#a sign from the tumblr gods

[gaytragicthing]

GUYS

IF YOU SEARCH MCYT SEXYMAN JOE COMES BEFORE THE OFFICIAL MCYTBLRSEXYMEN ACCOUNT

You know what this means

[samsaster]

[livingjust2beoverdramatizing]

Back to making posters, here's one that is FINALLY in the style of my Young Volcanoes poster, my first popular poster! I know these kinds blow up more so it's a mystery why I never made more.

The background image is the amazing Internal view of the O'Neill cylinder (2015) painting by Don Davis (public domain! go use it in your artworks, moodboard... I loved it so much I uploaded it to Landing!)

[kinokoshoujoart]

hello hello i just wanted to say i love your rock art and you're hilarious and i have a question.. apologies if you've explained this somewhere before but i'm curious if you believe rock was adopted (and along with that, what's going with the picture of the child who is not rock and does rock dye his hair, etc.) and what other rock headcanons you have that you haven't shared yet, if you're willing to share them. (also thank you for doing the 30 days of hm challenge--it's making me so happy to see your daily rock art)

woah i’m so happy you like my art!!! thank you so much for the ask <33 i’m having tons of fun doing these challenges too! thanks for making em!

ohhhh man the adoption theory… i’ve been trying to get to the bottom of this for so long, this answer might get pretty long sorry about that. i’m really glad you asked so i have an excuse to talk abt it :D

⚠️spoilers / taking clown man seriously warning⚠️

i’m thinking rock was first designed as a guest at the inn, but that late in development the connection between him and tei+lou was added

looking at the concept art for tei, his bio says 「元旅人だったせいか、ナミやロックのような人物を好んで泊めるようだ。」 which roughly translates “perhaps due to being a former traveler himself, he seems to enjoy hosting people like nami and rock” uh... hosting, huh? travelers, huh?

tbh rock’s original concept art/description feels to me like. he was meant to be the annoying trust fund kid prodigal son who is blowing his rich parents money to travel on the longest vacation in the world. and everyone responsible for creating this character hates him so so so much

so i think some of the Themes about rock were unintentional at least for the first game, but were rolled with for anwl with the total revision of his character + addition of his heart events and rival heart events. especially with his 2nd rival event with lumina, ESPECIALLY with the ingame rumor lumina isn’t actually related to romana

the photo was there from awl though… so maybe the idea was meant to be hinted at in awl

stuff that makes little sense to me if rock was their son—going from well-tread to lesser tread:

shares no physical features with them aside from having darker skin tone than most of the cast

rock even brings up the fact that he looks nothing like his parents just to get defensive and say it’s none of anyone’s business

does not speak like either of his parents. more apparent in jp. he sounds. “trendy” (he tries)

tei and lou didn’t design the inn with a room for a child… his ass is NOT supposed to be in that room!! it’s for van!!

rock remembers moving to the valley for the first time but there’s not even a hint he was part of their travels, even though tei/lou were traveling until reaching the valley (you’d think rock’d jump at the chance to brag about being well traveled)

the inn is older than the farm your dad and takakura started but rock says he never met your dad (lou and even lumina did meet him)

we can now actually look at all the photos in the inn of tei and lou and their travels, none of them have rock in them.

which brings me to the infamous photo…

other than the fact it isn’t rock, we don’t know anything for sure. both the original and remake have scenes where tei talks about this picture (strange hoe / blessed milker) but he never acknowledges the kid in the photo at all, just talks about the country they visited. it’s bizarre.

the jp flavor text when examining the picture says 「夫婦ふたりの間にうつっている小さな男の子はロックではないようです…」— “It seems that the little boy between the couple is not Rock…”.

there’s a ton of room for guessing, but personally i hc they lost a child. based on what i can see of the picture, the kid has the same hair color and skin color as tei and lou, and a similar build to them…

taking into account that rock dyes his hair, rock’s / his kids’ natural hair color is actually the same exact hex color code as cecilia’s…

if the fact that he dyes his hair is meant to say he’s their son, his natural hair would be black, yeah? but instead it’s cecilia brown

rock’s son also is described oddly specifically as “looking exactly like a small Rock”. you know who doesn’t look like rock’s kid? the kid in the photo :(

funny enough even in anwl it never occurred to me that rock was a natural blond. his eyebrows are dark and … damn those roots. i guess i just assumed he was dyeing his friggin toddlers hair

i also hc they’ve known rock longer than he’s been part of their household, and that he’s either the child of a friend they traveled with in the past or a kid they met in the “country far to the south” they traveled to a long time ago. he reminded them of their lost kid in some way

phew i hope that wasn’t too long… i’ll end on some

lighthearted rock hcs :D

i don’t want to overwhelm anyone so this isn’t all of them… haha…(makes the most overwhelming post ever as a devious little trick)

thank you 4 reading this far :3 please take my OH DEAR GOD WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS WHY WOULD YOU MAKE ROCK REAL wip as a little treat

since he says he’s an “earring and tattoo” kind of guy in anwl. he has a shitty misspelled hidden tattoo that says something like “never don’t give up”

the answer to rock’s question about why there’s no record player at the inn is because he literally yeeted records like frisbees as a kid

similar explanation as to why the guest beds are blocking both balcony doors. they literally had to rockproof the inn

moved out to live independently as soon as possible without any planning, proceeded to get fired and banned from every workplace in the world (failed salaryman)

surprisingly good vocabulary, piss on the poor reading comprehension though

his stash is in the statue in front of his southern window

[dj-wayback]

Great to see you again NWB!!!! Here's a doodle I made as a welcome back present!!!

A welcome back present, that’s so nice! Thank you lots!!!

[witchbydaywitchbynight]

Witches I have a bit of a story lol.

Recently I have not been doing so good, had a melt down yesterday which was fantastic and basically did nothing with my life and just kinda rotted for the whole day.

Now. I got up this morning with a new pep in my step and a vigor to do...something. I decided that I would do some art and then do some witchy research. but lately Loki has been on my mind a lot, like everything I do my train of thought has connected back to Loki somehow. and I felt really bad because I wasn't doing anything with that train of thought.

But like five minutes ago I got the cutest sign from him. I'm sitting her typing away on my laptop and a spider just falls onto my screen. I just watch it appear. and he just skittered around for a bit and when I tried to put him outside, he disappeared. Now I used to be afraid of spiders (like scream and run afraid) but seeing that sign I just smiled and felt really happy.

And I knew Loki was watching just wanting to say hello.

Thank you, Loki.

[nerosdayinanime]

last light Sabito</3

[feluka]

i'm going to be embarrassingly open about something very personal right now: as stupid as this sounds, the finale of GOS2 has entirely reverted me to the moment in my life when i was a bright-eyed lovestruck teenager who put *all* my plans and hopes and dreams for a better future for myself into one relationship, and then got horrifically dumped in a way that made me feel entirely worthless as a person for a long, long time

[queen-of-the-queers]

Hot take: I feel like people love "quirky" traits in characters that are also features of Autism/general neurodiversity, until that character is actually established as having Autism (or people suggest that this might be the case).

[nuclearsplatter]

i actually don't really think it's 'wrong' to eat human meat in general but i can promise the person to be the one to make the big statement about thaat is never gonna be some random white person online

[catastrxblues]

okay actually going to study now

[birdmenmanga]

THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME AND @heyftinally RECONNECT. And putting up with all my color of the sky reblog spamming TwT YOU’RE A REAL ONE AND AN ABSOLUTE GEM OF A PERSON

WAHHH THANK YOU... my mutuals are always like "why're you following 877 blogs. isn't 100, or perhaps 150, enough already?" BUT SEE. THIS WAS MY SECRET TOOL ALL ALONG TO DO THIS JUST ONCE IN MY LIFE!!

You're a special blog to me in a way because you were one of the first blogs who followed me waaaay back in like... 2018? I still have no clue how you found me but you're one of my longest-time mutuals (even though we barely speak to each other). I'm really happy that you two were able to reunite~

[singular-yike]

Tell me about Ink Twink Supreme (aka Tsubakura Enraku)

Oof, that's a tough one, as the name Enraku implies, they are truly a dark and mysterious bird...

But! Nothing ventured, so here goes: The "greatest prodigy in all of history", Tsubakura Enraku, the Loafing Monochrome.

The Enraku En-igma (I love bad puns lol)

Tsubakura is one of, if not straight up, the most mysterious characters in the series so far. So before we dive into them in any specific way, let's take a look at what makes them so unknowable

From an in-universe perspective:

As a character within the world of Len'en, we know so much yet not at all about them. Unlike characters like Yabusame or Hooaka on whom we simply lack information, JynX has practically bombarded us with little juicy bits regarding Tsubakura, yet has never elaborated on them. Here are but a few of them:

Is apparently not a complete stranger to Shinto shrine work (EE Tsubakura's Extra)

They own a sword, whose shape changes depending on their mood (EMS title screen & 2021 Interview with JynX Q154)

They're able to remodel their own body, e.g. to be cold-resistant (RMI Official Profile)

They've once accidentally made a nuclear weapon (BPoHC Scoundrel vs. Shion), although apparently the responsibility doesn't really lie with them (2021 Interview with JynX Q172) (Perhaps they merely oversaw someone else do so at their lab?)

They “dislike” Yabusame, and yet are constantly found together (AWTIF False Spirit Account)

They worked as the general chief researcher at a research lab under the EN corporate group (BotC EE Yabusame 3-4), although they were often a slave to their sponsorships (EE Official Profile)

I've only really picked one from each game, but we can already see that these are already plenty curious enough, and I haven’t even gone into their extremely contradictory personality and ways of acting.

From an out-of-universe perspective:

JynX has once stated that every character is based on something (in fact I would argue that everything in Len’en period is based on something), and while most characters can be tied to a historical/mythological figure, story or even just a concept, you can’t really tie Tsubakura to anything other than the vague concept of... scienceᵀᴹ.

This, of course, by no means detracts from the character at all. In fact, there are plenty other aspects of there character that one may inspect and analyse, like their design, character titles, themes, etc. But it does further the mystery of our favourite ink creature. (And it’s not even really ink...)

So yeah, the long story short is that there’s simply too much about Tsubakura that it’s impossible to go into them all at once. Although feel free to ask about any specific aspect of them, mentioned here or otherwise~

Tsubakura’s Name

Instead, I’ll specifically go into one of what I think to be the most esoteric parts of their character design, especially if you don't know Japanese (and even then it's esoteric, I'll be honest): The name “Tsubakura Enrkau”. (Please note that, for this section, I'll be using the Japanese name order, so "Enraku Tsubakura")

Enraku (燕楽) Tsubakura (玄鳥), the four Japanese characters in this name respectively mean "swallow (as in the bird)" (燕), "joy/fun/relaxed/comfort" (楽), "black/mysterious" (玄) and "bird" (鳥). Here we see possibly the most important part of their name, that they have a "Bird's Name".

In Enraku, we are able to split the word with its pronunciation exactly into "en" (燕) and "raku" (楽). When read, it shares the same pronunciation as a word for "partying/making merry" (��楽), an allusion to their ability "to enjoy that which is enjoyable". In addition, as a bit of a bonus point, although rare, 燕 can be used as an alternative to 宴, so one can argue that "enraku" directly means "partying" as well.

Tsubakura is less direct, you will find that there is no way for the characters 玄 and 鳥 to give the pronunciation of "tsubakura". In fact, you will find that 玄鳥 is an existing combination that is regularly read as "genchou" to mean "swallow" (again the bird). "Tsubakura" is instead one of the possible readings of 燕, which we've already discussed, refers to the "swallow". Thus we see, that JynX mapped one possible way to say swallow onto a different way to write swallow. It's a bit of a stretch of an analogy but it'd be like if I wrote "football" but pronounced it "soccer".

And now for the most obscure part of Tsubakura's name:

In this image from JynX, they demonstrate by highlighting specific components of each character (in black or white) how the four characters in Tsubakura alternate between the secret meanings of "black" and "white", a reference to their monochrome colour scheme. (Common character for black: 黒; For white: 白)

楽 and 鳥 are quite direct, you can find 白 directly in both of them (Although I will be a bit pedantic and say that 鳥 does not actually have a 白 component, it just has a similar-looking part that you can dissect out of it)

燕 is the most obscure, the highlighted components combine to give 北 (North). In the Chinese philosophy of the Five Phases (五行 wǔxíng), water is associated with the cardinal direction of the north, as well as the colour of black, hence the hidden "black" in 燕.

Finally, as previously mentioned, 玄 can simply mean "black" on its own.

And that, I think, will do for this preliminary exploration into Tsubakura Enraku. Let us continue looking forward to their many exploits in the future :)

[hydrachea]

[leafatlaw]

in an absolute insane turn of events i find out that my own person reading of Dracula is only slightly ahead of Tumblrs book club reading of the same book.

[concert-bflat]

has Anyone Else been getting just a huge increase in bot follows or is it just me

like I kid you not I’ve gotten like at least five today and it’s getting a bit annoying helppp