#tanuki speaks

[ifuckingloveryoshu]

"So many things in this world presuming that they deserve to call themselves family."

These are just my personal thoughts about the Ryoshu quote relating to my own life and experince, no analysis or anything of public substance.

The family line of Ryoshu got to me. Ryoshu's dynnamic with groups relates to me as someone who's been in organizations build on group unity when I was younger. I was put into dance classes, piano classes, girl scouts, catechism classes, chior, a lot of others. All of these liked to promote themselves as a family. I didn't relate to no matter how much I tried to. Everyone seemed close. They always like to say they were a little family. It's common for group organizations built on bonds like that, no? I didn't understand and I still really don't. I know when I start thinking of a group as 'family', I start acting stupid and dumb.

Within my personal culture, or at least the culture of my biological family, the only family they recognize or aknowledge is drawn from blood. That's not the concept I jive with either as a firm beleiver of found family. Family is whatever you deicide and no one can take that idea from you. If it just so happens the ones your bonded with the most, great for you. If you need to spread out and find the ones you can unmask to are fellow comrades in a warfeild, that is wonderful. I think everyone needs to find their own family even if it takes a while, a long time, a year, a decade, the only time limit is death. As breif or as long as a family sticks with you, humans are natually social creatures and isolation doesn't do a person good, but we both over and underestimate what is a healthy amount of socalization to stay sane. Or im still too confused, I tend to be confused a lot of the time.

Im more prone to parasocial relationships actually, im doing it right now. To be vulnerable with strangers to try and make friends is a struggle. Communicating to people more openly is a giant stuggle, it does not feel good. Im alright and appreciate what I have now, the ability to come and go as I please. I'm having fun again, I hope. It feels fun.

Anyone who's still reading, im in awe, but I'd like to tell you, you don't need to be the most extroverted person ever to belong with people who accept you. Nothing is wrong with you if you don't seem to click with people right away because these things take time. A kinship may never even form at all. Don't feel the need to force it, but if you do, enjoy what you have in these moments. You are doing your best for what you can at this current point in life.

[pielove123clan]

Failure, for the OC thing!

Thanks for asking because I got that vampire autism and don't talk much about my ocs. The thing with my ocs though is I purposly leave them open-ended, im never done developing and changing them. I did all my ocs if you don't mind. The thing is, I need to give my ocs more trauma. I'm too nice with them. None of these are fandom related, their just general ocs in my head.

Question: What's your OC's greatest failure? Have they been able to move past it? Does anyone else know about it?

Aparna: She is an undead zombie housewife who can turn into a giant rabbit kaiju. I think her greatest failure is going to be going to sleep when moments before her huband was trying to reson out why she should let him kill her. She was opposed but her husband was able to talk Aparna down like, "Ok honey, this idea was kind of silly, Your right, I don't know why I thought this would be a good idea. Let's go to bed." And then when she fell asleep, her husband killed her. No one else knows this and she's been trying to move past it, look on the bright side because the killing was done to make her 'immortal', it was just greatly delayed. I still need to do more research on how The Great Depression effected families.

Milicent: She is a woman made up of a bunch of centipedes but looks like a normal ass woman, just glossy. I need to give her a failure because killing people in a time when you were more controled by animal instincts and not fulling a conscious self doesn't feel like much of a failure to her. She just moves on like nothing every happened but she accepts that yeah, she did eat people. That was how she was before. She's not doing it anymore because she prefers engadging with not dead people, but she wouldn't care to do it. She'll tell her adopted child Fleshy when she's older.

Fleshy: Body horror child escaped experiment who is a living virus. Weird stuff I still need to write down fully. Her biggest failure is her existence because she was a mistake from the lab that made her. I think she's moved on fine so far but she's still young, still learning. Milicent is trying to teach her how to live in this human world while being true to her nature, im still trying to work out their dynamic. Milicent is doing her best but some of the stuff she's teaching is maybe questionable.

Fleshy has minor anger and violence issues actually. For example, if someone were to tease her, if they don't noticibly look bigger or stronger or if she knows she could get away with it, her immediate thought is "punishment" as in, she will punish the other person, just like the people at the lab did to her. That means hitting or trying to absorb them or their limbs, and she's ruthless. She's very shy and cowardly to juxtapose that and Milicent is trying to direct her to not solving situations like that with violence.

Marigold: She's an ecology student with a shovel that can dig holes to other dimensions. Letting her father vanish before she could completly say all she wanted to say to him. Before he had suddenly vanished, they had a verbal argument. What I'm working with now is that for some reason, the father is insisting on moving out just as Marigold got accepted to a local university. The day after while Marigold was gone from the house, the home was ransacked, her mother was beaten, and her father was no where to be seen. Im still working on lore for her. Long story short, she find the shovel and she's trying to find her father, the problem is she doesn't know what shes doing. No one knows about it. She used to be very social until her father went missing and her mother got transported to the hospital.

Zovasa: They are a vampire jumping spider person. I guess being easily bribed for their apperance? Because its a scay spider who seems to be around misfortune or bad events, people misinterpret them as the bad omen. It's in Zovasa's instincts and nature though to see misfortune sprits or demons and then suck their blood or ichor, or whatever magic demon juices are in there. But, if you thow Zovasa a bone or give Zovasa any sort of kindness that isn't hatred, that demon is free to do whatever in Zovasa's eyes. They get let off the hook. Zovasa doesn't see it as a failure, just that they'll go a little hungrier but its ok. Zovasa is alone so I guesss only the ones that bribe them know.

Cranberry: Gremlin bog otter cryptid. This thing has no thoughts in its head other than violence. The world is lucky that the Cranberry does not have highest intellect. We are all better off that way. I think the biggest failure is the creators of Cranberry have yet to find a way to control the Cranberry and weild them as force of destruction. A handful have tried only to die out of bloodloss from their fearsomely treacherous claws and mighty sharpened maws. Only few know of the Cranberry breeding lab under the bog.

Milly: Medical student in medical school studying to be a surgeon. How did she pay for medical school without the support of her parents? She signed a shady loan connected to a shady underground organ trafficing ring! That's her biggest failure so far and she can't move past it yet because she needs to work off that debt. She is pretty introverted so no one knows, im still playing around with the idea of Milicent, Milly, and Fleshy being a sort of found family and if that still sticks, Milicent would know and be there for her. Otherwise, I need to make Milly some friends.

Verdell: Haven't written much for him because hes relativly new but he will be a superhero oc, possibly influnced off tokusatsu stuff. He is Milly's brother and the much more favorited child in the family. It would be an easy cop out answer to say in his eyes, his greatest failure is not being able to help everyone while remaining in the spotlight and get that recogition. He does legitimately want to do good and help people but he's also a people pleaser and badly trying to over-compensate. He wants his good deeds to be seen, high praises sung in his honor, to be liked and widly revered worldwide. I don't think he's that subtile so if people wanted to really pay attention, he prioritizes what will give him more eyes, more fame in his heroic endevors. He feels the need to go higher and higher since birth because those high praises are what his family gave, he feels like he needs to live up to that severely. Experimenting on making him Marigold's housemate after the vanishing of her father.

Bake: My tanuki oc! She doesn't see herself as having any major failure in her life but for the most part all she thinks about is eatting and survival as a wild animal, and whatever would get her interest at any given moment. She's a younger character with no role model figure or adult figure in her life. She's really alone. Given her attitude as an animal, has little empathy for others experiences or feelings about death other than a dead thing should stay dead. I think her biggest failure is that she doesn't have any real goals or ambition, no actual reason to strive for continued exsistance other than for survival sake. She just exist, wandering around. She might be depressed but she doesn't know it, because she naps quite a bit. She also really doesn't have any morals unless its just, "This thing will get me killed so don't do that." or "There's food there, food is important for survival. I will take it." Id like to write her more but I get self conscious.

Malinda: This giant red and black spikey dragon. In her eyes, her biggest failure is not getting out of her cave and murdering the king yet because they keep sending these knights to her cave in order to steal from her horde of items. She has a personal vendetta against this one specific king but she can't be bothered yet to take care of it, she's procrastinating. I think her biggest failure is sort of being a hermit and shutting herself off from things. She's a very neutral dragon, almost passive with how much she doesn't care unless something really rouses her. She's just as likely to join a hero's party as much as she is to join the demon lord, its whoever gets to her first and impresses her the most. It's depending on her company how she'll develop.

Lily: My self-insert oc. The easiest way I can describe her species is wolf tulpa person. She specifically has an identity crisis. I made her to try and get through my own trauma and digest it without attacking myself. Wolves are known for their packs and undying loyalty so betraying or deserting them is treason no matter what. She is activly running away from her problems by going around by herself in an RV. She is not able to move past them and that's a major part of her character. She's trying but activly, when she tries to go with other people, to have fun and move past it, feelings kind of consume her. Even one slip up and she gets all scared and withdrawn. She has SAD or Social Anxiety Disorder when she never had that before. She internalizes her greatest failure a lot, the failure to stay and protect the ones she loves and cares about, then seeing them seemingly get corrupted by a miasma right before her eyes, or that dillusion in her part? I purposly make it vauge. I think about Knight Of Despair when thinking about her sometimes. I need to write her but its like staring at a mirror. I can't do it for too long but I'd like to.

[leafie-draws]

it tears me up inside because my niece is just like I was when I was younger and I was also bullied a lot for being a furry and I just want to defend her and be the cool friend and role model in her corner that I needed as a kid. like we were drawing together and she drew herself as a sad catgirl crying and I asked her why she was sad and she said it was because she was being bullied and I felt my heart physically break. I told her that catgirls become stronger with the more tails they have and now she's drawing them with multiple tails. protect furry kids.

[alliumdykes]

Ok i so im on break rn but whilst i was doing work i had a thought. If Tommy joined Qsmp he should only be known as Tubbo’s husband. Thats it nothing else. he isnt allowed to be his on character he is now Tubbos husband thats it.

[clown-demon]

Romantic ships I currently have:

Nikolai x Nimue Nikolai x Soldan Nikolai x Dazai (Kitten) Nikolai x Sigma (Aku) Nikolai x Kim (not yet completely established, but mentioned) Nikolai x Kounosuke (Not yet established, but mentioned.)

I think that's all of them? I have TERRIBLE memory so pls don't bite me if I forgot ours...

If you wanna ship-- you basically gotta punch me in the face and be like 'I wanna ship with yo' ass.'

[cozy-kimmy]

Making Sage my one oc’s rival now bfbdjw

Digit’s always making fun of Eggman for loosing to kids all the time, so one day Eggman decides to be petty and puts Sage in charge of dealing with her whenever she tries to hack the EggNET to steal info like “Alright fine, we’ll see how you like it then.”

So now Digit is getting annoyed and frustrated at an ai who’s besting her every move and complaining “It’s not the same thing, that brats just a stupid line of code!!”

[floorpancakes]

tired and eepy but i forgot have i shared with the tumblr crowd that one day i just decided the holic heights go by rule of expy and any jotaro expy with no specified height is 195cm tall by default. it's extra funny cause i did the math and that would make watanuki a tall lanky 183cm or so but hed still look smaller next to doumeki and it would make him mad. i mean we know that part is canon but its extra funny if you just imagine that everyone in holic is just super fucking tall naturally like it's in the water or something. enter the spaghettiverse

[godofvillains-arch]

((I have done zero replies except for this morning over on Micah.. I think I'm gonna tackle a few drafts on here.

[fucknowhyplease]

I don't need someone to love me the way that I love them.

I need acknowledgement that the people around me understand all of my expressions of love towards them.

I also need a Kamen Rider Tycoon plush, just look at him:

[ifuckingloveryoshu]

roommate suggests binoculars when it comes to ryoshu viewing. or like the glass at zoos between the zoogoers and gorillas.

This made me smile. She'd notice me either way, shes very perceptive like that. Man. Gorillia strenght glass would be nice but its a toss up between if that would agrivate her or not. She's not just an exibit to look at, you know? But I just can't help it but stare at her. The binocular tip is good, thanks for that.

Currently imaginly opera house binoculars.

Hope your roommate have a nice day! Or night! And thanks again for the ask!

[pielove123clan]

Don't use AI, I can butcher your favorite character just as effectivly!

[leafie-draws]

Hi, I love the design of your oc Leafie (that's their name, right?)! Was there a specific process you had when designing them? I know for a recent oc of mine, it was based upon certain aesthetics I feel strongly about in certain media I love and certain moods/vibes within myself. What kind of thoughts or inspirations did you have when designing yours?

P.S. - I love the drawing of them with the nb and ace flags (I'm ace too!)

eeee thankyou!! I'm so glad you like them! x3 for Leafie I wanted a fursona that was vaguely canine and had close ties to nature so I studied a lot of animal and Japanese folklore and finally settled on a tanuki! I was also inspired by Ghibli's "Pom Poko" and felt that the tanuki's dependence on caffeine to use their shapeshifting magic was fitting since I/my oc have chronic fatigue and it makes them too tired/brain foggy to shapeshift lol

originally Leafie also had the traditional tanuki leaf on her head but eventually became a sprout and now I come up with silly headcanons for it, like it controls her hair color, emotions and body temperature or gives her magical girl powers lmao

[bixels]

Give it up for the New York Wonderbolts!

Siobhan "Spitfire" Pierce-Evans, Irish immigrant. Got her start as a aeroplane mechanic's apprentice before becoming the first female pilot in WW1, flying reconnaissance for the UK. After the war, she went on to fly competitively, winning third place in the 1924 Italian Schneider Cup. After that, she immigrated to the US, where she began her baseball career with the New York Wonderbolts and quickly rose the ranks to become team captain. Pitcher, killer curveball. [Inspired by Dorothy Arzner]

Soren "Baby Face" Christensen, Scandinavian-English American. Lives in Brooklyn near the Fifth Avenue Line. Competitive pie eater. Slugger, with a 0.340 batting average. Mama's boy. Used to work on an airstrip and fly in the airmail service in the early 1920s. [Inspired by Babe Ruth, Superman, and the human form of the tanukis from Pom Poko]

Faizah "Fleetfoot" Farraj, 2nd-gen Syrian American. Lives in Little Syria, Manhattan with her family. Has been playing baseball all her life. Fastest sprinter on the team, infamous base-stealer. Despite being one of the youngest on the team, she has a head of grey hair due to a magical incident from her childhood. Speaks with a lisp. [No inspiration]

[lcpmon]

obsessed with this emote currently

[evertomorrowart]

Best of YouTube 2023

Yes, I did spend the first week and change of January on this. I wish I could have had it done for New Years, but too many people came out with incredible work in December, so waiting turned out for the best.

What these creators do are a huge influence on my life, I would honestly have difficulty doing what I do without them. That isn't to say that my favorites of the year are *only* on this image--It was almost impossible to narrow down my favorites. Many creators I wanted to include couldn't fit on a single page, and too many of them made more than one video I wished I could draw too!

But, to all of you, thank you for what you do. You're an inspiration.

For those who don't know, further is an explanation.

At the bottom center is an artistic masterpiece by Defunctland: "Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History." Over the last several years, Defunctland has risen from delightfully-entertaining commentary on decommissioned theme park attractions to occasionally dropping profound statements on the creation of art itself. "Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History" is worth treating like the cinematic experience it is: No second screen, you sit your ass down in front of a TV, set down the phone, and then you *watch it.* Any Disney, theme park, or independent film fan needs to pay attention to this one.

Bottom left is Caelan Conrad with their piece "Drop the T - The Deadly Consequences of Gay Respectability Politics." While I do think they've done more visually or artistically-daring pieces before, "Drop the T" is one of the most important videos released on YouTube in today's current climate of hate. We as queer folk (and our allies) need to understand how integral every identity of the queer experience has been since the start of the Civil Rights movement (and before!). While we are not identical, we *are* inseparable, and we deserve having our real history easily accessible.

TERFs and other conservative mouthpieces need not reply. Your opinions are trash. 😘

I cannot stop watching and rewatching this video by @patricia-taxxon, "On the Ethics of Boinking Animal People." It's not just a defense of furry fandom and its eccentricities, it's a thoughtful and passionate analysis of what the artform achieves that purely human representation can't. Patricia goes outside of her usual essay format to directly speak to the viewer about the elements that define furry media (the most succinct definition I've ever heard) and just how *human* an act loving animal cartoons really is.

As an artist who can draw furry characters, but never really got into erotic furry art, this video is a treasure. Why did I choose to have her drawn as a Ghibli character, hanging out with one of the tanukis from "Pom Poko?" Guess you'll have to watch, bruh.

Philosophy Tube continuously puts out videos that I would put on this list--I'm not even sure that "A Man Plagiarised my Work: Women, Money, and the Nation" is the best work she released in 2023. However, this video got many conversations going between myself and my partner, and the twist on the tail end of the video shocked us both to such a degree that I had no choice.

At the very tail end of the year, Big Joel released "Fear of Death." On his Little Joel channel, he described it as the singularly best video he's ever done, and I'm inclined to agree. However, for this illustration, I ended up repeatedly going back to a mini-series he did earlier in the year: "Three Stories at the End of the World." All three videos are deeply moving and haunting, and I was brought to tears by "We Must Destroy What the Bomb Cannot." While it may be relatively-common knowledge that the original Gojira (Godzilla) film is horror grappling with the devastation America's rush to atomic dominance inflicted on Japan, Big Joel still manages to bring new words to the discussion. Please watch all three of the videos, but if, for some reason, you must have only one, let it be "We Must Destroy What the Bomb Cannot."

Y'all. Let me confess something. I hate football. I hate watching it, I associate seeing it from the stadiums with some of my worst childhood experiences, I despise collegiate and professional football (as institutions that destroy bodies and offer up children at the feet of its alter as a pillar of American culture)--

I. L o a t h e. Football.

But.

F.D. Signifier could get me to watch an entire hour-plus essay on why I should at least give a passing care. AND HE DID IT. I might think "F*ck the Police," the two-parter on Black conservatism, or his essay on Black men's connection to anime might be "better" videos, but this writer did the impossible and held my limited attention span towards football long enough to make a sincere case for NFL players--and reminds us that millionaires can *in fact* be workers. That alone is testament to his skill.

Sit down and watch "The REAL Reason NFL Running Backs Aren't Getting Paid." Any good anti-capitalist owes it to themselves.

CJ the X continuously puts out stunning, emotional videos, and can do it with the most seemingly-inconsequential starting points. A 30 second song? An incestuous commercial? Five minutes of Tangled? Sure, why not. Go destroy yourself emotionally by watching them. I'm serious. Do it.

Their video Stranger Things and the Meaning of Life manages to to remind us all why the way we react to media does, in fact, matter. Yes, even nostalgia-driven, mass-media schlock. Yes, how we interact with media matters, what it says about us matters, and we all deserve to seek out the whys.

Folding Ideas has spent the last few years articulating exactly why so much of our modern world feels broken, and because of that his voice continuously lives rent-free in my brain. While the tricks that scam artists and grifters use to try to swindle us are never new, the advancement of technology changes the aesthetics of their performances. Portions of Folding Ideas' explanations might seem dry when going into detail of how stocks work in This is Financial Advice, but every bit of it is necessary to peel back the layers of techno-babble and jargon and make sense of the results of "Meme Stocks."

Jessie Gender puts out nothing but bangers, her absolute unit of a video about Star Wars might be my new favorite thing ever, but none of her work hit so profoundly in 2023 than the two-parter "The Myth of 'Male Socialization'" and "The Trauma of Masculinity." There's so much about modern life that isolates and traumatizes us, and so much of it is just shrugged off as "normal." We owe it to ourselves to see the world in more vivid a color palette than we're initially given.

Panels drawn after Kate Beaton and "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands."

"This is Not a Video Essay" is one of the most intense and beautiful pieces of art I've ever put into my eyeballs. Why do we create? What drives us to connect?

I don't even know what else to say about the Leftist Cooks' work, it repeatedly transcends the medium and platform. Watch every single one of their videos, but especially this one.

The likelihood you are terminally online and yet haven't heard of Hbomberguy's yearly forrays into destroying the careers of awful people is pretty slim. Just because it has millions of views doesn't mean that Hbomberguy's "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" isn't worth the hype. Too long? Shut up, it has chapters and YouTube holds your place, anyway. You think a deep dive into a handful of creators is only meaningless drama? Well, you're wrong, you wrong-opinion-haver. Plagiarism is an *everyone* problem because of the actual harm it creates--the history it erases, the labor it devalues, the art it marginalizes--which you would know if you watched "Plagiarism and You(Tube)".

Watch. The damn. Video.

In fact, watch all of them!

Thanks for reading this if you did.

[bitterkarella]

Midnight Pals: Kitsunes in love

Neil Gaiman: submitted for the approval of the midnight society, i call this the tale of the kitsune in love Kij Johnson: oh this sounds great Lafcadio Hearn: AHEM Hearn: i'll be the judge of that Hearn: you baka gaijin Gaiman: this is a tale of that ineffable madness that seizes the young and emboldens the old, cruel in its kindness and kind in its cruelty Gaiman: beautiful in its ugliness and ugly in its beauty Gaiman: i speak, my friends Gaiman: of love Gaiman: simply love

Gaiman: i speak of love as a singular force spiraling through the cosmos, unemcumbered by modular time Gaiman: love which speaks in gentle tones but will not be denied Gaiman: so powerful as to make a pauper of a king and a king of a pauper

Gaiman: to understand my story, you must remember the feelings of love Gaiman: to feel in the depths of that frenzy, unable to breathe for feelings too big to contain Gaiman: do you understand? can you feel it? King: Poe: Barker: Lovecraft: Koontz: Gaiman: then i'll begin

Gaiman: so it came to pass in the mysterious cloudlands of the distant east that a kitsune and a badger made a bet- Hearn: IT'S NOT A BADGER YOU BAKA GAIJIN Hearn: IT'S CALLED A TANUKI Hearn: GET IT RIGHT! Hearn: GET IT RIGHT!!!

Yoshitaka Amano: hey i illustrated your story, what do you think? Gaiman: huh, good but Gaiman: could you make the figures more wan? Amano: which ones? Gaiman: oh you know Gaiman: all of them Amano: ok how's this Gaiman: no no Gaiman: more wan