#Another is a Gojo fanartist

[ciderjacks]

Ok this is a story I wasn’t sure if I should tell, but I feel like maybe it’s relevant given the way some westerners tend to distance the victims of these bombings and massacres from humanity. Back when I was in DSMP fandom I followed an artist named Rice (@ was ricetronaut). They were a Lebanese artist. They were pretty talented, if I remember right they mostly made art of like. Tommyinnit, Tubbo, Ranboo. That circle.

They’d been shot by military forces, and when I followed them they were posting about their recovery. Specifically, I think the post I followed them for was a silly post about what their nurse thought the DSMP characters names were based on their Minecraft skins. Rice was also an orphan, their parents had been killed in an air strike, leaving them alone. With no parents to support them, they had to work constantly. Alongside this, they were still dealing with PTSD from being shot, and trauma from losing their parents. It was extremely stressful.

Eventually they couldn’t deal with the stress and pain, and took their own life.

Rice was 13. This was in 2021.

I’m only making this post because I really need people, especially those of us privileged enough to be living in a country that’s not subjected to these things, to recognize that these people are all human. The people you’re watching die were human. The people you’re watching survive are human. They’re the same as you are, they’re not naturally stronger or more resilient, they’re not any more prepared to deal with this shit than you, sitting at home, are. Their trauma doesn’t exist in a vacuum. This person, Rice, was a child. They were a 13 year old Minecraft fanartist. There are so many stories like this.

The people you see experiencing these genocides aren’t numbers—They also aren’t superheros. They’re just people. When you see them suffering you need to understand that person is no different than you, your cousins, your siblings, your friends, your classmates, the person you saw crossing the street yesterday. Remember that.

Here’s some poems Rice wrote.

[cursedvibes]

you got any jjk artists/writers you recommend?

Sure!

Artists

Shu draws pretty much every jjk character, but I mostly follow them for their Mahito, Kenjaku and Heian trio art. Love their artstyle, especially with their new brush. Has something of a watercolour painting or calligraphy.

@trung-roi (twitter) I mostly follow him for his amazing TenKen art, but he also draws SukUme, Mahito and stsg. It has a very ethereal sort of feeling to it that I really like and always incorporate amazing symbolism. He's also on AO3 and writes in English and Vietnamese.

@eggslamwich (twitter) Really enjoy their TenKen and MahiKen art or just art of Mahito and Kenjaku in general. It's quirky and fun and hits the dynamics of the characters so well. Always look forward to his posts.

@ginkutsudaisen (twitter) makes some great Tengen, Kenjaku and Sukuna art. I especially like their Tengen pieces and the way they incorporate her themes of isolation, enlightenment and the stars.

命さん makes great Mahito art, I love the mix of beauty and gore and surrealness they bring to it, and I'm especially happy to see that they got into ItaMahi recently. They sometimes post Kenjaku too, but always very Mahito focused.

もやし is like my go-to when it comes to TenKen art or anything focusing on Kenjaku and Tengen in general. Recently, they also posted fanart about Jin and Kaori that makes me a bit insane. The way they draw Jin's eyes is argh! Captures the vibe he gives me perfectly. They also have comic going with Kenjaku, Geto, Gojo and Takaba as children in a Reincarnated AU. Kenjaku and Geto are twins, Kenjaku mostly remembers their past life and suspects that Tengen messed with their soul to get them in this situation. They also just became friends with Takaba and dramatically gave him a speech to live to his own accord. It's really touching and even if you don't understand Japanese, I definitely recommend it for the art.

新井 their TakaKen comics are amazing. I love how Kenjaku and Takaba look in their art style and they capture their chaotic but intimate dynamic perfectly. Their comic about Takaba quite literally going through an insane fever dream to find Kenjaku before they could turn bad ripped out my soul.

dare? is another great Mahito fanartist. They also draw MahiKen, which is how I got interested in them. Their art can be either very gorey or sweet or a mix of both. Love it either way.

Last but not least, taigi (poipiku). They mostly draw TakaKen as well as those characters on their own. Their artstyle is really unique. Very colourful, vibrant, but also dark, disturbing and trippy. I love how surreal their pieces are. Also great source for other TakaKen art, they retweet a lot of it.

Writers

Fanfic writers is a bit difficult because I don't read that many jjk fanfics at the moment.

I like SenZen_Travelers KenMahi fics Complicity and Indulgence. One of the best KenMahi fics I've read. I like their characterisation of Mahito in particular. Haven't read anything else the author put out because it's ships or character dynamics that don't interest me, so I can't speak on that. Still highly recommend their Mahito fics.

I also like @urostakako fics, particularly the ones focusing on Tsumiki and Maki & Mai's relationship. If you're into Uro/Yuki I recommend them too. Or even if you're not, you can give it a try. I didn't really have the ship on my radar before, but I really like their dynamic here.

[jgnico]

preach to your post about gojo's portrayal within the fandom and his mischaracterization when shipping him with other characters!! i'm white myself so i don't think it's my place to speak about this, just going to add my my thoughts because your text brushed on this as well and hope it's not offensive somehow because it isn't my intention but it also bothers me quite a bit that fanartists usually draw anime characters as white by default (or at least the artists I have been in contact with that have a more realistic art style). especially when they don't have dark hair, dark eyes or those japanese/asian common characteristics, that's kind of used as an excuse to not draw these characters with the traces from their actual ethnicity. as if these stories aren't fictional and they can't have made up features or ones that just simply aren't as common. and gojo is one of the characters where this is really evident, even nanami who gets pictured this way solely because he has blonde hair. do you think, for example, the way noses or faces are drawn in manga and anime is a reason for typically white features in fanart? (genuine question) in general I think only black anime characters tend to have very obvious features and the line between asian, white or any other categories also tends to get blurry. but most of us also aren't kids and we understand (or should) the context of these stories and the identity of these characters. and in jjk we see very prominent characteristics of the japanese culture in every character so there doesn't seem to be an excuse, really. so yeah would love to hear what your thoughts are

So there's two things that I just wanna throw out there at the beginning of this answer.

1. Of the 7 billion people in the world, 2/3rds of our global population live in Asian countries.

2. There are around 125.8 million people in Japan alone, which puts it in 11th place out of 195 total countries when it comes to population size.

Asian features are in no way uncommon. People just tend to stick to the features that they're familiar and comfortable with when they draw and everyone has their own personal art-style. Manga and anime also has a very specific art-style, but you can almost always tell when a character isn't Japanese or at least mixed. The mangaka will make it pretty obvious, so genuinely, no, its not a matter of lines being blurred between white and Asian characters when it comes to features.

African Americans being portrayed in anime and manga is also a pretty sore subject because of this. We tend to have a lot of harmful stereotypes and depictions perpetuated when it comes to our ethnic characteristics (big lips, unflattering brow-lines, wide noses, etc) that only just recently started being combatted by more positive and genuine approaches to conveying our features in that medium. Bleach actually did a fantastic job of this, but if you want to stick to JJK, I'd urge you to compare Yuuta's bully in the first chapter of Volume 0 to what Yaga and Hakari look like in Gege's later work. They're all Black (or at least Blasian) characters, but Gege's original drawings of those kind of features weren't kind or tactful.

Another thing that poses a big issue is colorism. Historically (and currently) almost every poc and non-poc community that I know of has an issue with this because the world spent such a long time being told that lighter skin is more desirable. For white dominated countries, this often translates to white features (straight hair, light eyes, light skin) being considered more attractive than poc features, but I know that the Asian community goes through this kind of bias as well.

Going back to JJK, Nanami is part-Danish (1/4ths) so he'll obviously have different features than characters like Gojo or Geto, and if you actually look for those features, they're easy to spot.

Nanami has a wide and prominent browbone that extends out from his face before dipping into a long and straight nose ridge. He also has a more square jawline and a rounded chin that doesn't end in any kind of point. These are features that are more common among white people, as most Asian faces tend to be smaller and rounder.

In comparison, Gojo has a pointed chin and an angled jawline, which gives him a shorter, more compact face. His nose is also shorter and smaller (a button nose, if you will) with a browbone that curves softly into his nose ridge instead of angling out from his face.

For Geto, he still keeps that soft brow and short nose, but his face is wider and his eyes are have a more hooded almond shape, which gives me the impression that he has a mixed (most likely Chinese) ancestry. His face is also longer than Gojo's, but shorter than Nanami's with an angled jaw and a soft, rounded chin that isn't as square as Nanami's or as pointed as Gojo's.

All that being said, if artists are trying to portray the characters respectfully and accurately, even within their own art-style, these are the features that they'd want to pay attention to. It doesn't all just boil down to skin tone, which is something that they should be depicting accurately anyways.

Note: Asian people will have a warmer skin tone with a red or yellow undertone, while white people will have a cooler skin tone with a pink or neutral undertone.

If an artist is having a difficult time with portraying these differences in features in more realistic art-styles, then I'd suggest that they look into resources for drawing Asian (specifically East Asian) people and incorporate that into how they approach making fanart.