult to follow what people were saying, and people didn't always understand what I said either. I had been introverted even in English, but now I had enough negative experiences that I became afraid and stopped trying to talk to people altogether.

I threw myself into video games and reliving childhood memories. The internet was where I could communicate in my first language and understand. I lived online and didn't interact with the real world. On the internet I felt like I was understood and could find people who shared my interests the way I did, but in the real world it always felt like I could get hurt if anyone knew me.

I realize now that I could have had a better experience overseas if I'd known how to adapt and socialize, but this was not something I knew even in English, and trying to learn in another language made it ten times harder. I'm sorry now for missing out on interactions that I know I could have had, but I just didn't know how. I wouldn't know how until I learned, and it took me a long time to learn.

I grew up online, in the company of others who had trouble fitting in with the real world, even in their own language. Those experiences shaped me, and the friendships I've made and support I've received online are invaluable to me. The internet gave me a way to live, and through it I learned how to interact with others. But in many ways, for many years, it felt like my life was put on hold and I stopped growing up.

Several years ago I moved back, to not far from where I was born, and I was able to work for the first time. I began to interact with people and feel like I had a place in the real world.

After shutting myself away for so many years, every little step I made out in the world felt terrifying. But every little thing I did on my own made me feel like I was living for the first time.

Even something as little as going to the store and buying a pack of batteries.

I was directed to a shelf at the end of an aisle, and found myself looking at a rack of lithium AA batteries. Did they not sell the old kind anymore?

I walked around to the other side and was relieved to find the familiar black and brown Duracell batteries I'd known from my childhood. I felt more confident about putting in a battery that looked the same as I remembered. The smallest pack they sold was an 8-pack for $12.99. I really didn't need 8 batteries. I didn't have any other devices that used them.

I thought, what if I turn it on and it doesn't work and I'll have wasted $12.99?

I also thought we might already have batteries. I might be able to say, "Mom, do we have any batteries?" and she'd pull out two AAs from a drawer somewhere and I'd save my money.

But somehow I felt like part of what was important about this was being an adult and being able to buy my own batteries.

Yet... what if it just ended up making me sad? Was it better not to know?

I went to the checkout with just the toothpaste and stood hesitating at the edge of the checkout line.

If I didn't get the batteries now, and it turned out we didn't have any batteries, I wouldn't try it. I knew I would just put it off until even more time passed, and then... "Are you in line?" someone asked me.

"No," I said, and I turned around and went back to the shelf.

I bought the batteries.

At home, I took out my original Game Boy Color from the drawer where I left it, the one my dad had surprised me with when I was 5 years old and that I had brought overseas and back.

I put the batteries in and turned it on without a cartridge first to make sure the batteries were inserted correctly. The Game Boy logo scrolled across the screen and it made the familiar blinging Game Boy startup noise. I turned it off again, satisfied.

I took out my original Pokemon Blue cartridge, momentarily having to remember which way it went in, and slotted it in.

I turned it on, watched the whole Pokemon Blue intro out of nostalgia, and then pressed START.

My heart leaped for joy.

MY POKEMON!!!! MY POKEMON ARE ALIVE!!! 🥺🥺🥺

My original Pokemon, that were with me in 1998 when I was 5-6 years old, are still with me 27 years later. I want to cry!!! I love the old sprites, I'm SO happy to see them again 😭😭😭 the Pokemon look so little and cheerful at the same time, which I love 🥺🥺🥺 I know there are people with many more hours on their games, who have leveled all their Pokemon to 100. But these are my Pokemon who were with me through my childhood, and I spent many more hours making up stories about them than actually playing the game. I'm so happy to see them again 😭😭😭

All I want is to see my Pokemon. My other Pokemon are in boxes. Now, how do I get to the nearest PC? Where am I?

Oh... Oh. I have to confess something. When I was a kid, I was scared of the dark cave areas, and whenever I got to them, I stopped playing for a while. (I was stuck at Mt. Moon until I was like, 7.) So I never actually beat the game.

And here I am on Victory Road, with the team of Pokemon I was taking to the Elite Four, without an Escape Rope.

The only way for me to see my other Pokemon is... to finally make it through Victory Road, after 27 years?!

[inumbrapugnabimus-maybe]

the little guy ever perhaps

[demadogs]

The past will come back to hunt you. ⤷ Yellowjackets season 3 teaser

[shantechni]

Shiguang size difference my beloved

Also, shout out to Lu Guang's noodle arms dropping Cheng Xiaoshi in a heartbeat

[starscream-is-my-wife]

Megastar activities include fighting, making out, and harassing Ratchet

[scottsummers]

HOLA!

[deathberi]

FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH (2024) ↳ Cloud and Aerith Gondola Couple Time ➤ Gold Saucer

[starplatimoon]

This one's for you anon...

Out of Touch Thursday Crusaders: Remastered

[zecoritheweirdone]

wanna preface this by saying that i am. So normal. anyway i just spent the last week redrawing scenes from mystery skulls animated but as that hermitcraft au i posted about a couple times. you guys should watch msa it is. so so good.

[roydick]