#this is like one of those characters i would never think of drawing so this was fun

[madaqueue]

playlists

what a waste | "army dreamers" x kate bush

synopsis: on what would have his twentieth birthday, you visit geto's grave

pairing: suguru geto x reader

themes/content: semi-canon curse au. angst. language. death/loss.

word count: 1.3k

a/n: here's some angst bc i've been in a mood for the past few days and am allergic to being happy!

The grass is damp under your skin, the rain from this morning clinging to your clothes, the smell of wet earth lingering despite the absence of clouds in the sky. This is the closest it’s gotten to raining on this day in years, what would be a sign of late winter opening into spring, but today it just feels dreary and cold.

Sighing, you place the bouquet of lilacs - his favorites - onto the stone, careful to not cover the plaque adorning the granite. At this point you could recite it in its entirety without needing to see it, the words burned into your mind from the countless days you spent reading and rereading it, hoping that the shape of the characters would finally make it sink in.

Suguru Geto

Cherished and loved.

The epitaph still feels halfhearted, empty. Even though you and Satoru spent weeks trying to figure out what to write, everything you came up with felt hollow, unable to capture his essence. You wanted to do him justice, but you just couldn’t; he’s more than a plot of land and some words engraved in stone.

Of course, it’s a moot point: the grave is empty, anyways. After the fight against Toji, Shoko had to completely destroy his body, the risk of it being used maliciously too great. A shudder runs down your spine as you picture it, the cruelty of using your best friend’s corpse for something malevolent.

Would he notice? Would it bother him to know what had happened to his flesh? What makes a person, anyways; is it the body, or is it something else? You hope he doesn’t mind what had to happen to him after his heart quieted and his breathing stilled.

Are you at peace, Suguru?

You can’t help but wonder if, after everything, death brought him a respite from the pain he endured while alive. You knew the nature of his cursed technique, the necessary consumption of evil; in absorbing it, did it make him, too, evil? Was he plagued by the darkness he was destined to destroy?

You hope not. Despite the wickedness he witnessed, he nevertheless dreamed, hoping for a brighter future.

–

“What did you wanna be when you were a kid?” you ask through a mouthful of ramen.

Suguru sits across from you in the booth, forearms resting on the table as he eats his lunch. “What do you mean?” he questions, tilting his head ever so slightly.

“What did you want for a job? There’s no way you wanted to be a sorcerer,” you chuckle. “Like, I wanted to be one of those people who makes the cool brick patterns along sidewalks.”

He holds back a laugh at your answer. “I’m not sure, I don’t think I ever really thought about it.” He pauses, taking another bite of his food. “But I guess if I had to pick, probably a musician or something, maybe guitar, I always liked how they could make something sound beautiful with just their hands,” he muses softly.

“I could totally see you on a sick guitar,” you grin.

“Yeah, but I got my cursed technique too early. I never really got a chance to do anything but this,” he shrugs. “Maybe in another life.”

“Maybe,” you smile.

–

Now, the guitar you picked out for him, an acoustic one crafted in dark wood, sits in the back of your closet collecting dust. You were supposed to give it to him for his birthday. He was supposed to play it. He was supposed to be here, be alive, be celebrating with you.

Pain shoots up your palm as you look down, realizing your hands have been clenched into fists, your nails beginning to draw blood. Shaking out your arms you take in an uneven breath, a desperate attempt to steady yourself.

All the things he never got to do.

“I’m sorry, Suguru,” you whisper to yourself, placing a bloodied hand over the grass covering his grave.

He should be here. He never even got to turn twenty, never got to have kids or the family he wanted, hell, he was just a kid himself when he died. Just a fucking kid.

–

“That…that can’t be right,” you stammer. “There’s no way.”

“I’m sorry,” Satoru places a hand on your back, tears slowly rolling down his cheeks. “I - fuck - I couldn’t save him. I was too late.”

“No, no, no, no,” you begin to spiral, gaze rapidly shifting over the ground as you process his words.

Suguru was dead. Killed by a man named Toji Fushiguro, trying to protect the Star Plasma Vessel, the one who was supposed to assimilate with Master Tengen.

“I don’t…I don’t know what happened,” Satoru chokes out, “But…I saw his body. He’s gone.”

A scream echoes down the corridor - was it yours? Everything feels far away as Gojo wraps his arms around you, sobs racking your body as you cry into one another.

–

Shaking your head, you wipe the tears that have begun to fall as you remember the day you lost him. Despite the years that have passed, you remember it like it was yesterday, the way the setting sun covered you and Satoru as the night air came in, unable to move from that spot as you wept together.

The sickest fucking part was that it didn’t even matter.

When Riko Amanai, the Vessel, was found dead, they just got a replacement, another body to stand in for Master Tengen’s needs. They told Suguru to protect her with his life and he did, but ultimately the loss of hers was inconsequential to the upkeep of Jujutsu society; just as one flower died they plucked another.

But they couldn’t regrow Suguru’s soul.

–

Four men.

That’s how many it took to carry his body from the basement of Jujutsu High. You watched in silence as they passed you, unspeaking, unwavering, unbothered as they bore his weight.

It feels wrong, somehow, like he should be heavier. He always had this gravitational pull, this universe-sized soul that drew everything to him - shouldn’t they be able to feel that?

How heavy is a body? How heavy is the grief it carries?

–

“Hey,” a voice pulls you back to the present, the sun beginning to hang low in the sky as you ground yourself, idly tugging at the dirt beneath you. “I’m glad to see you,” Satoru greets warmly as he walks across the graveyard towards you.

Since the last time you saw him he’s aged, the creases around his eyes deeper than a twenty-year-old’s should be, an air of sadness clinging to him like wet clothes after being caught in the rain.

“You too,” you smile as he sits next to you in the damp grass.

Neither of you explicitly make plans to see each other here every year, yet you both tacitly know you wouldn’t miss this, the annual reconvening one you simultaneously cherish and dread. Suguru deserves to be celebrated, but it’s also a reminder of the time he didn’t get, the birthdays cut short when his life was stolen from him.

The two of you sit in silence for a while, content without speaking as a cool breeze picks up, dusk settling in.

“He should be here,” Satoru mutters, his knees tucked up to his chest.

“I know,” you murmur as you lay on your back, gaze unfocused on the darkening sky above you.

Another momentary pause falls between you.

“Did you love him?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you answer truthfully. “Did you?”

“Yeah.”

You let out a shaky breath. “Satoru?”

“Mhm?”

“Do you think that was enough, that we loved him?”

He tilts his head to look down at the grave that separates you, the lilacs you brought now lightly covered in a layer of dew. Sighing, he brushes away the tears that had been forming along his lash line. “I hope so.”

“I hope so, too.”

He reaches an arm out to you, holding your hand in his as you both place your empty palms onto the dirt.

“Happy birthday, Suguru,” you whisper.

[knight-a3]

Now we're getting into the realm of OCs. To preface, I was strongly inspired by THIS COMIC. I was also playing with an alternate face design for Random in a couple of these.

Anyway, this is Smokestack!

More below.

I started drawing @mfdragon 's OC, then kept making my own alterations until he became mine. I researched steam-powered locomotives for this y'all. I'll explain in a minute.

Final tidbit of context: I was playing with an alternate design for the Random face, just so it matched the other two a bit more. How I feel about it goes back and forth. I like Random's OG design, but it's just so different from the others that is doesn't quite fit in.

Okay, ramblings and train info dump under the cut. Get ready to learn stuff you never cared about.

So basically, the idea is that an allspark fragment brought some old abandoned steam engine to life. Like in the comic, it used Blitzwing as a blueprint, so Smokestack is the first naturally occurring triple changer. Which also means he doesn't suffer the same mental instability as the previous triple changers, he's just naive in a similar way that Wreck-Gar is. He is neither Decepticon nor Autobot. He's too sweet to be a Con, but he's too loyal to his "Dad" to be an Autobot. He's also full of train facts.

Time for trains info dump! Disclaimer, I'm not at all an expert and I am simplifying.

In the steam era, each locomotive was custom-made, so there weren't any industrial standard models or anything. Different companies had different classing systems at different times. I tried to figure it out once and gave up. Instead, steam engines are categorized by their wheel arrangements. There are leading wheels, driving wheels, and trailing wheels. The driving wheels are the only required ones cuz those are the ones that move it. The leading and trailing wheels are for stabilization and weight distribution. Different arrangements were better for different things, such as freight vs passenger. I don't know the science behind which ones were good at what.

The kind of trains that built the transcontinental railroad were 4-4-0 configurations, commonly called "American Standard" due to their prevalence during the westward expansion. They had two sets(four total) of leading wheels, two sets of driving wheels, and no trailing wheels. Like: <••⊙⊙]▣□□□ They're little guys.

The single most produced type of steam engine was the 2-8-0 "Consolidation". <••⊙⊙⊙⊙]▣□□□□ It was a good multi-purpose design. So I chose to make Smokestack 2-8-0 because it gave me the most wiggle room for when and where I wanted him to originally be manufactured and in service. By making him a random abandoned one, I didn't have to think about what museum pieces could be in the Detroit area (Nobody but me would care, but I got hung up on that for some reason).

Anyway, when he only has one vehicle mode, Smokestack is his original 2-8-0. Once he upgrades to having two alts, he becomes a 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy" <••⊙⊙⊙⊙-⊙⊙⊙⊙••]▣□□□□, which is LARGE. 16 driving wheels, which are at least as tall as a person! The purpose was to have enough power to handle the steep grades in the Rocky Mountains and similarly difficult terrain with heavy loads. These days, rail companies will just hook up multiple diesel engines to the train to get the needed power. There is only one currently functional Big Boy type train, which occasionally does tours. It came by my place on the anniversary of the transcontinental railroad in 2019, but I didn't understand trains enough to properly appreciate it.

Next, I'll be getting into drawing other characters, and making human designs.

[kokoasci]

mushi in ur style would blow my mind

you know what. just for you rocketlauncher3000 i hope you enjoy 🫶

[c10v3r]

i think more people should draw in the bluey style its cathartic

[cuteniaarts]

Behold, my latest and most enamouring new obsession:

Malina, Lady of the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe. As if Red Lotus child OCs weren’t niche enough

[darabeatha]

@holymost​ said ; ok listen I know they're fictional characters named/based on but every time I see an aztec god's name pop up on ur blog I'm like "??? WHY ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT AZTEC MYTHOLOGY?" and then I remember JHSDGFSJHDFHDS my hispanic ass got my ass once again I simply know nothing abt fate

/  AOAOAOOAOAOOAOO IORYTOIYUTOY IT- REALLY DO BE LIKE THAT! it’s so cool! and I can’t imagine how funny it must be to see one day greek mythology and then boom; Aztec and Maya mythology,,, and then Indian mythology and so on so forth; and to someone who isn’t too familiar with f.ate, i can imagine how funny it would be to look at someone u’ve read about in books and look at their anime version OITRUTIUORT LIKE;; what do u MEAN Achilles has bright GREEN hair?!?! it’s so silly sometimes, and it has its good and bad things, but i’ll always be grateful to f.ate for helping me discover more about history and mythology from all around the world which i love love love reading about!. But talking about my mesoamerican muses, I currently write five (5)!! 

Moctezuma II: in game they gave him a different name (Izcalli) but that’s more of a f.ate lore thing and a specific kind of situation that doesn’t really have anything to do with Moctezuma’s story so in my portrayal he is directly Moctezuma II the ninth emperor of Aztec empire or more commonly known as the last Aztec emperor (even tho after his reign there were two other more emperors but their reigns were very short so usually its default like that). He was the one who had the first official contact with the europeans amongs more but i won’t get into details because then this will get super long but yes- There are a lot of misconceptions and myths around his figure and quite frankly, not as much information about him, or well; objective information about him; f.ate wise, I got too attached to him and he shakes something in my heart;; maybe something along the lines of being misunderstood, rage, impotence, his story in overall being kind of put to the side, the strong emotional side of humans, expectations, fears and how these affect us all, etc etc. I think his character was not explored much in detail in f.ate and was a little rushed, which in exchange brough a lot of bad opinions about him and as a result, increased my curiosity over him. There’s also this thing where in fiction its often discussed the ‘negative’ traits a character has but these tend to linger on the usual ‘not too disliked’ traits, so when a certain side of a character is explored that doesn’t really match what we are used to see, it tends to create some sort of rejection towards it. In this case, i think his rage was seen as something petty and only that, which i can understand since not everyone will enjoy all characters but,, that limits his character a lot u know? There is something that hits me when a character has a big dislike ratio (like with constantine) and it made me feel more curious about him and to try to understand him further than what we were shown, which in return has made me grown more attached to him. Its me and mocte against the world frfr 😤✊ /OK JKJKJKJK! For some reason he lives rent free inside my head and by god there should be more art of him so i’m always drawing him nowadays. I could ramble about his f.ate design endlessly and talk much more about him but i’ll cut it here before i go overboard.

Tezcatlipoca: one of the central deities in Aztec religion! he is the god of darkness and night, of conflict, war; characterized by his duality as a desctructive god and creator, the enemy and the merciful of duality itself; associated with hurricanes and obsidian, jaguars. He is an omnipotent, ( the definition being: '(of a deity) having unlimited power; able to do anything’) omnipresent, (that can be present everywhere and anywhere at the same time, making him something akin to an invisible being that you can’t see but that he is there regardless) and omniscient god (that knows everything; he can see the truth in human’s hearts). He can also see through the hearts of men! he is also the brother of Quetzalcoatl in some Aztec tellings and the two of them are central to the creation myth, and there is s o much more! very facsinating god. In fate he’s a silly guy, i think in terms of personality; his character was portrayed wonderfully; the duality of Tezca truly shows and its just -chef kiss-

Tláloc-Huitzilopochtli-Tenochtitlán: now this character is kind of confusing if you are not too familiar with f.ate, and even to me it’s still kind of ??? as her spirit origin’s story is mostly tied to f.go lore, but basically, in fate she is the personification of the city of Tenochtitlán but she presents herself as Tláloc or Huitzilopochtli, as she mentions that by enshrining these two gods, Tenochtitlan (the city, aka her) thrived, and I can kind of understand the general idea they might have tried to go with as it -is- true that these two deities were incredibly important; from the side of Tláloc, he was the god of rain and was turbo mega important and venerated in mesoamerica particularly with the agricultural towns, as he had a crucial role in favoring the prosperity of harvest. He was so important that there were a lof of festivities and ceremonies held in order to receive his favors (their economy on the side of agriculture demanded for a lot of rainy days as there were long dry seasons so Tláloc was highly praised) and we still have a lot of items related to him in museums! I wish i could emphasize more how important Tláloc was but I’m gonna cut myself here and introduce Huitzilopochtli real quick;; he is the solar deity in Aztec religion and he’s tied to war and sacrifice as well (like tezca as well) he was like the patron god of the capital city of Tenochtitlan so you get the idea of just how important he was as well

Kukulkán: in fate, kukulkán also has some kind of odd story tied in that takes place in the f.ate universe, but my kuku is mostly- well; kukulkán, or known as the plumed serpent who’s origins mostly trace back to the Maya most specifically around the classic period. To some researchers, Kukulkán is the same as Quetzalcoatl which is why in f.ate, Kukulkán and Quetz are more like sisters to say; kuku being technically the eldest between the two even though she looks up to Quetz a lot. Kuku was considered a creator god and was associated with the winds and rain as it was said they brough them in the first place. a lil curious note; when the weather gets moody, clouds tend to have this sort of serpent-like shape which is from where the association comes from. Funnily enough, in f.ate she claims to be quite an airhead which im not sure if its a reference to her ties with the wind or not but if that was the case, it would be indeed a funny lil detail.

Camazotz: the Maya bat god from Popol Vuh! a god that dwells in the underworld (Xibalba) and is at the service of the lords of the underworld. Xibalba is packed with tests and trials, and if attempting to enter the underworld in the first place wasn’t already difficult, it keeps getting even more tricky! there are five houses and Camazotz rules over the house of the bats, where there is constant squeaking and shrieking. In the Popol Vuh, the hero twins must be able to spend the night in the house of bats (whose snouts are like blades that they use to attack) in order to pass the test, and they almost do it flawlessly until Hunanpu, (one of the brothers), by attempting to take a peak from the blowgun they were hiding inside of, tries to see if dawn has come, which ends up with his head getting decapitated by a bat. To this, other events pass by and he’s able to come back to life and with his brother they defeat the lords of Xibalba at the end. Popol Vuh aside, the bat as an animal had a lot of associtations such as with death, decapitation (from observing bats flying and snatching fruit from trees), night (even day! as they linger in caves but can also be seen flying in daytime across the skies), sacrifice (linked to the previously mentioned decapitation + blood), the underworld (as caves were a gateway to the underworld), etc, etc. Not to mention how important they are for agriculture as they help pollinate crops as well as help in controling over abundance of insects like mosquitoes. In any case, Camazotz is really cool and i love his design in fate!

[hero-of-the-undersea]

*sighs* it’s that time of year again. anyone in this club know what a shimeji is

[todayisafridaynight]

So, Ichiban’s mom isn’t Janel Monae (as in she’s not black)? If so saaaaaaaaad and missed missed missed opportunity.

if we're real with ourselves there wasn't ever really a chance ichi's mom would be anything but japanese- im more surprised at the fact she's alive lol

[the-acid-pear]

today's prompts are spiders and self insert so i've been thinking of drawing nembone and a uh, bunger. but Im still thinking around the uh. ? i cant remember the word HELP the fucking COMPOSITION there.

[alteredphoenix]

You know what, fuck it, I’m going to say it:

If Episode Final had revealed so much as a hint as to who Michelle’s parents were and what her heritage was and just left it hanging, unanswered, I would have been absolutely fucking livid.

Here’s a girl who’s spent fifteen years of her life where nothing in particular remotely happened, nine of which were spent raised under the care of a man whom I honestly don’t think is related to her at all who taught her medical science in a little village by the sea in Sheep Country, and tells her she’s definitely not this “goddess of healing” everybody else has been calling her as of late because those artes may as well be miracles performed in the flesh and that she shouldn’t be so dependent on them. She doesn’t know who her parents and where they are, other than being doctors that were born outside of Sheep Country, but they’re not in her life and haven’t been for as long as she can remember she can’t even put a name or face to them, and the one person who does have the answers for them keeps putting the talk off for years until one day he gets to hear said girl tell him that no, she’s not staying put and letting the adults get the ingredient they need to heal the Random Joe that got poisoned by a beast that shouldn’t be so close to their little village by the sea, she’s going out there, and she’s doing it with her artes - the same artes she uses to help heal people with, except this time they’re weaponized, he had no idea where she had learned to do all of that, and by Origin she’s hitting the coast and getting that damn flower whether he wants her to or not - and she gets it. She gets it with the help of a soldier passing by and makes it back home in one piece, none the worse for wear. (And isn’t it so strange that a girl raised among sheep is using a wolf in her repertoire of magic? Isn’t it just so strange she’s using the shape of not only one of the sheep’s most fearsome predators but her country’s - and her faction’s - greatest enemy, as well?) But even as she goes back home to help make the medicine that’ll save her patient, she never stops asking the questions she spoke out loud in the Salty Cove: What were my parents like? Were they worried about me getting hurt when I was a child? Which one of them did I get my artes from? Did I get them from both of them? How come they never came to see me?

Here’s a girl that’s running the counter at the clinic like usual, a normal day in a rather normal life, and one day the man that’s been raising her for almost ten years decides to tell her that lunch can wait, there’s something more important they need to do - that he needs to do, something more important that she needs to hear, and he lays it out to simple and clear: he’s going to tell her everything about her parents, the people she’s always wanted to know about, and put all those questions she’s been asking him and to herself to rest. No more secrets. Here’s a girl who’s this close to knowing, this close to having the truth be revealed, and in a fit of cosmic irony - be it out of a sense of morbid humor or cruelty - they get cut off. They find out a man’s been injured; he’s in dire straits and he needs to be tended to and fast. Here’s a girl that’s ready to tear through the house for medicine that might ease his pain when there’s a knock on the door, and it’s the lady soldier from before at the Cove. She tells her that a guy got attacked not by beasts but people and showing signs of a disease that infects the person with a change that turns them into something other, more demon than man, and he needs to be found ASAP.

And then her grandfather gets bitten. The change is already taking hold of him. And then she finds out from the soldier that once it happens there’s no cure. There is no saving someone from infection, and that’s there only recourse, and that recourse is death. Death before the virus can spread. And suddenly all the answers that she could have had about her parents, the family she never knew, are ripped away from her. Suddenly the man that held those answers, the man who raised her and gave her a childhood, is on death’s door, and there is no saving him from the infection that is going to rob him of his will and thought and turn him into a monster whose only goal is to kill and keep the virus going. Suddenly the soldier, the medic who’s been traveling the countryside searching for the group that was infected to put them down, is drawing her blade with a remorseful look in her eye. Suddenly, the life as the girl knows it comes crashing down, just like that.

She snaps. For the first time she’s not using her artes to heal but to hurt, to stop the soldier from killing the only family she has - the only family she has left and has ever known - and gets him out of there, passing him off to a friend with the promise that he gets her grandfather as far away from the little village by the sea as possible. And then she turns her sights on the soldiers that accompanied their captain, these people that have the nerve to take away her family from her. And so she turns the wolves on them, and in their shock they’re driven from her home, and that is good enough for her. It’s good enough for her to run and catch up and find her friend and grandfather. Except when she does he tells her her grandfather managed to get away, making for the Salty Cove. And so she runs, Federation soldiers and their lady knight hot on her heels.

Very briefly, she considers bolting for the north, the land of her enemy. Very briefly, she considers finding refuge and hope and solace within the Land of Wolves, where the sheep dare not tread.

Here’s a girl that finally finds him, worse than he looked before at the bite’s onset, and the knight corners her. There’s nowhere left to run. She tells her it has to be done. Doing it hurts her just as much as the sight of the man suffering from his infliction hurts the girl. If there was a way to save him she would do so in a heartbeat. But there isn’t; the choice has already been - she must kill him. But so has the girl. The girl tells her she won’t let her take him from her. And the knight agrees. She knows what she’s about to do is awful and is going to stick with the girl for the rest of her life - for both their lives. She does not condemn for her feelings. If that is how you truly feel, she tells the girl, then show me your resolve!

And so they fight. Neither will back down. And yet, despite the reaction the girl had at the little village by the sea, the knight tells her that in doing so she had saved everyone from suffering the same fate that’s befallen her grandfather. That by removing him from human contact, she has effectively put an end to the threat that would have hung over them. Through her, the disease will be vanquished from the face of the Land of Sheep. And here’s a girl who denies it, that she didn’t do it out of altruism. Here’s a girl that denies she did it for the man who is her only family and not for others. Through him she was given a purpose. Through him her life was made valuable. And still the knight does not condemn her. Still she tells her that even with things coming to a head as they are now, her feelings are not wrong. She loves her family more than anything in the world.

And then her grandfather gets up and charge when they’re at a standstill. And then the knight moves, too fast for the girl to see, and runs her blade through him. And then they learn that he wasn’t as far long as he appeared, that he made the choice of his own free will, and spends his final moments in the girl’s arms, voicing his regrets. And then he lets her go. And then he dies - and with it all the answers she could’ve had. All the value and purpose she had been given in her life has been rendered null - just like that.

Despite it all, we never get any more information on her family beyond that. We don’t even get a mention of there possibly being a note, something, that Ollie could have left behind to at least give Michelle an idea as to where to start looking. Could she have found it at Aedis? It’s possible; after all, Grace was the one that gave her the admittance letter to pack up and leave the only place she’s ever called home. It’s at Aedis she finds a new family to call her own, friends she has only ever dreamed of having and a school she has always imagined herself being in. It’s through Aedis she would have found a new purpose and find the value she thought was lost - or, rather, perhaps she thought was never there.

Can you imagine what it would’ve been like if the game decided, out of blue, to tell the player the names of Michelle’s parents, or showed them in silhouette, and never brought it up again, because the game shut down? Can you imagine getting just that and only that and nothing else because the game didn’t make enough money to justify what was being put out on an MTX cash shop that it didn’t require?

I would be livid. I would be furious. I would be just as blue-balled from the beginning as I would’ve been toward the end, because despite the parallels Michelle doesn’t quite get the same closure that Hugo gets at Episode Final. While her backstory entertains the idea, she - given what little canon has showed us and as far as it’s considered - chooses to forego leaving the Federation behind and defecting to the Empire as he did, even if the reasons might’ve ended up differently (although I wager, if not for Grace and whatever conclusion Michelle arrived at - to get her into the mindset of - between accepting the letter and deciding on leaving for Silvayer, she would have settled on throwing her lot in with Gildlla, if not out of a desire to protect the people of Bazine, then perhaps for one where she would find purpose and value over there). However, in Hugo’s defense, he doesn’t have the question of who he is and why he is like Michelle does hanging over his head, because that wasn’t what he was introduced with from the onset. The game at least decides to answer why he chose to side with the Empire and is doing what he has to do to protect his friends and family across the border, even if that means his decision comes at the cost of inevitably coming to blows with them and potentially damaging those ties he has with them forever.

But his is an easy mystery to solve, because among all the other mysteries that linger in the background finding out why a student from Aedis betrayed the Federation and is now fighting for the Empire - the same Empire that set Anthwan on fire and razed Le Sant, his hometown, to the ground - is a rather easy question to answer. Traitors are a staple to the Tales franchise, and what would be more enticing to learn the revelations and reasonings of a marked traitor than the person that was designed to be in the role of the traitor in mind from the very beginning?

Of course, the topic of parents - and the lore behind them - are just as essential to the Tales narrative as the traitor archetype, and it’s Michelle that has that question, and many others proceeding them, that go unanswered in the end. Who are they? Where did they come from? How are her artes related to them? How important are they to the story and the Greater Scope Plot, and what is it about them that made Ollie hesitate so much he couldn’t bring himself to tell her until she told him she was going to go out into the wild and use her artes to protect herself from the beasts and monsters that would have gotten in her way?

Who knows! Because at the end of the day it’s money that makes the world go round and money is the lifeblood that flows through an IP, especially in an entry that’s made on a mobile phone. We might never get an answer to those questions that the narrative, and even Michelle herself, proposed, and with it the character arc - positive or negative - that Michelle could’ve had as a result.

[dan-crimes]

Nuh uh uh *shakes my little finger* you will not get me Sonic franchise you will NOT get me invested into all this my dear buddy pal I've always enjoyed seeing you around but I will simply continue being a bystander just watching as it all goes by bcuz I know how it'll go if I actually get into all this

But also if I get bored I might get into it anyways it's mostly just a silly rule I put for myself cuz I know it would be a lot of work to catch up and I would prolly end up wanting to play some of the games if I got into the franchise but I'm not a gamer @ all so

[3amsnek]

the ghost of us can linger here

forever not to disappear

click for better quality

reblogs >> likes

[tobiasdrake]

*deep breath* Okay. Here we go.

I don't think the Netflix Avatar show likes women very much. It's a great show for fans of Aang, Sokka, Zuko, and Iroh specifically. All four of those characters get a ton of great material. In fact, it's super great for Sokka stans, because the show takes him ultra-seriously and can't go five minutes without one character or another (usually a woman) praising him.

But the way it handles its female cast is troublesome.

Katara

So, all three of the main trio got some changes made to their stories. They changed Aang's story so that he wasn't running away from his responsibilities; He was just clearing his head and somehow accidentallied himself into a tsunami. Whoopsy-dooodle. Aang did nothing wrong.

They changed Sokka's story so that him being a leader of his people and a great guardian warrior is treated with complete seriousness. Multiple times, characters stop to talk about how brave and noble Sokka is for taking on such an intense responsibility, and tell him to his face what a great warrior and a wonderful leader he is. Also his misogyny is erased.

And they changed Katara's story so that she directly got her mom killed because she sucks at waterbending.

Katara tries to waterbend to attack the Fire Nation soldier but couldn't manage it, provoking the soldier to start actively searching for her and forcing her mom to fake a waterbending attack and draw his fire. They changed Katara's story so that her bad decision making fucking got her mom killed.

This is treated with the same level of severity as "Sokka was bullied by mean kids and also his dad doesn't think he's good enough to be a leader."

"I hoped Sokka would do better but not everyone is meant to have people's lives in their hands," Sokka's dad says of him.

Yeah, you're right, that's totally comparable to watching your mom get barbecued because you tried to waterbend in a situation you shouldn't have and then failed.

In fact, they give Sokka's greatest trauma more weight because it gets examined again with Yue next episode, while Katara actively getting her mom killed isn't brought up again at all. We get traumatized glimpses of it throughout the season leading up to the reveal, but after this scene in episode 5, it never comes up again.

But to be fair, Katara was a child. An event this significant would surely have motivated her, driving her to become the great waterbender she is now, right?

No! Katara sucks at waterbending and needs men who aren't even waterbenders to teach her how to waterbend. She requires instruction from Aang in episode 1 to learn how to waterbend, then from Jet in episode 3 to learn how to waterbend better.

And unlike the show, her relationship with Aang isn't a give-and-take; Katara doesn't teach Aang a single goddamn thing. He never learns to waterbend. She is a strictly a pupil throughout the whole season. Though she at least gets officially labeled a master in episode 8, so there's that.

In any case, the whole traumatic memory thing isn't even the only time she's directly compared with Sokka. Episodes 3 and 4 see Katara and Sokka bicker over whose morally dubious side character is better. Sokka likes the Mechanist and Katara likes Jet.

Ultimately, Katara is forced to eat crow when Jet turns out to be the worst, while Sokka is vindicated when the Mechanist sees the error of his ways and reforms. But not before two separate arguments where Sokka calls Katara childish and accuses her of acting like a little girl.

Arguments ultimately resolved when Katara apologizes to Sokka for not adequately respecting his very serious and ultra important role as village protector and leader. Gives him a whole speech about how great and glorious he is. And Sokka... appreciates Katara learning to respect him properly, I guess, because he never offers any similar sentiments back to her.

The show just... They need you to know how important Sokka is, okay? It's very important that you respect Sokka.

Suki

Suki suffers tremendously from that whole "Sokka's misogyny was removed" thing. Y'know, because they need something else to do with that episode. The show is deeply aware that Suki is Sokka's love interest, so they just do that right off the bat. Suki falls madly in love with him from the moment they meet, and spends the entire episode making goo-goo eyes and trying to get him to Notice Me Senpai.

They still do the "Suki Trains Sokka" stuff. But Sokka is a serious, dignified manly man worthy of the deepest respect now, so of course they don't make him wear the Kyoshi uniform. Instead, the main purpose of his training is to allow them to flirt some more. It's less martial arts training and more an excuse to grope each other and near-kiss.

Suki's just a waifu now. She still fights real good, but all of the stuff that made her relationship with Sokka interesting has been erased.

Yue

Yue, similarly, leaps straight to shipping from the word go. They write out her fiance, Hahn, by having Yue briefly meet Sokka earlier in the season. She spends one minute talking to him in the Spirit World about Spirit World lore; In that time, she falls so desperately, madly, unfathomably in love with him that she breaks off her marriage to Hahn and devotes herself to waiting for him to one day come to her.

"Never have I known such joys as that time you let me explain the spirit bear Hei Bei to you. Truly, we are destined to be together for life."

Like with Suki, they go out of their way to have Yue and Sokka already be a ship from the word 'go' so they don't have to spend time developing any kind of meaningful attraction.

They just. They really want you to know that Sokka is the manliest and most desirable man ever to walk this earth. It is very important that you understand how great he is. Women hurl themselves into his arms with zero effort whatsoever, because he's just so goddamn irresistible.

Fortunately, Hahn is super okay with this turn of events. He's the most chill guy ever, he gets along perfectly well with Sokka, and he completely supports Yue's right to dump him! In the famously misogynistic Northern Water Tribe, no less! What a swell guy. Aren't men swell?

June

June gets hit with that "rewritten as hollow waifu" stick too, but her eyes are set on Iroh. They rewrote June to be super attracted and flirty towards the man who was her unwanted sexual harasser in the source material. So that's fun.

Also, she barely does anything. Zuko hires her to find Aang, she succeeds, and then she fucks right off out of the show - But she manages to find time to express how unbelievably sexy Iroh is twice during that time.

She seriously just dropped into the show to flirt with Iroh and leave. She is unbelievably inconsequential.

Kyoshi

And then there's Kyoshi. They really want you to hate Kyoshi. She's constantly shot from below, as if looking down on Aang and the audience. Her voice takes on a demonic echoing reverb at one point as she's screaming at Aang that "THE AVATAR MUST BE A MERCILESS WARRIOR!!!"

She despises Aang, calling him a coward for running away from his responsibilities - Which, I remind you, is no longer a plot point because they unwrote that flaw from his character. So she's just a complete and utter asshole, shot from the asshole angle, yelling violently at him with asshole sound effects. They want you to despise this woman.

Azula

Awkwardly, they do not seem to want you to despise Azula.

There's a lot to be said for how Ozai treats Azula in the original show. The way the favoritism he shows her is every bit as cruel and manipulative as the unfavoritism that he shows Zuko. Ozai does not love Azula. He loves the reflection of himself he sees in her eyes, and his encouragement urges her to polish herself to ensure his reflection always shines through.

This is not that. The show instead erases the favoritism entirely. Ozai doesn't really care one way or another about either of his kids. He plays them against each other, bragging openly to Azula about how great Zuko is and unpleasably writing Azula off as weak and useless.

They've rewritten the dynamic between abusive father and his two abused kids in order to take Azula's pride away. Reimagining her from a gifted prodigy who excels at imitating the toxic behaviors of a father who doesn't truly care for her, to a put-upon overachiever tearing herself in knots to live up to the standards of her unpleasable father.

This results in a truly wild portrayal of Azula as insecure and jealous of Ozai's seemingly love for Zuko. Here, she is simply a browbeaten child constantly complaining to her friends about how mean her father is and conspiring to get one up over Daddy's Golden Child Zuko.

Which she fails at, because she backs Zhao. Zuko deftly defeats her without even realizing they're in competition.

Conclusion

The season ends well for some of these women. It ends promising that maybe we'll see Katara teaching Aang some day. It ends with Zhao bragging that Ozai just used Zuko to train Azula so maybe we'll see the more confident and misguidedly proud Azula some day. Yue becomes the moon like she's supposed to. June's still out there so maybe she'll get to do something again some day.

Katara gets to fight Pakku and lose, but she looks pretty cool. She gets to fight Zuko and lose, but she looks pretty cool. Azula learns to lightningbend because she's just so mad about Ozai's contempt for her and favoritism for Zuko, which isn't how you lightningbend.

But promises of future content fall flat when the content that exists is so underwhelming. This season made its feelings on these characters pretty evident, and it's unwise to expect better material from creators who've disappointed you with the material they already made.

The women of Netflix Avatar simply do not get to shine, outside of superficial moments like the "Women of Northern Water Tribe demand the right to fight and then fuck off and don't do anything for the entire rest of the episode" bit.

"In the midst of battle, we demand that you stop being sexist and give us permission to fight! This is a way better idea than convincing you to teach us to fight before the battle begins."

The characters of this show feel as if they've been reimagined to glorify the boys at the expense of the girls. The boys are treated with a great amount of care. They're dignified and made important movers of the plot, with their rough edges sanded off. While the girls are molded around them.

[arolesbianism]

I <3 tail sleeves tail sleeves are my best friend

[writingwithcolor]

How can non-Jewish writers include Jewish characters in supernatural stories without erasing their religion in the process?

Anonymous asked:

I have a short story planned revolving around the supernatural with a Jewish character named Danielle (who uses they/them pronouns). Danielle will be one of a trio who will be solving the mystery of two brides' deaths on the day of their wedding. My concern with this is the possibility of accidentally invalidating Danielle's religion by focusing on a secular view of the afterlife. At the same time, I don't want to assume that Jewish people can't exist in paranormal stories, nor do I want to use cultural elements that don't belong to me. So, how do I make sure that Danielle is included in the plot without erasing their Jewishness?

Okay so to start with I think we need to ask a question about the premise: what is a secular afterlife? I’m not asking this to nitpick or be petty, but to offer you expanded ways of thinking through this issue and maybe others as well.

A Secular Afterlife

What is a secular afterlife? To begin with, I get what you mean. The idea of an afterlife we see in pop culture entities like ghost media owes more to a mixture of 19th-century spiritualist tropes drawn from titillating gothic novels than to anything preached from the pulpit of an organized house of worship. Yet those tropes--the ominous knocking noises from beyond, the spectral presences on daguerrotype prints, the sudden chill and the eerie glow, all of those rely on the idea of there being something beyond this life, some continuation of the spirit when the body has ceased to breathe. For that, you need to discount the ideas that the consciousness has moved on to another physical body and is currently living elsewhere, and that it was never separate from the body and has now ceased to exist. Can we say that this is secular?

More so: Gothic literature, as the name suggests, draws heavily on Catholic imagery, even when it avoids explicit references to Catholicism. Aside from the architectural imagery, Catholic religious symbols permeate the genre, as well as the larger horror and supernatural media genres that grew from it: Dracula flinches from a crucifix, priests expel demons from human bodies, Marley’s Ghost haunts Ebenezer Scrooge in chains. The concepts of heaven and hell, and nonhuman beings who dwell in those places, are critical to making the narratives work. 

The basis also draws from a biblical story, that of the Witch of Endor. The main tropes of Victorian spiritualism are present: Saul never sees the ghost of Samuel, only the Witch of Endor is able to see “A divine being rising” from wherever he rises from, and her vague description, “I see an old man rising, wearing a robe,” evokes the cold readings of charlatan mediums into the present (Indeed, some rabbinic sources commenting on this assert that this is exactly what was going on).

While neither of these views of its origin define the genre as the sole property of Catholicism--or of Judaism for that matter--it would be hard exactly to categorize them as secular.

A Jewish Perspective on ghosts

However, it’s not the case that ghost media is incompatible with Jewishness, assuming that it doesn’t commit to a view of heaven and hell duality that specifically embraces a Christian spiritual framework. 

Jewish theology is noncommittal on the subject of the afterlife. The idea of a division between body and soul in the first place is found in ancient Egypt, for instance, earlier than the earliest Jewish texts. In Jewish text it’s present in narratives like the creation story, in which God crafts a human body out of earth and then breathes life into it once it’s complete. It also appears in our liturgy: the blessings prescribed to be recited at the beginning of the day juxtapose Elohai Neshama, a blessing for the soul, with Asher Yatzar, expressing gratitude for the body, recited by many after successfully using the bathroom. 

Yet it’s not clear that this life-force is something separate than the body that lives beyond it, until the apparition of the Witch of Endor. The words we use to describe it, whatever it is, evoke the process of breathing rather than that of eternal life: either ruach (spirit, or wind) or neshama (soul, or breath): neither is a commitment to the idea that it does--or that it doesn’t--go somewhere else when the body returns to the earth. 

Jewish folklore, however, leans into the idea of ghosts and other spiritual beings inhabiting the earthly plane (and others). Perhaps most famous is the 1937 movie The Dybbuk, in which a young scholar engaging in kabbalistic practices calls upon dark forces to unite him and his fated love, only to find himself possessing her body as a dybbuk. It appears that he is about to be successfully exorcized, but ultimately when his soul leaves her body, hers does as well. 

More relevantly to your story, a Jewish folktale inspired the movie The Corpse Bride. In the folktale version, a newly-engaged man jokingly recites the legal formula he will soon recite at his wedding, and places his ring on the finger of a nearby corpse--a reference to a time when antisemitic violence is said to have gotten worse not only at Jewish and Christian holidays as it does still to this day, but around Jewish weddings as well. The murdered bride stands up, a corpse reanimated complete with consciousness, and demands that the bridegroom honor his legal obligation. 

In the movie, the bride gives up her demand willingly: her claim on him is emotional rather than legal, and she finally accepts that he has an emotional connection with another person, that he doesn’t love her. In the folk tale, the dead woman takes him to court to decide whether their marriage is legal, since he spoke the legal words to her in front of witnesses as is required, and the court rules that the dead do not have the right to make legal demands on the living. In this version, the moral of the story is that a legal formula is an obligation; that when he jokingly bound himself to the corpse, he not only disrespected the dead but also the legal framework that structures society, and by so doing risked being obligated to keep his side of a contract he never intended to enact. 

This speaks to the ways that a Jewish outlook can differ from a Christian-influenced “secular” one. Christian-influenced cultural ideas can often focus around feeling the right thing, while Jewish stories will often center on doing the right thing. Does the Corpse Bride leave because she realizes she is not the one he loves? Because she--or he--learned a valuable lesson? Or because she loses her court case? It’s not that the boy’s emotions are irrelevant to the story--the tension, the suspense, the horror of the story takes place primarily within the boy’s emotional landscape--but emotions on their own are not a solution. The question “should he marry her” can be answered emotionally, but “has he married her” can only be answered by a legal expert, and once it has been the deceased bride may not have changed her emotional attachment to him, but she no longer has legal standing to pursue her claim. 

Centering legal rectitude over emotional catharsis isn’t a requirement for having Jewish characters in your story, but it’s worth thinking about what is and isn’t universal, what is and isn’t actually all that secular. 

Meanwhile, back at the topic:

Where does any of this place Danielle?

Well, unless you’re positing a universe in which Christian or other deities or cosmologies are confirmed to exist (See Jewish characters in a universe with author-created fictional pantheons for more on that topic), there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be perfectly fine interacting with whatever the setting you’re building throws at them. 

My wishlist for this character and setting runs more to the general things to consider when writing fantasy settings with Jewish characters: 

Don’t confirm or imply that Jesus is a divine being. That means no supernatural items like splinters of the cross, grails, nails, veils, etc. There’s nothing particularly powerful or empowering about this one guy who lived and died like so many others.

Don’t show God’s body and especially not God’s face, or confirm that any other gods or deities exist, whether that’s Jesus, Aphrodite, or Anubis, or someone you made up for the context. 

Don’t put Danielle in a position where they’re going to play into an antisemitic trope like child murder, blood drinking, world domination, or financial greed. If you have to, name it and let Danielle express discomfort with or distaste for those actions both because Jewish values explicitly oppose all of those things but also because Danielle as a Jewish character would be painfully aware of these stereotypes as present and historical excuses for antisemitic violence. 

Do consider what Danielle’s personal practice might look like. What does Danielle do on Shabbat? What do they eat or refrain from eating? What are their memories of Jewish holidays and how is their current holiday observance different than their childhood? I know I say “Jewishness is diverse” on every ask, but it is, and these questions--which also underscore how very much Judaism is rooted in one’s actions during this life--will help you develop how Judaism actually functions to inform Danielle’s character, even if you don’t spell out the answers to each of these questions in text. 

Do let Danielle find joy, comfort, and identity in their Jewishness not just in contrast with Christianity but simply because it’s part of the wholeness of their character. I know the primary representation of Jewishness is a snappy one-liner in a Christmas episode followed by the Jewish character joining in the Christmas spirit, blue edition, but make room for Jewishness to inform how Danielle approaches the events of your story, or why they decide to get or stay involved.  

-Meir

Hi it’s Shira with some Jewish ghost story recs written from inside–

When The Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb (deliriously good queer YA Jewish paranormal, mainstream enough that it’s got a good chance of being at your local library and won all kinds of awards)

The Dyke and the Dybbuk by Ellen Galford (sorry for the slur, warning for a paragraph of biphobia in the book but it’s an older book. I read this right before my divorce so my memories are super fuzzy but it’s about this modern day lesbian who gets possessed by the ghost of a different lesbian from hundreds of years earlier in Jewish history.) Nine of Swords Reversed by Xan West z’L of blessed memory - another queer Jewish paranormal.

The general plot is that two partners are struggling with how to be honest with each other about the effect disability is having on them. It’s got a very warm and fuzzy cozy vibe but kink culture is central to the worldbuilding so if that isn’t your vibe I didn’t want you to go in unaware.

The Dybbuk in Love by Sonya Taaffe. I don’t remember the details but I remember loving it, it’s m/f and romance between possessor and possessed.

I wrote a really short one called A Man of Taste where a gentile vampire woman and a Jewish ghost/dybbuk get together.

~S

[determunition]

i took the switcheroo week as an excuse to finally try my hand at some scrybeswap designs! got a bit carried away as you can see, i love doing character design so much

decided to keep their species/major design elements fairly consistent (e.g. grimora's makeup, mag being vague and indistinct, leshy having nonhuman legs, p03 only having one arm) while still switching up their aesthetics as needed; super happy with all of these as a result!

design notes for each scrybe under the cut! def open to any further questions or curiosities, i always think way too hard about characters while designing them lmao

P03:

scrybe of the dead: i went for a possessed tv vibe; he's still mechanical but those bones do have a living soul trapped in them...also shoutout to @squid-hug for suggesting the x-ray machine, i was very tickled by that lmao

scrybe of beasts: overgrown old bot was kind of a given for this one, but i was also thinking that the plants are part of what's keeping him running somehow

scrybe of magicks: the magic eye is the core powering that top monitor, and the two side monitors display what he's seeing with that eye at any given time

grimora:

scrybe of beasts: she's a witch! like a chill terry pratchett kind of witch, she works with a lot of herbs and such; also her makeup is meant to mimic blood drops

scrybe of magicks: magick grimora is more of a warlock type, her magic is a lot more sinister and she almost never opens her eyes (whereas her third eye is basically always open)

scrybe of tech: tech grimora is kind of a wacky machinist-flavored dr. frankenstein; she inscribes by writing on circuitboards!

leshy:

scrybe of the dead: this leshy is a gargoyle/vampire hybrid! i thought a mirror would be fun for him bc you can get two different cultural refs; medusa (bc stone gargoyle), and the idea that vampires don't appear in mirrors!

scrybe of magicks: i decided to make him a bird guy (kinda harpy-esque) bc he's basically a more whimsical baba yaga hermit; the baba yaga thing carries over from slavic folklore obvs. also he has polycoria!

scrybe of tech: tech leshy was super fun, bc he's steampunk! rather than animal legs i gave him digitigrade robot legs, but other than that he's the most like, normal human guy here probably lmao; despite his well-adjusted appearance though i still think he's got a bit of freaky wonk in him

magnificus:

scrybe of the dead: this one was very ring-inspired lol, got those clump of hair you found in the shower drain vibes

scrybe of beasts: bush magnificus real! i think he'd be a bit more quirky trickster fae in this form

scrybe of tech: one of my favorites; tech mag is an emaciated cyborg draped in so many loose cords and wires that you can't tell what he looks like anymore. a lot of those cords are connected to him, and he plugs them in wherever as needed! he also has a drawing stylus, making him just an average art student tbh lmao