#.:: { inca's ramblings }

[nyaskitten]

One day I truly wanna just get sooo deep into the different cultures that kind of exist in Ninjago but in the weird Ninjago fashion of taking bits and pieces and horribly misrepresenting them.

[forestshadow-wolf]

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLHPXKwS/ :) have fun

I HAVE BEEN PRESENTED WITH BIRDS!! I AM UNSTOPPABLE!!! MWAHAHAHHAHAHA!

A few of my favorites from the link:

Fancy mustache man: Inca tern, bowl-cut boy: Gloster Canary, punk mohawk: turaco, and "fight me heathen!: blue titmouse

[caramel-mocha-latte]

More hsr landau siblings g/t thoughts- now with more pain!

Serval finding a shrunken Lynx and panicking about her sister being so small and worrying about how hurt she could get, so just grabbing her and holding her close.

What's so bad about that?

Lynx isn't used to everything being so big, and Serval holding her so protectively is kinda tight and she really can't even move. So now she's scared and panicking because she doesn't want to get hurt either and the tight grip has her thinking she will. And Serval isn't listening when she asks to be let go of.

They probably both are just overall freaked out and on edge for awhile. Serval eventually puts her on a table in her workshop, but won't let her get off the table. Takes Serval a bit to trust Lynx to be out of her sight, she's a protective older sibling and doesn't want her extra little sister to be hurt. Lynx probably panics whenever she gets suddenly grabbed by Serval, who does it whenever she thinks Lynx is trying to leave or just feels she could get hurt (maybe playing with gadgets in her workshop)

Eventually they both calm down. Serval stops being so protective and stops grabbing lynx whenever she tries to run, Lynx relaxes and just gets used to navigating around the workshop

Anyway I just want sibling pain that turns sweet later and they probably get a cute nap or something, then the awkwardness of telling their brother what happened.

[neilyoungs]

if trans 1982 by neil young has one fan it's me if trans 1982 by neil young has no fans i'm dead etc etc

[bitegore]

GOD WHY didn't anyone tell me baja blast was just raspberry lime flavored soda. Why did i have to buy myself (read: ask my friend to buy me) a baja blast under the impression that it would be like, pineapple soda, or coconut, or something else actually interesting and then drink it and find out it was raspberry lime. what the fuck

[fandxmslxt69]

guess who just KICKED ASS in her World History exam.

ME.

1 down, 2 more to go

[bisexualpunk]

the cinematography for inca mummy girl was like.. kind of a lot for a motw episode. why was the scene between xander and ampata shot like that

[aboutzatanna]

Zatanna, Wonder Woman and Barry Allen go undercover in this issue of DC Retroactive: JLA- The 70's #1 (2011) and Diana is absolutely terrible at it:

For those who don't know DC Retroactive are untold stories set in past continuities mostly by writers from those eras.

This issue was written by Carey Bates with art by Andy Smith.

(Side note: While Diana being 'bad' at going undercover is just a two page gag, it makes more sense for me that Diana, former 'Goddess of Truth' and wielder of the Lasso of True wouldn't be comfortable with secret identities. I never liked the idea of Diana needing a secret identity. )

The plot of this issue mainly revolves around Adam Strange, who is accidentally transported to Earth Prime following a fight with Kanjar Ro so Barry, Diana, Zatanna and Ollie travel to Earth Prime to rescue him while Hawkman and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) take on the newly empowered Kanjar Ro.

Earth-Prime is basically "our world" where the JLA are all fictional characters and the writers and creators exist on that earth. It's also the world where Superboy Prime originally came from. Since Adam had his mind zapped at a mental institute, the only solution is to find DC editor and Adam Strange super fan Julius Schwartz who can jog Adam's memory.

I'm not really a fan of creators writing themselves or their collegues into the story. It feels very self congratulatory. Especially since WW's lasso could have solved the whole thing. I much prefer how Marvel did it, like an Easter Egg, where Stan and Jack would sometimes appear as themselves in issues of Fantastic Four. But I guess you can look at this issue as Carey's tribute to Schwartz. This issue also came with a reprint of Justice League of America #123 where Carey Bates wrote himself (or rather his Earth Prime counterpart) as the villain of the story.

Adam Strange himself is a character that I have mixed feelings about. He's very much a product of his time but the ordinary guy with a space suit, jetpack and helmet really appeals to the young boy in me who loved the Rocketeer. I don't think anyone has ever quite figured out how to make him relevant today. Tom King tried in his mini but it was the usual trope of 'lets reveal this innocent Silver Age character is actually a horrible person' variety of reinvention.

Anyway, enough rambling, since this is a Zatanna blog, here is a few moments with her that I like:

-The League chilling on the tower, Diana looks like she is oogling at Zee plus Hal being a Pink Floyd fan:

-Zatanna and Barry interactions plus Barry taking a leader ship role:

-This bit about mind wipes:

Knowing how much of a nerd Barry is he probably folded inside when she called him boss.

Also while this was most likely an excuse to bring in Julius Schwartz, Zatanna not tampering with minds is more in character for her during this period especially since the arc with her mom also had a subplot of her being mad that her father played with her mind. Another point deducted from Identity Crisis.

Blink and you miss it panels where the artist is clearly showing off their ability to draw human body in perspective:

And Diana wanting to take a selfie after the League defeats Kanjar Ro:

(also Diana's clearly a history geek, only a history geeks would drop random facts about Incas completely unprompted):

Overall, it's an old school issue. Very much a throwback. Still it's noteable that the writer of this issue didn't do the almost obligatory 'Zee gets gagged or taken out early so other characters can shine' plot. Every one has a role and everyone contributes their fair share to help defeat the villain.

[demonstars]

broo you got me so interested in Incan mythology.. do you have any good resources where I can learn more? you can also use this ask to infodump to me and ramble about everything that interests you

THANK GOD I love it so much I grew up with tales of these gods its just like very special to me. The best resource I can give you is trying to hunt for a copy of Gary urton's incan myths (though I hate this author, he remains the best source of inca culture for now). I'm assuming you don't speak spanish but if you do there's an internet archive version of the spanish version. As an anthropology student I also feel like a great guide to incan myths are both the archeological sites correlated to ethnographic research regarding these myths, so I feel like this book by Reinhard and Ceruti is very interesting in this regard.

In general I'm just live deeply invested in the tales surrounding mythology Like how we shape stories so what I will say rn is that One of the other things that are to me deeply fascinating about incan mythology is how effectively they assimilated local surrounding gods and made them into minor gods from their own pantheon so the towns they took over wouldn't have to change their systems of beliefs. For example, since mountains were gods, they would pay respect to the gods of the places they "conquered" by performing human sacrifices (burying children/young adults alive) deep within the mountains in a ritual names capacocha. these were decorated by the symbols of both the incans and the local's nobility/head chiefs, to show their respect. One of these children was found in santiago, chile, and since this was one of the coldest mountains they performed this sacrifice in the child was perfectly perserved and has served as an invaluable asset to Understand incan's sacrifices, records of which were burnt or discarded because the Spaniards considered them inhumane

[sadincae]

Sorry if you randomly get booped by me (and then if you get booped a lot)

[the-cat-and-the-birdie]

AHHHHH I LOVE MOCHE AND THE CONCEPT OF HER AND HER UNIVERSE IT'S SO CREATIVE AAAAH

also EIGHT BABIES??? MULTIPLE SETS OF TWINS + TRIPLETS YOU GO GIRL much tougher than I am

anyway I love her so much and I love ur mild miguel concept because THAT'S WHAT IVE BEEN SAYING

anyway that's my ramble luv ur blog

-🍋

THANK YOU SO MUCHHHHHHHH ahhhhHHHHHHHHH

Writing Moche scratches my history itch SO BADLY, and it makes me so happy to share my culture with other people. Because the Incas were DOPE

It makes me really really want to make a victorian era Spider-woman just so I can go history diving again (and model her after Bernadette Banner or something)

And I LOVE the idea of Miguel with a big family.

Context about me:

As an afro-latino, I grew up with a HUGE family in the same apartment. Growing up, I live in an apartment with my parents, my nana, an aunt, and two of my uncles. So, seven people. And this was not a big ass apartment it was three bedrooms. My grand-aunt and great grandmother also lived in the apartment above, so I was raised very communally. As was by dad and my nana. And I think it's SO enriching to have a community of adults to watch, teach, or listen to me. Plus it takes a lot of weight off the parents. I was raised alongside my cousin - and he didn't live with us but he was always there because it's free daycare. Just leave us with my nana or my aunt or my uncle or WHOEVER home. (When we moved out when I was 7 it was genuinely weird to me having only 2 other people around but now I'm use to it.)

I know Miguel doesn't have a good history family-wise, so I was like... 'I can't fix him but I can do something really wholesome'.

ANd I find the whole 'No daughters for you thing' SO FUNNY

Cause people love giving Miguel girls and I'm like...no no no...I'm not making it easy for him.

So like two twin boys. And if he tries again MORE TWIN BOYS. and if he tries again again THREE GIRLS ALL AT ONCE

Like even when Miguel gets what he wants the universe still messes with him

And also the idea of Miguel with like 8 teenagers in the house at once, I just think that's rich dlgjfkgfdklgj

The eight kids was mainly to mess with him. Stressed Dad Miguel

I guess the reason I like soft miguel so much is because he reminds me of my bosses

And I don't mean that in a bad way - I just mean Assistant Directors are stressed and tough as concrete which I LOVE. They're super blunt and orderly but they're the more attentive caring people ever.

BUT ANYWAY THANK YOU SO MUCH

[mangoscriber]

.

.

Continuing in my design process for my LatAm AiW (Alicia en el Pais de Maravillas) the grand question on how to design another human like character came up. Changing the animal characters to other animals is one thing but just like the mad hatter what can I do with humans? At first I started looking into trickster spirits in various LatAm and Caribbean lore. The research was hard and endless but then I had an idea with the playing in the concept of Sun and Moon. Everywhere around the world in old belief systems the Sun and the Moon are always connected to one another. Whether it be husband and wife, siblings, or parental, the two celestial objects are tethered to each other. After coming up with the connected opposites concept now came their design. I was looking into how I could display this concept of sun and moon while connecting it to the theme of showing LatAm and Caribbean culture. A people I have always been fascinated by are the descendants of the Inca Empire. The Qero’s people that live the Cusco region in Peru cloth themselves in these brilliant hot pinks and red poncho’s decorated in beautiful geometric design with even more colors. And they adorn their heads in woolen hats with colorful pom pom’s. I just knew I had to use them as my inspiration in the look for my twins. I had to be careful to not create the twins into caricatures of REAL people. I’d like to think I as able to achieve that as nothing is an exaggeration of the Qero people. The names Inti and Killa are sun and moon in Quechua which is an umbrella term for the various dialects that spoken by the Indigenous of the Andes mountains. Hope my little ramble helped in understanding the design of these twins. :)

[thats-a-lot-of-cortisol]

Every time I do my art history readings the little bit of respect I had for the authors continues to diminish

[sadgirlautumn]

Every time both of my parents are off on a Sunday we end up all sleeping in until like 3pm (or later) and I really hope that doesn’t happen tomorrow

[moltensunlight]

welp, I rambled through an entire meta/character analysis of Shinra’s devil (rage) vs hero sides. guess this was bound to happen eventually. new favorite character???? time to psychoanalyze them

-

Spoilers below through Chapter 295

so to preface, I’m writing an au in which Shinra does more to understand and save Amaterasu after returning from the Chinese Peninsula - and don’t worry I won’t get into that here. But in writing it, I think I get it now, why the canon goes the way that it does

because I genuinely thought there was going to be more of an effort on Shinra’s part to understand and save each of the pillars - he is a hero after all, and I feel like that’s typically what you see of the good guy heroes - they’ll go out of their way to save everyone, villain be damned

but for all the good in his heart and all his desire to save people and be that hero, these latest chapters show Shinra as the pillar of rage, and they talk about Shinra’s true purpose for joining the fire force being revenge rather than that desire to rescue others. and to be honest at first it kind of stumped me. because Shinra’s always had this whole thing about being a hero and rescuing people as a fire soldier, and making that promise to protect and save Sho and his mom. And I thought Amaterasu of all people would be rage - didn’t know what Shinra would be, but rage was not the first thing that came to me.

but with some time to reflect on it all, I think maybe I just wasn’t picking up the clues that were being put down throughout the series

hell, it just clicked for me that Shinra’s rage is the reason Arthur continuously calls him ‘Devil’ and ‘evil’ throughout the series, being the only one that can see the true intentions of others. he can see that revenge (the devil) in Shinra’s heart. and it’s why he challenges Shinra when Amaterasu takes over at the 4th with the whole ‘are you a devil or a hero?’ speech - where Shinra is literally being consumed by the fires of rage and he has to choose between his desire for revenge (devil) vs his desire to save people (hero)

It also makes Amaterasu’s takeover make a bit more sense too. I had wondered why she only shows up once and then literally never again, when she had had all of this lead-up to her character happening in dreams and brief Adolla Links. But when Shinra goes to the 4th, he’s faced with all these old memories of being in the academy and people calling him a devil and mother-killer there, and where as once upon a time he was able to direct all the hurt and rage from those rumors toward a singular focus - killing the devil that killed his family and proving to everyone that it wasn’t him - now all of that hurt and rage is completely untethered. The devil is his mother, he can’t kill her. So where is he supposed to direct those feelings now? Well, back at the people saying those rumors of course - back at humanity. And that’s exactly in line with Amaterasu’s rage. Amaterasu isn’t just a character that takes over Shinra, she acts as a narrative device to showcase the state of Shinra’s own rage and desire for revenge, to show that the devil is very much at large within him and is something he has to struggle to gain control over

(and part of me wonders if this late realization is because I started with the anime, thinking of Shinra as being more hero than rage, because I’ve seen a few people comment on how Shinra is more feral in the manga - and you know, I’m not sure if I remember Shinra threatening to kill Inca in the anime so that would track)

it makes a number of things make sense with this hindsight too-

like the grab for pillars 5 & 6, Shinra just went in like ‘I’m taking you into custody’ and ‘you’re coming with us’ and never once explained - hey these are bad people that want to hurt you and use your powers for bad things and I don’t want that to happen to you, so don’t worry I’ll save you - like when I tell you I was fucking reeling during both the Inca and Nataku arcs that Shinra didn’t act more like a hero

(And it still kind of baffles me even if I try to take some things that should be givens into consideration, because like I guess it would be common knowledge that fire soldiers are good people, so if they show up? you should trust them. but how prevalent is the knowledge about the white-clad outside of the fire forces??? Because it didn’t really seem like the common folk knew too much about the white-clad being a thing, like neither Inca nor Nataku knew anything about who the white-clad were)

But by the time that Inca’s arc starts, Shinra already knows about his mother being the demon he saw in the fire 12 years ago, so the revenge narrative he’s been hanging onto - the very thing that’s been driving him for all this time - is suddenly swept out from under him, and to ground himself again he turns that focus toward the evangelist. NOT toward saving the pillars (hero) but toward stopping the white-clad from getting the pillars before the 8th (rage/revenge). and while yes those are the same action on the surface - where his motivation is coming from in those two scenarios is different

So then when actually trying to get Inca and Nataku, the goal is not understanding and compassion (hero), but stopping the enemy (devil), which then makes sense that he wouldn’t be trying to reach out and connect with the pillars (regardless of said pillar’s mental state), but rather focus on fighting the bad guy instead - he’s looking for a fight rather than connection

Now to be fair - he does tell Inca that the white-clad took his brother, and does say that she’ll be safe with the 8th. (Still not much of a hero speech - but that’s just opinion at this point). And there’s probably not much he could’ve done to stop Inca from going the way she does, even with a proper hero speech, because of her desire for dangerous situations being her motivating force

Nataku on the other hand very literally becomes a game of ‘keep-away’ between the 8th, Haijima, and the white-clad — right after this whole spiel about the kids at Haijima being treated like shit too and Shinra wanting to put a stop to that like y’all — not a kid to reassure and comfort, but an object to obtain

Once again in the effort of fairness - Nataku’s mental state was already highly unstable and Haumea definitely pushed that over the edge, but Shinra fucking Adolla Linked with the kid and saw his history, and then goes on to repeat the very words that hurt Nataku most??? “you can do it”???? Not something like “you don’t have to do anything anymore, the heroes are here to take care of things for you/take care of the hard stuff now”??? LIKE. Y’ALL.

The Nataku arc hurt me cause like damn that poor kid has had to go through so much in this story. But taking into account Shinra’s hero/devil balance, that lack of understanding makes sense. Because once again, at this point his motivation - the force driving his very character - isn’t connection/understanding/comfort, it’s fight/spite/get the pillar for us not them. And because of that he flounders at being an actual hero.

Of course all this being said, I worry that I’m coming off like Shinra is somehow bad for all of this - and that’s not the case at all. This boy was traumatized as fuck from a very young age and only had that trauma perpetuated as he grew up with all the rumors spread about him - I don’t blame him for having such a deep rage, and I don’t blame him for struggling to be an actual hero through all his trauma. Shinra is a sweet boy, and has so much goodness in him, he’s just got a lot to deal with 

Jumping back into things making narrative sense now, it just hit me that this also fucking makes the scene where Shinra defeats the eighth titan (the one with Raffles’ face) that much more poignant, because here his little brother is calling him a hero, the fire force is calling him a hero, and he believes that he’s a hero - the hero/devil balance is finally swinging triumphantly toward the former of those two (even Arthur comments on it), but at the peak of that triumph humanity turns on him, once again calling him a devil, and the pendulum swings back, and it’s in that moment that Shinra disappears, becoming the pillar of rage, and FUCK that scene hurts so much more now.

there’s probably more that will hit me later and I’ll come back to reblog this post like ‘oH SHIT WAIT THIS OTHER THING TOO’ but for now this is all

if you’ve actually read this far into my ramblings - what do you think about Shinra’s character and that struggle of devil vs hero that he goes through throughout the series?? 

I’m almost worried this could be like an ‘oh I just completely misunderstood the source material on first read-through and everyone else already knows this, whoops’ situation, OR, a ‘what the hell are you talking about’ situation lmaooo