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yamayuandadu · 1 year

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The real life inspirations behind new characters in Touhou 19 (Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost) While I haven’t been posting much about Touhou as of late, I felt obliged to put together the customary post about the inspirations behind the new characters. The new game genuinely renewed my interest. In contrast with similar write-ups pertaining to previous games the research is not entirely mine - some of the sections are a result of cooperation between me and @just9art. Without further ado, let’s delve into the secrets of the new cast. Find out if Biten is the first “Wukong impersonator” ever, when a tanuki is actually a badger, and why Hisami both is and isn’t an oni. Naturally, the post is full of spoilers. Also, fair warning, it's long.

1. Biten Son - sarugami + Sun Wukong

Sarugami means “monkey kami”, the monkey in mention being the Japanese macaque.To my best knowledge, the term is actually not used commonly in English - the results on jstor and De Gruyter are in the low single digits, Brill outright has nothing to offer. Translations are much more common.

Sarugami are particularly strongly associated with Mount Hiei. You might have heard of it because of its association with Matarajin, though in this case he’s not exactly relevant. Instead, it is believed the monkeys act as messengers of Sanno (the “mountain king”), Sekizan Myojin and Juzenji. Sanno himself could take the form of a monkey according to medieval texts, while Juzenji can be accompanied by a deity depicted as a man with a monkey’s head, Daigyoji, known from the Hie mandala. Sarutahiko is also associated with monkeys based on the similarity between his name and the word saru. Bernard Faure notes that despite the clearly positive portrayal of monkeys as semi-divine beings in service of these deities, their perception in folklore and mythology can nonetheless be considered ambivalent, because they could be viewed as aggressive. There are even examples of sarugami being portrayed as monstrous antagonists to be defeated by a hero. The best known tale of this variety is known simply as Sarugami taiji. It is preserved in the Konjaku monogatari. Here the sarugami is a fearsome monster who terrorizes a village and demands the offering of one young woman each year.

In contrast with the sarugami, I do not think Sun Wukong, one of the protagonists of the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West, needs much of an introduction. We reached the point where even in the west he is recognizable enough to warrant toys based on him (there’s a Lego Wukong on my desk right now). Biten's design has many callbacks to traditional portrayals of Wukong, including the staff (which in the novel is a pillar stolen from the undersea palace of a dragon emperor) and a very distinctive diadem (in the novel making it possible to pressure the unruly Wukong into obeying the monk he is meant to protect). As a curiosity it’s worth noting that “fake Wukong” is not a brand new idea - in the novel itself, one of the enemies of the heroes, Six-Eared Macaque, actually impersonates him for a time. Wukong is effectively himself a “divine monkey”, seeing as despite his origin as a literary character he actually came to be worshiped as a deity in mainland China, Taiwan and various areas with a large Chinese diaspora. The topic of Wukong worship itself came to be an inspiration for literature, starting with the excellent The Great Sage, Heaven’s Equal by Pu Songling, a writer active during the reign of the Qing dynasty, in the early eighteenth century.

2. Enoko Mitsugashira - “immortal yamainu” + Cerberus

Enoko gets the least coverage here, because there really isn’t much to say. Yamainu, “mountain dog”, isn’t really a supernatural creature, it’s an old term for either the extinct Japanese wolf, a type of feral dog, or a hybrid between these. It can also be used as a synonym of okuri-inu, a youkai wolf believed to accompany travelers at night.

There’s actually a distinctly Journey to the West-esque component to Enoko’s backstory, but I have no clue if this is intentional. In the aforementioned novel, many of the antagonists, who are generally demonic animals, are motivated by the desire to devour the flesh of the protagonist, the Buddhist monk Tang Sanzang, because it is said to grant immortality. Granted, given the obscurity of the figure Zanmu is based on - more on that later - perhaps this is an allusion to something else we have yet to uncover. Cerberus, being probably one of the most famous mythical monsters in the world, does not really need to be discussed here. The illustration is included mostly because I like Edmund Dulac and any opportunity is suitable for sharing his illustrations. I do not think it needs to be pointed out that Enoko's bear trap weapons are meant to evoke Cerberus' extra heads.

3. Chiyari Tenkajin - tenkaijin (+ mujina) + chupacabra

While my favorite animal youkai not yet featured in Touhou is easily the kawauso (otter), I was very pleased to learn we sort of got a mujina since I wanted to cover this topic since forever, but never got much of a chance. Technically Chiyari is actually meant to be a tenkaijin, which is not a mujina but a slightly different youkai (a will-o-wisp or St. Elmo’s fire-like creature, specifically) who in the single tale dealing with it takes the form of a mujina after dying, but as there is not much to say about it beyond that you will get a crash course in mujina folklore instead.

Today the word mujina is pretty firmly a synonym of anaguma - in other words, the Japanese badger. The animal does not substantially differ from other badgers, so I do not think much needs to be said about its ecology. However, historically the term could be used to refer to the tanuki regionally, or interchangeably to both animals, so in some cases if insufficient detail is provided it is hard to tell which one is meant. This ambiguity extends to the folklore surrounding them, and generally if you know what to expect from tanuki tales, which I’m sure most people reading this do, you will instantly recognize many of the plot elements typical for mujina ones. In other words, it is yet another yokai which typically takes the role of a shapeshifting trickster. Some supernatural phenomena could be basically interchangeably attributed to mujina, tanuki, kitsune or kawauso. Mujina are commonly described taking the form of Buddhist monks, which is one of the many similarities between them and tanuki.

The most famous depiction of a shapeshifting mujina comes from Toriyama Sekien’s Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (The Illustrated One Hundred Demons from the Present and the Past). The accompanying text compares the creature to the supernatural versions of kitsune and tanuki, and states that the artist relied on a tale according to which a mujina was able to successfully impersonate a Buddhist monk until accidentally revealing its tail.

What makes the mujina special is that it is actually the oldest recorded example of a youkai of this sort. A mujina tale already appears in the early Japanese chronicle Nihon Shoki, dated to 627. It reports an incident of a mujina transforming into a human and singing somewhere in the Michinoku Province. I feel like this alone is a good example of why you should be wary of people who seek to present Nihon Shoki or Kojiki as historical truth. Western audiences as far as I know were first introduced to mujina by Lafcadio Hearn. To my best knowledge, the fabulous shapeshifting badgers however failed to gain the popcultural recognition enjoyed by tanuki and kitsune. They did appear in Shigeru Mizuki's stories every now and then, and I found a mascot character based on them, but overall there isn't all that much beyond that.

Naturally, there isn't much mujina in Chiyari's design, and she instead most likely owes her distinctly spiky appearance to the other inspiration behind her character, the chupacabra. Mujina are not really portrayed as bloodthirsty, but the poorly documented tenkajin apparently is, which is presumably why ZUN decided to connect Chiyari with the chupacabra, the best known modern blood-drinking creature, who first appeared in tall tales from 1995 and subsequently took popculture by storm after spreading from Puerto Rico to mainland USA and Mexico. I am not a chupacabra aficionado so I have little to offer here, sadly.

4. Hisami Yomotsu - yomotsu-shikome

Judging from what I’ve seen on social media and on pixiv, Hisami is shaping up to be one of the most popular new characters (she’s my fave too). In sharp contrast with that, her basis is pretty obscure. So obscure that there isn’t even any historical art to showcase, as far as I can tell (note that this blog claims night parade scrolls might have something to offer, though - I was unable to verify this claim for now, sadly). As we learn from her bio, she is supposed to be a yomotsu-shikome. They’re called the “hags of Yomi” of Yomi in Donald L. Philippi’s Kojiki translation. The term shikome can be literally translated as “ugly woman”. Nothing about them really implies femme fatale leanings we are evidently seeing in Touhou but I’m not going to complain about that. Yomotsu-shikome appear only in the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, and in both of these early chronicles they are portrayed as servants of Izanami after she died and came to reside in Yomi, the land of the dead. Nihon Shoki states there are only eight of them. The distinct grape vine motif present on Hisami’s clothes seems like an obvious reference to Izanagi’s escape from Yomi following his meeting with Izanami, portrayed in the myth recorded in both of these sources. When the yomotsu-shikome started to pursue him, he threw a vine he used to hold his hair at them. The plant instantly bore fruit, which the entities started to eat. They later resumed the chase, but were once again held back, this time by a bamboo shot. According to the Nihon Shoki, they eventually give up after he creates a river from his piss (sic) to keep them away.

Yomotsu-shikome are sometimes compared to oni by modern researchers. Noriko T. Reider in her monograph about oni argues that alongside hashihime and yamanba (pictured above) they can be effectively grouped with them. Another researcher, Michael D. Foster, is more cautious, and states that despite clear similarities it’s best to avoid conflating oni-like female demons with female oni proper, especially since the latter have a distinct iconography and a distinct set of traits. Norinaga Motoori, the founder of kokugaku or “national learning”, a nationalist intellectual movement in Edo and Meiji period Japan, claimed that oni were based on yomotsu-shikome, which is a pretty dubious claim. It is ultimately not certain when the term oni started to be used, but it is safe to say it has continental origin. And, of course, oni permeate Japanese culture in a way yomotsu-shikome do not.

5. Zanmu Nippaku - Zanmu

This was the toughest mystery to solve, and I am fully indebted to 9 here, since they figured it out, I am merely depending on what they directed me to. Research is still ongoing, and it feels like we just started to untangle this mystery, so you can safely expect further updates. Zanmu appears to be based on the Buddhist monk… well, Zanmu. You can learn a bit about him here or on Japanese wikipedia; it seems there are quite literally 0 sources pertaining to him in English, and even in Japanese there is actually very little. Their names are not written the same, ZUN swapped the sign for “dream” from the original name for one which can be read as “nothingness”. If the unsourced quote on wikipedia is genuine, the reason might be tied to the personal views of the irl Zanmu. What little we’ve been able to gather about him is that he was active in the Sengoku period, and apparently was regarded as unorthodox and eccentric. This lines up with Zanmu’s omake bio pretty well. Seems the real Zanmu was also unusually long lived, and was able to recall events from distant past in great detail, though obviously the figure of 139 years attributed to him in a few places online has to be an exaggeration.

Yet more puzzling is the reference to Zanmu’s familiarity with Ikkyo you might spot in the linked article. Whether the famous Ikkyo who you may know from the tale of Jigoku Dayu is meant is difficult to determine. The chronology does not really add up; on the other hand the logic behind associating one eccentric semi-legendary monk with another in later legends isn’t particularly convoluted. As 9 pointed out to me, if ZUN was aware of this link, and the same Ikkyo really was meant, it is not impossible the connection between Zanmu and Hisami is meant to in some way mirror that between Ikkyo and Jigoku Dayu. As you can easily notice, it’s pretty clear the historical Zanmu was male. It does not seem his Touhou counterpart is, obviously. I would say we should wait for more info until declaring that we have a second Miko situation on our hands, with a male historical figure directly reimagined as a female character without any indication we are dealing with a relative rather than the real deal. There’s still relatively little info to go by so I would remain cautious (though naturally this is not meant to discourage you from having headcanons).

Neither me nor 9 were able to find any connection between the historical Zanmu and oni… so far, at least. Therefore, what motivated ZUN to make Zanmu an oni remains to be discovered. As a final curiosity, on a semi-related note it might be worth pointing out that while not as common as their male peers, female oni are not a modern invention, and already appear in setsuwa from the 13th century. A particularly common motif are tales describing a woman turning into oni due to jealousy or anger. Further reading:

Jason Colavito, The Secret Prehistory of El Chupacabra (2011)

Bernard Faure, Gods of Medieval Japan vol. 1-3 (2015-2022)

Michael Daniel Foster, The Book of Yokai. Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore (2015)

John Knight, Waiting for Wolves in Japan. An Anthropological Study of People-wildlife Relations (2003)

Noriko T. Reider, Japanese Demon Lore (2010)

#touhou #touhou spoilers #unfinished dream of all living ghost #udoalg #touhou 19

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siliconcat · 2 years

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This may sound weird but you are my art goals.

I have been trying to make touhous look more beastly/monstrous for a long time but i can never balance well the original design with the creature side, ending up with designs that are often too detatched from the original character and maybe too scary.

I honestly envy your ability to blend animal and human traits in such skilled way.

UUUWWHAHHH TYYY

I tend to look exclusively at references of canon sprites and whatnot, I’m trying to walk this weird line that’s neither furry nor kemonomimi but a secret third thing that’s like weird beastgirl lol so I’m glad that’s how it comes across

I do love doing the research as to design origins from the youkai too it’s what makes this fun, oomukades are kinda swag ngl

Also if anyone wants to see me draw a particular touhou shoot me an ask/reply/tag whatever I might do it lol. Emphasis on might

#asks #i have a design for yukari that I’ve been rotating in my head maybe I’ll spit it out soon

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ygg-yiggles · 1 year

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Old Art: Inktober 2022, part 2

Continuing on from last time, here's days 16-31. Sorry it took longer to get to than I expected.

Day 16: Fowl More issues with the scanner! Why didn't I just find something to weigh down that edge? Anyway, this one was fun to draw, with a mix of various mircon pens, including brush tip ones for those big, chunky lines. The wings are... less than ideal, but I think the twisting neck of the swan turned out well. The swan is one of those animals that looks beautiful, until it's angry, and then suddenly it's terrifying, with innumerable pseudo-teeth like a mouth full of needles. As October is the month of spooky things, I leaned into that.

Day 17: Salty ...Oh come on, you were doing so well with the scanner, almost perfect in fact, but you went back to the phone camera again? Come on. The look is kind of iffy as well, just like the Crabby one featuring these same two characters. I think the weird face on the mom was intentional, though, in order to match the unintentionally weird look of her previously.

Day 18: Scrape Now there we go, there's a nice, clean scan, and an image I'm proud of. Girl in maid outfit, sharpening her cleaver thing. I think it's a girl, at least. If I recall, some degree of ambiguity was the goal. I did still screw up the hands kind of and made that arm chunkier than I wanted, but making heavy use of grey ink let me actually draw something that would read as black without being pitch black and indiscernible. The hair was drawn with an unknown blue-purple fountain pen ink. Really wish I could remember which one that was.

Day 19: Ponytail More adventures in brush-tip micron pens. This is a redraw/other angle of a character I drew just before Inktober 2022 began, but I don't think I quite captured him in the same way. His legs also ended up weirdly stubby here.

Day 20: Bluff Ahhhghhhhh, bad scan again, and it made key parts of the art blurry. Damn. I should really re-scan this one. At least the image is alright, even if one shadow is distractingly dark. I chose to shade this largely with horizontal lines mostly as an experiment, which I think worked out decently and would have worked better if I had committed even more to it. The subject here is the man from the previous day, standing on the topographic feature called a bluff. The best part of the image, I think, is the way I worked the number and prompt into the river.

Day 21: Bad Dog A grotesque, monstrous creature, vaguely canid, with no skin and spikey bits all over. Bit of hair here and there. Overall, I like it. Don't really have much else to say.

Day 22: Heist This anatomy sucks but I drew it quickly, more quickly than something that took up this much of the page normally would. Evidently, I even managed to get it to scan properly! This is not meant to be any character in particular, by the way.

Day 23: Booger You ever just sneeze out an entire slimegirl? I like several things about this, from the way I was able to give the look of transparency to how swollen the sick man's face looks. I'm sure I've drawn plenty better, but I do quite like this one, gross as it is.

Day 24: Fairy Call me old fashioned, but personally I believe fairies should be nude. Well, okay, Touhou Project fairies do really well with big poofy dresses or even american flag pattern spandex, but other than that, keep 'em naked.

Day 25: Tempting All across the Halloween-observing world (i.e. the United States and not much of anywhere else), children are asked to simply not touch a bowl full of candy, sitting out for anywhere from the day leading up to trick-or-treating to all month long. Imagine! Here, we see a child eyeing up a brass bowl full of all sorts of treats. The temptation is palpable.

Day 26: Ego Max Stirner, father of Individualist Egoism, wields an AK, wearing a shirt with torn-off sleeves, with a waifish girl clutching his chest. Need I say more?

Day 27: Snack Another kind of goofy one from a perspective sense and I could have afforded to put more pink on that pig in the front. However, I'm overall happy with the chonky dragon design. Hog after hog has gone down his gullet, and now he looks a little like one himself.

Day 28: Camp I enjoy making recurring characters that exist only for each Inktober. As it turns out the girl(?) from Scrape and the guy from Ponytail and Bluff are either an item or good friends. And hey, look, that cleaver works as an axe to gather and split firewood! I did better with the treeline here than I normally do when I try to draw such a thing. Plenty of room for improvement still. At least this one has a decent amount of color.

Day 29: Uh-Oh Due to the ancient subject matter, I chose to use entirely brown tones to give this one a sepia look. The ancients had cats, and by all accounts I've ever read, their behavior has not changed a bit throughout the entire course of the history of feline domestication. Here, we see a cat which has located a bucket of something, left carelessly on a ledge. Below, a just minding his own business is about to have a bad day. Is this scene Roman? Greek? Something else? I don't know, but it's ancient something somewhere somewhen, or maybe even pure fantasy. No matter the circumstance, no matter the time or place or plane of existence, cats will cause problems on purpose.

Day 30: Gear An amorphous creature with a gear incorporated into its body and other gear around its gaping maw. It is an uneven, asymmetric, shambling beast. One of its hands is even beginning to turn gear-like, with gear teeth on the back side of each digit. I think the best part of this piece is the mouth. Gear piece here were colored with Diamine Ancient Copper ink.

Day 30 31: Farm Oops. This one was rough because I was busy all day and couldn't think of the perfect thing to draw for the entire day up until the evening, when I suddenly chose to embark on a pumpkin field... Or a jack-o-lantern field, rather. They're naturally like that, at least on Halloween. For something I rushed at the end of the day, I honestly don't think it looks half bad, and I'm glad I actually made it full color, even if the coloring is sloppy. Not that any other days were much less sloppy. And yes, I did write 30 there instead of 31. I didn't notice until the next morning. Here, I've put a transparent white square and a yellow numeral "1" on top of it, to correct the day while retaining a legacy of my error

...And that's all. I'll be participating in Inktober again this year, but that's not for a few more months. Stay tuned until then, as I'll be posting newer art as well as more compilations and commentary on my older work, including previous years of Inktober. And, thanks for reading.

#drawing #traditional illustration #inktober

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master-thief-gray-shadow · 5 years

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So as of today it’s been exactly one year since I first watched Revue Starlight, and it’s been a really interesting year. I’ve been thinking about the impact the series has had on my life lately and felt like I needed to get some thoughts down.

TW: self harm mention, suicide mention

Love Live changed my life. It was not my first fandom ever, but it was the first one where I got seriously involved with the community. Not only did I manage to make friends within the fandom (and to be honest these friends have proven truer than any I’ve had in real life), but I also managed to meet not one but two amazing partners, which is two more than I’d ever anticipated I’d have. Love Live was good to me, and for a good three years I happily allowed it to consume my very soul. But things like these don’t last forever.

I don’t talk about it much (there’s a reason why but that’s another story), but I am autistic and I do have ADHD. Obviously hyperfixations are a big part of my life. The big ones tend to last for years. Naruto was three or four, Touhou was a solid three, Kancolle was less than a year but I feel like it would have been longer if I hadn’t forcibly divorced myself from it due to the fact that my mental health at the time was spiraling out of control. Love Live was just another one of these things. For years it was constantly in my thoughts, and at the height of all this I couldn’t watch a movie without thinking “hm, what if this was Love Live characters?” It gave me a reason to live and got me through a few rough patches. But my interest did eventually start to wane. Unfortunately this coincided with one of those rough patches, and this particular one had something that I hadn’t had to deal with in a while: uncertainty.

Early last year I quit my job. It was a customer service job, one that I had been at for a few years and was starting to get tired of. I figured that I would be unemployed for a month or two (which at the time sounded refreshing, one of the reasons I quit was because the job had become so soul-sucking that I didn’t have energy for anything else) before getting a new one, preferably one with better hours and better pay. What I hadn’t counted on was my depression, which was already a contributing factor in my somewhat fragile state, utterly consuming me now that I didn’t have any kind of routine or purpose, and was therefore at the mercy of my thoughts at all times. I tried to take refuge in Love Live like I always had, and for a while, it worked. But eventually it just kind of...stopped working. So here I was, unemployed, depressed, and rapidly losing the ability to find joy in things. All that, but thankfully in no actual, real, physical danger. But apparently my brain thought I was. So that’s what it started telling me.

I’m not gonna go into what I specifically believed was happening. The long and short of it was that I started having irrational fears about my health, brought upon by some discussion that was going on in the spaces I hung out in. At first I was able to just dismiss it as paranoia, but certain things happened that only served to deepen it. Eventually I started thinking that I needed to go to the hospital, but what for? Nobody would believe there was anything wrong. I didn’t even believe it myself, at least consciously. But my brain was telling me I needed to go. And if I didn’t have an obvious reason to, I should give myself one.

I did not actually reach the point of doing self-harm, fortunately. But I came close. One evening something triggered a massive panic attack, and I, sincerely believing my life was in danger, began seriously, seriously considering it. I was very lucky that my parents kind of knew what was going on and rushed me to the hospital before I could do anything I might regret. I ended up spending a few days in the hospital’s psyche ward, which from what I’ve gathered was actually pretty okay as far as psyche wards go, but it was still a quiet and sterile place with no clocks and no contact with the outside. I was relieved to get out, to say the least. Even spending five and a half hours a day in intensive therapy, five days a week, was an improvement. I even managed to keep the job I had just started.

And that was the state I was in when I first watched Revue Starlight. Crawling my way out from the bottom of a pit. I had heard of the show, I’d seen it on my dash a few times, and this one anon, you know who you are, kept recommending it to me, which I had responded to every time with “okay, I’ll consider it.” For the past month or two I had been watching JoJo for the first time, and I had just finished Stardust Crusaders. Stardust Crusaders, if you haven’t watched it, is not bad at all. But it is very long and has some pacing issues. I needed a break from JoJo. A short one-season anime like Revue Starlight? The perfect palette cleanser. After all, it’s just Love Live with swords, right? It’s not like it’s gonna take over my life or anything.

And it didn’t. The first three episodes were...uh...well, I was more than a little confused. I didn’t really gel with any of the characters or understand what was going on, so, upon finishing episode 3, I unceremoniously closed the tab and declared myself done. At least that was how it was initially. One evening a couple days later I found myself bored, and figured that I might as well just finish the thing. I had time to kill, after all.

Now this was what did the trick. This time I found myself blown out of the water, especially by the finale, which had just aired that day. Revue Starlight quickly flooded in to fill the void Love Live had left, and I found myself giddy with that new hyperfixation feel. Therapy was going extremely smoothly, I started getting the hang of my new job, and I was even going to the gym regularly. I had something to live for again. A rope to hold onto so I wouldn’t fall deeper and hit the bottom that I’d struggled so hard to climb away from. No matter what happened, I would have the 99th Seisho class to fall back on.

Things, of course, did happen. I grew to resent my job, which wasn’t well-suited for me, so I started looking for a new one. A better one. I had my eye on one in particular, it seemed like a nice cushy desk job that probably had good pay and benefits. I was sure I had nailed the interview. I’d opted to finish the holiday season with my current job, but I really, really wanted that new one. I’d just start once I was finished with my current one, and I had gathered the next starting date was early in the spring. It was for this reason that I wasn’t too concerned when the place I was currently working at got closed down. No problem. I’d just wait for my new job to start.

And so I was unemployed again. In winter, no less, so my depression was particularly monstrous now. For two months I sat in figurative and literal darkness, clinging onto two things: the expectation that I would hear back from the people I was hoping to hear from, and my love for Revue Starlight. I was absolutely miserable. But I held on. I held onto those two things. And finally, the date where I would be called in for an initiation drew near.

Unfortunately, it turned out I actually hadn’t gotten the job after all. I nearly fell apart completely.

I’m kind of convinced that if I hadn’t gotten into RevStar and renewed my need to hyperfixate on things I might’ve actually gone through with killing myself. The sheer despair I felt when I found out I had just spent so much time sitting around for nothing, that I had wasted a whole two months of my life, was crushing. In the heat of the moment, I really did think about it. I felt so utterly worthless and foolish, and if I took my own life I wouldn’t have to feel that way anymore. But I couldn’t. Because I did have a reason to keep living and to move on. I still had Revue Starlight.

Eventually I did manage to get a job, my current one. It’s not ideal, but the pay and hours are better than either of my previous ones, as is the nature of the job itself. The effects of my hormone replacement therapy, which I had only been on for about a month when everything had fallen apart, soon started to become more apparent. Now that I had a steady and regular source of income I decided to make plans to go out and see my girlfriend, who I figured it was about time I met in real life, which I eventually did, and she was wonderful. And those were just things that happened within my personal life. As for Revue Starlight? Shortly after I’d gotten the job, I managed to actually watch the stage plays, which I hadn’t seen yet, and they were amazing, especially the second one. Starira got an English release, pulling new blood into the fandom. Sato Hinata was slated to appear at Anime Central, which is the one con I actually bother to attend, and I got to meet her. For real. In person.

And if I’d gone and killed myself? I would never have gotten any of that. I would have missed out on so much. As much of a fool as I had felt like at the time, at least I didn’t do the single most foolish thing that I could have. And I’m glad. And thankful.

So thank you, to that one anon (you know who you are) for pointing me in the right direction. Thank you to the fellow fans who make up this community that I’ve settled down in. Thank you to the seiyuu in front of the mics, and the artists, animators, composers, writers, and coders behind them. I’m here right now because of you. Thank you.

#i've just been thinking about this #like a lot #because so much has happened in the past year #so much has changed and i feel like a different person now #and i feel like i really do owe it to this series #revue starlight #gray posts

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shiningspinda · 7 years

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Updated Games List

This I’m doing more or less for myself, because I: - Want to keep track of my game library - Want to keep track of which games I’ve yet to finish - Want to keep tabs on my collection. If you’re interested, you can look through this list by reading beyond the cut, and yell at me to finish your favorite game if I have it and I haven’t finished it yet! Just go right into my IM box and be like “Eli, finish those game!!” Also feel free to recommend games to me if you see I don’t own it. I will warn you, I don’t really have anything other than Nintendo consoles and PC at the moment, so I won’t be able to play games that aren’t for those. Anyway, here we go. Oh boy.

Game Boy (7)

- Pokemon Red (Completed) - Pokemon Blue (Completed) - Pokemon Yellow (Completed) - Pokemon Gold (Incomplete) - Pokemon Silver (Incomplete) - Pokemon Crystal (Incomplete) - Quest RPG: Brian’s Journey (Incomplete)

Game Boy Advance (17)

- Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past/Four Swords (Incomplete) - Yu-Yu-Hakusho: Spirit Detective (Incomplete) - Namco Museum (You can’t “complete” Namco Museum) - Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team (Completed) - Kirby and the Amazing Mirror (Incomplete) - Pokemon Ruby (Incomplete) - Pokemon Sapphire (Completed) - Pokemon Emerald (Completed) - Pokemon Fire Red (Completed) - Pokemon Leaf Green (Incomplete) - Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga (Incomplete, though I’ve tried many times) - Golden Sun (Incomplete) - Golden Sun: The Lost Age (Incomplete) - Mother 1 (Incomplete) - Earthbound (Incomplete) - Mother 3 (Incomplete) - Drill Dozer (Incomplete)

Nintendo DS (43)

- Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (Incomplete) - Dogz (You can’t really complete Dogz.) - American Girl: Kit Mystery Challenge (Completed) - Drawn to Life (Completed) - Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter (Completed) - Lock’s Quest (Incomplete and dislike) - Nintendogs: Dachshund and Friends (It’s Nintendogs.) - Nintendogs: Dalmatian and Friends (Again, it’s Nintendogs.) - MySims Kingdom (Incomplete, I guess) - Diddy Kong Racing (Completed) - Hamsters 2 (You can’t complete Hamsters.) - Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team (Completed) - Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time (Completed) - Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness (Completed) - Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky (Completed) - Pokemon Pearl (Completed) - Pokemon Platinum (Completed) - Pokemon Heart Gold (Completed) - Pokemon Soul Silver (Incomplete) - Pokemon Black (Completed) - Pokemon White (Incomplete) - Pokemon Black 2 (Incomplete) - Pokemon White 2 (Incomplete) - Pokemon Ranger (Completed) - Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia (Completed) - Pokemon Ranger: Guardian Signs (Completed) - Pokemon Conquest (Incomplete) - Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (Incomplete) - Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes (Incomplete) - Magician’s Quest: Mysterious Times (You can’t complete this game.) - Magical Starsign (Incomplete) - The World Ends With You (Incomplete) - Kirby: Canvas Curse (Incomplete) - Kirby: Superstar Ultra (Completed) - The Legendary Starfy (Completed) - Professor Layton and the Curious Village (Incomplete) - Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box (Incomplete) - Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (Incomplete OTL) - Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (Complete) - Rhythm Heaven (Incomplete) - Ghost Trick (Incomplete) - Final Fantasy III (Incomplete) - Kirby: Squeak Squad (Complete)

Nintendo DSi (1)

- Foto Showdown (Incomplete and makes me angry)

Nintendo 3DS (49)

-Tales of the Abyss (Incomplete) - Fire Emblem: Awakening (Incomplete) - Fantasy Life (Completed) - Return to Popolocrois (Completed) - Super Smash Bros 4 (SMASH) - Harvest Moon: A New Beginning (You can’t really complete this.) - Hyrule Warriors: Legends (Incomplete) - Project Mirai DX (Can you complete this? I GUESS,) - Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer x2 (You can’t complete this.) - Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. (Incomplete) - Harvest Moon: Story of Seasons (You can’t complete this) - Tomodachi Life (You can’t complete this) - Yo-Kai Watch (Incomplete, dislike it) - Monster Hunter Generations (You can’t complete this.) - Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate (You can’t complete this.) - Final Fantasy Explorers (Incomplete) - Kid Icarus: Uprising x2 (Incomplete, tell me how I got 2 of these.) - Animal Crossing: New Leaf x2 (You can’t complete these really) - Kirby: Triple Deluxe (Incomplete) - Bravely Default (Incomplete) - Bravely Second (Incomplete) - Chrono Trigger (Incomplete) - Pokemon X (Complete) - Pokemon Y (Complete) - Pokemon Omega Ruby (Complete) - Pokemon Alpha Sapphire (Incomplete) - Pokemon Sun x2 (Complete, Incomplete) - Pokemon Moon (Incomplete) - Pokemon Ultra Sun (Complete) - Pokemon Ultra Moon (Incomplete) - Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity (Completed) - Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon (Incomplete) - Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, Anniversary Edition (Completed) - Weapon Shop de Omasse (Complete) - Cave Story (Incomplete, I’M TRYING) - VVVVVV (Complete) - Shovel Knight (Incomplete, AGAIN I’M TRYING) - Pokemon Yellow Virtual Console (Incomplete) - Pokemon Gold Virtual Console (Incomplete) - Pokemon Silver Virtual Console (Incomplete) - Rhythm Heaven Megamix (Incomplete) - Swapdoodle (You can’t complete this.) - Gunman Clive (Incomplete) - Gunman Clive 2 (Incomplete) - Kirby Planet Robobot (Incomplete) - Miitopia (Completed)

Nintendo Wii (13)

- MySims Agents (Completed) - MySims (Almost Completed, 5 stars is hard) - MySims Kingdom (Incomplete) - MySims Racing (Incomplete, I guess?) - Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Incomplete) - Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Incomplete) - Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter Wii (Incomplete, this game is BAD) - Pokepark Wii: Pikachu’s Adventure (Completed) - Pokepark 2: Wonders Beyond (Incomplete) - Pokemon Battle Revolution (You can’t complete this ripoff of Stadium) - Super Smash Brothers Brawl (SMASH) - Animal Crossing: City Folk (You can’t complete this) - Mario Kart Wii (Completed)

Nintendo WiiU (13)

- Animal Crossing: Amiibo Festival (It’s just Marioparty) - Pokken Tournament (Incomplete) - Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap Virtual Console (Incomplete) - Earthbound Beginnings/Mother 1 Virtual Console (Incomplete) - Earthbound Virtual Console (Incomplete) - Animal Crossing: Wild World Virtual Console (You can’t complete this) - Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town VC (Can’t complete this) - Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland Virtual Console (Incomplete) - Ohayou! Beginner’s Japanese (it’s literally a learning dictionary) - Lost Reavers (It’s an MMO and sucks imo) - Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (Incomplete) - Splatoon (Completed) - Shantae: 1/2 Genie Hero (Incomplete)

Nintendo Switch (9)

- Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Completed) - Super Bomberman R (Incomplete, I dislike it) - Stardew Valley (You can’t complete this silly) - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Completed, now I just mess around) - Deemo (Incomplete) - Splatoon 2 (Incomplete) - Touhou Kobuto Burst Battle (Incomplete, I dislike it) - Elnea Kingdom (You can’t complete this silly) - Super Mario Odyssey (Incomplete)

Steam (92)

- 1bitHeart (Incomplete) - Alicemare (Completed) - Angels of Death (Completed) - Artifact Adventure (Incomplete) - Audiosurf (You can’t complete this) - Audiosurf 2 (You can’t complete this) - Awareness Rooms (Completed) - Bastion (Incomplete) - Battle Fantasia -Revised Edition- (Incomplete) - Battleblock Theater (Incomplete) - BIT.TRIP BEAT (Incomplete) - BIT.TRIP CORE (Incomplete) - BIT.TRIP FATE (Incomplete) - BIT.TRIP FLUX (Incomplete) - BIT.TRIP Presents... Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien (Incomplete) - BIT.TRIP RUNNER (Incomplete) - BIT.TRIP VOID (Incomplete) - Cave Story+ (Incomplete) - Celestian Tales: Old North (Incomplete) - Crypt of the NecroDancer (Incomplete) - Cursed Sight (Incomplete) - Destiny Warriors (Incomplete) - Disgaea PC (Incomplete) - Don’t Starve (Incomplete) - Don’t Starve Together (This is co-op) - Downwell (Incomplete) - Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition (I haven’t touched this tbh) - The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Incomplete) - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Incomplete) - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Complete, this is my raise hell copy) - The Enchanted Cave 2 (Incomplete but I’m obsessed) - Evil Hazard (Incomplete) - Eternal Senia (Completed) - Freedom Planet (Incomplete) - Girlfriend Rescue (Incomplete) - Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure (Incomplete) - Hatoful Boyfriend: Collector’s Edition (Incomplete) - Helen’s Mysterious Castle (Incomplete) - Kero Blaster (Incomplete) - King of Dragon Pass (Incomplete) - Knock-knock (Incomplete) - Labyronia RPG (Incomplete) - Labyronia RPG 2 (Incomplete) - Legend of Mysteria (Incomplete) - LiEat Trilogy (Completed) - LIMBO (Incomplete) - Long Live The Queen (Almost certain you need to sell your soul to complete this game.) - Mega Man Legacy Collection (Incomplete) - Melody’s Escape (You can’t complete this.) - Millennium: A New Hope (Incomplete) - Millennium 2: Take me Higher (Incomplete) - Millennium 3: Cry Wolf (Incomplete) - Millennium 4: Beyond Sunset (Incomplete) - Millennium 5: The Battle of the Millennium (Incomplete) - Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (Incomplete) - Monaco (Incomplete) - Neverwinter (It’s a DND MMO, so ???) - Night in the Woods (Incomplete) - One Way Heroics (Incomplete) - OneShot (Incomplete) - Ori and the Blind Forest (Incomplete) - Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (I don’t know the difference.) - Out There Somwhere (Incomplete) - Owlboy (Incomplete) - Portal (Incomplete) - Portal 2 (Incomplete) - QuestEvent (Completed as much as I can) - Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale (Incomplete) - Secret of Magia (Incomplete) - Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove (Incomplete, sigh) - Silence (Incomplete) - Sins of the Demon RPG (Incomplete) - Skullgirls (It’s a fighting game) - Skullgirls: Endless Beta (???) - Slime Rancher (Incomplete?) - Soundodger+ (I don’t think you can complete this) - Starbound (Haven’t touched it yet) - Starbound - Unstable (Sounds scary.) - Stardew Valley (You can’t complete this) - Storm of Spears (Incomplete) - Super Meat Boy (Incomplete) - Tales of Zestiria (Incomplete) - Terraria (Incomplete) - They Bleed Pixels (Incomplete) - To the Moon (Completed) - Transistor (Incomplete) - Trick & Treat (Completed) - Undefeated (Incomplete) - Undertale (Completed) - VVVVVV (Completed) - We Know the Devil (Steam Version is broke. I completed it on the website) - World’s Dawn (Haven’t touched it yet.)

On PC Alone (WIP)

- Ib (Completed) - Witch’s House (Completed)

#text #my list #video games

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barbosaasouza · 5 years

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‘3rd eye’ Unveils a Gloomy World Creeping Behind Reality

Koishi can use her Third Eye to read minds and see some things most people can’t (and likely wouldn’t want to). It’s a cursed power, but you’ll need it to escape your new, monstrous predicament.

Koishi’s hasn’t been super keen on being around people since her powers manifested, so she’s kept to herself in her room for a very long time. That typically works fine, except one night, she awakens someplace else, and will find herself wandering a strange world and meeting some creepy folks within it.

3rd eye follows Koishi throughout her journey across several realms, each of which is filled with some unsettling visions hiding just underneath a (still kinda eerie) surface. Koishi’s eye can allow her to see the things that hide beneath reality, which helps when you’re looking for some item you need to escape it. This comes with some problems, as some ghastly things live on the other side and don’t seem too happy to see you. Also, it dries your eye out to stare into the abyss for long, so you’ll need to use eye drops to soothe it. Seriously. Just because it’s supernatural doesn’t mean you won’t need to take care of your physical health.

This Touhou fan game is filled with wonderful, yet unsettling folks to meet and befriend, as well as some startling visions of disturbed places. It creates a chilling sense of something lurking right behind you in plain sight with its dual realities, creating some wonderful dread even when you’re looking at a calm place filled with cute (but odd) kids.

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3rd eye is available now on Steam.

The post ‘3rd eye’ Unveils a Gloomy World Creeping Behind Reality appeared first on Indie Games Plus.

‘3rd eye’ Unveils a Gloomy World Creeping Behind Reality published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/

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ygg-yiggles · 1 year

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Old Art: Inktober 2022, part 1

I have participated in Inktober since 2019, on Twitter up until now. To breathe some life into my blog here, I'll post my work from past years over the next few days, along with my thoughts and explanations where relevant, using the more long-form format of tumblr to its advantage. Please mind this small content warning before you continue reading: Some of what I drew for this quite odd and creepy, and in at least one case (day 14), arguably gory. Keep this in mind as you read and view the art.

Day 1: Gargoyle This one was fun. I did a poor job of making it actually look like it was perched on the wall and the wall itself was a pain, ultimately resulting in something kind of halfassed and iffy looking, but still, I had fun with it, and I think the gaping red maw looks pretty decent, all things considered. I used a grey ink--if I recall, it was Noodler's Lexington Gray--for this one, though only sparingly.

Day 2: Scurry Some of the anatomy is screwy here, in particular the catgirl's hands are all kinds of gnarly in ways I didn't intend. Ink is unforgiving. These aren't really meant to be any characters in particular, but I was probably influenced a little by Nazrin from Touhou Project and undeniably heavily inspired by Maekawa Miku from The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls. You might immediately notice two things about this image: firstly that it is clearly more true to the color of the paper and secondly that the left edge curves away, gets blurry, and has a bit of a shadow. Day 1's drawing was simply captured by my phone camera, but I used my scanner for this one. That took time to set up (I have a bad habit of putting things on top of the machine and I have to reposition the whole thing because the USB-B cable I have is too short), so I didn't always use it. There's another scanner now, though, which I can use much more easily.

Day 3: Bat GAHHH why did I go right back to the phone camera? Oh well. The anatomy here is really poor especially around the legs, but I tried to be a little more dynamic with the pose than I usually would be. Evidently, I didn't properly plan this from the beginning, since the torso is on a somewhat different perspective plane than it should be. Oh well, not everything works out as you'd want it.

Day 4: Scallop I love drawing spooky little creatures. Here, we see a sea scallop, but with spindly arms and legs. This is only slightly more monstrous than what live sea scallops actually look like. Did you know they have like 200 eyes, all lined up in a row along the edge of the "mouth"? Crazy. There's also a moray eel in entirely imaginary colors here. It seems about as freaked out by the scallop creature as is appropriate.

Day 5: Flame Dragon girl! I should really put this under the scanner someday. Overall I mostly like how this turned out, though I clearly had no clue what to do with the breasts. Probably should have grabbed some references.

Day 6: Bouquet This time, the gnarly fingers were absolutely intentional. Here we see an elder vampire or something, perhaps some other kind of aged fantasy man, enjoying several flowers. I think they were based upon a couple specific real flowers, but I can't quite recall exactly what they were.

Day 7: Trip This is one I'm really glad I went through the trouble to use the scanner for. There are certainly things that could have been improved, but overall, I'm still quite proud of this one. Two girls on a road trip in an Autobianchi Bianchina, stopped on the side of the road for... I dunno, looking at the scenery, I guess. I don't know if that car was ever sold in this color, but it's what color I'd want one in.

Day 8: Match Matching outfit elves. The anatomy and basic geometry of this one was completely unsalvageable by the time I realized what was going on. Alas, at least it was properly scanned.

Day 9: Nest Sometimes you go into a drawing with an image in your head that's too complex to hold for long and when you zoom in in your mind to look at the details, you lose it. Ultimately, though, when I look at it now, that worked out better than if I had faithfully rendered every piece of trash in the garbage heap that this giant, mechanical bird-thing has built. Seriously, this looks way better than I remember it looking. I also used the grey ink here again, I think to much better effect than with the gargoyle.

Day 10: Crabby Crabby child, crab hat, "Feelin' Crabulous!" shirts. Not much more to say other than wow that mom character looks weird. I think I did a pretty decent job of depicting a child in the middle of a tantrum over god-knows-what here.

Day 11: Eagle A man and his concerningly large eagle. If I recall, this was meant to depict a Haast's eagle, an extinct species from what is now New Zealand. Or at the very least it was mostly inspired by that. In other words, it's completely nonsensical for a man in a heavy coat, fur hat, and snow goggles to have one as his companion, but somehow it just felt right. I used a bunch of different colors of brown micron and even fountain pen ink for this, and I think the effect turned out well.

Day 12: Forget Creepy creatures what take your brain out and make you forget things. The head being comically outsized compared to the rest of the body was actually intentional here--I felt the strange proportions would further bring focus to the point of the action and also just make the whole scene feel even weirder.

Day 13: Kind More weirdo creatures. I thought it'd be fun to depict kindness between alien things rather than more easily relatable humans or animals. This color palette also happens to be enjoyable to me. This is another one featuring some fountain pen inks, but I can't recall what they were.

Day 14: Empty Yeah, this one is pretty gross and freaky. Sorry about that. But hey, that was the idea. Mission accomplished, right? If I remember correctly, this one included Diamine Oxblood ink, to get that fleshy cavern look.

Day 15: Armadillo Yep, it's Tarkus. As in, the album by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. I guess you could consider this a gijinka? The nameplate thing bearing the day number and prompt is based on the colors of the ground in the album art.

..And that's it for now. I'll do days 16-31 tomorrow or the next day, depending on how much I can think of to write about those. If you made it this far, thanks for reading and for looking at my art.

#drawing #traditional illustration #inktober

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