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i appreciate that i saw both of these on my dash within about five posts of each other. we’re gonna need both moods going forward, tbh.

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Sandrone height comparison to tsaritsa 😖

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The fouls legacy - surtalogi ,skirk and childe . I love this abyss family so much, also it’s so crazy to have a strong tie between the sinners, the abyss and the fatui in such a small group

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Still can't get over how it takes Welt all of about 30 minutes to go from threatening Sunday in the middle of the street to "is anybody going to adopt this kid (grown-ass man)?" and not wait for an answer

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The unsung symphony

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Everyone: Please please please don't write your books in Google Docs. Frankly don't use Google Drive for personal stuff.

Their terms of service say they take down stuff like content related to terrorism and trafficking, but this Google Sheet was literally a list of movies I'd watched this year and books I'd read.

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Sunday is not a Christian

Note: This post is being written prior to the release of Patch 2.7 and does not address any changes to Sunday's characterization from 2.7 onward.

Spoilers for Honkai: Star Rail "Penacony" arc below the cut

Especially since his drip marketing came out, I've seen a lot of people saying that Sunday is a Christian, "Sunday made me Christian," Christians complaining that Christianity is being vilified because Sunday is the antagonist of the Penacony arc, etc etc. I honestly don't understand how people can so radically misunderstand a character but let me provide some key quotes here to clarify the situation:

"It seems you have misunderstood my intentions. Allow me to clarify — My desire is not to resurrect a fallen Aeon or become one myself… My sole objective is to create a paradise free from Aeons, where the Order ensures the dignity and happiness of all humanity. A paradise exclusive to us human beings."

"The time has come. Creation will be reborn from the remains of the gods…"

"It was not you who created all things. It was humanity that created you! …Your divine being will become the foundation of our paradise!"

Sunday literally wants to usurp God's power to create heaven on earth for humanity. This is the literal opposite of Christianity. There is no version of Christianity in which this is not wildly heretical and blasphemous.

I understand that he has a halo and angel wings. I understand that he is (or at least was) a priest. I understand he has crosses on his gloves. I understand that he is absolutely drenched in Christian aesthetic and even sometimes phrases things in Christian, or at least religious, terms.

But if you listen to the actual words that he's saying, there is just absolutely no way to interpret him as a Christian.

Sunday is a complex character, and I think a lot of that complexity is being lost on people who want to flatten him into something more simple. Sunday is someone who had, and in a way still has, religious devotion. To the extent that Christianity exists in Star Rail in the form of the Harmony and the Order, it is true that Sunday's experiences and thinking have been shaped by Christianity. His profound empathy and compassion clearly originate in part from his religious experiences, including receiving confessions from his congregation. But he ultimately comes to realize that Aeons, the game's version of gods, cannot be depended upon to save humanity. While he maintains faith in his own values and dreams, which were influenced by his religion, he is no longer devoted to the religion itself or its gods.

Sunday is not a Christian but could perhaps be viewed as an ex-Christian who has become sort of a dystheist/misotheist/antitheist/atheist. Because the way that gods work is a little different in Star Rail compared to the real world, and because his perspective is complex, it's difficult to affix a particular label to him, but that's sort of the general ballpark. To really explain Sunday's philosophy and spirituality would require delving into some obscure concepts that I don't want to get into here (I would consider him sort of a spiritual anarchist, though I don't expect anyone other than me to know what that means), but I hope that this at least clarifies things a little.

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i don't really like how sunday is portrait like "ohhh religious guilt forgive me god for all this nasty thing i'm gonna do". like I GET IT, but the main point about sunday's character is that he's the equivalent of a corrupted priest who is DISAPPOINTED of deities. he isn't completely narcissistic about them, seeing gods as inferior, but he denunces them as weak, unable to actually do something about people suffering. and there is where he moves from corrupted priest to failed god. like yes, the religious symbols and meanings are a absolutely part of him, but i'm afraid you guys are looking at it in the wrong perspective when writing about sunday

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Valentino - Fall 1992 Couture

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Children please stop calling the slightest hint of sexual desire “gooning” I’m going to strangle all of you

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My really big takeaway from seeing the GUESS AI ads is that well... without the AI gimmick they seriously kind of fail as ads.

Starting with the obvious thing to be bitchy about: the woman in the striped dress is apparently about 8 feet tall and that the textural HELL is going on with that skirt over her legs. There's a reason that the word most associated with AI is "slop." If you want to make something with no money and no effort, you can expect garbage.

But going further, just glancing at the ad, my first thoughts were, "That's it?" Seriously there is just NOTHING there. No vibes, no flavor, just nothing. A beautiful big titty blonde woman in Vogue? To quote Miranda Priestly, "Groundbreaking."

To bring in just how bland and generic these ads are, I'm gonna bring in some previous GUESS ads, ones from the 90s featuring Anna Nicole Smith.

Can you say FUCKING ICONIC I mean goddamn....

Look at that! There's an actual human personality there! She's actually evoking a mood. Having seen a fair amount of AI porn, I can say I've yet to see any AI that's actually sensual. You look at these ads and you know that GUESS jeans are going to make you feel SEXY. Anna Nicole looks warm and inviting and happy to be here experiencing this FANTASY, and the AI girl looks, well.... pretty.

Anna Nicole Smith was MEMORABLE. There's nothing memorable about the impossibly pretty AI model, who doesn't even have a name. You just glance at it and then turn the page.

Of course, these days GUESS isn't the brand it was in the 90s, and I can only GUESS (heh heh) that this is a gimmick thrown out by a dying brand desperate for publicity.

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"Such Sweet Sorrow" We made this piece to be a mobile wallpaper, so feel free to use it! We asked our patrons to nominate and vote on a solo/duo/trio for the art, and they picked Lenore and Annabel by a landslide. And well, y'all have had it too good for too long with all the fluff pieces lately. Welcome back to ANGST. 💀

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gonna officially share the new samples art i've in the nxt couple of days! been obsessed with these two birbs and their design, specifically

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hsr characters as things to never say to someone who just came out

crop is weird bc idgaf

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Historically Accurate Mulan

This is the 8th entry to my "Historically Accurate" Disney Princesses series. Mulan was easily the hardest one to research, even harder than Pocahontas. It's based on the historically oldest period of all the Princesses, which means there's little primary source images to follow. But if that was the only problem I had, it wouldn't have been harder than Pocahontas. The even bigger issue is that Chinese history is so wast and multifaceted and I don't know that much about it. And to make this even harder there is plenty of information, perhaps even too much information to digest in relatively short period of time, but the sources that are in English are generally not very good. So this will be a little bit different than my usual research notes.

Research and references under the cut!

So lets start from the beginning. Like with the other non-western settings, I'm basing the story on the what could be described as the original setting of the story rather than try to guess what was the intended setting of the movie. As said my knowledge of Chinese history is very shallow, but here's what I've gathered relating to Mulan. The ballad of Hua Mulan (though apparently originally there was no surname mentioned) dates to Northern Wei dynasty, which lasted from 386 to 535. This period of Chinese history is called Northern and Southern dynasties and often considered part of Early Medieval China and sometimes latter half of Six Dynasties. It was a time of division, chaos and change. Northern Wei was ruled by Tuoba clan of the Xianbei. The Xianbei were a nomadic multi-ethnic confederation of mainly Proto-Mongolians, but probably partly some Tungusic and Turkic peoples as well. Northern Wei was therefore a very multicultural dynasty, where a plenty of cultural exchange was happening. In fashion this was very visible. Hanfu (Han clothing) was influenced by hufu (Hu, or nomadic/foreign, clothing) and the other way around. There were also political influences, since at different points of the Northern Wei history there were both Sinicisation and anti-Sinicisation policies leading to periods of suppression and promotion of hufu (and Xianbei culture in general).

You can probably already see that things are getting pretty complicated. In addition to all that there's apparently a prominent theory that Mulan in the original ballad was Xianbei. Xianbei in Northern Wei would dress at different points in hanfu or hufu, but even then both had an influence in each other and how much influenced changed through time as well. Of course class is also a big factor on what any one person would wear and I have no idea what would be Mulan's class. In this period because of all the turmoil, lessening of the Confucian influence and nomadic influences, the differences between men's and women's dress became lesser. As mentioned, there's not much visual representations left (and certainly not extant garments) from Northern Wei because it was so long ago, but even with the ones there are (and I was able to find) there's so little information on what they specifically represented (at least in English). Especially with figurines which seem to be most common visual representations, since there's no visual context like in a painting or illustration.

So instead of trying to figure it out with my limited understanding of Chinese history, I decided I would rather rely on someone who actually knows about Chinese history. Thankfully I found a Taiwanese PhD researcher for V&A, Laurence Wen-Yu Li who specializes in Chinese dress history, does historical reconstruction and has made some very well produced and easily digestible videos on Chinese dress history. Specifically she has made a video on Mulan (or rather on the intersection of dress and gender during the Northern and Southern dynasties, which includes Mulan a lot) and made a reconstruction dress for her. I highly recommend that video. It's very interesting, discusses gender during Northern and Southern dynasties and is only 9 minutes long. In the video she identified Mulan as Xianbei (Xianbei didn't have last names and they were known to have women fighters as well) and presents a reconstruction dress and couple of related primary depictions of relevant fashions. I'm not sure what type of dress this is specifically (like what period of Northern Wei, is it class specific etc.), since I have seen also depictions of very different styles from Northern Wei. I tracked down some more of the depictions of this particular style and based my redesign on them and the recreation by Laurence Wen-Yu Li.

Here are several figurines from Northern Wei.

These depict the ruqun clothing system, which was typical during this period. It's a two piece outfit, with separate upper body garment and a skirt worn on top of it. Cross-shaped hairstyle was popular. In Northern Wei make up with yellow powdering on forehead, red lips and red dots on forehead, cheeks and chin were fashionable.

Here's my main sources in addition to the video by Laurence Wen-Yu Li.

China’s early clothing system intertwined with social hierarchy

Historical changes of Chinese costumes from the perspective of archaeology

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— a walking contradiction.

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Yeah I remember that time. I made an account right before season 3 came out. I didn't and still don't really interact much with other users on Tumblr, but regardless the TUA community was a fun experience. I stopped reblogging TUA content as frequently after season 3, and season 4 was the nail in the coffin for me not gonna lie.

I miss my old fandom

ok that sounds kinda weird no context. Or maybe i just miss what it was like three years ago and not the fandom itself? But idk I'm sad and i wanna talk abt it

For context, if you weren't there, i used to be a middlingly popular blog in the umbrella academy fandom (i changed my url a few times, but if you knew me, you probably knew me as five hargreeves defense squad)

In around 2022-ish (I'm estimating, but i think it was 2022) before season 3 released. the umbrella academy fandom was genuinely such a fun and creative community. Like all communities, of course, there were bad eggs but at least the people i interacted with were nice (aside from the klaus anon incident, iykyk) and it was so fun to be in that sort of fandom inner-circle

I realize I'm talking in past tense as if the fandom isn't still here. It definitely is, but after season four's release (and honestly a bit after season three too) the fandom has died off a bit and i really just don't feel that pull to the characters anymore.

Honestly i think what i miss more than anything was the stability. It was my longest stint of sticking with one fandom and still is to this day. It was also the first community on Tumblr i made a home in. i had joined Tumblr in general about a year before season three released and my god was the suspense killing everyone. But since i left I've been jumping between a few fandoms seemingly per month and it just doesn't quite feel the same.

I miss having a place on the Internet i could always go to if i felt lonely or even just bored, and find someone to talk to and something to do. And i know if i scroll far enough I'll find relics of a simpler time in my life. Conversations that, at the time were the center of my universe, even if a lot of the stuff i said was incredibly dumb.

I know all of this seems stupid to say about an old umbrella academy fan blog, but man do i miss it. And if you see this, and you remember me, or is being friends, just know i miss you along with the rest of it. I hope you're doing well.