HAPPY MARBLE HORNETS ANNIVERSARY!!!
This took… so long… I spent the entirety of yesterday figuring out the sketch for this, and today I woke up at 6 in the morning to watch the anniversary livestream (still watching it now), and now, ten hours later, it’s finally done! It probably didn’t help that I accidentally overworked the smoke effect by A LOT the first time around, so I had to undo roughly 3 hours of work to fix that. I am proud of the way it turned out though!! Like, super proud! I haven’t done anything this “artsy” in a while, and I think it looks nice!
(Overworked unfinished piece below cut bc I didn’t have the heart to delete it completely)
Oh yeah, and I also made this. If you know you know:
179 notes
·
View notes
On my walk home from the cafe I was thinking about Sanji (as one does) and how every influence in his life for 19 years screamed at him to hunker down, stay silent, and never appear weak.
As much as I love Zeff and know he loved Sanji, it's clear he has such a straight-laced and unflinching view of masculinity and what it means to be a man. The environment on the Baratie was an extension of that.
It was a machismo world where affection was hidden behind kicks to the head and insults. The kind of environment where cutting your hand or something gets a response of "what? You call that an injury? Don't cry over nothing". Where outright kindness has to be dragged out of people, and then immediately covered up with a half-baked insult.
Throw into that environmemt a little boy who is desperate to prove he's not the failure he was told he was, and out pops a man who wears his heart on his sleeve for "acceptable manly emotions" but who hides real emotions behind anger, and hides pain (physical or emotional) altogether so as not to seem weak.
Tack onto that the idea that the only surefire way to show love is through self sacrifice (his mom + Zeff), then of course Sanji will be all sorts of jacked up.
We see throughout the series how Sanji is so unwilling to be vulnerable or to even admit he's feeling hurt at all. Plaster a smile on, make some comment about loving women, and voila! He's the man's man everyone expects. No need to worry about him. After all: he's strong.
...🥺
96 notes
·
View notes
I remember many years ago, someone (and for the life of me I cannot remember who, but I think it was a commentator) called Vale "the man with the golden mask", basically saying that the Vale we see on TV and in interviews is only the person he wants us to see and that only a few people know the real Vale, and for me this has always explained why he is the way he is with Marc and why it went way from the ranch.
Unlike with people like Biaggi, Stoner, Jlo etc, he clearly genuinely liked Marc (I think possibly because Marc reminded him of himself lol but that's a whole different topic) and I always got the impression he let Marc see a bit of the real Vale behind the mask bc he trusted him, then when Marc rocked up at his ranch with his whole team, he saw it as Marc trying to outdo him and broke that trust. Vale then sees trusting Marc as a mistake, overanalyses everything Marc does on and off track from that point on (rightly or wrongly), sees a lot of it as Marc deliberately sabotaging him, even though it's just his usual demon behaviour, and then 2015 cements his view that he's made a huge mistake in ever trusting Marc with the real Vale. And that's why still now, even though he's had fights and crashes with a lot of other riders, he can't let 2015 go, not just because of the 10th, but because the others were just battles on track; Marc hurt him on a personal level and he blames Marc as much as himself for allowing that to happen. I think the "the mask" went back into place the day Marc left that ranch and has stayed very firmly there ever since, and had it not, maybe things would be different today. Or at least, that is how I've always seen it (sorry for the essay!)
i COMPLETELY agree.... ive already talked like. truly so much about how i think that marc bringing his mechanics to the ranch was seen as the first shot in their little war by vale... like marc transgressing on vale's territory and bringing the smoke to a fun friendly ranch day was spun in vale's brain as MARC being the one to throw the first stone here... like yeah vale has a pattern of icing people out once they become real rivals but i actually think he came into being competitive with marc still open to being friends (or at least thinking that lol) !! and then marc shows up at his house like remember i want to destroy you on track! :3 which for marc's insane brain (mechanics are my familyyy and what happens on track stays there) is fine ! but not for vale lol. and then there's insecurity and ego and marc being an annoying crazy person et cetera blah blah blah so it goes = divorce
i also think ummmm. literally every day about when marc had to introduce valentino to the audience in his documentary, and the first thing he said was "to me, valentino is SHOW." and then also literally immediately identified ranch day as definitively when vale started icing him out... like even if he was in denial during the 2015 season, i think in hindsight he is PAINFULLYYYY aware of exactly when that mask went back up AND when he was unceremoniously removed from the small circle of people who ever get to see vale without it. like there was a shift. and it hurts his feelings lol.
and youre so right! marc IS different than those other guys bc they had a really good relationship before... vale's ability to show the press only what he wants them to see is one of his most effective mechanisms of self protection. (SO effective that he apparently does it in his real life relationships, like with his dad)... if no one sees the real you, then you never have to be vulnerable. if youre never vulnerable, its a lot harder to get hurt. unfortunately for vale it also makes it a lot harder to build meaningful connections ! so i think when he let marc in and then was "betrayed" by him, it was a) a rare occurrence for him to get that close with another racer (academy boys are a lil different obvs. like he thought marc was his equal, which i think compelled him AND freaked him out) and b) deeply effecting when he felt like that trust got betrayed... so even though hes the aggressor in the sepang drama i think he felt pretty victimized at that point. which like yeah is delusional ! but is also just sometimes how emotions work. especially when you have trust ego and vulnerability issues lol
39 notes
·
View notes
SL Rag spoilers below
just another Haein ramble post don mind me.
Look man I love Haein as much as the next person but I feel like, even with the new content of her coming out (from SL Rag to Arise to the anime) she's still lacking in something of her character. And, as I began to look more into her I kinda saw that the main culprit of her characterization is that: She is perfect.
Too perfect, I mean she holds no flaws or anything that can set her aside from the rest (and no being an s rank and female doesn't automatically make her different), and even if she does she doesnt hold them to the extent that other characters might have them, or she just has the same thoughts as anyone else. Her personality as well never clashes with the other hunters or is too different, especially from Jinwoo-- and okay yeah that's expected bc trophy wife trope and all that– and in a sense I think this might derive from the fact that everyone wants her to still be stuck into this mold of “perfect wife + perfect mother” that doesn't have the same level of flaws as the rest.
She wants a comfortable life, like Jinwoo, she trains constantly, like Chiyeol, she is not burdened by trauma unlike Juhee who leaves the story or Jinah who actively tries to stop his brother at one point from entering dungeons (and stopping the MC? Clashing due to real life precautions and worries? And expanding on that? No sir we don't do that). She is strong but not too strong to be a threat (in their first meeting maybe but then Jinwoo just levels up in the castle and then bam stronger than her again) just like… yeah everyone else lol. She fights Jinwoo at one point but it's not due to some difference in thinking or to stop him from something, rather Haein just wants to spend time with him. And yeah despite wanting a comfortable life, or so told so far, she is still placed in the spotlight during her idol years, and has to deal with the most supernatural shit going on in her life constantly. She might be strong but she is still a damsel in distress, and her olympic background… I mean it's there.
I like the implication that she might have been stressed about appearing perfect during her idol life, especially pressured to do great by the adults around her just as she was pressured to be a maintainer of peace when she was an S rank (friend’s death and all), but that… doesn't get anywhere, and I admit Haein hinted to being stressed was only in the date scene with Jinwoo, the rest was expanded by Arise and Rag, still, still its not treated as anything else except ‘oh she is so camery shy’ and ‘oh she just wants a normal life being a normal wife’ (mind you Jinwoo is there as well but he even he doesn't see a problem with that except for when the cameras are pointed at him to which he just makes all the photos look black) and not, idk, dwell on the amount of pressure she would have been faced in since she was a child, the failure of not meeting those expectations in her past life and wishing to meet them when she was given the chance to become an s rank hunter, or how all of that constant training might have affected her life and social ties with other children who werent as talented as her. Or maybe how Haein has had to constantly keep people at a distance due to her nose problems, plus her almost never appearing in the news (so it was said during her hunter years, bc she had signed a contract with Jongin for this to not happen i think) leading everyone to not get to know her as well as the rest of the other hunters who were practically seen as celebrities.
No? None of that? Not even tackling the fact that olympic athletes tend to suffer from burnout, eating disorders, depression, anxiety, or how traumatic the double dungeon must have been since it was the first time Haein, an S rank, had ever come so close to dying (as far as we know in the og sl), and it cant be backed away with saying ‘oh that would be too complex for the story!’ when we’ve seen Haein trying to challenge her fears against Beru during the Ahjin guild arc.
It's also not needed for her to be so overly complex either, I was listing examples out of the many routes in which her story could be fleshed out more. She can have a small healing moment to herself or slowly unwrap the tolls of pressure she’s been under, and that would be enough, because tbh, she does deserve some time to breathe, as a character, as herself. For the most part she’s never alone, in every scene we see other she either is with someone (mostly a guy) or thinking about someone (90% Jinwoo), so seeing her outside of anyone’s interaction, seeing her go on about her daily life or her daily struggles, or seeing how Haein fixes her own situations without the reliance on others, that I think, would be more needed than ‘just more Haein scenes’
Arise has one scene which I like, her talking with Chiyeol after his double dungeon incident. Both characters definitely needed something like that in my part, 1) because it highlights Chiyeols maturity over the certain years he has been as a hunter, and 2) because it emphasizes Haein’s relationship with her teacher and how she’s not only learning to be skilled but also the pain that comes with losing your comrades afterwards.
And in Rag, though I find it way too absurd to the point that its funny that Haein has managed to protect an entire village, on her own, for the past 5 years, with daggers, in her 40s, no experience whatsoever in a fight unless it was also transferred alongside her memories, and also had no qualms in protecting the race of beasts that had once pose such a level of danger Jinwoo himself rewinded time itself— I do like her interactions with Sirka, and it posses such an interesting dynamic to see considering she is one of the few humans who has managed to maintain a connection and lived alongside intelligent magic beasts like he elves (Suho being the other which is… interesting actually when you think about it considering Jinwoo is somewhat yes and not on the list).
Again, she is so interesting in her own right, but the thing is that we never see her act alone or be solely in the spotlight, and don't get me wrong, this also goes from the other characters too. But with her I feel like too much of what she could be or experienced is brushed off too quickly or not given enough time to expand.
So anyways, I will like to see where she might go off from here foward, especially in rag, and the anime.
11 notes
·
View notes