#kiki and sixty

[femalecelebrityoftheday]

Wednesday's female celebrity of the day is Kiernan Shipka. There's only one Kiki Shipship. This is the sixty ninth(!) time she's been FCOTD.

[heyitsjooooanne]

265

One room.

Two hundred and sixty-five packages.

A young man decides that he's had enough…

Author's Note: Inspired by a Korean musician with questionable behavior concerning his package deliveries.

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My friend Holden liked to collect packages.

Actually wait, no.

I'm sorry.

He liked to hoard packages.

Ah.

See?

That’s much better.

But back to what I was saying.

This dumbass liked to hoard his own packages.

Let me show you what I mean.

It was a cold, January day, the birds were migrating, couples were cuddling, casseroles were baking, and—

Okay, I'll just cut the bullshit and get right to it.

See, Holden and I (my name is irrelevant), were part of a small group of rich online influencers.

Now, don't go throwing that rotten fruit at us just yet.

Yes, we posted videos on social media, but we treated the gig like actual jobs, which they were.

 And not to brag, but those videos gave us both a hefty sum of money.

Read: I am currently a millionaire at the time of writing this.

Anyway, Holden and I lived together as platonic roommates while we both did god-knows-what outside of the apartment we lived in. Which was fine by me.

So fast-forward to sometime in early 2017 when we were both 24.

It was damn cold, our heater was broken, and there I was, minding my own business (I was playing a video game in my bedroom) when this stupid son of a bitch walked in and said...

"Here's your birthday gift."

One: My birthday was in November.

Two: He bought that birthday gift for me the previous year for the previous year's birthday!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“You’re kidding, right?”

“What?”

And if you're wondering how that could've happened, I'll tell you how.

He hoarded packages and never opened them, so naturally when he ordered something for me online, he tossed it aside and never bothered opening it.

Sigh.

Yes, I needed to actually write that out.

And that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Two years later, I had finally gotten enough money for my own place, so I moved into another room a few floors down from our old room, which was now Holden’s.

But I would occasionally go over to his room to hang out and film videos for our individual channels.

There was a time when I had to watch my two-year-old nephew (read: his cat) for a few days while he was visiting his family.

The problem?

I was bored out of my mind.

Because I had already used up all of my data.

And it wouldn’t be renewed until the next day due to a “system error.”

Also, the WiFi didn’t work.

Now, I love Coco.

He’s like a real-life version of the cat from “Kiki’s Delivery Service.’

But all he does is sleep, cuddle, and look absolutely adorable.

Great for relaxing, but not so great when you’re itching to do something.

So I decided to count all the unopened packages in Holden’s "delivery room."

He called it that, not me.

Ignoring his poor taste in naming rooms, I counted every single package in that room, and it all led to just one number.

265.

He ordered two hundred and sixty-five damn things, and he didn't open a single one of them, other than him randomly finding a package and going "oh! I forgot I ordered this for you ‘X’ number of years ago."

In case, you’re wondering, yes, Coco is still alive to this day.

I know.

It’s a shock to me that someone like him could keep a living creature alive for that long too.

But don't worry.

This ended up biting him in the ass later on.

Because remember when I said he and I were part of a group of rich online influencers?

Well...

Actually, it hasn't been that long, so this is still a sore spot for me to think about.

But I'll push through it.

.

.

.

.

Jesus, how many "birthing" references can I make in a single post?

Meh.

I'll just get on with it.

So this group was made up of ten people, myself and Holden included.

Seven guys and three girls.

And we were all super close with each other.

I'd even go so far as to say we were all friends.

In 2020, one person from our group got sick.

Her name was Emily.

We had dated a few years before then, but we eventually broke up because we each wanted different things.

She wanted kids.

I didn’t.

But we ended up being pretty good friends after our breakup.

Anyway, I probably don't have to tell you what she got.

The point is, she got it.

My last image of Emily was her laughing at a stupid joke that her boyfriend made as they both got into an Uber to go back to their hotel.

We had all been partying at a club that night.

#richpeoplethingsssss

And then six weeks later, I received a call from her boyfriend telling me that she had died.

Shot down like a fly.

Just like that.

After that, they all started falling down like dominoes.

One after another.

Trust me when I say that a virtual funeral is not any better than a real one.

And when you're forced to "attend" nine of them (a relative of mine also died) in the span of a year, it really does something to you.

"Forced" might not be the right word to use here since I attended them all voluntarily, but...

Now, you can believe in whatever conspiracy you want, but the point is that people we knew died.

And if you're wondering why Holden and I didn't get sick...

Honestly, this is a little embarrassing to write down, but...

Holden and I got a great opportunity to try out this new game before things got crazy, and...

We spent two weeks in our own rooms playing it.

Then we had to stay in quarantine.

Then we had to wear masks everywhere.

Combine that with the fear mongering news anchors, my hypochondria, and you've got two dudes ready to wear hazmat suits outside.

Or at least, I was.

I didn't though.

(I couldn't find a legit one online.)

It's easy for me to laugh at the ridiculousness of this now, but at the time, it was a Hellscape.

Finally, in 2022, I just snapped.

I don't know what it was.

Could it have been that it was May 14th and that was the day that Emily had died two years earlier?

Maybe.

All I remember is going into Holden's “delivery room” because a damn fly had flown in there and I was trying to kill it.

I swatted with the fly swatter and missed, which caused a package on top of a pile (yes, he had piles) to drop down to my feet.

I picked it up and shook it, and it sounded like a bag of chips.

I was already angry with the fly for getting in through the vent, so I was already pissed off by this point.

So, not caring that I was committing a literal crime, I opened the package in frustration.

It was a bag of cookies made exclusively in Japan.

A favorite of one of the friends who had passed away in 2020.

His name was Kareem.

After that, I just saw red.

I'd realized then that I'd had enough of Holden and his complacent bullshit.

I barged into his bedroom without knocking and threw the bag of cookies in his face.

I think he was live streaming.

Maybe a game or something.

After that, it was a blur of us yelling at each other and Holden getting upset at me for interrupting his stream and opening up one of his packages.

No, shit, dude. Someone had to.

After it was over, I rushed back to my own room, fuming.

The next day, I invited my boyfriend (#birepresent!) to stay at my place for a while.

Holden would eventually knock on my door a week later.

I was still angry, so I told my boyfriend to ignore him.

The next morning, my boyfriend told me he had to go out and do something, so I stayed in my  room alone.

But the fight between Holden and I kept nagging at me.

I knew I couldn’t let that be our last interaction with each other.

So I went over to his room.

I knocked, but there was no answer.

Feeling a sense of urgency, I put in the pin number for his door lock and in an unsurprising twist, it worked.

It was his birthday.

>_<

After I was in, I immediately went over to the "delivery room” and found Holden sitting cross-legged on the floor gliding a sharp kitchen knife across the taped end of a package that was actually a box.

I looked to my left and saw several packages opened up with their contents discarded in a pile next to them.

It was so surreal, I couldn't believe my eyes.

Was my friend Holden actually opening these packages????

I bit my tongue to avoid saying something snarky and settled on...

"Need some help?"

We spent the rest of the day opening the packages.

We even shed a few tears because it seemed like every package was an old gift that Holden had forgotten to give to one of our dearly departed friends.

Finally, at around 11:45 PM (I had my phone with me), we finished opening up every single package that he had neglected over the years.

It was like a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders.

And even though he didn't say it, I could tell that Holden was relieved too.

The next morning, while we were both enjoying a bowl of oatmeal at his dining table, I asked him why he had taken so long to open the packages.

"Don't tell me you really forgot."

"Well it's just that..."

He sighed.

Then he ate another spoonful of oatmeal.

"You're gonna give me shit for saying it."

"We've been friends for over ten years. I've already seen your shit. Literally."

A tiny laugh from him.

"Come on, man. Now's not the time to be a passive shithead."

"Alright. Fine."

He put his spoon back in his bowl.

"I was thinking about it last night, and I realized that the reason I never gave our friends their gifts was because... I never appreciated the time I had with them. I mean, getting opportunities to travel to other countries. Speaking at Cons all the time. I don't know..."

He looked down at his bowl.

"I guess I always assumed that since we were rich that there would always be enough time. Like we could buy more time if we needed to."

"That's stupid."

"I know. But it's what I thought."

I leaned back in my chair.

"So what do you want to do now?"

Holden leaned forward.

"Maybe I should send all the packages for our friends who have passed on to their families?"

"That could work."

Holden and I spent the next couple of days calling everyone, but no one wanted the gifts. They were all items that could be ordered in the exact same way online, so there was nothing really special about them.

Nothing personalized or unique.

Three days later, by sheer luck, I overheard these college students talking about a donation drive on their campus.

I immediately ran home (well, I ran to the subway) and told Holden all about it.

He agreed to it.

I really should've recorded the looks on the students' faces when they saw Holden dropping a big-ass box of miscellaneous shit into their donation box.

And that wasn't even half of it!

The school didn't want anyone else to miss out on an opportunity to donate something, so they cut him off at about twenty items.

But that was just the beginning.

A professor told us the phone numbers of places where Holden and I could donate his box of thingsTM, and we spent the rest of the day going to every single one of them until finally we were down to a box of thirteen items.

Unfortunately, we had already gone to all the donation centers in the city.

Not knowing what to do next, we decided to call Uber again and head back home.

The next morning (take a shot of water every time I say this), I was scrolling through social media when I saw a clip of someone announcing a giveaway that they were hosting.

And it hit me.

Like, literally hit me because Holden accidentally bumped into me while trying to get to the kitchen to make breakfast for himself.

"Sorry, dude."

"You should host a giveaway on your channel!" I blurted without thinking.

Holden turned around quickly.

"Huh?"

I got up from my seat at the dining room table.

"A giveaway! That's how we're gonna get rid of those thirteen items."

Holden crossed his arms and raised one eyebrow.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Got any ideas?"

"Hmm..."

Two weeks later, I went with Holden to the post office and watched him hand a box that contained a really fancy black jacket worth eight hundred dollars that was going to a very lucky winner in Oregon, to an employee behind the desk.

And that was that.

Two hundred and sixty five packages, finally gone.

I glanced over at Holden and noticed that his eyes were getting shiny.

But I didn't say anything.

Instead, I put an arm around his shoulder reassuringly.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =  =  =

Author's Note: I actually think this would make a very good short film. Maybe something for the holiday season or whatever. Also, 265 is supposed to be Seventeen’s debut date scrambled up (May 26th, 526 = 265).

[catboymccartney]

ok uhhh the dio + jotaro playlists r "done" [have enough songs for me to be satisfied to post them LOL. more songs to be add ofc] i'm gonna list the polnareff playlist i have too since i never did that <3 all my playlists are songs that define them but i also try to go for what they'd listen to as well :-]!!

DIO - 25 songs

Confetti - Cold Cave

The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul - XTC

How Soon Is Now? - The Smiths

Seconds - The Human League

Cities In Dust - Siouxsie and the Banshees

Dreams Never End - New Order

Love Like Blood - Killing Joke

Seattle - Public Imagine Ltd.

Personal Jesus - Depeche Mode

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything - Bauhaus

Happy - Red Lorry Yellow Lorry

My Possession - Ministry

Tasting Static - Panther Modern

Smells Blood - Kensuke Ushio

Exces de Vitesse - Marie Davidson

Bela Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus

Wax And Wane - Cocteau Twins

Lucretia My Reflection - Sisters Of Mercy

It's A Sin - Petshop Boys

Master And Servant - Depeche Mode

Seedy Films - Soft Cell

Liebe Auf Den Ersten Blick - DAF

This Night Has Opened My Eyes - The Smiths

The Passion of Lovers - Bauhaus

Transmission - Joy Division

JOTARO - 32 songs

We All Stand - New Order

Don't Fall - The Chameleons

Eighties - Killing Joke

Imagination - Sad Lovers & Giants

Sub-culture - New Order

Mad World - Tears For Fears

Dazzle - Siouxsie and the Banshees

Second Skin - The Chameleons

Black Celebration - Depeche Mode

Decades - Joy Division

Leave Me Alone - New Order

Dead Souls - Joy Division

A Means to an End - Joy Division

Shadowplay - Joy Division

Lazy Calm - Cocteau Twins

One Way Or Another - Blondie

Creep - Radiohead

Geography I - Front 242

Life Goes On - The Damned

Run Away [The Escape Song] - Oingo Boingo

But Not Tonight - Depeche Mode

Blanket Song - Kikagaku Moyo

Dear Prudence - Siouxsie and the Banshees

The Damned - Plasmatics

Dead Man's Party - Oingo Boingo

Just Another Day - Oingo Boingo

Disorder - Joy Division

Assimilate - Skinny Puppy

Our Lady - Executive Slacks

Anywhere Out of the World - Dead Can Dance

POLNAREFF - 56 songs

Little Lamb Dragonfly - Wings

She Wolf - Shakira [joke]

Hips Don't Lie - Shakira [joke]

Part Of Me - Katy Perry [joke]

Iris's Song [Version Two] - Vashti Bunyan

She Wants Me [To Be Loved] - The Happy Fits

Michelle - The Beatles

Walk Like an Egyptian - The Bangles

Dancing Queen - ABBA

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! [A Man After Midnight] - ABBA

You Gave Me The Answer - Wings

Hold Me Tight - The Beatles

When I'm Sixty Four - The Beatles

Coming Up - Paul McCartney

We're Off You Know - Klaatu

Take A Chance On Me - ABBA

Honey, Honey - ABBA

Walking on Sunshine - Katrina & The Waves

Aujourd'hui c'est les vacances - Petit Fantome

Pour que tu m'aimes encore - Les soeurs Bouley

With A Little Help From My Friends - The Beatles

Funky Town - Lipps Inc.

Don't Go Breaking My Heart - Elton John & Kiki Dee

Come On Eileen - Dexys Midnight Runners

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da - The Beatles

Crocodile Rock - Elton John

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go - Wham!

Good Day Sunshine - The Beatles

La vie en rose - Louis Armstrong

Fernando - ABBA

9 to 5 - Dolly Parton

You Spin Me Round [Like A Record] - Dead Or Alive

I'm Coming Out - Diana Ross

Junk - Paul McCartney

Careless Whisper - George Michael

[Just Like] Starting Over - John Lennon

Listen To What The Man Said - Wings

In The Summertime - Mungo Jerry

It Only Takes A Moment - Michael Crawford

Somebody Made For Me - Emitt Rhodes

My Way - Frank Sinatra

Promises I've Made - Emitt Rhodes

Someplace Else - George Harrison

Heaven Is A Place On Earth - Belinda Carlisle

Love Me, Please Love Me - Michel Polnareff

Sous quelle etoile suis-je ne? - Michel Polnareff

Last Christmas - Wham!

Beautiful Night - Paul McCartney

The Winner Takes It All - ABBA

I've Just Seen A Face - The Beatles

Believe - Cher

I'll Be Back Up on My Feet - The Monkees

I Get Around - The Beach Boys

Felicita, ta ta - Raffaella Carra

Who Feelin' It - Tom Tom Club

[daisyneptune]

Hello, it’s Sunny! Good news, my Secret Santa gave me a visit yesterday. I like the fact we’re all classic rock blogs or fans. It does help us find something talk about and bond over. Other fandoms should do it too. So I see you like anime. I do too but I’ve been watching less lately. What shows do you like? Do you like Studio Ghibli films? I’ve watched quite a few of them myself starting with either Spirited Away or Kiki’s Delivery Service. They are so stunning visually. The music in them is wonderful too. As for shows, I didn’t watching them until I watched the original Fruits Basket show with my brother and then eventually Naruto and Naruto Shippuden (which I still haven’t finished). I’d like to hunt for new shows to watch so recommendations would be nice. :)

There’s another 60s band that reminds me of The Zombies called The Left Banke. They’re a lot more obscure but very very good. The lead singer also reminds me of Colin Blunstone a bit. They had good hits like Walk Away Renee, Pretty Ballerina, and Desiree. Shadows Breaking Over My Head is really good too.

I’ve never listened to 60s music from other countries besides US and UK. I’m curious to know what music in Japan sounded like. By the way do you have any favorite anime openings/endings or anime music in general? I really like the classic Pokemon theme song myself.

By the way, the types of history I love the most is US history, European history, and Ancient history (esp Greece, Rome, Egypt), film history, women’s history,and black history. This semester I took classes about The Holocaust, Modern Europe, and California History. Very interesting and but also very sad at times. How do you like your classes? What exactly do you learn in emergency management? My dad’s an EMT/Ambulance driver. I’m guessing you probably learn how to work with people like him. Anyways, I got class. Talk to you later! Bye! ☀️

I do like anime and manga! Most of the things I like are older, though. I'm pretty bad about keeping up with new things in all forms of media ;; I do like Ghibli films! Kiki's Delivery Service is probably my favorite. Right now, it's about the time of year I start wanting to rewatch Dear Brother, which is a gorgeously animated soap-opera-levels-of-melodramatic show from the early 90s. (It's based on a manga from the 70s, which is when shoujo melodrama was at its peak, so that explains it.) I feel like a grandma having to watch her "stories" when I put that one on. I can't stop watching!

Look at it! Even little moments like this just look so nice. :3

Ooh, I love the Left Banke and baroque pop from the 60s in general! Walk Away Renee was one of my favorite songs I heard on the oldies station as a kid, and Pretty Ballerina sometimes makes me legitimately emotional (but a lot of things do tbh).

Music in Japan in the 60s was a lot of covers of US/UK artists, but a lot of the time, lyrics were translated into Japanese. If you have Spotify, a few compilation albums you can check out are Monster A-Go-Go, Slitherama, Big Lizard Stomp!, and Sixties Japanese Garage-Psych Sampler. The first three have some weird interludes of music from kaiju films that the person who put the compilations together threw in, but they're still really good. Also, you can find whole albums by The Mops and The Tempters on there.

There are also some compilations put out a while ago called Nippon Girls (vol. 1 / vol. 2) and G.S. I Love You, which I found on YouTube. As far as music from all over, a compilation I really like is Nuggets II: Original Artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond. I found that one on CD on eBay so I listen to it in my car sometimes.

I was always interested in natural disasters and things like that when I was a kid (I was a nerd who would read the 'what to do in case of emergency' manual we had at home), so I thought emergency management would be an interesting thing to pursue. Basically, emergency managers are the ones who create response plans for disasters in their areas, coordinate the response when the disaster does occur, and keep everyone up-to-date with the latest information gathered from people on the front lines (like EMTs). I'm good with organizing information and things like that, so I thought it would be a good fit.

Now that I've gone on for way too long ... I hope you have a lovely Wednesday and the rest of your classes go well!

[berattelse]

The first thing you saw when entering the Dangerous Beauty exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was a vintage dress from Versace's 1992-1993 "Miss S&M" collection. Straps of quilted leather crisscrossed the throat and décolletage of a headless mannequin, each strap adorned with a dollar-sized brassy coin bearing the head of a howling Gorgon, a play on Versace's usual logo of a placid Medusa face. The overall effect was oddly militaristic, a sort of four-star dominatrix look. The exhibit, subtitled "Medusa in Classical Art," was tiny, tucked away in a single room in the mezzanine of the Greek and Roman art collection next to the study gallery. So perhaps the dress was there to grab the attention of tourists who might accidentally have wandered up from the floor below, a broad indoor courtyard across which a young Hercules, lion-skin coat held meaningfully over his arm, stares impatiently at a statue of his older self. This is often the purpose, after all, of women's bodies and the clothing that adorns them, especially clothing that highlights the body's constraints. Clothing like this exists to catch the eye. In this case, though, gawkers lured by "Miss S&M" were deposited into a room full of artifacts depicting not only Medusa but a coven of other female creatures of antiquity. Gorgon faces -- both horrible ancient ones, with tusks and beards, and later ones, whose placid classical symmetry is broken only by a few demure snakes at the temples -- stared out from roof tiles, armor, cups, and cameos. A piece of pottery showed Scylla with her snake legs splayed, a pack of dog heads lunging out of her crotch. Sirens perched their bird bodies on plates and mirrors. On the side of one shallow goblet, a Sphinx was painted in loving miniature, crouching over a male victim who appeared to plead for his life. Chasing after the female torso in her chic bondage, in other words, landed you in a nest of monsters. The sixty pieces in the exhibit were intended to track the way Medusa and her counterparts became subject, despite their monstrousness, to principles of beauty. A gold pendant with a Gorgon's face from 450 BCE showed a grimacing creature with sharp teeth, a protruding tongue, a creased brow, a knobby chin. An exquisite nineteenth-century cameo, displayed in the same case, showed a perfect, precise neoclassical profile -- which is to say, she looked a bit like Graham Chapman, but that was the style at the time. Apart from the coil of snake at the crown of her head, like a fascinator, and another knotted scarflike beneath her chin, she had no visible markers of monstrousness. You'd easily mistake her for a proper young lady with Bohemian hair and odd taste in accessories -- the youngest Downton Abbey daughter, maybe. A Siren on one oil vessel from the sixth century BCE sported a full beard, though Sirens were generally coded as female, and had no arms; its head sat atop an awkward, turkey-like bird body. Catty-corner was a 1910 French woodcut in which a Siren, despite having developed bear arms and a fish tail to go with her wings, was still depicted as a beautiful bare-breasted feminine figure with a crown of flowing hair. Creatures conceived as repulsive were gradually reimagined as appealing, even seductive -- at least on the surface. The monstrosity remains, but it's no longer visible. "In a society centered on the male citizen, the feminization of monsters served to demonize women," writes curator Kiki Karoglou in an accompanying bulletin. The later monsters don' tjust look more beautiful and more feminine; they look more human, underscoring the idea that monstrousness is somehow the human woman's natural condition. As monsters became more pleasing to the eye, they were defanged -- beauty being equated, in classical Greece, with moral goodness -- and, paradoxically, made more dangerous. A Medusa with tusks, whiskers, and a grotesque distended tongue could be easily pegged as a threat; a human-looking Medusa could fly under the radar, until you tried to brush her hair. The resulting girl-faced beasts, read the exhibition text, foreshadow "the conceit of the seductive but threatening female that emerges in the late nineteenth century in reaction to women's empowerment." When a feminine face might belong to a secret Gorgon, any woman could be a monster. Perhaps every woman was.

Zimmerman, Jess. Introduction to Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology. Beacon Press, 2021.

[hakesbros]

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[myseancedetravail]

JOHN GALLIANO

Galliano arrived in Paris in 1990, a nearly destitute punk with unmistakable talent and an unrivaled reputation for personal excess. At the time, many designers were operating under the influence of Japanese-inspired minimalism á la Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto. The eighties were over and the era of the pouffe was out of vogue. The models, often walking wearing subtly tailored black clothing, would walk quietly down the runway under dim lights. Galliano was appalled by this. He thinks about fashion the was Spielberg thinks about movies: he believes in spectacle, complication, suspense. Suzy Menkes commented his fall 2002 show, calling it ”the most staggering example of self-indulgent luxury since Louis XIV held court at Versailles”, where Galliano also had presented said collection. Critics often dismissed Galliano as a sort of dressmaking Barnum - and his clothes were exquisite, but he was too much of a showman - and his outfits often seemed more suited to the pageantry of public relations than to profits. 

The man is controversial to say the least, but non the less a genius. Crazy genius one might say. Each collection of his 1990’s presentations was based on a fantastical narrative. For example, the Suzy Sphinx show, show a punk schoolgirl who dreamt of cinema and ancient Egypt was taken from her English girl’s school through Egypt to Hollywood where she starred as Cleopatra in a film, seated on a golden throne wearing a dress made entirely of golden safety pins (AW1997). Galliano’s historical research ranges far and wide. For him it’s a dialogue between past and present. While the starting point is factual, the imagination is let loose to run wild. His presentations were highly theatrical and characterized by highly developed sense of theatre. In 1984, his graduate collection from St. Martin’s, Les incroyables, was heavily influenced by a contemporary production of Danton at the National Theatre in London where John worked as a dresser. The immersion of theatricality might also have been informed by Galliano’s immersion in the London club scene of the early to mid-1980s, in which the relentless reinvention of the self through costume and makeup was the currency which guaranteed entry to the clubs. 

A common narrative in his works is to collage together motif from different cultures, juxtaposing them against each other. While at other times he morph references and motifs from different periods and cultures into a single fusion. John is particularly drawn to Edwardian actresses, demimondaines and women of independent means, all of whom were identifiable by the striking, outré or ””exotic”” appearances. Flamboyant women of wealth, such as Nancy Cunard and Marchesa Casati. Also bohemians such as Misia Sert, Kiki de Montpernasse, Gaby Deslys, and the great courtesan Liane de Pougy. These real women were mixed with references from popular culture of the past. It is difficult to imagine a Galliano design which is not a visual quotation form a pre-existent source. 

Givenchy appointed Galliano in 1995, to people’s surprise (including the sixty-eight-year-old Givenchy himself which learned about it when reading a press release. Galliano became the first British designer to take over a major French fashion house in nearly a century and a half - since Charles Frederick Worth was appointed by Napoleon III to dress Èmpress Eugénie. He did a great job at the house, but people were not ready for him yet, with his profile being highly controversial for the role. 

After John got hired at Dior, we was able to create his shows on a much grander scale. Increasingly he began to use more theatrical techniques for this presentations, replacing runway light with theatre lighting and minutely choreographing each section of the show three days before premiere. The conventional parade down a catwalk was replaced by a walk through series of connecting rooms dressed like film sets through which the story was told. Sometimes it almost looked like a salon presentation. Only a very small number of people experienced the old-fashioned intimacy of a Galliano show, seated close enough to see the fine detailing of the model’s clothes, like the original Dior customers in the 1940’s and 1950’s. An haute couture collection which would not appear in the shops, would almost certainly inly be experienced through images. In that way the consumer continually strive for the idea of Galliano, since it’s for very few people could be a materialized reality.

[adsin1960smusicmagazines]

Kiki Dee (1968)

[chicinsilk]

Model Kiki Olsen wearing sailor's crew cap in ticking-striped denim by John Frederics, photo by Louis Faurer, Mademoiselle, 1962

[femalecelebrityoftheday]

Thursday's female celebrity of the day is Kiernan Shipka. It's very easy to post Kiki after there are new images of her. But she also always deserves it! This is the sixty sixth time she's been FCOTD.

[embellishme]

Kiki Willems for Chanel Fall 2016 Haute Couture

[daydreamrry]

the inspiration of the film has to be late sixties because if they attempted to be historically accurate then technically before 1964 there would've been a very high chance that Kiki's character would not have been on the same premises as a guest. Again not sure why the 50s angle was the one they wanted to market when the 60s would've been simply much more fitting to say and I'm not saying at all that it needs to be historically accurate but why go out of your way to market how historically inaccurate it is? I will never understand that woman.

It’s supposed to be the 1950s because that was the decade of the white housewife. Which is what the men are trying to replicate. Submissive housewives. It’s also what the original script was. The 60s had a different cultural climate in the US that was more liberating and women didn’t take it anymore, the pill was introduced, sexual liberation, rise of divorce and single women, etc... Olivia just isn’t smart enough to pull inspiration from the right decade that she was aiming on portraying.

exactly.

[mollywauk]

Another Rewatch Bonus: Remember when Beau (and Marisha) mentioned in Episode 2 how jails were not her favored terrain and we all thought she was just joking, referring to the times it happened to Kiki?

It definitely stopped being funny once we found out WHY sixty-three episodes later. It's how she lost her first love Tori.

Gotta love how a past joke and the expectations that came with it was turned on its head.

!!! This completely!

There have been a few offhand remarks that they've made (and Molly just straight up lying about backstory) that hit so different when you know what actually happened. Like in episode 6 there's a brief moment when Nott tells someone in Alfield that she also experienced a similar attack once and nobody really picked up on it but it's literally the basis of her backstory. Or the fact that Molly lied about his family being hunted down by a sect of fanatic priests but in a sense he was kind of being persistently approached by the likes of Kree who was a fanatical zealot of the Nonagon and I'm pretty sure she was a cleric of the Cougnouza or something equally as pseudo religious. So many threads and hints that I never picked up on and never remembered by the time reveals were happening, and it's so much fun

[sabraeal]

All That Remains, Chapter 8: The Flower Garden of the Woman Who Could Conjure [Part 5]

[Read on AO3]

Obiyukiweek 2021, Day 3: Strength Upright: Compassion, Courage, Self-Control Reversed: Weakness, Doubt, Discord

Once upon a time, a troll makes a mirror.

Is that not how we started this story, so long ago? How so many start: a vile creature forges an object. Who and what change in the telling; a troll makes a mirror, a god conjures a box, knowledge grows in a garden. In the end, it is all the same: what is once contained is opened, unwitting. Or lost, foolishly, in a heart so cold and cruel that it becomes bent to another purpose entirely.

But that is merely an allegory, a fiction composed to cover the raw edges we leave when we rub against each other. For that is the truth, is it not? There is no fell creature, no capricious and omnipotent beings to blame for our misery. There is only us, carving our place in our story by smoothing pieces off another. A snow queen is not made from frost and cold but by the blades of others, slicing slivers from her flesh until only ice remains.

That is the truth we cannot bear: the only monsters we face are the ones we have made. The only poisons we drink are those human hands have brewed.

And it starts like this, always: a girl in a garden, remembering the image of a rose, and wondering, how could I have I forgotten?

“You were quiet at dinner tonight.” Shirayuki hasn’t been at court long-- or rather, in court, privy to all its secret signals and capricious undercurrents-- but she knows that this is as close to an “are you all right?” as Haki can come. If confrontation is only allowed the glint of a knife, affection is stifled to a hint of warmth, a fire made in a room one is forbidden to venture. “I hope that the meal agreed with you.”

A flash of pharmacy white flutters at the corner of her vision, frustratingly out of reach. It’s been so long since she’s been there, since she’s thought of anything but silverware and schottische; when she tries it’s like a hundred voices shouting at once, each demanding to be heard. Just like being at Lilias, heads bent over a knotty problem--

“Shirayuki.” The consort does not crouch; it’s best, Lady Mihoko often remind her, to pretend one has no anatomy beneath the waist. But Haki does perch on a cushioned stool, her brows drawn tight over the elegant line of her nose. “You are not...indisposed, I hope?”

A solid shake dispels the fog mired around her. “What? Oh, no! I only...” It would be a mistake to speak of loam between her fingers, of the satisfaction of hearing a pod snap from its stalk. “I didn’t have much to say with my, erm, conversational partners.”

Royal brows raise to stunned arches. “Is that so? I would have thought you’d find much in common with Lord Kazunori and Lord Seiichii.”

They had both been older men, southern lords drawn to court for Seiran’s summit. Kind enough, but they spoke to her as they would their own daughters, which is to say: warmly, but brief. Not of any topics that one might sink their teeth into, lest it leaving lines around her mouth.

“I think they were more interested in talking to each other than to me,” she admits. In part because of her sex, and in part because-- well, her body may have been in that chair, obscuring the twining gods and goddess painted across it, but her mind had been a wing away, wondering if it was yet time to harvest the roku berries, or whether this year’s crop of apprentices knew akegi from yura shigure. “It seems there’s much to discuss before they all meet for, ah...discussion.”

Haki hands her a rueful smile. “There always is.” With a sigh, she sweeps to standing, as statuesque as any marble in Wistal’s halls. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing for it. I’ll have to ask the majordomo to find you some more scintillating seatmates tomorrow.”

“Ah..!” Tomorrow. Never had a day seemed so far away, so much more than a handful of hours between dawn and dusk. At Lilias, the nights had wavered between seasons, some so short she hardly slept between sun set and rise; and others so long that she woke in darkness, only to leave the lab in the same. But still, none seemed so long as this, and for no reason at all.

“Is something wrong?” Haki turns to her again, concern rumpling the curved lines of her mouth. “Do you have plans...?”

“No!” Shirayuki rushes to assure her. “It’s only...you mentioned dinner, and suddenly I felt so...”

“Weary?” Haki offers, when she won’t. Her eyes soften with mouth to match, smile turning her from heavenly to beatific. “I’m not surprised. You have been hard at work these last few months.”

And hardly anything to show for it, in Lady Mihoko’s learned opinion. Shirayuki bites back a groan. She would be sixty before that woman found her approaching passable, and even then, she still wouldn’t be good enough for a prince’s wife. Not when his children might have some chance, no matter how slim, of seating their sullied bloodline on the throne of Clarines.

“Perhaps you have earned a break.” Shirayuki blinks, staring up into the consort’s glowing face. “A private dinner seems in order. A night of no pressure of expectation.”

It sounds too good to be true. “Oh, no! I couldn’t--”

“Give me but a moment.” Haki hesitates at the door to her boudoir, lips lifted in an impish grin. “Perhaps my good brother might find himself available as well?”

Her mouth snaps shut. It’s been ages since she saw Zen, just the two of them. He came to dinner rarely-- understandable, with the summit only weeks away, and entirely under his purview, despite Seiran’s tacit position as host-- and where he went, Mitsuhide and Kiki went too. Haki had been her closest companion these past few weeks, the only friendly face, but Shirayuki longed for someone who didn’t look at her and see a princess, but--

Nervous energy courses through her, jolting her to her feet. Her hands itch, wanting for something to do, and with no plants to hand, they land upon the package on the receiving table. It’s wrapped in humble brown paper, folds clean and crisp, twine tightly tied. Haki’s medication, she realizes, dropping it from her numb hands. Made in the pharmacy. There’s a note on top-- instructions. She’d recognize them anywhere; after all, she’d written more than a few of them herself.

It’s curiosity that makes her pluck it from where it sits. It’s been ages since she’s been in the lab, but her knowledge hasn’t faded; there’s no harm in seeing whether there are any mistakes. An apprentice could have made this, after all. The dose does, as Garack was so fond of saying, make the poison.

She flips open the card, already flushed with the thought of being useful, but--

It’s not some apprentice’s writing at all. Oh no, she knows this spidery scrawl all too well. It was on every jar at her bench, every treatise she read late into the night.

It’s Ryuu’s.

Ignorance is bliss, they say. Always with a laugh, but stewing beneath it is envy and longing in equal measure. A pining for times past, for a childhood never quite as innocent as we remember.

For that is what we miss: innocence. Not the not-knowing, but state of not needing to know. The trust we felt towards those who always knew in our stead, who kept us safe from the dangers that pressed in around us. The ones who protected us with little lies; the small pauses to omit what might scare us, the careful editing to make our worlds the giddy fantasy we dreamed.

But there comes a day where all children must grow up. There is a day we must know these things for ourselves, so that we may see the world with clear eyes. For even innocence can be a cage, should some other hand try to lock you within it.

Ignorance is bliss, they say, but oh, only if they can keep you from knowing what it is you do not know.

May I ask you a question? the little girl asks, her gaze no longer on the garden, but the horizon beyond. It is bent in her vision, the glass made in such a way that each diamond blows out the edges, warping the world around it. She had never noticed when she looked only at the garden so near to it, but now...

Now the imperfection is all she can see.

Anything, the sorceress replies, her fingers wrapping around the caps of her shoulders. They’re cold, as cold as the glass beneath her palms.

The girl looks at their reflection, at the way the wave of the glass make those fingers bleed into talons. Where have the roses gone?

Shirayuki’s hands tremble, her eyes tracing every last loop, every hurried curve. “I didn’t...”

Haki peers around the jamb, letter folded in her hand. “Did you say something, my dear?”

This is the closest she’s been to Ryuu in months; even from where she holds it, the scene of lavender and akegi shigure waft from its paper. Not scented, not on purpose, but just from being left in a desk’s cubbyhole with his hastily tidied samples. His parchment smelt the same in Lilias, fragrant as the hothouses themselves.

Her chest can hardly contain her breath. “I didn’t realize that Ryuu was overseeing your treatment.”

A shadow flickers over the sorceress’s face, her grip painful for but a moment before she is her usual smiling self. A moment that could have been imagined, if only the girl was so sure it was not.

Roses? the sorceress asks airily. I’ve never grown any roses.

“Excuse me?”

“It only makes sense,” Shirayuki hurries to add, placing the card back atop the package. “He’s taken over for Chief Garack, and she always oversaw the royal--”

“Shirayuki.” Her name is firm from Haki’s lips, just shy of a scold. “I’m quite sorry but...who are you talking about?”

So many tales speak of trust as a blade, one that may be used to cut, that breaks when forged from brittle iron. A weapon, wielded and forgotten on the battlefield once the story is done.

But you and I know better: trust is a spell, woven to protect. It is a shield, unseen but always felt; sense by faith and not by fingers. And when it wavers, it does not break, does not shatter like a blade upon a stone; no, nothing so dramatic as that. Instead, it frays, unwoven one thread at a time, unnoticed until--

Until the hole can no longer be ignored.

She doesn’t leave the consort’s chambers meaning to break her curfew; oh no, when the door closes behind her, Shirayuki has every intention to head straight to her own. Her feet drag beneath her, weary from contorting herself into a mold that barely fits. There’s nothing she’d like more than to divest herself of all these courtly trappings and pass effortlessly into oblivion.

But she turns a corner, her mental map of the palace resolving, and she realizes: in one direction is her room, and in the other, the pharmacy. It’s late, but Ryuu would still be there, committing his last-minute thoughts to page while the offices emptied around him. She misses him, a longing so intense it aches.

It would only be a short visit. If Izana brought her before him in the morning, trying to act as both judge and jury-- well, Ryuu would be her physician, once she and Zen finally managed to make it down the aisle hand-in-hand. It only made sense to keep a cordial relationship with the man who would bear the next branch of the Wisteria tree into the world.

And if she missed him, the boy who straddled the line of friend and brother and son both-- there was no need to explain that to the king. It wasn’t as if Izana made a habit of confessing his ulterior motives to her. Though strangely, she thought he might understand that better than anyone.

Or all but one. And he...

Well, if there was a single person who might know where he went besides her, her feet were carrying her to him now/.

Were you to ask the girl, she would say she had not chosen night on purpose. The sorceress had housed her, fed her, loved her in her way; even with the image of the rose burned behind her eyes, she trusted her still, in the desperate way one does when one knows they should not, but cannot bear to contemplate why.

Opportunity chooses for her; the late afternoon sun burns hot, and when they finish their dinner, the sorceress excuses herself to lay down in the dark, to merely rest her eyes-- and does not wake, not even when the door creaks as the girl slips around it. The moon guides her steps when she walks into the garden, bright as the day itself, but she does not need it: her feet carrying her better than memory could.

There is one there, just as there was this morning: a petal, pink and sweet, fragrance so familiar she knew it even without sight.

Come out, she murmurs, digging her hands into the earth. Come out my lovely, my dear. I have been searching just for you.

A tendril spirals up from the ground, tentative. It flips and flaps, and oh, she is too shocked, too awed to help it. Even still, it finds her, wrapping around her finger, and with a single drop of blood the bush emerges, whole and dirt-smeared, from the soil.

What, it murmurs, impatience tinging its words, took you so long?

In the day, the pharmacy is all rush and chaos: apprentices burning tinctures and ushering patients to their rooms; masters emptying drawers as soon as they are filled, only for other herbalists to hurry to replace them. Guards arrive with injuries and nobles with ailments, no moment ever dull while the doors are open.

But at this hour, when the lords and ladies are all tucked in their beds-- or are at least pretending to be-- and the work is done, the pharmacy sleeps. There is no herbalist at the front desk, only the push bell Ryuu despised when she was his apprentice, since it always meant she would be pulled away from him or he away from his project.

A necessary nuisance, he called it once, and Obi had laughed. Just like me, eh, Miss?

She no longer remembers what she said-- it was early enough when he was one still, though she’d like to think she was too kind to say it-- but now she wishes, even if just for a moment, that she could tell him how much of a gift he was to her. How much he had made tedium bearable, even when she hadn’t known it for what it was.

Instead she bites her lips, rubbing at the ache in her breast. It’s hardly the first time she’s forgotten to say what matters, but-- but this won’t be her last chance. Obi might be away now, but he will be found, and she will tell him...

Everything. Every last thought she had since the moment they last spoke; her apologies and her worries, her failures and her triumphs. Because Obi hearing them-- that’s what makes them real.

Her hand wraps around the third door’s knob by habit; even now she expects to open it and see her projects spilled across her desk, to see a curtain closed beneath the other, and a window open between them. To see it waiting for her the way her heart waits for them, empty and waiting to be filled.

But there’s nothing of them there anymore. Nothing besides memories that no longer fit over the space it has become.

Her feet carry her onward, down to the last room, a sliver of light slipping across the hall where it’s been left ajar. She still expects to see a curled mass of blonde hair bent over the desk, long tables sprawled with books and half-finished studies, a bottle of roka medicinally sitting in the corner. But instead--

Instead it is a dark one, a riotous shrubbery of walnut and teak in desperate need of pruning. That had been her job in Lilias, along with Yuzuri’s helpful hands, but is seems no one here has yet talked the Chief Herbalist to task.

Give it a few years, Garack would tell her, and he’ll have herbalists as eager to get into his hair as you three were with me.

She leans against the jamb, a sigh slipping past where her heart clogs her throat. Ryuu had once fit beneath a desk half this size, and now he towers over it even seated, looking more and more like Shidan with each passing day, a man overgrown by time and deadlines.

“Ryuu.” It’s a palpable hit when their eyes meet. Everything else about him might change, but that gaze, so wide and thoughtful-- that never does.

Until now. One moment they spark, a fire lit behind blue glass, and the next...

It gutters, his gaze slipping away.

“Shirayuki.” His voice is so much deeper than in her memory, so much older. And colder too. “Excuse me, Lady Shirayuki. Is there something you need?”

“No.” She clings to the doorway, too aware of how fine her dress is, of how little it belongs in this place, his sanctum sanctorum. How little she belong here, now. “I saw a card you wrote to the consort, and I...wanted to see you.”

“A card?” His eyebrows twitch; she can no longer tell if it’s in surprise or confusion, not on this stranger’s face. “Ah. The powder for her migraines. Did you want some as well?”

“No, I’m-- I’m well.” It feels like a lie, even as she says it. It wouldn’t have, only hours ago. “I just...I’m here for you.”

His knuckles blanch where he grips his pencil. “Well, you’ve seen me. I trust you know your way out.”

You’re too late, too late, the roses say, their sing-song jangling in her ears. I’ve been hidden away for so long, and even now I cannot find him. The betrayal in their voice is thick when they ask, How could you forget us, your flower and your boy, when we have always grown together?

“Ryuu.” It leaves her lips cracked, broken; her mouth no longer knows how to form the shape that calls to him. “I know it’s been...a while, but please don’t think that I didn’t want to-- that I wasn’t thinking about you. I just...”

His pencil pauses on the page, but he does not speak. He just looks at her, the way he would at a stranger, and this room is suddenly a desert and ocean both, too far and deep to go by foot alone.

Still, there is nothing she will not brave, not for him. “It was hard to come,” she admits. “I’m not allowed in the gardens, and I’m not allowed to take patients. Coming here, watching everyone working the way I always have...”

It would have been like watching someone eat a feast while she was starving. 

His eyes soften, even if they don’t precisely thaw. “I know that you’re marrying the prince, and that you don’t have time for m--” his lips press tight-- “this. I’m not upset because you’ve set your career aside.”

“But you are...” Her words limp as she says them, wounded fawns searching of an elusive mother. “You are upset.”

His hands flex as he places them on the wood, utterly silent. “I knew...” he breathes, so harsh it scrapes her own throat too. “I knew you’d have to give things up--important things. But...”

Ryuu had always spoken slowly, thoughtfully. But still, these moments when he meant what he said, when he composed rather than conversed-- it had never taken him to long to tell her what he meant. He trusted her, knew that even if his words came out garbled or his message was lost in a sea of ellipses, she would salvage it, gluing it back together with his intention.

So when he sits silent, it wounds her almost as much as his words.

At last his gaze lifts again from his work, but the glare he fixes on her-- “But I never thought you’d let one of them be Obi.”

Her mouth works, but the well from which she draws her reason is empty, leaving only pain in its wake.

“I didn’t...I didn’t let him leave,” she murmurs, more wind than whisper. “He never told me he was going. He just left without even...”

Saying goodbye. As if all these years had meant nothing at all.

“There’s a guardsman,” she says instead, her voice trembling toward something approaching even. “He said he saw Obi leave with--” a woman-- “someone.”

Ryuu grunts.

“He ran off with Torou, once.” She wants the words to come easy, but each one emerges from her trembling, the way her fingers are against her skirts. “On the way back from Tanbarun. That’s...that’s probably what this is. An old friend that needs help, and then he’ll come right back--.”

“He won’t.”

Each breath is a stab, deep in her chest. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.” He stands; a production with how much of him there is now. Cautiously, his hand extends, a fist hovering over the knotted wood of his desk.

It takes all her courage to take the first step, and all of it again to take the next. On and on until she’s crossed the room, hand outstretched, quivering beneath his own.

His palm opens, and into hers falls...a seed. Tiny. Blue. As clear as glass.

“An orbia seed?” Shirayuki lifts it up to the light, the plumule a hazy bead nestled in its luminous cotyledon. It’s impossible to tell by sight, but still, she’s sure-- it would germinate, if she planted it. “I was collecting these before we left.”

“I know.”

“It’s funny,” she murmurs, a smile lifting her mouth. “I never did find a blue one.”

“I know.” His explanation comes in fits and starts, a path never worn in the telling. “I had one. I gave it to Obi.”

“You...?” The thought catches in the light, just like the seed between her fingers. “Oh. Oh. But...” Her mouth curls, a silent question: why?

“I don’t know. I thought he might...” Ryuu’s shoulders twitch, as narrow as Obi’s when he first blew in with the wind. Before he settled into the man he became. “When he was ready...”

Of course. Her hand closes tight around the seed. Obi had what she needed all along. And she’d never known, not until...

Not until he was gone. “Where--?”

“I found it on my desk.” Ryuu’s fingers flex, falling by his side. “The morning after he left.”

Where did he go? the little girl asks, desperation choking her as surely as her tears. Where can I find him?

How should I know? the roses reply, thorns in their words as well as their stems. You are the one who left me buried under the ground. How could I watch him when you let us be trapped together?

“Did you...” Her mouth works, cutting itself against her question. “Did you tell Zen’s men, when they came? Do they know that he...?”

Said goodbye, she cannot say, to someone at least.

“No.” Ryuu blinks, his eyes as round and innocent and blue as ever. “They never did. Come by I mean.”

This is not the first time we have spoken of betrayal, is it? Of the wound that never heals, the jagged cut that scabs over only to be ripped open anew. The injury that teaches one to be wary, lest one be inflicted again.

But that is only after the wound is made. When it is first done...

Well, it is strange how long a heart can bear a blade through it without ever feeling the killing stroke. 

“You are thinking,” Haruka remarks, with no small amount of disapproval. “I can tell.”

Shirayuki blinks down at her place setting, expecting to see broth dripped across the tablecloth, or perhaps the edge of her sleeve dipped in yolk, maybe even her tea dribbling over the edge of her cup--

But there is nothing. The white linen is pristine beneath her gold-rimmed plate, her sleeves and elbows tucked up and off the table, and if anything, her beverages of choice are picturesque in their vessels, juice beading with moisture and tea gently steaming. “What am I doing wrong?”

It, historically, has been the wrong question to ask the marquis, sure to send him into a silent huff that will stretch from first course to fifth, disapproval deepening with each sorbet. In his vaunted opinion, the fact her inexperience might cause her to trespass the unspoken rules of good manners is bad enough, but to not know precisely when and how it was done-- now that was truly unforgivable.

However, today he merely settles back in his seat, rubbing his fingers against the cloth tucked over his lap, and fixes her with his unerring gaze. She doesn’t shrink beneath it; oh no, instead something in her chest shifts, almost as if-- as if it grows.

His lips twitch, just the slightest upward tremor. “Nothing.”

Her mouth opens, then closes, stymied. “Then how did you know?”

A single, noble arch lifts. “Because you have never once stopped.”

It is to the tiger-lily the little girl turns, after the roses. They are a pompous flower, no doubt, as proud and self-important as any big cat, but despite their bluster, they are honest. The noblest flower in this garden, hearty and constant, and though they sniff when she kneels down upon their bed, dirtying her hem, they listen.

Have you seen him? she asks, heart lodged tight in her throat. Have you seen my precious boy?

“So what is it,” Haruka murmurs into his glass, “that has you so engrossed, young lady?”

Her lips press together, teeth plucking at the scar. “You told me once that I should know who is my ally, and who is my-- Zen’s.”

The rim has hardly touched his lips, but Haruka sets down the crystal, hands folding behind his plate. “I did.”

“But those are not the one two options, are they.” It’s not a question, not anymore. “Sometimes they may seem to be one or the other, or both at the same time, but really-- it’s their own, isn’t it? Everyone is just trying to do what they think best.”

“That is...” The marquis takes in a steady breath. “A very mature way to see a frustrating problem.”

“The consort has said that she is my friend,” she says slowly, each word shaken loose from her heart. “But she is also lying to me.”

“Is she?”

Haruka, she had said once, these long skirts tangled around her legs, binding fast as any chain, he’s hard to read.

Is he? Zen’s hand was cold against hers, like touching marble. Izana’s had been the same so many years ago; she wonders if it might be a problem with their circulation, perhaps passed down from a parent, but this doesn’t seem the time to ask about his mother’s medical history. He’s always seemed clear as crystal to me.

Though, he continues, mouth set in a rueful grin. After a childhood of lectures, maybe it’s easier. I can tell how stupid he thinks I am just from the degree of his eyebrows.

His brow is furrowed now, a tight knot over the bridge of his nose. There’s no angle, no lift, and Shirayuki isn’t quite sure what that might say about his perception of her intelligence. If it were anyone else, she might even call it concern.

“Is she lying to you,” he asks, posing it like Lata when he wants to ask something particularly perverse as a rhetorical. “Or are you not asking the right questions?”

Her fingers clench tight on her lap, linen rucking up between her fingers. She likes this far less than Lata’s. “Your Grace...”

Now his brows raise, shock stark on his face, “Yes, Miss Shirayuki?”

“Do you...?” The words stick in her mouth; to ask them is to admit defeat. No-- distrust. That the best interests everyone has been working towards are not her own. “Do you know where Obi is?”

I have seen no precious boy, the tiger lily trumpets, as proud as ever. Only a little girl loved by all who see her. How lucky she is to garner such attention!

I care not for me, the little girls mutters, impatient. Where do you think he has gone?

Away, away. The flower bobs beneath its own self-importance. He has been taken away. Down and gone and buried with the roses. Perhaps you are the better for it.

“No.” It’s the truth; he wouldn’t bother to lie to her. “As of now, his location is unknown, even to the king himself.”

She licks her lips, nails biting into her thigh. The orbia seed burns a hole in her hip. “Are they looking for him?”

A shadow ripples over his face, gone before she can follow it to its source. “Someone might be.”

“I mean Zen,” she clarifies. “Or Izana.”

“I know,” he replies, voice impossibly gentle from such a forbidding mouth. “I think we’re ready for the next course, don’t you?”

Innocence and ignorance, truth and illusion, trust and betrayal-- we have meditated upon each, as if they are but separate concepts that can be held to the light and have each facet revealed in turn. But surely you seen that they have all brought us here, to this part, to this singular place: a knife buried in a breast, a garden made into a cage. A girl in each, who has finally seen the truth beneath the illusion.

We should rejoice, should we not? For these girls who might free themselves, might heal themselves? But yet you do not, do you? For you know the trick of it:

A wound does not truly begin to bleed until the blade is removed. And a girl like this--

Ah, her hand is already at the hilt.

For once, Shirayuki is relieved that it is her round-faced guard that awaits her and not a more experienced one. Or worse yet, Kiki, who would anticipate her before she could get a word in edgewise.

But luck is on her side; this dear boy springs from his place on the wall, every muscle tense with anticipation, quivering to do his duty, and she-- she is ready to take advantage of it.

“Ready, my lady?” he asks, bouncing on the balls of his feet, a hound eager to be given his leash. “It’s off to the ballroom next, isn’t it? With Master--?”

“Not today,” Shirayuki informs him swiftly. “I need you to take me to the king.”

The color leaches from his face. “The...the k-king?”

She nods, tight, officious. The sort Lady Mihoko gave her maids; the sort that belonged alongside a command obeyed.

“But, my lady...” He shuffles on his feet, loath to disappoint her. “Don’t you need an appointment to see His Majesty? I don’t think you can just go right in and--”

She’s already walked past him, chin held high. “He’ll see me.”

It may seem humble before the dawn, its petals as rumpled as bedsheets, drawn over its head like a child-- but when the sun casts its fiery crown over the garden, it is the convolvulus that is ascendant. It needs no dazzling pattern, no fanciful pinwheel of petal and sepal to make itself stand above its floral brethren, but only purity of color. For there is no other here that is so purely white, that has a color so simply blue. The tiger lily might roar among the plots, but it is to the convolvulus it bends, when it rises from its nightly slumber.

The little girl watches as the sleep falls from its petals, witness to its splendor. What, it asks, ruffling its delicate mane, could have made you seek me out, girl?

There is a not-insignificant portion of her life that has been spent waiting; not in the way of most of her colleagues-- for water to boil, or a titration to drip, or even for a letter of acceptance to arrive-- but for men with nothing else to recommend them but birth to decide they’re bored enough to receive the royal pharmacist. Shidan had called it fundraising and Kazaha glad-handing, but Shirayuki can admit now, as she flies past Izana’s steward, leaving him and her guard in her wake, what it really is:

Insulting.

The view always arrests her when she enters the royal solar, and this morning is no different; the sun setting, finishing its bright arc through the sky, but the angle of it, with the windows as they are-- it sets the king’s hair alight, a halo burning.

A target, she names grimly; and she the arrow. With his steward calling her name behind her, she takes a determined step toward him.

“Have you not heard then?” Izana asks, hardly bothering to look up from his papers. “I already approved your request to be excused from dinner.”

Shirayuki hauls up short, skirts swishing around her ankles. “Dinner?”

“Yes.” His brows raise, as does his gaze, already bored. “My brother already spoke about at length this morning. So if you seek to move me as well, please note that I have already stepped aside.”

“I...” She blinks. “I wasn’t here for that.”

Interest sparks in his eyes, quick as a struck match. “Then by all means, scold away. At least--” his mouth quirks, too amused-- “I assume that is your intention, marching into my office unannounced as you are.”

“Forgive me.” The steward presses a hand to his heaving breast. “Mistress Shirayuki--”

“It a force of nature,” his master replies, mouth curling like parchment corners. “So I have often had occasion to find out. You may leave us.”

“Your Majesty--” Izana merely lifts his brows, and the man stutters to a stop. “Of course. As you wish.”

“Now,” he hums as the doors close. “Just which wind sent this storm spinning into my office?”

Bound here you might be, but I know the trick of this place, the girl says, kneeing at the bed’s edge. What roots grow here touch the roots of all the morning’s glory. And you who wake with the sun-- you keep the closest watch on the horizon.

If there are any in the garden who know of my precious boy, she continues, the breeze rippling the convolvulus’s ruff. It would be you. So tell me, please...have you see him?

“It’s Obi,” she admits, heat stinging her cheeks. “I want to know the, er, status of the search.”

Izana blinks.

Oh, how kind it would be if this confusion was feigned, if it were all just a show to drag out her loyalties; to force her to admit that even if Zen was her heart, she could not turn her back on her home. That this was simply another moment where she would show him that friendship was strength, and the walls he erected himself were merely a folly.

But there is no smug satisfaction buoying his words when he asks, “The search? Didn’t Sir Obi leave my brother’s employ months ago? The beginning of the summer, I believe--”

“He didn’t quit,” Shirayuki insists, even as the seed weighs heavy between her skirts. “He disappeared, and Zen said he had put men out to search for him.”

A flower has no face, but the girl need no smile, no hooded eyes to discern the sorrowful bent of its stem.

I am but the morning’s glory, the convolvulus sighs, and when the night comes, I fold myself tight. Your boy does not pass me in my waking hours, so perhaps it is that he travels in the night.

But what does that mean? asks the girl. Why would he only travel at night? He is but a boy, a boy, and he walks in day.

The convolvulus is quiet, swaying in the garden’s eternal summer. I do not know, he admits. I do not know at all.

“Ah.” His eyes soften, no longer the unrelenting velvet of the night, but the waves of deep water, and Shirayuki finally has cause to find out: to experience Izana’s pity is a thousand times worse than his disdain. “I am not privy to the movement of my brother’s men, so long as I do not need them in attendance. He must not have put in his last report...”

“Please.” Her hand flies up between them, earning her an incredulous lift of a brow. “It only makes it worse that you are being decent about it.”

His laugh surprises her. “So you’d like me to gloat?”

“No.” Her breath saws out of her, great heaves that shake her shoulders. “I want you to grant me leave to find him.”

“You?” His brows raise, even his eyes widen, but to his credit, he does not ask, but what could you do? Instead his mask settles back over his face without a ripple, the king staring out from behind it. “It would be a waste. I have heard from your tutors that you are making good progress. Lady Mihoko even ventured to say you might make a passable princess, if you pushed out an heir fast enough.”

Her mouth twitches. Only yesterday, she would have nearly fainted with relief, but today-- “What praise.”

There’s a stern tilt to his mouth, a forbidding set to his eyebrows; if she didn’t know any better, Shirayuki would call it concern. “As I recall, our agreement did address this.”

“Then you mean...?”

“Yes.” He nods, splaying his palms across his desk, almost as if he were bracing himself. “If you leave the palace grounds, you forfeit your chance to be the one at my brother’s side. A princess leaves such things in the hands of her guardsmen--” his mouth twitches-- “and her husband.”

You want her to go, do you not? Even now you quiver at the edge of your seat, begging this little girl to open her eyes, to keep them open, to see through the illusion and run as fast as she can. You want her to leave the garden, to break through the last of this enchantment and leave safety behind.

But tell me, what would you do, with the knife quivering it in your chest? To forget it is to live with the pain. To remove it is to be free.

An easy choice, you might say. Who could live with a blade in their breast? Ah, but do not forget:

There is no way to know if the wound is fatal until the knife is removed.

“There is something I wonder, Mistress Shirayuki.”

His musings shatter the brittle silence between them; that fragile bulwark that has kept her in his skin. Now that it’s gone, she trembles, every muscle in her body fighting the urge to cross the king’s study and shake him until decency falls it.

A hopeless quest if there ever was one. “Is there something else you could possibly say to me?”

She says it sweetly; most would hear only that-- the tone rather than the content. But Izana has not sat so long on his father’s throne by being that sort of man; no, his mouth curls, amused.

“No. It’s only...” he hums, gaze lifting from his paper. “I wonder when you started to think Obi left.”

Then what do you know? the girl says, anger and bile rising in her tone. What good are you?

A flower cannot smile, but she feels teeth when it replies, I know that it will cost you, and cost you dear.

Izana might as well have struck her. Shirayuki rocks back on her heels, only just catching herself before she trips over her own hem. “I-I...what do you...?”

“When you came in here, you first talked as you had before.” Long fingers knit beneath his chin, though he does not deign to rest on them, not alert as he is. A cat before a kill, still toying with with the prey between his paws. “You insisted on his disappearance-- the implication being, of course, that you deny his own agency in his departure. Kidnapping or coercion, one might say.”

She cannot see its teeth, but Shirayuki isn’t so foolish to believe there is no trap. “Y-yes..”

“But now you come to me and ask after my men.” His mouth quirks. “You ask for my permission.”

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?” she asks, fingers clenching in her skirts. “A princess wouldn’t depart without the approval of her liege.”

“Of course.” He waves a hand, as if all those rules she spent late nights learning mean nothing at all, as if they were worth less than the paper on which they had been printed. “A princess would. But you, Miss Shirayuki, you--” his eyes spark, the way she only saw that night in Lilias as he closed the gates-- “you jump from windows. You follow a flower into a cave. If you truly believed your companion in danger, I doubt there is a single promise that would keep you by my side.”

She cannot breathe, let alone hazard an answer. Not when even a flutter of an eyelash could give her away.

“Which begs the question, doesn’t it?” His gaze fixes her to where she stand, pins through a moth’s wings. “Just what reason would make him leave?”

Me? the girl cries, already thinking of her lovely red shoes, of the boat they bought her down the river. Why me?

Because my dear, the convolulus hums. It is your fault that he has left.

The doors swing open, and the steward steps inside, sparing her an infuriatingly smug glance. “Sir Lowen, Your Majesty.”

“A moment,” the king tells him, “Mistress Shirayuki and I are nearly done her.”

The man nods. “I will tell him to await your will.”

Shirayuki blinks. “What--?” It’s trial to catch her breath, to make her heart stop pounding in her breast. “What is Mitsuhide doing here?”

“You need an escort to your dinner, do you not? I thought he would be the most palatable option for you.” Izana fixes her with a meaningful look. “I do hope you find your answers, Mistress Shirayuki.”

You don’t know me. Obi’s gaze is raw in her memory, too gold. You don’t know anything about me.

You know how he is. Zen’s smile curls at the edges, brittle, like parchment pasted to vellum. Obi has always come back on his own before.

Zen will take care of it. Mitsuhide won’t meet her gaze. I’m sure Obi will be back any day now.

“Don’t worry.” It’s a miracle that the words don’t catch between her teeth, the way she’s clenching them. “I will.”

A hand wraps around a hilt. A breath shudders. And with one, swift tug--

The blade moves but an inch.

[the-bjd-community-confess]

Dear 'Anime Bad' Anon: I Want To Help I pity your situation, so please have a list of weebshit that isn't moeified, or wherein the cutesy art-style serves a greater purpose. (Note: though they won't be soft marshmallow uguuuu, they may still have issues in other ways. Some may have aged badly with regards to how society views or portrays groups or beliefs, some may have upsetting content and dark themes, and some may simply not be to your taste. Note: Anime is a genre, not a monolith, and the disparaging stereotype that it's all cute girls uwuing over their brother s-s-senpai!!! is as much of a disservice as saying all western movies are just vapid cash grab superhero movie sequels with no inegrity or thought put into them. There are indeed a lot of superhero movies, but they're not all identical schlock (megamind vs venom vs kick-ass),  but even more than that, there is a wealth of creative endeavor just beyond the veil of Marvel's cape: just as there are plenty of good anime if you dig past the isekai high school harem wish fulfillment genre that no one wants to keep making but people keep making because it prints money to a very small demographic of the animation equivalent of a mobile game whale thereby allowing this frankly quite-small industry to work on engaging and worthwhile series where the budget permits, Regardless,)

Mushi-shi: -Pros: gorgeous animation, tranquil vibes, episodic stories so you can cram in an episode between classes or on your lunch break. highly recommended by the literal-who typing this out. -Cons: some themes or stories may cause emotional distress, learning to tell apart Urushibara Yuki's characters is a learning curve.

Baccano-Pros: meticulously-researched 20s-and-30s-era mafia violence with a hint of the supernatural, as a treat, told anachronistically with flair and jazz music. practically made to be binge-watched. the novels are finally getting translated into english as well. -Cons: lots of characters to keep track of, fair bit of blood and violence, some scenes or themes may be upsetting, lots of jumping around between different time periods. See Also: Durarara, another series by Ryōgo Narita with a ton of characters and a plot with more threads an overpriced sheet.

Cowboy Bebop-Pros: incredibly well-regarded, space bounty hunters are cool, episodic series that slowly takes on a plot towards the end, fantastic animation, scoring, and even dub work.  -Cons: some scenes or themes may be uncomfortable, some parts have not aged quite so well, the smart doll version of the main character is ugly, you're gonna carry that weight.

Trigun-Pros: starts lighthearted, develops an increasingly investing plot as the series goes along. fictional westerns are cool. this world is made of love and peace -Cons: some scenes or themes may be upsetting, and probably will be. gun violence is naturally present, but that ain't all of it.

Hellsing (standard or Ultimate. or Abridged)Pros: vampires killing nazis. the original adaptation isn't bad, the second adaptation (ultimate) is generally viewed as an improvement. abridged is a youtube parody version that was so popular the voice actors reference it in convention interviews.Cons: a Lot of violence, even trending to the gorey side of things. Uncomfortable Themes Everywhere, but it's a horror-tinged action series about killing nazis, so that's to be expected. 

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood-Pros: while the original anime was quite good, the second iteration is a large improvement. does to alchemy what naruto does to ninjas: It's Basically Battle Magic. the plot starts on a strong note and doesn't let up from there. -Cons: there are distressing scenes and themes that may or may not be tolerable to the viewer. there are moments of cheesecake and even an occasional joke or a moeblob here and there, and it's not all doom and all gloom all the time, but this doesn't detract from the abject horror-despair that comes to permeate this series as it progresses. finally understand why people on the internet respond so negatively to the name 'nina'! 

[Mod: many more recs/reviews under the break, worth reading for those who like more obscure anime and animation]

Grave of the Fireflies-Pros: you will remember how to cry. it's a good reminder that one country's 'triumphs' often come at the expense of another country's people.  -Cons: this movie is incredibly dark, do not watch if you are in a bad headspace. see also: Barefoot Gen, a similar tale but this time from the perspective of an actual survivor from Hiroshima.

Michiko to Hatchin-Pros: an actually diverse cast of characters tangled up in a messy and very humanizing story, interspersed with Shinichiro Watanabe's particular flare for adventure. -Cons: some scenes or themes are very likely to be distressing. can be tricky to find, too.

Mo no no Ke (not the ghibli movie, though it is also quite good.) -Pros: incredibly unique art style and pacing that draws heavily from japanese theatre traditions, every screenshot is wallpaper-worthy. -Cons: may cause motion sickness. it is a psychological horror series, and one that does not need blood, nor gore, to cause visceral emotional response in the viewer. scenes and themes will be distressing- as really, that's the point.

Tokyo Godfathers-Pros: a transwoman, a (self-identified) homeless bum, and a runaway teen girl find a newborn in the baby on christmas. incredibly wholesome, somehow, and grounded in reality, with wonderful animation from the tragically late satoshi kon. -Cons: it is grounded in realism, and sometimes, people are dicks. mild transphobia warning, too, but in-universe- the transwoman herself is portrayed with kindness and allowed to be her own (wonderful!!!) person. still, viewer be mindful.

Kino no Tabi (the first series is my preferred, the second is shinier but lacks emotional impact- in my onion.) -Pros: mostly episodic, very unique series that can be gritty where it counts and kind where it matters. -Cons: some scenes or themes might be disturbing. finding it's not easy, either, and unfortunately, i don't think the novels are being translated right now, either.

Spice and Wolf-Pros: it's mostly about economics. there are shenanigans, a harvest god, and a slowly burgeoning romance, sure, but it's still mostly about economics. -Cons: there are moments of cheesecake and comedy, and moments that may cause distress to the viewer. it may or may not be to your taste.

Puella Magi Madoka Magica-Cons: yeah i know, it's moeblobs.  -Pros: you're gonna watch 'em die, though, in case that may interest you. it's quite a good subversion of the magical girl genre overall. somehow volks hasn't made an MDD of anyone from the series and i will never understand how that didn't happen.

Wolf Children: Ame to Yuki-Pros: watch a family grow together as a newly-single mother does her best to raise her twin children after the tragic loss of their father.  -Cons: keep tissues handy. certain scenes or themes may be uncomfortable.

Lupin III (Red Jacket, Ghibli, and the new 3D animation are all A+) pros: heist comedy elevated to an art form before half (or more!) of the people reading this were born. the english dubbed series that used to air on adult swim is a treat. cons: this franchise started in THE SIXTIES, so naturally, some shit has not aged well. certain series (fujiko mine) are darker than others in themes and material. the 3d movie that released recently is an excellent starting point.

Samurai Champloo-Pros: breakdancing samurai, a fascinating roster of characters, and a superb soundtrack by the tragically passed Nujabes. -Cons: it was made in the weird era of the transition from analog to digital animation and so the /series master/ was animated at a painfully low resolution, so even if there's a bluray out there (I haven't looked,) it will be an upscale, which doesn't always look the best. as well, there are scenes and themes that may make the viewer uncomfortable here and there.

The Works of Studio Ghibli Oh, I'm sorry, Ponyo too suffused with childhood wonder for you? My Neighbor Totoro not depressing enough?  In addition to the infamous Grave of the Fireflies, Studio Ghibli has made a wealth of movies that aren't aimed squarely at the kodomo (children's) sector. -Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind: climate change existential dread, the movie -Castle in the Sky: government obsession with obtaining weapons of mass destruction destroys everything beautiful, the movie -Pom Poko: human-caused deforestation and urbanization is destroying the natural world and all that live in it, the movie -Princess Mononoke: industrialization will be the death of everything beautiful in the world, the movie, with a side of sometimes everyone (and no one) is the villain when everyone is simply trying to survive -Howl's Moving Castle: The Physical Manifestation of Depression is a Liquid Ooze, the Movie, also War Is Bad It's not all depressing, but let it never be said that Hayao Miyazaki was subtle. Whisper of the Heart is a good coming-of-age story, Kiki's Delivery Service is a classic, Tales from Earthsea is divisive among fans of Ursula K. Le Guin but I personally liked it. From one studio alone there is a wealth of opportunities.

And that's really the point. These are just some from the top of my head. There are so very many options outside of the cute-girls-doing-cute-things genre that I couldn't list them all if I was here for a week. Or as Madoka Magica so ruthlessly showcases, even series that appear a certain way on the surface might not be what you bargained for once you look into them! These are all (I think) mostly older, mainstream-appeal series that should be easy to track down, too -- there are all kinds of singular animations like The Diary of Tortov Roddle, crowdfunded experiments like KICK-HEART, Masterpiece World Theatre renditions of classic (western) novels that never get talked about, films like A Silent Voice that confront social issues- and of course, series like Rozen Maiden that helped popularize this very hobby!

There is literally an ocean of content to explore from Japanese creators alone, and it opens up even more if you look into works from other parts of Asia- just look at how popular manwha have become, or Chinese animations like Leafie, a Hen Into the Wild! It's a genre unto itself, with all the breadth of content and inter-industry problems that come with it, and without any of the respect that similar art forms have been granted over the years. The way an entire culture's art form is often disparaged, disregarded, and belittled- and by extension, the way most of Asia's animated endeavors are often rolled up into that reductive dismissal along with anime and manga- is honestly Not Great, and there is absolutely a thread of xenophobia that runs through it. The industry has so very many problems (low wages, poor training, overwork of everyone ever, archaic financial modules, the exclusivity and breadth of merchandising necessary to turn a profit and how it leads to consumer burnout and disconnection over time, and yes, the way minors are portrayed not just in anime, but in Japanese media in general- and how much of that is actually bad (some of it is indeed,) and how much if it is cultural difference (I've heard people call the scene where the family in Totoro bathe together problematic because of the nudity, but I've also only heard people say that from the West)

-- none of the actual problems affecting the people who produce this medium are gonna improve when the general response to "animators frequently have to live at home to survive" is "that's what happens when you're a weeb."  It's 5am and I'm gonna point out the problems in the narrative around how we discuss this genre of entertainment because it's important, damn you! Regardless, thank you for coming to my unasked for and overlong TED talk about animation on a doll collecting drama blog, feel free to call me a pathetic weeb etcetera on your way out- but while you do so, might I suggest you also go watch a choice animated series! My current go-to is Bofuri, which is a cute-girls-doing-cute-things moefied isekai series that I refuse to apologize for watching. Be free. (The battle scenes are great and it captures the feeling of learning to play a new MMO with your friends better than most video-game-based anime I've seen in a long, long time. does anyone even still remember .hack? how about serial experiments lain...?)

~Anonymous

[spaceteenagers]

i'd love to know more about your 101 dragons au!!

Here’s the THING! you picked the ONE au I posted that’s really just like. It just VIBED with me as opposed to like Actually Fleshed out but !! BUT!!! Here’s what I DO HAVE!!

-Gwen also has a dragon, it’s green and small and the dragons don’t get That much bigger then like. a VERY V E RY big dog, but they still breathe fire and are inherently magical in a very specific way.

-Merlin is a magic boy! He does potions and magical medicine, you remember kiki’s mom in kiki’s delivery service? He does that! He keeps the pale blue magic dragon aithusia! They live together in an Urban Fantasy Sixties bachelor flat! One day aithusia wants to go for a walk bc she decided that Merlin is lonely and there’s a green dragon with a pretty girl attached entering the park.

- HERE IS the thing with morgana. It works to make her the kind of villain who like. Resents her old employee/friend who left employment to get married and help with the magical pharmaceuticals and also Pursue her own dressmaking dreams, and now thinks of Merlin as . Just the worst, the villain who STOLE her FRIEND! And she never really tried to keep up with Gwen, and so when they DO meet she’s REALLY passive aggressive about it. Hence Merlin being RUTHLESSLY mean in a song he makes up for three minutes

- morgana doesn’t want a fur coat, or a shawl made of scales, and dragons only have one egg, and she wants to raise the dragon to be a weapon and not. Care for it as an endangered animal who can be just FULL OF LOVE so like merlin and Gwen want to make sure that the egg is a FRIEND not a big fire breathing Monster. So I guess in actuality it’s not 101 dragons so much as it is. three dragons. But still.

Mostly it’s just the FEELING of roger and anita in 101 Dalmatians you know? This domesticity and easy living. There’s a little pile of tea cups on the hearth of merlins potion fireplace. Gwen has a sewing room with crystals and plants hanging in the window with an enchanted thimble on her finger that keeps the needle sharp. The dragons will stomp around the house and there’s the odd scorch mark on the carpets that they can’t get out, but they both signed up for it. The soft music coming out of the radio that has a bleached stain on the side from a potion where Merlin and Gwen bumped into it while dancing. It’s the FEELING!!!!!