#It's really really good both the animation and drawings are very detailed compared to the rest of the anime but...

[sskk-manifesto]

(｡･ω･｡)ﾉ♡

[yarameijer]

Raimon GO Trio: Growth

So I was busy answering an ask for AR, and then realized I got super carried away with it and didn’t really answer the ask anymore. Yet I’m also having too much fun with this particular analysis, so I decided to make it a separate post!

The ask was originally about Raimon GO Trio headcanons, and moments in which Original Raimon Trio saw themselves in the GO Trio. Anyway, things happened, and… oops?

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The relationship of the GO trio is one based on growth, I think.

To start, I need to talk about the original trio. Endou, Kidou and Gouenji have always had a friendship based on equality and mutual respect. They were equals from very early on in the anime, if not the start, I think (it’s been a long time since I watched it so I’m a little skewed on the details). Kidou and Gouenji were both established as phenomenal soccer players from the start. Endou was not, but he was the captain and that gave him a certain, status, I suppose might be the word, as well. The three of them have always had this sense of equality to me that the GO trio lacked for a very long time.

As for mutual respect; Kidou started on a different side, but he has very clearly been impressed by Gouenji’s skills since before the first episode even started, specifically challenging Raimon to draw him out and face him in a match, and he was relatively neutral to Endou but eventually started to respect him even while they were rivals. With the exception of the first two, three, episodes, Gouenji has always had a friendly relationship with Endou and (as far as I can remember) never fought his authority as captain, and he’s had a friendly relationship with Kidou basically from the moment he joined the team. Despite some hostility at the start, Kidou and Gouenji have always deferred to Endou’s position as captain. And I think we all know Endou’s opinion. There were some bumps in the road but the three of them have always held mutual respect for one another, and their friendship has always had that respect and equality as its basis.

Shindou, Tsurugi and Tenma are very different.

From day one they were hostile to one another and that lasted for a very long time, and unlike the original trio they didn't even respect each other to balance it out. Shindou and Tsurugi considered each other enemies and just had a general bad opinion of the other; Tsurugi was cruel and sort of crazy, to be honest, and saw both Shindou and Tenma as an enemy, although Shindou was probably the bigger threat in his eyes (now I'm thinking, despite the Gouenji-Tsurugi parallels, it's also possible to compare Tsurugi and Kidou as they were both originally antagonists, but Kidou never seemed as bitter as Tsurugi to me (it's been a long time since I watched the originals, so I could be wrong)). Shindou seemed very self-absorbed in the sense that he took all the weight on his own shoulders, like he thought that he was responsible for everything and needed to solve all problems primarily alone. Tsurugi was a Seed and his enemy and Tenma a troublemaker and distraction.

Tenma here would be the exception, but that didn't matter because originally Tenma held the weakest position. New to a team, good at dribbling but horrible at everything else, younger than Shindou (which, especially with Japan's focus on age differences, really doesn't help the equality thing) and generally discarded by both Tsurugi and Shindou. Sure, he respected Shindou and he didn’t have the same hostility towards Tsurugi as many others, but it didn’t matter because he barely had a voice on the team. Sure, he talked a lot, and I mean a lot, but people didn’t listen.

The three of them were a mess no matter how you look at it. You couldn’t even refer to them as ‘the three of them’ because they had nothing in common, no relationship to speak of.

As we all know that eventually changed, and it kept changing. Tenma got through to Shindou, Shindou started treating Tenma, if not as a friend, at least as an underclassman - as someone he had a responsibility towards to care for. Tsurugi became a tentative ally to Raimon, and they had to put up with him, and eventually he switched sides completely (still kept to himself a lot though). Tenma gained more confidence in his place on the team. They struggled, they fought together, they had to encourage each other and that builds bonds. To be honest, I don't know when these three became friends, I'd have to rewatch the anime for that, but I think it took a while even after they initially set aside their differences. Even during the last match of season 1, Tsurugi still refers to Tenma as ‘’Matsukaze’’ in his head.

(Another fun thing that makes them less compatible compared to the original trio - their positions. Endou, goalkeeper; Kidou, midfielder; Gouenji, forward. Defense, bridge, offense. They’re spread out equally over the field. The GO trio, though, consists of one forward and two midfielders; mismatched.)

Anyway, their relationship is constantly evolving. From enemies, to (tentative) allies, to sort of friends. I mean, there’s an obstacle simply in the fact that Shindou is older and therefore put in the ‘senpai’ role (seriously, don’t underestimate how important age differences are in Japan). Then there’s Tsurugi being a pretty quiet individual. They might be on friendly terms, even call one another friends, but they wouldn’t be good friends.

Tenma’s and Shindou’s relationship in season 1, to me, never really seemed like friendship. Tenma very obviously respects Shindou and depends on him and thinks he’s great, but he also sort of puts Shindou on a pedestal. Shindou seems, eventually, very fond of Tenma, and to be honest I think Shindou is actually the one to call him a friend first; less of an age barrier for him, and Tenma is a bit too shy to declare his captain a friend first (seriously, it’s easy to forget but especially at the start of the anime, Tenma is very shy). But especially as long as the barrier of Tenma putting Shindou on a pedestal exists, they can’t really be friends in the deeper sense of the word.

Tsurugi and Tenma, on the other hand, have learnt to work together and depend on one another by the end of season 1. It’s not very pronounced but it’s obvious (especially when they use Fire Tornado Double Drive) how much Tsurugi really depends on Tenma (and accepts that!), while Tenma is just super friendly and nice towards Tsurugi. At some point these two became friends, but gosh don’t ask me when. (I want to add here: we see clearly in season 1 how much Tsurugi depends on Tenma, and while we don’t see that sentiment returned, I do believe it already exists at that point; at the very least, Tenma’s reaction to Tsurugi’s kidnapping in season 3 speaks volumes.)

I haven’t mentioned the friendship between Shindou and Tsurugi much before, but that’s because they’re really hard to pin down. The one thing that stands out to me is how great of a team they are together, even, or maybe especially, without Tenma. We don’t see the two of them interacting as much as we see either of them interacting with Tenma, but what interactions they do have often occur during matches - I can’t really pinpoint any examples but to me it’s always felt like there was no real need for them to talk so much. Tsurugi goes along with Shindou’s strategies always without ever asking for explanation; he’s got a healthy respect for Shindou’s mind, I think, and seems very good at picking up clues from him. Which, to Shindou, probably makes him the perfect ‘’pawn’’ in his strategies, since Tsurugi is 1) a real ace of the team and 2) really good at responding to him instinctively. They’re very quiet together, and a very good team. They didn’t respect each other at the start, but once they saw eye-to-eye? Hell yeah, and I think that defines them for the entire series. Shindou never treats Tsurugi like an underclassmen, not like he does Tenma. When did these two become friends? I don’t think even they know - actually, I think they might not have been friends if Tenma hadn’t been there to be the bridge between them, but when it actually happened? No clue.

Anyway! Then there’s the next big change: Tenma becomes captain.

It always stood out to me that Tenma didn’t stop calling Shindou ‘captain’ until Chrono Stone. I always wondered why Tenma was still captain in Chrono Stone, since Shindou was out of the hospital at that point and they never discussed the - what initially seemed like a temporary - captain switch in the anime. I mentioned in an earlier post that I headcanon that this switch happened because Shindou insisted on it, because Shindou didn't want to be captain and felt Tenma was better suited to the role. This conversation would've taken place somewhere between season 1 and 2, or potentially somewhere in the first episodes of season 2. That's also why Tenma switches from calling him ‘captain’ to ‘Shindou-senpai’, and that's the start of the newest change in their relationship. It quite literally forces Tenma into being on more equal footing as Shindou, as captain to former captain. Obviously this switch is gradual, as we see him doubting himself quite a lot in Chrono Stone and growing into the position as the season goes on.

Now I have to wonder how Tenma and Tsurugi's dynamic would've changed in response to Tenma becoming captain. I actually imagine that Tsurugi had a very easy time with it; he’d been following Tenma’s lead quite a lot in season 1 already.

Finally, season 3. It starts out pretty great, actually - their teamwork is great. One thing of note is that Tenma, at least, switched to calling Shindou ‘Shindou-san’ somewhere between season 2 and 3, I'm not certain about Tsurugi - he doesn't often call Shindou by name but I think he already called him that? Or switches multiple times? - but it shows that Tenma is much more comfortable with Shindou than before. At least, until the start of their disagreement over the Inazuma Japan team.

Season 3. Damn, what a ride.

I mean, I’m sure everyone remembers Shindou and Tenma in this. Pretty hard to forget, really. Shindou’s angry, frustrated, incredibly emotional and basically seems to revert back to how he was at the start of season 1. He seems to be taking it all out on Tenma and Ibuki; which while not fair is at least understandable. Tenma’s constantly disagreeing with him, someone Shindou believes should have the same opinion as him, whereas Ibuki keeps on challenging him. 

The funny thing is, this doesn’t affect their teamwork at all.

In the first episodes, it’s Tsurugi, Shindou and Tenma basically doing all the work during the matches, and it is their incredible teamwork that gets the team through the first stages of an intergalactic championship, which, damn, is pretty impressive if you ask me. They’re arguing but still in sync, and I love that. The three of them have always been a great combo when playing soccer, whereas outside of that they definitely weren’t - they’re perfectly balanced yet horridly incompatible. The contradiction is incredible with those three.

Something else I noticed is that, even after Tenma’s been captain for quite a while, he still follows Shindou’s orders without question, and Shindou still orders him around without hesitation. And yet Shindou doesn’t overstep; he’s very clearly not trying to be captain anymore, and in the instances Tenma thinks he’s wrong, Tenma is not afraid to disagree.

Tsurugi, during the early episodes of season 3, is really the eye of the storm. While Shindou seems to have a pretty short temper around Tenma, that’s not the case when he’s around Tsurugi, and there’s multiple instances where he asks for Tsurugi’s opinion. At the same time, Tsurugi doesn’t make it any harder for Tenma, either; he really stays out of it. Lmao he basically saw Tenma and Shindou fighting and went ‘’oh hell no I don’t want any part of this’’, so he’s really the neutral ground between them (and then he gets kidnapped pretty quickly, sooo…).

Of course everything gets turned upside down when they find out about the whole alien thing, and though Shindou doesn’t argue with Tenma anymore, he does put a lot on his shoulders.

He’s not wrong, per se, but way to put pressure on the kid! Which, fair, he is the captain, but Shindou, honey, c’mon. You know Tenma. You know how he’s gonna take this.

So yeah, I don’t think that Tenma at any moment in Galaxy beyond the first and last episode is actually happy. Even when he’s cheerful, he’s constantly trying to keep a team that’s falling apart at the seams together - do you see the parallels here with Shindou in season 1? - or gauging their mood, or dealing with internal conflicts, or arguing with Shindou (and to some degree Tsurugi), or dealing with the stress of being the captain that has to save the entirety of humankind. Even when he's laughing, there's no way he's able to let go of that fully, no way he can be carefree. Despite outward appearances, Tenma in season 3 is so fundamentally different from Tenma in season 1. There’s no freedom, no fun, no ‘wind of the revolution’ when that is exactly what his character has been about all along. He's restrained. He's pushed into a mold he doesn't fit into, by everything and everyone around him, and the ones who know him, who could've put a stop to this - they don't see it happening. An extra interesting detail is, Tenma rarely reaches out to his friends when it's about himself or his issues, it's only when they notice that something's wrong and confront him that he actually opens up. And Tenma, in season 3, has become a lot better at keeping up appearances - understandable, since the whole spiel is that he has to be the captain, has to keep everyone's spirits high, and he cannot allow them to see him hesitating and worrying. It's actually probably not a good thing that he learns that lesson, because it means it'll be even easier for him to smile and say he's fine and divert people away from the fact that he's struggling. And then to add to that, Tsurugi and Shindou, people he would usually depend on and let down the mask for, aren't there.

Y'see, in season 1, Tenma is never really alone - despite the rocky start, he’s got Shinsuke and Aoi. In season 2, he’s alone for a while before Fei comes and by the time Fei betrays him, he’s got Raimon with him again. In season 3, Tenma is cut off from Raimon, pushed away by Shindou and Tsurugi, not opening up to Aoi, surrounded by a team that expects things of him as captain that no one has before, and Tenma is alone. And he has to deal with that. Learn from it. Grow with it. Find himself again, and he does. And that is the growth Tenma goes through in season 3.

To be honest, all three of them have their own stories in Galaxy, kinda like in season 1 but whereas in season 1 it converges from separate places to the same path, in season 3 it’s the opposite - they come from the same story and then split up. Tenma with his learning how to stand alone; Shindou with letting go of his steadfast opinion; Tsurugi with, uh, getting kidnapped by aliens?

Not gonna lie, one of those three doesn’t quite feel the same as the others…

Seriously though, Tsurugi’s arc in Galaxy is a little less introspective than the others, I think. Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe it’s about stepping up more? Previously he just went along with Raimon a lot. He’s a relatively quiet character and happy to leave the decisions and speeches to Shindou and Tenma - to be honest, in Chrono Stone when he was acting captain for one of the El Dorado/Raimon teams against the Second Stage Children, I was a bit startled before remembering that canonically, Tsurugi was captain previously. He never seemed to care much for the position. Like I said, he’s always followed along with Tenma, and he’s always been easy with following Shindou’s commands as well. But in season 3 that switches - he’s left alone, but it’s very different from Tenma’s situation. He’s becoming much more proactive in trying to convince Lalaya that her planet sucks, that she doesn’t need no man to be Queen, and most interestingly to me - the whole development with him becoming captain of Faram Dite. He steps up in a way he doesn’t really do in the rest of the anime.

To be honest, Tsurugi’s a hard character to pin down because he’s so quiet and composed most of the time. One thing about him, though, is that he’s got a major guilt complex. Just look at the whole situation with his brother, the fact that he blames himself has driven him for years before the anime even starts. It’s the reason he’s with Fifth Sector. After Tenma and Yuuichi give him that much needed reality check, Tsurugi backs down a lot and stays quiet. I think, and mind you this is all speculation - I think Tsurugi is afraid. Afraid of making choices, afraid of speaking up, of speaking his mind out loud. He follows Tenma, and Raimon’s, lead a lot, and while I think he does agree with them and doesn’t hesitate speak up after they already did so, I also think for a long while he would not be the first one to openly speak his mind. He’s been through a lot. He’s made mistakes, big mistakes (coughcough-joining Fifth Sector-coughcough) that you can’t blame him for considering the situation and the fact he was a literal kid when he joined Fifth Sector, but with what we’ve seen with his guilt complex with Yuuichi, who’s to say Tsurugi doesn’t blame himself? It’s like he needs the confirmation from Raimon that yes, this is the right choice, before he decides to speak up.

And in Galaxy, that changes. He’s left alone, no example to follow, dealing with a girl who’s even more afraid of making mistakes than he is, and for good reason. Lalaya has the lives of an entire planet on her shoulders, and she reaches out to Tsurugi because she has no faith in herself at all. Kind of like Tsurugi has no faith in himself either unless an outside source - Tenma, Yuuichi, Raimon - confirms it. Suddenly this girl is looking towards him for his approval on her decisions, same way he’s always done, and she doesn’t see what he does - that she doesn’t need it, that she can stand on her own. And Tsurugi committing to helping her, making that his priority rather than getting back to the Earth Eleven - and then, of course, switching sides and joining Faram Dite, knowing Earth Eleven won’t understand, Tenma won’t understand, won’t approve, and doing it anyway. For the first time in a long while, Tsurugi makes a choice because he believes it’s right, regardless of what anyone else thinks. That’s his character growth.

This already is eight pages, but now I’m committed, lol. Two down, one more to go!

Shindou Takuto. Honey, what a mess you are.

I could talk for ages about the impact that his rich kid life and likely demanding family would have on him. He’d be one of those ‘’piano lessons, Chinese lessons, fencing lessons’’ kids that get so much pressure put on his shoulders at a young age, to be perfect, to be worthy of the family name. I don’t think his family’s necessary neglectful or bad or anything! He gets to play soccer a lot, and it’s clearly because he likes it. But I do think that Shindou is an incredibly intelligent kid, and he’s always been pushed to perform the absolute best in whatever he does. It’s why he cracks under the pressure in season 1, when everything is falling apart around him, when the one thing he’s got for fun, because he loves it - soccer - becomes just as stressful, or even more so, as everything else in his life.

Season 3’s interesting, because from every damn side, Shindou is told he’s wrong.

A team of amateurs, when from basically his first appearance in season 1 it’s so damn obvious how much the Raimon team means to him. It’s a disgrace, not to him but to his friends, and Tenma - who should by all means agree with him completely - doesn’t seem to care. His plans are denied, his ideas are denied, except during matches. And these amateurs are just trampling over everything he believes in, everything his friends have worked so hard for, everything he holds so dear and hurt for and cried for and they don’t even have the grace to care. No wonder he hates them. No wonder he hates Ibuki, because Ibuki doesn’t understand a single thing about it but still has the gall to pretend he’s worthy of the position of keeper. Ibuki tries but not because he gives a damn about what Shindou believes in, but because of spite (I don’t actually think this about Ibuki lol, but I think Shindou would, I’m writing this from his perspective). The Inazuma Japan team spits on everything Shindou and his friends have fought and cried and bled for and he’s told to suck it up. No wonder he’s angry.

But, of course, things get a little better when they do start trying, for real, and keep trying. And then the whole hahaha-hey-you’re-actually-fighting-aliens thing gets revealed, and, well, new priorities and all that.

But still, Shindou’s stuck in his own head. Still dealing with a team he may or may not even like (don’t recall tbh). And at this point, Tenma’s retreated into his shell again (which, fair enough! Shindou hasn’t exactly been supportive and Tenma’s insecurities are acting up! There’s no way he’ll be the first to reach out again if he’s not sure it’s welcome - but Shindou, at this point, has missed all of Tenma’s angst because he’s keeping it quiet, so Shindou doesn’t know to reach out either! Which is also fair!! But they’re just in a continuous spiral at this point, rip) and Tsurugi is kidnapped by an alien queen like five episodes into the whole space adventure, which I’m gonna say is a fair reason not to have great communication at the moment. Also, honestly, both Tenma and Shindou not realizing something’s wrong with Tsurugi is a bit questionable but they both have so much going on in their own heads, plus the pressure of, y’know, trying not to get the earth destroyed, so I’m gonna give them a pass for this one.

Anyway. Shindou is put in a situation where things are, to him, completely spiraling out of control. He never wanted any of this - in fact, he probably was super excited for the international tournament, to just have fun for once and now the whole Grand Celesta Galaxy mess happens, poor kid. He has an idea of how things should be, within the team, at least, and he has such a hard time letting that go. He’s bad at adjusting. He’s not like Tenma. He doesn’t see the good in people as easily as Tenma does, he doesn’t adapt as easily as Tenma does (the wind is adaptable, haha) to this situation, doesn’t go, ‘’okay, I’ll make the best of this’’. He’s prideful, and used to, while not everything going his way, at least knowing his place, about having a certain image of the world around him, good or bad, and for once it doesn’t match up to his expectations at all, and he can’t change it, can only get through it. I’m very tired right now so I don’t think I can explain it very well, my words aren’t working (I’ll probably make a separate character analysis for Shindou at some point where I touch upon this again), but I think that Shindou is a person who needs some sort of control. His whole theme is music, being a music conductor, the strategist, calling the shots, and in Galaxy that’s taken away and he doesn’t know the stage, or the players and that might be similar in a way to Chrono Stone - but in Chrono Stone he still has the majority of his team, his support system, and in Galaxy he only has Tenma and Tsurugi and I just discussed why that whole thing isn’t working out. All he can do is get through it... alone.

Isn't it funny how that's a reoccurring theme with all of them?

Y’know, now I’m reminded of his Kami no Takuto hissatsu. How he directs the entire team like it’s a play or an orchestra. They do exactly what he wants them to and maybe that’s lulled him into a false sense of security. It might even go beyond that - his family demands perfectionism, tells him that if you just work hard enough, you can get everything, be everything, you want. That life will work how you want it to. But it doesn’t. He can’t strategize the entire world to his liking, and that’s okay.

And the fun part about all this? By the end of Galaxy, these three haven’t reconnected.

Oh, it certainly seems like it, because they concluded their own respective arcs. Tenma learns how to be captain and how to be true to himself. Tsurugi learns how to make his own choices and stop being afraid. Shindou learns to be patient and let go of his preconceived notions. They learn their lessons but they never talk about this. They grow, again, as they always do throughout the entire series, and rarely if ever do they talk about it, but why should they? They were together for the entire journey, right next to one another, so why should they tell each other what happened when they’ve all witnessed it?

Except in Galaxy they don’t. They weren’t on the same path. They’ve missed things, and now they’re, sort of, still assuming that the others will just understand because it always worked that way, right? So they don’t talk. And by the end of the season, they haven’t talked, despite the misunderstandings and the hurts. And oh, that’s an opportunity for angst I’m having so much fun exploring in my stories😈

Okay, I got like, so carried away with this. How did this turn into a character analysis for the Raimon GO Trio?? How did it get so long?? This was never the intention. To quote AR!Tenma…

Oops?

[artificialroux]

ik u said dani is prob ur least fleshed out oc but tbh i love her sm!! and the fc! her and shauna's smiles are literally the same i cant

the deer as her symbol?? i literally love it, esp since shauna is the butcher of the group (so it adds more angst to their dynamic) anyway js letting u know cause i would love more lore on her if u have any!

(also i feel like she'd get along well with anara)

aw thank you so much!! and yes i literally saw icons of them both smiling and was like omg...twins???

AND YES!! the deer as her symbol is definitely supposed to be tied to shauna's role as the butcher. deers are such a big thing in yj, from in doomcoming where they see travis as a stag and hunt him, to when they cut open a deer filled with maggots (literally rotten from the inside out but somehow still alive?), and of course the whole antler queen deal!

as for danielle, her connections to a deer symbolize her unconditional love for the people she cares about, shauna for one, who she will always idolize, even as shauna takes on a darker role, and she's left to question if this person is still her sister. many people also view deers or rather doe as a stereotypical feminine symbol; ie gentleness, compassion, innocence.

ANYWAYS!! here are some actual fun facts abt her since that was your question...

hopeless romantic – before the crash, danielle secretly loved romance novels and old hollywood movies, dreaming of a love story of her own, even though she never felt like she fit into the dating world—until she developed feelings for natalie.

film buff – she could spend hours watching movies, analyzing every detail. if she had survived, she probably would have studied film or literature in college.

writes in the margins – she has a habit of scribbling notes in the margins of her books, whether it’s thoughts, favorite quotes, or little doodles when she’s bored.

fashion-obsessed – she’s meticulous about her outfits and always made sure her skirts, cardigans, and tights matched perfectly. in the wilderness, losing control over her appearance is one of her silent struggles.

sisterly shadow – she loves shauna deeply but has always felt like she lives in her sister’s shadow—both at home and socially.

doodles flowers – whenever she’s anxious or lost in thought, she absentmindedly draws little flowers.

hated gym class – she always dreaded gym, partly because she wasn’t athletic like shauna and partly because she hated sweating in her nice clothes.

nose scrunch – when she’s frustrated or deep in thought, she scrunches her nose slightly, a quirk that shauna used to tease her about.

tea over coffee – unlike shauna, who probably leaned on coffee, danielle preferred tea—especially chamomile or anything floral.

loves music but can’t dance – she adores music, especially soft rock and indie artists of the time, but she’s a terrible dancer and gets embarrassed easily when asked to dance at parties. this is especially funny when you remember that she took ballet as a child to makeup for not joining the soccer team! she obviously was not very good at it though.

secretly good at card games – she used to play cards with her dad before he left, and even after he was gone, she retained a knack for card games.

soft spot for poetry – while she loved novels, she had a quiet fondness for poetry, though she rarely shared that with anyone.

doesn’t swear much – compared to some of the other girls, she doesn’t curse often. when she does, it’s usually under her breath or when she’s truly upset. her mother taught her from a young age that it was impolite to swear, and she just never grew out of the habit.

had a childhood stuffed animal – she had a stuffed rabbit named clementine that she kept on her bed at home, something she never really talked about.(this is a parallel to callie's stuffed animal as a child that shauna gets the van back for.)

used to babysit – before the crash, she made extra money babysitting, and kids tended to like her because she’d make up stories for them.

hates the feeling of dirt on her hands – before the crash, she was the type to carry hand lotion or wipes in her purse. the wilderness forces her to push past that discomfort.

still thinks about her crush on nat – even after the crash, she sometimes finds herself watching natalie when she thinks no one’s looking, though she knows romance isn’t a priority in survival.

nicknames - over time danielle has acquired quite a few nicknames, the most common being dani as a shortened version of her first name, but the team has also taken to referring to her as "little shipman" even though she's only slightly younger than shauna. she dislikes this nickname.

[tossawary]

I think SVSSS as a 2D cartoon would be the best moving medium for it imo.

I mean, personally, yeah, that's how I'd enjoy seeing it as well! My ideal slightly pretentiously artsy SVSSS screen adaptation would probably look only a little more detailed than linograph prints (2D or shaded 3D?) (someone hit me up in like two weeks to draw an example of what I mean, if I don't remember on my own, I don't have access to art stuff right now), very stylized and vibrantly colorful, because that's one of the art styles that I particularly enjoy.

I'm not a personally a fan of the 3D SVSSS show because I find the characters a little too doll-like and same-facey for my tastes? It's fine! It works! It's serviceable! It's just all, backgrounds included, a little... safe? I tend to like over-the-top bright colors and intricate details and impractically weird shapes and yet also coherent world production design in my fantasy, which is a lot to demand of any production, perhaps especially with animation productions, which are always squeezed for time and money.

(EDIT: I know the SVSSS show was under heavy constraints and the results are impressive considering their resources; it doesn't change the fact that I just don't like the art style and nevertheless find the results underwhelming. I don't like a lot of "realistic" modeling / rendering styles, not just "anime" ones, even if they are extremely technically impressive. Believe me when I say that I know the vast majority of the entertainment industry is overworked and underpaid and creatively restrained.)

Slightly tangential general note: I don't think 2D is inherently superior to 3D (EDIT: NOT trying to imply asker is saying this, just having some general thoughts), especially because, with the realities of production, each have their advantages. 2D has a lot of stylistic advantages still, but 3D shaders are catching up and doing some incredible things these days! More advanced puppet controls and particle effects and such are doing some beautiful things for 2D shows as well these days. A lot of stuff has been subtly mixed media as soon as 3D became possible. It is potentially possible (note: not saying any studio would actually greenlight this) to do an equally slightly weird and artistically stunning 3D SVSSS show, given the freedom to work. (Good boarding and writing is also sooooo important in both mediums, obviously, it's not just about the art design. You can get away with incredibly limited animation with good boarding, writing, and art design.)

Another slightly tangential ramble: both 2D and 3D have the potential for stiff animation and poor character acting, which also comes down to production limits and animator skills? (I often think of character animators as a type of actor!) There are a lot of 2D shows that I don't really like because I find the animation incredibly stiff, both puppet and handdrawn (there's great 2D puppet stuff out there these days), which pretty much always comes down to production limits (deadlines and budget and software, saving up their animation for the coolest scenes). One of my favorite things about Studio Ghibli films (which as features get a lot more space to focus on art compared to the demands and restraint of television) has always been the squash and stretch in otherwise relatively realistic action, making things like hugs look SO nice for example. But 3D stuff is getting better at that these days! The ways characters slumped into each other in "Nimona" for example was great. And it's just fascinating to look at the elasticity / stylized sculpt of expressions in "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish" compared to the technical limits of the models / rigs in "Shrek" or "Shrek 2".

Adding these side notes because I want to be clear about my respect for both 2D and 3D artistically! A lot of video games are doing cool stuff in 3D that looks very close to 2D with stylized shaders, which you can sometimes spot by the large or small rotations in character action / acting, which is difficult (and therefore often expensive) to do in 2D with all of those extra drawings / angle poses. Also, I think the current push towards funky shaders in 3D is so cool and it's hard not to gush about them!!!

[fndmfrenzy]

part 2 to my higuchi post cause i came up with more things to gush about (haha). he's so cute to me i want to shake him.

(moe higuchi for attention)

love his fangs. in general i like how his teeth are drawn. most other characters have flat teeth with (usually) minimal detail. his sometimes look uneven (cute).

i love his walk here, hands in pockets and all. he has so much swagger. he mostly runs (pathetically) in the anime but i imagine him to usually have this typical anime delinquent walk.

i think his eyes are really pretty. i like his eyeliner (haha). plus in animanga i prefer when characters are drawn with smaller irises/pupils cause it's more expressive. his only colored illustration in the manga just shows his eyes... i wish we got more but I GUESS it's fine.

i talked about pronouns in another post but i must confess that i prefer anime guys who use watashi over ore. it gives a softer/more feminine vibe. higuchi uses both but i like that he uses watashi in his thoughts. really moe...

it seems i'm not the only one who noticed it, because i found it mentioned in his pixiv dictionary entry ^^

i know i'm grasping at straws to feminize him (hey, why not). i like him sitting with crossed legs. and not the (more masc) version where you put your ankle on your knee. i even grabbed anime screenshots.

also: i like him drinking wine while the other guys are drinking whiskey at their meeting at mido's house.

ok let's talk about his color scheme. for a while i was convinced he's supposed to have black hair, but the anime made it brown (which i enjoyed, he's red-coded so it makes sense). but he actually is supposed to have brown hair in the manga as well. in the colored ver. i like how they made his highlights brown to show this (while the characters with black hair have grey highlights). so it feels kinda wrong to see the game ver. with black-grey hair lol.

i like how the colors of his shirt and tie are swapped in the manga and anime, both palettes are nice. i guess the grey shirt is more special so i think i like it more? but the game colors are really fun. i have to draw him with this color scheme more (i did it for the cover for this post!). i feel like purple and red are both colors that fit him.

his birthday is on 6th of june and he got the death note on the 14th of june. isn't that just the worst birthday present? haha.

i'm not enough of an mbti nerd to diagnose anyone but the people on personality database say he's an ESTP. it's actually close to misa's ESFP (i think it should be similar if it's just one letter off? thinking vs feeling. but it gets more complicated when you actually look at the function stack).

also i immensely enjoy the concept of unhealthy mbti. it just bascially means you're an asshole. so in my opinion higuchi is an unhealthy ESTP. here's some stuff i found when looking it up. source: people on reddit and website psychologyjunkie.com (don't treat this stuff too seriously i think mbti is just good fun)

here's some people comparing unhealthy ESTPs and ESFPs. it's literally higuchi and misa?? man, what a duo.

some more stuff that fits. hm, i also like that he's an extrovert but he's terrible with people. very funny. most of his coworkers are introverts, save for takahashi and hatori and yet the introverts like namikawa have better social skills.

another funny thing i've seen mentioned by some japanese people is how complicated the first kanji (卿) in his first name is and how difficult it would be to write in the way light did. light's just too good lol.

[soyouareandrewdobson]

Hey why does Dobbington hate Anime and Manga but has works inspired by it and what do you think of the critisisms he has of them.

very, VERY post note (and slightly incorrect or too simplified) version of that answer because it is such a basic one regarding Dobson, you can find it better explained and more detailed in a lot of other places:

Dobson began hating anime and manga for overall the following main reasons: as it became severely more popular for kids in the 2000s, Dobson, who had stumbld upon anime erlier in the 90s before Pokemon etc. could no longer feel as special about himself and his interests as before. In addition I assume he hated that people enjoyed certain types of anime that he simply could not get into. To elaborate a bit as I think it is always overlooked kinda: It isn't that Dobson hated anime in and on itself, as evident by the fact that his work was heavily inspired by it aesthetically (more on that later). But he only enjoyed certain types of shows. And those types were mostly those "wackier" cartoony anime of the late 80s and mid 90s. Slayers, Ranma 1/2, the more whimsical Miyazaki movies, Secret of Blue Water etc. Dobson was never really much an "action" guy, or grittier stories. Frankly, the more episodic a show was, the happier he was with it. Mind you, I don't think it is a bad thing to enjoy such shows, we all have our preferences. But as we know, Dobson was a mental case and if something did not stand up to his (bottom of the barrel) standards, he would dismiss it as shit. Or at least for as long as it did not include lesbians or he got enough shit talked on it so that he had to begrudingly join the chorus. to his "defense" I would say that him disliking certain anime may have also been related to having had bad dubbing experiences with some. I once read he hated Sailor Moon, till he saw the japanese dub as before he had been exposed to an early 90s american dub that supposedly was not very good. Lastly, there is just the factor that as his stuff was criticzd as being derivative of anime and manga, he began hating on it on proxy. Blaming his failure as an artist who couldn't make it in the mianstream on anime having been a shitty influence on him. Instead of, you know, the fact his artistic talents both in drawing and writing were again rather low level compared to other stuff, among other things (such as his failure to keep up steady releases or the interest of people looking his name up)

2. his work was "influenced" by anime only in the sense as that he tried to (badly) emulate the very simplistic cartoony art style of a handful of artists he knew of (particularly Rumiko Takahashi) in his comics and essentially drew newspaper strips but with the humor being the "slapstick" humor he saw in some of the anime and manga he read and consumed. And like many people and corporations in the 2000s who tried to emulate "anime" in style to sell their shit (Like the guys who did Martin Mystery, Kappa Mickey or certain webcomic artists) he failed to get the bigger picture. That anime and manga were not simply enjoyed for the aesthetics, but also because of a general different tone and approach of telling a story (progression, devlopment etc) compared to the average saturday morning level writing we got normally in cartoons. Dobson just tried to draw in a way he thought was cool and believed people will eat up because it was hype back then. But instead everyone else just saw it for what it was: a shallow product with very little (if any) identity of its own. Like say about Avatr-The Last Airbender what you will, it had an identity. You know, lore, world building, internal logic, characters with development etc. Dobson had a school bully bcoming a lesbian after 40 pages and some kid dropping from the sky in some cavemen inhabited fantasy place whose actual name (despite being the title of the comic) was not even really mentioned in the very first volume.

3. I think his opinions are like him: Worthless. Primarily because Dobson's criticism were too generalized. He just "hated" all of anime and manga, ignoring the fact that there are all sorts of different creators, genres, stories etc attached to those terms. It is like if I said "I hate books and writers" because I don't like Moviebob's "Brick by Brick", or I say "All videogames are terrible and videogamers should be gased" just because I have only been exposed to one shitty gaming experience in my life. It is just a display of utter ignorance for the craft of storytelling in itself. And coming from a guy who wanted to be a storyteller, that is bafflign to hear. There are more than a few things one can criticize about individual bad anime, manga, creators or trends within the industry or a fandom. I for example am not a big fan of bland isekais where the story is just that character X lands in fantasy setting and is immediately the most special of them all. But that doesn't mean everything in the genre is immediately trash. It means that I should at least take some time out of my less than busy schedule to see if perhaps there do exist one or two good exceptions. Do my "research". But that was something Dosbon was also more than allergic to do.

So yeah, hope that helps a bit.

[crimsoncold]

have you ever thought about the snow queen fairytale in connection to jonsa? it might be a reach but i can see elements of them in there

Hi asoiastarks! Please forgive my very delayed and rambly response to this ask

I hadn't really considered this fairytale before but when I thought about it in depth I ended up having way more to say about the connection between Jon and Sansa's stories (and Jonsa as a romantic pairing) and fairytales in general than I expected so I'm putting my response below...

While I wouldn't say that there is one specific fairytale that jonsa (or jon and sansa individually) clearly and directly follows I would totally agree with the opinion that Jon and Sansa (two of asoiaf's comparatively most traditionally romantic characters) definitely seem to draw from or echo several common aspects found with protagonists of traditional fairy tales- both as individual characters and as a potential romantic pairing.

I've definitely seen people describe Sansa as a romantic heroine that has tragically been "misplaced" into a brutal world like westeros- and I think that description holds up and that ultimately her gentle and romantic nature will result in an end that is not simply having all her happiness and hope being destroyed by consistent trauma and narrative punishment but rather will have to involve her life flourishing into something beautiful but still grounded providing a more satisfying end for someone who maintains much of the sort of traditional kindness/goodness found with the typical fairytale princess despite the horrors around her- otherwise asoiaf would seem little more than an outright bitter and nihilistic story

I also think we shouldn't sleep on Jon who underneath his wonderfully bitchy sarcastic grumpy or occasionally ruthless exterior holds similarly romantic values and thoughts

Generally speaking it wouldn't surprise me that someone could find commonalities between a fairytale and Jon and Sansa, I feel that many common tropes that are found in a great number of fairytales can correspond to aspects of Jon's or Sansa's individual story and personalities or to Jonsa as a pairing by itself.

Just listing a few off the top of my head ...Having and reclaiming some secret identity that they may or may not have know about, young members of nobility/royalty raised or living in hiding due to their lives being in peril- typically in a position of lower class than they might actually belong to; being the target of the machinations wrath or cruelty of evil kings/queens/or some type of sorcerer or spellcaster, having notable interactions with or a special connection to animals or some type of mythical creature, the concept of being resurrected from some form of permanent sleep or even death

.... and of course in the case of a possible romantic relationship forming- them being character's who after experiencing incredible hardship, tragedy, or sorrow are ultimately awarded for exhibiting, maintaining, or gaining traits such as kindness/compassion/bravery/dutifulness/or selflessness, the possibility of either of them occupying the role of a hero or saviour for the other from either literal physical threats/enemies or more metaphorical ones like their loneliness or emotional trauma, as well as having a completed and happy story arc that ultimately cumulates in them forming a deeply intimate and loving partnership or marriage.

When it comes to the Snow Queen specifically I'm only passingly familiar with this fairytale (so please forgive me in advance if I miss something obvious or get any details wrong) but based on my very basic knowledge of this fairytale I can definitely think of a number of interesting commonalities/parallels this fairytale could have to Jonsa.

Firstly, because so much of Jon, Sansa, and the Stark family's storyline is rooted in a snowy and cold environment (the north, winterfell, the wall, etc.) and because one major threat in the overall story comes in the form of "ice" (i.e. the Long Night and the Others coming from beyond the wall) it doesn't surprise me that one could find a number of (at least surface leve)l commonalities to a story like the snow queen with its similarly icy setting and villain, as well as find a number of common basic story elements/imagery that occur in both- though not always in the same type of context or role (e.g. the appearance of or focus on ice/snow/snowflakes, roses, crows, doves, and a girl traveling and reuniting with someone in the north, the emphasis put on the sweetness or goodness of a character, and the unexpected effect or power that a character's faith/prayers/love/or inherent goodness can have on the world or people around them)

Most of all i can definitely see the potential for some more direct similarities between the snow queen and a hypothetical (but very possible) jonsa endgame for asoiaf....

First in the form of a character like jon being healed and changed from his own altered state (e.g. some form of strangeness, purposelessness, distantness, coldness, harshness, forgetfulness, or trauma that occurs in the aftermath of his time with the night's watch and his subsequent assassination and resurrection) after he is reunited and touched by the sweetness and affection- the love, tears, or even kiss- of a distantly regarded (or even forgotten post resurrection?) but once beloved part of his childhood- in the form of a girl he was raised with who has made a dangerous and long trek north to be reunited with him,

Secondly I could see strong paralelles occuring regarding the ending, i.e. one that centers around two individuals returning to their common home, grown and deeply changed by their experiences but with a hopeful and happier future promised or symbolized in the form of the changing season (with the upcoming one promising to be a time of warmth and renewal after the comparatively harsh or treacherous winter).

Side Note:

Given got/asoiaf's efforts towards exemplifying a far more corrupt, harsh, cruel, senseless and unjust world than what is typically seen in fantasy works I'm not exactly expecting an ending chock-full of sunshine and rainbows....

However I find it notable that Sansa, and to some extent Jon, exist as somewhat of an outlier in an explicity harsh and grim setting (and are further flanked by a number of characters that are a great deal less romantic and more pragmatic, if not outrightly more selfish, cruel, or even brutal and psychotic)

As a result there is something quite striking about the way many of Jon and Sansa's experiences, core personality traits, and their supposedly hopeless or rejected- yet still deeply idolized- dreams end up resembling eachother in so many ways.

Their desires and motives may (for lack of a better word) be comparatively "simpler" and more straightforward than those of many other characters yet they also correspond to an underlying shared sense of duty and desire for family, and are simultaneously deeply meaningful to the character's personally while also exemplifying an appropriate blend of the series realism/pragmatism with jon and sansa's trademark romanticism.

I do believe that a bittersweet but hopeful and affectionate end for these characters and this epic fantasy tale can definitely (at least in part) take the form of not just a reunion of the surviving starks but also in a sort of slightly twisted and bastardized fairytale end for the series via Jon and Sansa having their dreams (of winterfell, marriage, and family) being fulfilled by a respectful, willing, and even loving marriage to one another.

(a love and relationship that would initially be appropriately fraught and seemingly forbidden or obscene but ultimately would be allowed to blossom giving these two characters the closest a story like asoiaf will ever get to a traditionally "happy" fairytale ending)

A Jonsa endgame would also offer a thematically appropriate foil to several other notable romantic relationships in the series...

Like seriously there is way too much sibling incest in this series for GRRM not to be building up to something/coming full circle in the end with a very different but still pseudo-incestuous relationship in the form of Jonsa

... like I swear to god he's gonna be like "here have a bunch of current, recent, and long past tragic, ruinous, and/or deeply unhealthy and harmful incestuous marriages and relationships...isn't this obviously always such a terrible thing to occur?" only to go against typical expectations of readers and once again reject the simplicity of an obviously black and white story with a strong and consistent divide between the "heroes" and the "villains" and instead sucker punch the audience by offering up an emotionally and thematically fulfilling but somewhat unusual (even uncomfortable for a number of readers) and bittersweet end that once again involves an incestuous (of sorts) relationship only this time amongst the "good" characters in the story, in the form of a marriage between cousins and psuedo siblings Jon and Sansa.

[okaystoptellingmetomakeanaccount]

Unpopular DT opinion: I don’t care for Don Rosa’s work. None of it ever resonated with me. I dunno if that makes me a heathen, but whatever, DuckTales in the early days bores me to tears. Guess you can put me at the stake. 🔥

I do get it. Rosa’s work is not for everyone. It certainly has a very fanfic-y taste to it, and arguably isn’t very Disney-comic-like at all. Or it at least isn’t Barksian. Rosa more writes like it’s a Hollywood movie. For some that’s exactly its appeal, but for others it’s a turn-off. Both are fair.

Also his art is probably a problem as well. I know it is for many. It’s very stiff. Me being a big Rosa fan doesn’t notice it while reading, but the moment you go and look at the art of some professionals it does start to stand out in a negative way. Rosa’s difference is also that he puts 10 times the amount of time in drawing compared to other artists, partly because he’s technically an amateur, and because he wants the very best possible, but it does end up in often overcrowded drawings. Some might really love all that extra effort and the details, some would say, like I quote my mother: “It hurts my eyes”.

There are a lot of people who dislike Rosa’s stories, so it’s really not the unpopular opinion you might think it is. You might just haven’t encountered the Barks purists yet. Or even those who prefer the cleaner drawing and writing styles of… pretty much everyone else.

I have seen very little of the original Ducktales and it kind of bored me as well. I don’t think that’s an unpopular opinion at all actually. I see lots of people say that Ducktales 87 hasn’t aged well compared to like, Darkwing Duck. I would even say it was never that great in the first place. I find it a very childish adaptation of the duckverse that looked at Barks’ stories and misunderstood everything that was good about them. Gotta say though, that the animation and staging was beautiful. Especially for that time! That was some movie-level of budget they had or something, because it still looks great, and maybe even better than some modern animation we see in the industry today.

[slightly-gay-pogohammer]

I don't know if you've ever been asked this question, but I was wondering:

Did you learn to draw somewhere, or were you self-taught? Maybe you have some tips or hints for beginners? What was your favourite thing about drawing?

Sorry if this ask is too personal, but I really like your drawing style and wanted to ask some advice :D Have a good day! 🌸

it's a mix of both, really! i grew up loving art from the very beginning, like. im talking about making teletubbies fanarts and asking my dad to make me learn to draw characters from w.i.t.c.h. and tomb raider fandsndfs, according to my parents i had a pencil in my hands before i even started talking -- and that's what led me to actually learn to draw "properly", first in a art-centered high school (that. did less than good to me tbf but it was a matter of 90% of the art-related teachers being garbage) and the comics academy in torino where i think i started to truly "understand" what i wanted from my art style

if i may give some advices other than the good ol' "keep practicing and try to at least doodle something once a day", i could go with:

don't compare yourself to other artists negatively, especially those younger than you. it's probably the hardest part, but you need to "force yourself" to be positive. if you find yourself thinking "this 14 years old draws better eyes than me", go with "i love how they draw eyes, let's see if i can learn from it"

copy copy copy copyyyyy!!!!! copy from references, copy from photos, copy from comics, copy from movies. of course don't plagiarize people and then present that stuff as your own, but try to make a pose yours and learn to take pictures of your own hands, feet, face or ask people to pose if you can't find the right position

your art will look like shit to you, a LOT of times, but know that at one point you're going to quit. if you don't like what you're drawing, either quit there or restart, don't try to "fix" it because you'll just end up noticing more and more issues with it - issues that, most of the times, aren't even issues to begin with. letting go of perfectionism is very difficult, but at some point you'll have to do that--

and about perfectionism, a VERY good exercise we did in comics school was being forced to "draw fast". this isn't me telling you you NEED to draw as quick as possible, but it's an exercise that forces you to learn quickly where certain body parts go, to prioritize specific details rather than others. we had a model, and at first we had to sit there for an hour drawing her, then the hour became 30 minutes, then 10, then 5, and at the end 1. it took us a few lessons to do that, but at the end the super sketchy 1 minute copy went from ???? to a stylized human figure!!!

learn to draw realistic anatomy, and then make it your own style.

for the love of god learn prespective it's a bore it's a chore but as soon as you learn that everything becomes SO much easier

for shading, just. put a point in the canvas where the light source is and go from there!! if the light is on the right, the shades will be on the left

if you're coloring, play with the shades' colors. a good idea is to use the opposite color you use for the lights - if the light is yellow, the shades look great in purples, for example just don't use pure black unless you wanna go for a more dark/noir aesthetic oh my god

professional comic artists retrace a lot of their backgrounds. i'm js. use this as you wish :)

learn to draw different body shapes!!!! like getting out of the anime phase of "fat people are just like thin people but with a huge belly" can be difficult, but it's very satisfying

go out of your comfort zone. if you have problems drawing horses, spend a few days learning to draw horses. take some pics and try to understand them.

body proportions are so fun once you realize how so many things are the same. generally speaking, your spread hand is as long as your face, your feet and half the size of your arm; the outer corner of your eye is at the same level of your ear, and the inner corner is perpendicular to your nose and the corner of your mouth; if you leave your arm on your side, your elbow is at the same level of your bellybutton, and your fingers reach halfway your thighs. it's so fun

and yea, i can't stress it enough. it'll take time. art is painful, art is stressful, art can be discouraging. take a step at the time, accept some failures and celebrate any good thing - even the smaller ones. you learned to draw hands today, and you should be proud. i tried to draw a cat for the first time and it looks wonky, but the cat you will draw tomorrow will look better. i believe in you

[vickyvicarious]

Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. [...] His face was a strong—a very strong—aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.

Dracula, 5 May

I rose and bowed, and he came towards me; a man of medium weight, strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck. The poise of the head strikes one at once as indicative of thought and power; the head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the ears. The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large, resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big, bushy brows come down and the mouth tightens. The forehead is broad and fine, rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps or ridges wide apart; such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides. Big, dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man's moods.

van Helsing, 25 September

Some similarities and differences in the way van Helsing and Dracula are first described. Especially upon Jonathan meeting him today and remarking cheerfully on his appearance, I don't think they actually look that similar really. And to an extent the wording may refer to specific features of physiognomy that I happily do not know. But still, there's enough here to take note of.

They're both clean shaven (except for Dracula's moustache) and their hair doesn't grow on their temples. They have high foreheads. They both have big noses, though of different shapes (one broad and one thin) and expressive nostrils. They both have a strong chin. They both have eyes that change with their moods (though Jonathan doesn't note that on first meeting him, he later emphasizes the Count's blazing eyes when angry).

And there are a couple strong differences too of course. Dracula is characterized as pale and lacking color except for his mouth, while van Helsing has red hair and blue eyes. They both seem to have large or at least noticeable mouths, but van Helsing's is "resolute" compared to Dracula's looking "cruel". Dracula is tall, thin, old... while van Helsing is medium weight, strongly built. Even as he talks up his age Mina doesn't comment on him looking old or anything at all. He seems much more animated and full of life.

I'm certain that both descriptions are drawing heavily on physiognomy to try and reveal things about their respective characters. And again, maybe it's just the case that similar terms are used for a lot of that stuff. But there still seems to be a decent amount of general overlap, and I don't think any other characters really ever get this sort of intentionally detailed description, so I do feel you are to an extent meant to compare the two. To recognize the similar features but the way they come together into something completely different in the end... maybe reflecting how they share other traits but with different overall intentions.

[frogswithfrogs]

Details about the Mci’s in my Au

Personalities:

Gabriel Green

Standard little brother type. He is incredibly rambunctious and energetic toddler with a highly active imagination who loves to draw and do other crafts. He also has a habit of bringing animals inside his house, much to the annoyance of his mom and Jeremy

Jeremy Green

A very smart kid, but is very bad at rational thinking. He really likes space exploration and wants to be an astronaut. He also acts more mature than he actually is

Susie Smith

Very stereotypical girly girl who loves all things cute, princess related, and pink. She has a very big heart, especially when it comes to animals and babies. She is highly emotional and gets upset over small things, though she is only five, and is yet to face any real problems.* she’s kinda spoiled

Fritz Santos

Definitely a Wild Child. He acts, talks, and looks like a pirate, even calling himself “Captain Fritz” he often acts out at school, his intentions are always good, however. He loves to play imagination games, especially if they involve pirates of the ocean.

Cassidy Guerra

A very, very, very grumpy kid. She can be sweet if you can look past the sarcasm and biting however. Her anger was increased when Evan died, so her reactions became a lot more intense if angered. She is also super loyal, and trusting.

Family and home life

Jeremy and Gabriel

They both live with their mom, Michelle(38), their older sisters Carly(13) and Felicia(12), and Gabriel’s dad Marcus(40). All three children have different dads, Carly and Felicia’s dad being Michelle’s ex husband’s , and Jeremy being her former boyfriends. They live in a somewhat small house. Jeremy and Gabriel share a room, and the attic was turned into a room for Carly and Felicia. They are quite close to each other because of this, Jeremy feeling very protective of Gabe.

Susie

Susie comes from a big Mormon family, having seven sisters. Her family includes her mom Francis(40), her dad David(43), her sisters Kathrine “Katie”(16), Samantha(14), Linny(10), Grace(8), Ruby(6), May(3) and Tilly(1). She was raised very wealthy, as her father was a great banker. She was little Miss Hurricane in 1984 when she was 4, due to this, her death and funeral were a big deal compared to the other kids. She was raised in a huge house, it was three stories and had a in ground pool.

Fritz

His life was very vibrant, being raised by many eccentric aunts and uncles, but his family was his father Pedro(34) his “best friend” Damien(34), and Damien’s daughter Christie(9) and his older brothers Jose(12) and Davi(9). His father was the owner of the local pub JR’s, which was frequented by William. They all lived in a rather large apartment above the building. The other part of his family included his mom Beatriz, her “first mate” Frida, and her many, many crew mates on their boat, which was a pirate themed entertainment boat restaurant that Fazbear Entertainment considered an enemy. His life was vibrant and filled with color due to this odd upbringing

Cassidy

Cassidy grew up on a trailer park with her mom Barbra(40), her father Pharrell(38), and her two siblings Hope(17) and Andrew(14). Due to them not having much, their lives were hectic. It’s also worth noting that Barbra was a chain smoker and spent her government aid money on cigarettes. Their father was a good dad, he loved his kids very much.

How William lured them:

Susie

Susie had just gotten a puppy, unfortunately Samantha left the fence open, the dog got out, and was hit by Williams car. Susie saw the whole thing and was traumatized. William used this to his advantage, and promised that he had her dog, but the only thing g that was promised was her death.

Fritz

Fritz had been visiting the restaurant on a school field trip,William saw the whole thing as an opportunity. Fritz was stating that he was going to save the recently disappeared Susie from her capture, so William then told him he had her.

Gabriel

William simply offered the kid Candy, he had not been taught about stranger danger yet.

Jeremy

Jeremy had gone looking for Gabriel, this is why Jeremy died fighting, as he saw that he had killed his brother.

Cassidy

Cassidy was having a birthday party at Freddy’s, and no one showed up. William had been observing the whole thing, and lured her in, promising her the best party she could possibly have. Which forty-ish years later, she did

[kazzu120]

Will you be my sensei and show me how to draw the anime body, including the hair? I want to draw anime and manga on my own, but I'll need some help. I'm using Krita to help me begin my journey. Tutorials would be much appreciated, especially to those who want to learn how to draw like me!

I don't know if I'm able to make good step by step tutorials, but I can share with you the resources I've been using to practice!

Before anything though, I need to warn you that I'm still very much a beginner myself, so my advice might not be much worth at all. I mean it, I'm not trying to be humble or self-deprecating, I've only been drawing while taking art seriously for a total time of ~6 months, and you'll probably realize as you yourself get better, my current art output is extremely amateurish.

With that out of the way, I'm going to go into a LOT of detail and add several picture examples of what has more or less worked for me under the cut. I'm really sorry for the excessive amounts of yapping xD

First of all, the methods I've used that I felt have helped me retain knowledge the most were Oriday's "Blind Method" + Naoki Saito's "Fastest Way to Improve Illustration". The methods are extremely similar, they both have videos on Youtube explaining them more in depth, please check them out if you want:

The basic TL;DR of what you'll want to do is, find a pro illustrator you like/wish you could draw like them, and do copy studies of their drawings. I specifically like Oriday's way where he iterates his copies in 3 steps.

You take an illustration you like and do a full copy. Trace some parts of it if you need to, the point here is to understand the specific stroke directions that the original artist did and try to figure out why they chose those strokes specifically. After you finish copying, overlap your copy on the original and mark up what you got wrong.

Do another copy, but now do it from memory. Do it even if you feel like you don't remember it well or it's coming out badly. When you're done, once again put it side by side with the original and take note of the parts where you feel you went wrong. Make sure to make mental notes of the differences and what the correct way is.

Do ANOTHER copy from memory, this time trying to keep in mind the parts that you got wrong in the last one. Again, after you're done compare it with the original and take note of the things you got wrong.

I started these months later in my journey and haven't been very diligent about them, but ideally you shouldn't be like me and do this exercise at least once daily. xD

Here, if you want to see an example of what types of practice I've done: Since I really wanted to draw good looking fanart of Nico, I took copies of the anime settei and started making both full and blind copies of it. See here:

The great thing about anime settei is that they usually have heads and bodies in all angles. They're meant as reference material for pro animators to draw, which makes them amazing reference material for learning to newbies like us!

I got those Nico character settei from a website called setteidreams. It has settei from a lot of different anime, so you can browse for an anime with a style you like and start doing your copy studies from those.

Here you can see an example of the types of copy studies I was doing during my first month of art drills:

I was heavily focusing on that head and shoulders game at first, as you can see xD

I wasn't doing the full 3 iteration of the copies every day. I mostly just tried to at least sit down and do one copy a day minimum, since I noticed that skipping even just a couple of days of practice made me forget some info I had learned.

At first I was taking FOREVER on each copy and struggled a lot even with simple faces, but as I kept doing it daily, I noticed that I kinda started to get the hang of general face proportions and where stuff should be placed in most basic face angles. I'm still not perfect right now, but I have a much better sense of how a "Love Live-like" anime face should go than I did before I started this.

I wasn't as diligent with copying full body illustrations... you'll probably notice that many of my earlier comics tended to cut out the rest of the body and just had a lot of head and shoulder shots. The reason is that I just wasn't practicing bodies for a long time xDD

Anyways, as I moved along I started realizing that I was still REALLY bad at drawing full bodies (I still feel like I suck at drawing full bodies even now).... so over the months I started doing stuff like gesture drawing sessions where I'd look up a batch of random poses on pinterest and did copies of them. The intent of gesture drawing isn't to get the full details, but rather to try to get the overall gesture lines of the reference in the simplest way possible. Here's an example of some of my gesture practice sessions I did (the first few ones I was going way too into the body details imo which is not supposed to be the point):

I haven't been very diligent with these, and to be honest I'm not sure if I've learned much from doing these (at least not compared to the iterative copy method from before)... They just seem to come out fine or badly randomly to me... xD I'm sorry I can't offer much advice here.

Next are these: I don't do these a lot, but here are some examples of full attempts at colored "copies" of illustrations I really like. Here are some side by side examples:

As you can see I tend to get really lazy with them and leave them unfinished, which probably explains why I still suck at coloring so much xD I do feel like these have helped me retain some knowledge though. Much more so than the figure drawing sessions.

I can't specify enough how important the iterative drawing method was for me, by the way!!! When I started out, I had been doing my drills for a couple of months now and when I drew using reference, the result would start to look more refined, but when I tried to draw 100% from imagination, I would return to using my old methods and fall back on my old bad habits, and my doodles would end up looking like my art from before I started practicing!! This did NOT change and I did NOT start getting better at drawing from imagination until I started incorporating the blind copy method into my drills!!!

Here are some examples of 120% FULL EFFORT illustrations from imagination I drew from before I started this whole iterative practice exercise:

Not good at all compared to what I felt I should be capable of, coming from my reference practices!!

Those are examples how my imagination drawings would ALWAYS look AT THEIR BEST, with a couple of outliers where I'd get lucky and the art would look decent.

Please note that the decent looking ones were alwaysthe exception and NOT the rule, and I would not be able to consistently replicate them if I tried.

Anyways.... After using the iterative drawing method, here are some random lower effort doodles 100% from imagination that I drew as warmups from the past couple of weeks:

See the following, I can now much more consistently draw stuff like this from imagination:

I still get a lot of duds, but in comparison to before the proportion of decent ones vs bad ones are much more in my favor, as long as I make sure to put proper thought and time to the drawings, unlike before where I might get something bad no matter how hard and for how long I tried hitting myself against the wall.

Again, I need to mention that even after I started doing my copy practices, my drawings from imagination would consistently look like those older bad ones, and only started really improving AFTER I started the iterative drawing practice method!!! I know it must be annoying and I'm repeating myself a lot but this was a super important revelation for me xD

Anyways I don't have much else to say... Just watch the oridays video and follow his practice steps is my advice.

On some other things:

A lot of people try and LOVE the Loomis Method. You can find his book "Fun With a Pencil" by Andrew Loomis for free online. I did try it for some time during my art journey, but I never felt I was actually getting results at drawing the pretty anime girls I wanted with it xD.... It's REALLY popular though so it might be worth a try for you!!

You might also want to check out DrawABox. I did go through all of its exercises steps before I started doing the iterative copy method. I didn't feel like it really helped me much at the time, but it might be a good thing to do in principle before immersing yourself in copies, if only to get a very basic foundation. Like the Loomis method, many people love it.

One last thing: doing your practice drills is important and good, but don't get so focused on the grind that you ignore doing full-effort original pieces from scratch. Like in my case there's my comics for example. It will be the way you'll be able to put to the test what you've learned. It's really important, please don't skip it!

That's honestly all I have. It's worth mentioning again that I'm also NOT very experienced at drawing. I'm still basically starting out, this is just what I felt has worked for me the most effectively...

If you have more questions or anything don't be afraid to ask, I don't mind sharing what resources I've used! I'm happy to see more people join me on this rocky road to try get good at drawing xD

Oh and about Krita, I've only ever used Paint Tool Sai and Clip Studio Paint, so I'm afraid I won't be able to help you much with the tool, sorry.

[marsbymarsviner]

Research [Fortiche]

I think everyone's heard of Fortiche lately. With the new Arcane season and constant new animations from them on the League of Legends channel, they're stapling themselves as an iconic art studio.

Fortiche is a french based studio that specialises in art and animation and they are most popular for creating the animated series Arcane (both Season One and Two) based on League of Legends.

They are renowned for putting a tremendous amount of detail into their animations and fans are constantly finding new things to notice in Arcane. They spent years on the show, so their work is definitely paying off.

They're on my list of artists that inspire me because Arcane is a masterpiece. I loved the show from the first season and it always inspired me to draw. From the epic music to the beautiful settings and characters, it's a wonderful show. Season two just brings that inspiration to a whole new level, with more fights and more concepts of art being explored, like different art styles and impact frames.

Every character they design has a tremendous level of care into their character and while not all of them get equal screentime, none of them have terrible costumes or writing.

Arcane was well known for its good fight scenes in Season One, but Season Two just brought it to a whole new level and Fortiche hit it out of the park. It fits the music really well and the fighting is so fluid.

On a different note than Arcane, they recently released a new music video for Bite Marks, a song for League of Legends to advertise their new season.

The video features a slightly different style than arcane as the characters have more grounded anatomy (arcane is known for their big expressive eyes for example) but they have a range of fighting in the video and I'll show these too, because I am a sucker for them.

The fight between Trundle and Darius is really cool because it's brutal compared to the other main fight in the video. They both lose their weapons at some point and they just punch and wail at each other, Trundle nearly ripping Darius' head off. As the music is paused you can really focus on the fight and it is very cool to watch, especially with both Trundle's allies and Darius' soldiers watching on in the background.

In a stark contrast, Elise and Katarina fight like they're dancing. Weaving with blades, spiders and strings Elise fights to protect her charge (the man in the first image) but Katarina is simply too swift and she manages to slice his throat in an unexpected movement. It's synced well to the music and is a very good fight. I also love the character designs, Katarina looks great compared to her in game design.

Overall Fortiche has solidified themselves as a talented art studio and I hope they go on to do great things. I heard that they're planning to do a movie of The Odyssey as well, which could be interesting to see.

Even if there's no new content in the Arcane world, I still can't wait to get the Art Book delivered so I can see even more details I missed. They put so much effort into this show and it inspires me that if I create something like this, others will care to find the details too.

[fishedeyelenz]

Billy Lenz headcanons 2

Part two baby let's go

TW: child abuse, animal death again :( though I don't really get into the details of either of it

Grew up in a kind of suburban/rural like area, not totally isolated but definitely a bit remote, so a lot of things that happened in the Lenz household went unnoticed by the wider community

Lived close by to a pig farm as a child, hearing their grunts and squeals all day and all night. He quickly adopted the sounds, and now grunting and squealing and snorting are a stim to him. Though, because of this he often got compared to pigs by his family as a child :( he did sometimes sneak away to the pig farm to look at the pigs to get away from his house

Had a crooked broken nose. He either got it broken by one of his parents or Agnes broke it in self defense

As stated in the last part, he loves movies, and one of his absolute favorite ones is the shining. Jack Nicholson is one of his favorite actors, and he watched most of his filmography- exept one flew over the cuckoo's nest. He can't handle that one, it's too real for him

Likes those adult oriented animated movies that came out during the 70's-80's like Fritz the cat, Fantastic planet, Rock and rule, and so on. He also very much enjoys who framed Roger rabbit and cool world, though not really for their technical breakthroughs (perv)

I can see him also appreciating eastern block animated films if he ever got his hands on them, like Russian fairy tale animated films and early Hungarian folk tales, János vitéz etc.

Last unicorn enjoyer but prefers the book to the animated movie (though he enjoys both)

Doesn't really like Disney animated movies though (exept for Roger rabbit). The ones that came out during his adulthood were too "kiddie" for his tastes, and the ones from his childhood trigger him greatly

Has Italian heritage

Hates hippies, though likes a couple of bands that can be considered to make hippie/stoner music like Pink Floyd and the Doors

Yes he relates to Pink from the acclaimed concept album/rock opera movie Pink Floyd's The Wall why do you ask

Every weed is scary weed to him, don't let this man bake

Cat's are his favorite animal, aside from pigs, and he would feed the local stray cats as a child

Would honestly be catkin in a modern au

Garfield is his favorite mediocre but cute Saturday morning comic strip <3 he relates to Jon a lot

Doesn't like children, they freak him out, he would never want to have children and that's for the best

Has an appreciation for naive/amateur/outsider art, and he himself does make his own collages and drawings from time to time, whenever he's mentally stable enough to do that. His works are crude, both technically and thematically, and there is a very morbid quality to them. One of his great inspirations is Henry Darger

Has hoarder tendencies

Loves soft things, like blankets, pillows and plushies. His nest in the attic is like the most comfortable pillow fort there is

Yes the plushies are stolen directly from children

Honestly has his own collection of small, tinny , insignificant shinny things he found/stole. If he ever gets his own place his house would look like Howl Movingcastles room just more... Dirty and covered in cat hair

Liked to lay out all the things he stole from the girls in the sorority house on the attic floor, and admire his spoils from time to time

Yes he is a panty snatcher why do you ask

Doesn't like people staring/looking at him, though he himself has a staring problem

Is afraid of dogs, he got bitten by a stray dog one time when he ran away from home when he was just three years old. A stranger who just so happened to be passing by saw what was happening and defended him, killing the dog in the process. Then he took Billy right back to his family home, like any good Samaritan would. Sometimes Billy's nightmares have bloody, gaping black dogs in them.

[heiayen]

operation: the secret admirer - albedo x gn!reader

tags: highschool au, headcanons, fluff, lisa and kaeya as your friends, oblivious!reader, very light themed!

summary: you have a secret admirer. a someone who every morning leaves you cute drawings and trinkets on your desk, but your heart is already given to someone else who, at least to you, doesn’t share the same feelings. little did you know just how connected those two people are...

a/n: happy valentines! i'm late like, an hour, but details. based on @twilight-theatre february prompts! sending love to all the members muah

- You never thought something like this would happen to you, but you had a secret admirer. Someone who always was putting small, decorated envelopes on your desk, every morning without a miss, a small drawing inside the envelope. It would be a flower sometimes or a small trinket. No matter what it was, it always made you smile at yourself. It was such a small thing, but it made your mornings so much better and gave you something to look forward to the next day.  The drawings were simple, a cute animal, a pretty flower, yet there was something so... unique about them. Or maybe you were just biased a little and the small drawings seemed prettier because they were just for you. 

- And, yes, the secret admirer was nice, but your heart was already given to someone else. To your classmate, Albedo, the most beautiful boy in your class. He was so smart, so handsome, his voice was so nice to listen to and you two were good friends, how could you not fall for him? For the man of your dreams, the one so often helping you with classes, sharing food with you? You were weak for his charms, it was really no surprise. And you wished he could share your feelings, but... Albedo was the best student in your class, one of the best in school, he probably already had life plans, you believed he could achieve anything he wanted, and have anyone he wanted. And everyone liked him, even if he wasn't the most talkative person around, his politeness and charms caught everyone's heart! Who were you compared to him? An average B grade student with no proper plans for your future. He was out of your reach, just being by his side was enough. 

- Yet you couldn't just drown in self-deprecation about how you'll never get to date the guy you adore, no! You should go and live your life no matter the feelings you have for a pretty classmate. Besides, there is someone out there who has feelings for you, right? Your secret admirer wasn't doing all of this just for a joke, you hoped at least, so it might be nice to at least try to find who they are. Though that seemed like a pretty hard task and you weren't exactly sure just how you could find the person out. Maybe you could try waiting for them in the morning to leave the pretty drawing, but that seemed... Well, not exactly foolproof. You had no idea when your secret admirer was even leaving the notes! And getting up so early just to stalk someone didn't seem like a good idea. 

- So you were left with, oh, what? Old Sherlock Holmes like searching for clues about the identity of the admirer! From what you already managed to guess, whoever it was, they probably attended the same class as you since there wasn't exactly an easy way of getting into someone else's classroom daily, right? And you also knew that they were an artist... and it sadly didn't narrow the number of candidates, since you didn't really know many artists, let alone in your class! You only knew that Albedo drew in his free time, but you never saw his works so there was no way for you to compare his and the secret's admirer style. Not like it ever could be Albedo, but...

- You decided to ask around then. You had two good friends other than Albedo–  Lisa and Kaeya. They both were quite popular in class and liked by many people, they for sure had to know anything. You asked Lisa first, who, despite your expectations, didn't turn out to be very helpful. She said that the secret admirer and their little gifts for you were adorable, but she sadly didn't know who it could possibly be. She did though tell you that maybe you should just look around and try to come to conclusions. Well, you were looking around. You came to no conclusions. To even bigger confusion on the other hand, yes–

- The next person on your list? Kaeya. He knew everyone and everything (and it was scary at times, but you believe that as long as you were on his good side, there was nothing to worry about), so he had to know at least anything about the secret admirer… well! He didn't! He agreed with you that it probably was an artist who was too shy to tell you their feelings straight into your face, but other than this? He also didn't know much. He did redirect you to Albedo though, saying that since he's an artist (and apparently artists are always to be found in groups, whatever logic it was), maybe he could help you. 

- You refused. Nope. No! You couldn't possibly bother him with something as silly as some secret admirer. In the end, you were left with little clues about who it could be, but not without any determination to find out. You promised yourself to find the admirer out, after all… You spend most of the remaining classes wondering about how to find who was the secret admirer. Your notes were missing a few sentences and you probably missed an announcement about an upcoming exam, but at least you had some kind of plan on how to catch the admirer! The idea from before– the one with simply waiting for the person in the morning– turned out to be the only possible one with the most possible success rate, even if it still could fail. 

- You were in pretty high spirits on your usual study time with Albedo, excited about tomorrow morning. He noticed it and asked what made your mood so good, so, despite your previous thoughts about Albedo and the admirer, you shared all your thoughts about the admirer. He listened to everything you said, made a few small comments about it and wished you luck. The topic simply ended since, as it turned out, you seriously missed an exam announcement, so it  would be good to start studying already. The studying time passed on, you went home, went to sleep and woke up earlier and, and went to school all prepared and excited-stressed about catching the admirer… just to find a single envelope on your desk and an origami rose. 

- Damn it. At least the rose was pretty. You obviously ranted about it to Kaeya and Lisa, the moment you saw them walk together into the classroom. They listened very carefully, but you noticed Kaeya trying very hard to not laugh and when you asked what makes him want to laugh so much, he just shared a look with Lisa. 

"...you two know who they are!" You called out the traitors, to which Kaeya just bursted out with laughter. You groaned and sent him a dirty look. Lisa, like the angel she was, just patted your shoulder with a soft laugh. 

"We do, sweetie, but we also think it would be better for the admirer to reveal themself, rather than have us break the surprise." 

You couldn't argue with the logic. You sighed. 

"Can you give me at least a hint? I seriously have no idea who it can be…" You had your wishes, but no guesses. By that time Kaeya was done laughing. 

"It's someone you know, (y/n). That's all we can tell you without making it obvious." 

You blinked. Someone you knew who was an artist. You literally knew only one artist and, oh, God, it wasn't looking good for your fantasy and romance filled mind. You refused to accept the possibility, because how could someone like him like you? You probably would spend another five minutes just rethinking everything you did with the secret admirer matter, but someone's, totally not Kaeya's, failed-to-stop laugh threw you out of your thoughts. 

So, you threw a pen in his direction. 

- The possibility that Albedo could possibly like you too was way too much for your brain, so you decided to let it flow around your mind and simply not care about it till you just had to. And the 'had to' came later on, when you had chemistry classes and a group project for the entire hour. You had to pick a partner and solve some exercises. Am easy grade. You couldn't pair with either Kaeya or Lisa, since they paired with each other and… well, not that they were stupid, but chemistry wasn't their strong force and neither was yours, so! Albedo was an obvious choice. Because he was your only choice at this point. Usually your first, both for his great chemistry skills, but also because you liked him. But as contrary to the usually, today you…  didn’t exactly want to work with him, your thoughts still a total mess. Maybe putting them off to clean up later wasn't a good idea. 

"How did your plan go?" Albedo asked at one point, when you two were already finishing the group work. You blinked at him in surprise. 

"Plan, what plan?" You hoped he wouldn't ask about it! And yet he did! And your first instinct was to play dumb, second was cringing at yourself. 

"With the secret admirer. Did you succeed?" he asked in his usual, calm tone. No teasing lit in his voice, as if he seriously was curious about your little mission. You stayed silent for a moment, weighting your words. 

"Well… no. The gifts were already here when I came to class." You replied and then, in a moment of some genius, you added, "They gave me origami roses and I think they are really cute. I hope the next time they'll give me tulips." 

"Why?" He didn't move his gaze away from the notebook, but you could swear you saw a slight blush on his cheeks.

"They are my favorite flowers." 

The next morning you saw a bunch of little paper tulips.

- And tulips weren't even your favorite flowers. You stared at the paper tulips until other students started to enter the classroom. You sat on your chair. You opened the envelope and saw a little drawing of two cats, one of them was watching the other play with a toy and it was really cute. A sudden thought popped in your head that one day, you told Albedo how you would like to adopt two cats in the future. You took a deep breath. This was not looking good for your sanity! 

- You put the envelope with the drawing into your notebook and the tulips in your bag, carefully to not crumple them. Did it all mean… that Albedo really was your secret admirer? No matter how much everything that happened in a span of the last days made sense to you, a part of you really couldn't accept the thought. Maybe it was just your insecurity speaking, maybe you were afraid of being wrong so you tried to get rid of the thought altogether, just how you first tried to do with your feelings for Albedo. Oh, you literally started the secret admirer hunt because of your feelings for him! And now it turned out that it's apparently him? What kind of romance novel was it? 

- You sighed. There really was no way of dealing with it and calming your heart other than just confronting the facts, right? You would never know if it was him or not if you didn't ask, and getting rejected was a better option than spending all the time thinking about all this stuff, no matter how much your heart disagreed with you. You would be sad for some time, but at least you would be free of all the pining and yearning. Your head would be free of some worries at least. You talked to your best friends-traitors about it and…

"Oh, sweetie, I am so glad for you!" Lisa said, all sunshine and smugness, "I hope your talk with Albedo goes well!" 

You shushed her, because you were in class and someone could hear it, the someone being Albedo and it would not be cool, thank you very much. 

"Too loud, Lisa!" You sighed (you were sighing a lot lately) and said, "I still don't know how it will go…" 

Lisa and Kaeya just shared a look and you hardly stopped yourself from groaning and leaving the table. Great, you loved your friends very much!

- But you decided to deal with the talk in your own way. You spent half an hour learning how to make origami (you wanted to make a cute bunny, but it turned out to be too much for you and you decided to click the first 'how to make cute butterfly origami in 2 minutes' video you saw and follow this one instead) and another fifteen minutes searching your entire desk for some random blank envelope. You had a plan, a five dollar decorative paper and a single wish. 

- The next morning when Albedo came to the class, it was still around twenty five minutes before the class. He carefully pulled out a paper cat out of his bag and an envelope, and walked toward your desk. Today's drawing was cats again, this time just sleeping next to each other. He wondered if this maybe was enough cats for one week. The next time he will give you another paper animal, a bunny, perhaps? He put the gifts in the middle of your desk and walked toward his own. To his surprise, there was… an envelope lying and a paper butterfly. He carefully opened the envelope and saw a small note with a smiley face next to it. The handwriting on the letter said 'meet me in the school garden before classes!'. 

- Albedo smiled after reading the letter and put it back into the envelope. He put his bag down and without waiting any second more, left the classroom with the garden as his destination. He knew the letter and butterfly was from you, after all he saw your handwriting enough times to recognize the small details of how you write certain letters. He had so, so much to say that pretty drawings and little trinkets couldn't convey and he hoped that you would give him the time and listen to what he always wanted to tell you. 

[dragonfoxgirl]

It's been years.

Naruto was the anime that marked my childhood.

Bleach marked my teens.

I can't deny how invested I was at one point. Speculating like crazy because of the interactions, chemistry and overall bond that Ichigo and Rukia shared.

For years I watched their relationship be depicted closer. The way Tite would draw their eyes fixated on one another with so much emotion. Always in each other's immediate mind. Always drawn together in spreads and promotional covers.

For years, I thought I was blessed to watch their constant evolution as their relationship grew larger and more intricate. I thought, that they for sure would end up together. Because no friendship with that level of love for one another ends in just a simple "friendship" At a certain point, their interactions stopped being overly silly and comedic and the serious, emotional dial was cranked up to 100.

But obviously it didn't end that way.

Seriously, no hate towards Orihime. I think the character is very sweet. Same with Renji. But, looking back, their characters were always the ones with the unrequited love.

There was a point in the story in wich Renji let go of his feelings and moved on and same with Orihime. I don't remember with every exact detail when but I do remember I sensed the shift.

After that, I don't remember any important interaction between Renji and Rukia or Ichigo and Orijime that would make me think those feelings where still there. Or that they where even reciprocated.

Onwards from there, the road had seemed cleared for IchiRuki and that's why the ending of Bleach hit me so hard in the brain.

It felt so.... off.

There's no years worth of content. No countless interactions filled with trust and support. No several looks filled with warmth and longing. No teasing, gentle smiles or overwhelming emotions between the couples who ended up being Canon, atleast in my opinion.

Not when you compare between them and Ichigo and Rukia.

I remember from time to time, the scene where they both think they will never see each other again. That Ichigo would no longer be able to percieve her at all. How much pain, longing and just... love was contained in their eyes. When she started to fade and jerked her head upwards to meet his eyes in such a way.... It's like she wanted to reach out to him, say something but couldn't. Because she is ultimately bound by Tite's limits.

I wonder now.... if that's when he changed his mind, for whatever reason that I, to this day can't seem to sense from the rest of the story.

I wonder if that was his way of saying goodbye. I wonder if that was his way to close that possibility off in an emotional and respectful manner.

Bleach is getting its final arc animated and it's supposed to come out later this year. I'm not... sure if I want to watch it.

Thing is, if Tite really meant that scene as his own private goodbye, then maybe he shouldn't have kept pairing them up afterwards in the very same way as before.

Even to this day, promotional materials and special illustrations are still depicting them together. Even knowing the outcome.

Some people may think not watching a show because your ship didint end up Canon is immature and that why the heck would I care so much about characters being together in a Shonen.

But Bleach is different. Because A LOT of its plot, subject and story rides on Ichigo's and Rukia's relationship. It's not a side story thing and it's not a background filler. It's very much ingrained in the main storyline. Over and over again.

That's why the ending feels so unfaithful. Offbeat.

I chose not to regard it too much. Rather, I prefer to reminisce on the slowly building bond between them. Because that's not erased by the ending.

I guess, I will forever be sour on the fact they work so good together and that for me, it's just a bummer that they can never officially give fruit to years of blooming relationship and chemistry.

Truly an example of something just "meant to be" but will never get to.

Right now, for my life, I prefer to focus on things that can be.