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lotus-tower · 1 year

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the orochi revisited: the takagin edit

the digital version of yaoizine vol.2 has been out for a while, so i thought i'd finally post my essay on here! some of the jokes don't work as well without the context of the zine's cover but lol. hope you enjoy anyway. a very brief overview of the takagin relationship in relation to my first essay's framework

The following paper is a commentary on and tribute to My Orochi Stood Up: A Draconic Response to "eat shit and die” (1948), in celebration of its 75th anniversary. Though much has changed in the anal-ytic landscape since Orochi was first published, much is still the same. As the pioneer of ouroboros theory, a now interdisciplinary framework that has made many valuable contributions to the study of literature both anally inclined and not, My Orochi Stood Up is a foundational work that has remained relevant and resonant across years and disciplines. However, in this text I will be focusing on Orochi’s roots first and foremost as a piece of Gintamaology.

To begin, we must acknowledge that it is impossible to discuss My Orochi Stood Up without also accounting for the work it was written in response to, T. S. Hirt’s eat shit and die (1938), or the original unnamed poem where most of its ideas first took shape (1944). Unfortunately, providing a commentary of the former would be beyond the scope of this paper. Readers interested in anality are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with this watershed text in Gintama escatology, as it lays the groundwork for everything that follows. As for the poem, it is referenced at length in My Orochi Stood Up, but I have decided to omit mention of it–among many other things–owing to this journal’s physical constraints. While I regret the necessity of this, there is simply too much to say on the subject of “the pole and the hole” in Gintama–particularly the pole, which Gintama explores with endless fascination. The sword, the pillar, the Terminal, the gravestone, the tree–with its fondness for substitution as well as its love of dirty things, Gintama’s collection of treasured motifs has no shortage of things that stand erect.

Both pole and hole are equally important to the cycle of self-fertilization first described by My Orochi Stood Up almost a century ago. Yet Orochi was, understandably, primarily preoccupied with explaining its ouroboros thesis, leaving it with limited room to discuss in-story logistics beyond the conceptual framework and Gintama’s broad thematics. As you may have guessed, this paper will attempt to do so–and for this purpose it would be more efficient to start from the bottom up, so to speak. So this essay is dedicated instead to the hole, that gaping void named as Gintama’s ultimate antagonist. Let us now revisit the holeistic framework of the serpent swallowing its tail while examining one of Gintama’s most fraught relationships: Gintoki and Takasugi.

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First, it cannot be overstated how much Gintama relies on duality and parallel structures. The Gintama cast and narrative is constructed like a hall of mirrors, parallels upon parallels upon parallels organized on each side of a central divide. This intersecting line, as shown in Figure 1.1, is what creates the reflection in the first place, allowing characters to be mirrors (or, in the prized language of fandom, foils). One could consider it the glass of the mirror, or the organizing force of the narrative itself. The creation of this dividing line provides structure to the characters, the world, and its temporality–but it is also an act of violence. See Fig 1.1.

Fig. 1.1: ⭩🢥⮀🢛❑⮅⮡🢜

On a diegetic level, bad things happen to the characters because life is difficult, and mostly similar bad things happen to everyone because the series rests upon the Joui war and its related conflicts the way a world rests on the back of a turtle. But perhaps more relevantly, Gintama’s central conceit is that one’s ultimate enemy is always oneself, so naturally all enemies can eventually be conflated. It is an efficient tautological loop.

What separates the characters on each side of the dividing line, then, is not the degree of suffering they undergo but their response to that violence. My Orochi Stood Up terms these unfortunate souls who end up on the wrong side of the divide “hole-sided.” Their lack is caused not by their injury, but by their own response to it, by their failure, for a time, to live up to their own humanity. This is the position occupied by the antagonists (and, intermittently and continuously, yet somehow always away from the reader’s eyes, our protagonist Gintoki), those who have failed to fill the lack in their souls like responsible adults.

That which Gintama prescribes to fill these naturally and unnaturally occurring holes in humans is dirt: the debris accrued from a lifetime of living, brushing shoulders with other people, becoming stained by them, becoming dirty and worn as you mature, subjecting yourself to the deeply humiliating and humbling experience of being alive. Of course, as both eat shit and die and My Orochi Stood Up illuminate, in Gintama “dirt” is also a synonym and euphemism for “shit.” We are thus not talking about just any dirt-filled hole, but specifically about the anus. The vulgarity of Gintama’s framing of bonds–as shitting onto and into each other–and its use of shit as a humanizing trait is highly characteristic of both the series’s general sense of humour and the ways in which it mixes gags and serious delivery of narrative to create a densely layered non-linear experience in which absurdity and tragedy are forcibly, jarringly concomitant.

As T. S. Hirt wrote in 1948, “the anus—the dirty human things—is the home for the phallus—the ideals we hold, the source of our power.” Indeed, were Gintama not so irreverent about its most valued symbol, the sword, due to its fondness for wordplay and for low-hanging fruit, perhaps the nationalistic bent of the series would be more questionable. But as My Orochi Stood Up argued, Gintama’s emphasis on wordplay and its fearless decision to call itself the equivalent of “Ligma” are integral to a thematic understanding of the series, and are key to the ouroboros thesis in particular.

But perhaps the singularly most important example is the -tama in Gintama, with its plethora of potential meanings, each of them just silly and dirty enough that you have to take it seriously. Beyond the obvious joke on kintama (balls) and the “silver soul” direct meaning, we’ve seen that tama is also easily conflated with atama (head), and even with tamago (egg). This is clearly demonstrated with the series’ fixation on beheading leading to the salvation of the soul and the bodyswap arc hinging on the pun between soul and egg. [...] The fact that the characters end up turning into giant turds, likening the soul-egg-balls to an asshole, only drives the point in further. (My Orochi Stood Up, 1948)

To return to the unfortunate hole-sided, these are the characters who lack dirt, who could not withstand the mortifying ordeal of being alive. The natural assumption to make here would be that Gintama then juxtaposes opposing forces, setting “desiring-pairs” of head and hole, sword and scabbard in conflict with each other. Indeed, Gintoki is stabbed again and again, with all kinds of blades–but the villains do not want to stab him as much as they want him to stab them, with his much more meaningful sword. Yet those who are hole-sided do not seek to be filled.

[...] But this is a different process than emptying yourself, which is what the antagonists are doing. All Gintama villains are hole-sided, desperately trying to destroy themselves while pretending, as hard as they can, that they don’t know that you can’t destroy a hole–only make it bigger. (My Orochi Stood Up, 1948)

Takasugi desires Gintoki, not because he believes Gintoki can make him whole again, but rather because he knows he cannot ever be whole again, and that is because of his love for Gintoki. Moreover, the series’ consistent use of language such as “broken” versus “unbroken” swords implies that those who cannot be filled are also those who cannot fill others. Just as the serpent cannot swallow its tail without filling its own mouth, its mouth cannot be filled without having a tail to swallow. As My Orochi Stands Up makes clear, the process of self-creation and other-creation are effectively one and the same in Gintama.

All Gintama antagonists are in parallel with each other and in mirror with their counterparts, who in turn contain echoes of our protagonist, Gintoki. In this way, the entire story can be folded in on itself, side over side, into the shape of Gintoki, the microcosm, like a piece of carefully designed origami. One of the most popular endings of the anime, ending 25, “Glorious Days,” demonstrates one half of this as Gintoki stands unmoving and unchanged as the anime’s large roster of antagonists replace each other before him in quick succession, different times and places flashing past without emphasis. “Nothing has changed,” Gintama constantly claims, while simultaneously showing us how the world has entered a different era, a different century, a different genre, in the span of ten years.

In the ending, Takasugi and Gintoki haunt each other’s footsteps. Takasugi’s feet in Gintoki’s reflection in the water lag one step behind, unable to keep up with him but unable to stop chasing after him, while Gintoki’s ghost is not even visible in Takasugi’s reflection; instead, Gintoki’s presence is indicated by Takasugi’s own reflection stopping and looking back.

Gintoki and Takasugi are the most important pair of mirror selves in Gintama, and inarguably the most yaoistic. Rather than homoeroticism, however, what they have could perhaps be termed a sort of homothematicism. Whereas Gintoki has filled himself with dirt and debris from the series’ overflowing, enormous cast, learning and re-learning how to be human, Takasugi is caught in an incandescent storm of rage and grief, a serpent futilely trying to swallowing itself in the literal sense. But he can never succeed, because he has nothing to fill his belly with other than himself; there is nothing he values in the self he is trying to destroy; thus, he can never satisfy his desire to hurt himself.

Takasugi’s immortality is of the same kind as Utsuro’s, which is to say, hole-sided. It is not that they cannot be killed, only that they cannot die. Takasugi therefore turns to the same drastic final resort as Utsuro: destroying the world in order to destroy themselves. Again we can observe Gintoki’s role as the microcosm in comparison to Shouyou and Utsuro’s exaggerated, macrocosmic style. My Orochi Stood Up details how Utsuro as well as the eponymous Orochi’s identities blur into that of their respective planets, likening them to world snakes. Tied to the Earth itself, Utsuro’s existence cannot end independently of it; his only recourse is to destroy Earth, and perhaps take the entire universe with it.

To Takasugi, however, the world is synonymous with Gintoki.

Takasugi’s doomed love for Gintoki affords him an interesting position in the narrative, where his conflation between Gintoki’s sword and the pillar of the world aligns with the story’s folded structure centered around Gintoki. Takasugi is Gintoki’s shadow, Gintoki’s “other self”, as Gintama terms it, but weak, diminished, unable to carry the burden of living or live up to Shouyou’s teachings. Gintama’s villains–and its weaklings–are those who will recklessly hurt others in order to harm themselves; its heroes are those who will fight themselves in order to become better versions of themselves. Conveniently, in this cast the villains are the heroes are the villains–and so in defeating the villains, the heroes overcome their own shadows, while the villains knowingly throw themselves into this process out of desperate hope that this will finally end their miserable roles in this story.

Takasugi, then, tries to destroy Gintoki because it is the only way he can destroy himself. On one level, part of him possesses the same general meta-awareness that all Gintama characters have about their allotted roles, and knows that if they were to clash, Gintoki would be the one to successfully devour him. But for the most part, Takasugi’s motivations are painfully earnest and straightforward: harming Gintoki simply hurts more than harming himself can ever hope to accomplish, and if Gintoki were to die, so too would Takasugi’s world crumble to nothing.

What is interesting is Gintoki’s response to these violent advances. Gintoki, of course, understands full well what kind of story he is in at all times. “Too bad,” he tells Takasugi, scraping himself back up from the ground. “I won’t fall. Until you stop, I’ll keep standing back up.” Here Gintoki himself is positioned as one of those things that stand erect. The Gintoki in Takasugi’s memory that is invoked is “a figure that stands before Takasugi”–or, put another way, Gintoki understands his duty in their relationship as that to keep standing, for as long as Takasugi needs something erect to throw himself against.

Thus, when Takasugi says that the world will not end as long as Gintoki’s sword remains unbroken, while Gintoki says that the only way to stop Takasugi is to stop his breathing, Gintoki becomes the immovable object and Takasugi the (un)stoppable force. However, in a fascinating inversion of the usual connotations, here the object is presented as something the force has chased after all its life, something unattainable and unreachable and yet no less immovable. Meanwhile, the force traps itself in a circular, looping motion, its unstoppable momentum doing nothing to help it escape its labyrinth. But in their battle, Takasugi and Gintoki do manage to reach each other; not because of Takasugi’s desperate violence, but because Gintoki’s interiority is as vast as the story they are in, and he is able to take Takasugi into himself.

My Orochi Stood Up’s ouroboros thesis is famously anchored in western alchemical and philosophical concepts. It frames Gintama’s mission of human-becoming as the enacting of the Great Work, viewing Gintama’s parallelism through the lens of the individuation process. On the ouroboros as a symbol of two becoming one, it quotes Carl Jung:

In the age-old image of the Ouroboros lies the thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process, for it was clear to the more astute alchemists that the prima materia of the art was man himself. The Ouroboros is a dramatic symbol for the integration and assimilation of the opposite, i.e. of the shadow. This 'feedback' process is at the same time a symbol of immortality since it is said of the Ouroboros that he slays himself and brings himself to life, fertilizes himself, and gives birth to himself. He symbolizes the One, who proceeds from the clash of opposites, and he, therefore, constitutes the secret of the prima materia which ... unquestionably stems from man's unconscious. (The Collected Works of Carl Jung, Volume 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis, 1977)

Gintoki’s assimilation of his shadow, of his other self, is best represented by the moment where he finally visibly attains “a human’s sword” at the end of the series. Takasugi’s reflection in Gintoki’s blade bequeaths upon him the honour of being the face of Gintoki’s “human’s sword.” This is a similar use of the reflection as in Ending 25. What is made clear by comparing these two moments is the same obvious truth that Gintama has impressed upon its readers all along: Gintoki is capable of containing Takasugi within him, but Takasugi is not capable of the reverse.

Or, more accurately, Takasugi is chiefly defined by the fact that he carries Gintoki’s ghost within him–and was driven insane by it. Gintoki was able to quietly shoulder the knowledge that his actions caused Takasugi’s descent into madness, but Takasugi was never able to inure himself to the sight of Gintoki’s tears. Takasugi is hole-sided primarily because he hollowed himself out in a vain attempt to scrape the image out. But dirt, as My Orochi Stood Up states, is what remains.

Takasugi’s crushed left eye has ever been his most obvious hole. Indeed, confronting Gintoki again made him aware that the image of Gintoki’s face that he had been carrying around in his eye like a grain of sand was in fact a speck of “dirt.” And of course, Takasugi was never empty: though the Kiheitai are sparse characters, they serve quite clearly to illustrate that Takasugi had never stopped being surrounded by people who trusted and depended on him, people who could participate in Gintama’s dirty gags and absurd comedy in the ways he could not, and people who, on multiple occasions, physically emulated Takasugi in order to inject his likeness into the series’ gags even when he was not present. People who, in short, supplied him with dirt.

The linkages between the gross and vulgar nature of Gintama’s preferred jokes and the double entendre in the meaning of “dirt” are an intrinsic part of both Gintama’s vision of life and the ouroboros framework. As T. S. Hirt explained, “the persistence of those dirty things marks the permanence of one’s relationships. something clean would never stick so.” Gintama posits that living is mortifying, humiliating, and while not shameful, certainly full of shame and debasement. To be a character that clings to dignity–or to whom dignity clings to–in Gintama is to accept an unfavourable life expectancy. Takasugi, while participating in a few gags, was never thoroughly embarrassed by them. His friends’ actions thus helped to tether him to the world of the living, even at his most ghostly.

Holes do not need to be completely empty to be deemed holes. Such a proposition would be absurd. Holes are identifiable even when filled partway with soil–even, perhaps, when brilled to the brim. No one is truly empty. My Orochi Stood Up makes clear early on that “head vs hole” is not a false dichotomy, but a misleading one:

You can reduce everything in Gintama to essentially two things. Shouyou and Utsuro. Gintoki and Takasugi. Humans and monsters. [...] Those who take in and those who are taken in. Those who keep struggling and those who don’t. And then you can also always reduce these two things to one thing: Shouyou/Utsuro are, after all, the same being [...]. You can’t pick yourself back up if you never lost in the first place. We know that Gintoki has managed to become “a splendid human” by the end of the series–so what was he before that? Was he really a monster? At what exact point in the series did he become human? Was it while he was on-screen, while we were looking, but without us noticing? Was it off-screen, while we were flipping the page, or in the space between the panels? The answer, of course, is that he was learning to be human every day of his life [...]. And so “which one is the head and which one is the hole?” is the wrong question. Even if you assigned one to each half and managed not to be wrong, since they’re collapsible into one anyway, they’ll always be both. (My Orochi Stood Up, 1948)

To be hole-sided is not to be the hole. It is to be stagnant, to be trapped in a state of needing to be filled without being able to carry out the process of self-constitution with the dirt that is received. In the end, Gintoki, the “reluctant hole” as T. S. Hirt iconically termed, is the one who takes Takasugi into himself. My Orochi Stood Up quotes philosopher Bernard Stiegler: “The I is essentially a process, not a state, and this process is an in-dividuation [...]. It is the tendency to become one, that is, to become indivisible.” This is, I argue, the climax of their homothematic relationship. Not coincidentally, it is also the climax of Gintoki’s personal quest to become human, the individuation that Jung and Stiegler speak of.

My Orochi Stood Up capitalizes on the ouroboros’ nature as a symbol of fertility to liken dirt not only to shit but to seed, and the hole to the womb where the tama (egg/soul) is fertilized. It is an intentionally paradoxical and anachronistic framework, where one must have an unbroken sword to be able to be fertilized by the dirt of others, yet it is only through that fertilization that one’s sword can be forged. This is simply another iteration of the classic chicken-or-egg dilemma, as befits the motif of the ouroboros. But for the characters of Gintama, this paradox reflects their continuous responsibility: the task of becoming human is a Sisyphean one that will span their lifetimes and beyond.

In other words, as Takasugi was folded into Gintoki, he found that he was already there; that his lack was filled by Gintoki because he was filling Gintoki; and that being a ghost did not preclude anyone from being human.

I have spoken at length about holes and serpents up until this point without mentioning the eponymous dragon, Utsuro. This is partially because this essay was focused on Takasugi and Gintoki’s relationship, and partially because practically all insights regarding Utsuro are contained within the framework of the ouroboros thesis itself. As the world snake, his body and bones were used to construct the theory we have been discussing, his lack identical in essence to the other hole-sided. It is worth noting, however, that for Gintoki, Utsuro represented the unreachable object. Gintoki’s deepest anxiety was over his blade not reaching Utsuro, because he had been told that he could only reach him with a human’s sword. In the end, as we have seen, he does indeed manage to reach him, with Takasugi’s soul in his hands.

Takasugi, too, manages to reach Gintoki in the end. Cradled in Gintoki’s arms, he is brave enough–and selfish enough–to ask for a fleeting smile. My Orochi Stood Up argues that the moment Gintoki’s tragedy was revealed to us through Takasugi’s eye was the one that broke Gintama’s own narrative cyclicity. This was, of course, the original bit of dirt flung into Takasugi’s hole that he could not cope with, that halted his process of individuation. As previously mentioned, the ten years that separate the end of the Joui war from the present day span an entire age. At the very end, this eternity spent wandering, too, ruptures, and Takasugi finally finds his way out of the labyrinth, only to look back and see a clear and straight path through the trees.

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This essay has been a brief exploration of Takasugi and Gintoki’s relationship in the context of My Orochi Stood Up’s innovative ouroboros framework. In the seventy-five years since it was first published, it has been transformed in diverse and exciting ways. However, I thought it only fitting that for this major anniversary, the focus be brought back to the Gintama characters that first inspired it. Rather than the iconic dragon, Shouyou/Utsuro, this piece has chosen to focus instead on his two most intertwined disciples. While not necessarily treading any new ground, I hope to have presented an interesting snapshot of this relationship known for being simultaneously transparent and opaque.

As we have seen, this relationship is one made possible by the intense parallel structure it embodies. Just as Takasugi serves as Gintoki’s shadow, their journey and the cannibalistic nature of their duality echo the conflict represented by their teacher, and in many respects parallel the shape of the narrative itself. In this way, the position they occupy in relation to these other draconic structures–micro- or macrocosm–is perhaps a reversible one.

In short, though Gintama “cannot resist the phallus,” as T. S. Hirt said, it is also singularly concerned with holes: how they are filled, what results from them, what constitutes them. The only question it does not ask is what creates them. It is instead implicit that human beings naturally possess holes, that they are a natural part of the anatomy of both our bodies and souls. And thus, it is natural both to fill them and to fail to fill them; the fertile infinity of the ouroboros guarantees that should one fail, there will always be tomorrow.

#gintama #takagin #well. just take it #a lot of unavoidable overlap so not as much value as my first essay but. you know #i was NOT going to assume hapless yaoizine 2 readers would know what the fuck i was talking about.

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vryfmi · 2 months

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talk shop tuesday!!!! I love love LOVED your piece for the tea toast & ghosts zine – what was your experience in planning and creating it? was it a challenge to combine both art and writing, and did your art influence your writing or vice versa? I'd love to hear about your thought process in the creation of that really cool piece :D

thank you so much! it's really nice to hear especially since it's my first posted writing!

if im being honest i wanted to write an article from the very beginning, it was the overall idea that was ever changing but eventually i found it. since TTG zine's topic was your favourite thing about l&co, and i had no idea how to incorporate skullyle and it was too much work to come up with technical parts of ghost-lamps (tho i did dive deep into street lights' wiring at one point), i figured i'd stick to my favourite thing of all - worldbuilding and dark stuff!

The Idea™, at first, was to come up with a few cases and illustrate them, but the longer i rotated those the more i didn't like the prospect of making something separate and not rooted into canon. so i skimmed through the books while looking for any mentions of Fittes and Rotwell cases, since back then i already decided to use the Mud Lane Phantom's story. the other two i took are from TSS and THB and they were vague enough to be able to lengthen them to an article entry.

i outlined ideas first, what themes i wanted to convey, what i wanted to put out there for fans and how these cases would've work with each other. from the that point i started drawing the illustrations. quite a backwards process. and it all sounds good on paper but in reality irl struggles really weren't making me any favours and i wasn't meeting deadlines at all, but mods team was patient and understanding with me, they are literally the best!

for Mud Lane i went for slight mockery of pioneers because, well, yeah. there was quite a lot of made up lore that i decided to cast aside (like what if "today" at the crossroad there's a statue of Fittes and Rotwell? a museum? a tourist attraction? a gift shop?). overall im just really proud of illustration that i did, i should draw more of Marissa and Tom at some point.

fun fact and easter egg of sorts: Marissa's pose was supposed to be an homage to first poster of the series and the way Lucy stands in it! i think it got lost along the way as i changed the pose but i think it's still readable enough. i love drawing parallels between the two (:

[id: a side by side of Marissa in illustration, where she's holding her lantern with her right hand and looking beyond the viewer, and Lucy from the first Netflix' poster, where she stands in a simillar manner but points with her rapier at something out of view./end id]

picking one case set 50 years before the others ment that i'd have to contrast them, draw a parallel and make them work against each other to bring up the best and the worst. The Shoreditch one was, admittedly, more of that coming up with something that wasn't there in the first place. first book only mentioned patrols and i latched onto them. (plus i was drafting it at around the same time as l&co bigbang came out and i was massively inspired by my teammates work which incorporated those patrols but in metro tunnels. great case-fic btw). mainly i went for darker aspects of agent's work there, thinking that to fit in sewers the team would've been of smaller children, and that Kipps (yeah, he's there in illustration) would be as close to them as possible, unlike other inspectors we are used to seeing.

Holland Park Hounds was the one that i was the most excited for because wdym we as a fandom don't talk about possible animal-ghosts?? sure, it could've been Changer(s) but is it really? plus how badass of Holly to be part of it AND it was famous enough that Lucy knew of it as well!

Holly Munro pushed a stray hair or two behind her ear. ‘Well, I’ve seen some things. I was there in the Holland Park Cellar case, when our party got blockaded underground by those seven spectral dogs. It was quite a tight spot. And after that—’ ‘I heard about Holland Park, Holly, and I can tell you the thing that makes the bloody footprints is ten times worse. I’m only saying. I don’t want to frighten you. I just wouldn’t want you to get hurt.’ (THB)

innitially i wanted to do something about a horse-phantom that was mentioned somewhere but for the life of me i couldn't find it in books, so i'll leave it for my next reread. but this case has so much more ties to the main gang and especially Holly herself. i really wanted to draw a picture of her and her team after the case but no composition really worked so i kept it to park's plan (my urban planer friend said it looked good even). plus giving a plan and thorough haunting information somehow felt very Rotwell to me.

aaand i think that's it! not much to say for back cover only that my friend really disliked my choice of comic sans for one of the adverts. and that i wanted to make it gritty, as if its a wall right around the corner of the Fittes ball court.

#wow that took a lot of time to put into words #wouldn't have done it without this ask tho so thank u so much!!#l&co #lockwood and co #ttg zine #described #inbox #talk shop tuesday #blogposting

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platonic-qpr-selfshipping · 1 year

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Interest Check for an Aspec Selfshippers Digital Zine!

YES YOU READ IT WELL

I wanted to celebrate Pride in this blog somehow and what's better than doing so with other aspec people of this beautiful community by building something with our own works! I am excited to organise this but for now I'm just sharing this Interest Check Form with you to have an idea of everyone's interests, know your opinions and think about how it would work the best according to them. If enough people want to participate, the form to actually do so will be posted in Pride Month as the project is expected to start there. It would be a summer-long thing that will be available to download for free by August or so.

Here is the link to the Interest Check and also some other information that you can already find in it:

"Hello and welcome to the Interest Check of this future zine! The project is planned to start in pride month and be finished by the end of summer, so it's a summer-long project for all aspec selfshippers to enjoy and celebrate! Here are some main ideas about how it will be organised to give you a bit more of information in case you want to ask something related to these:

- I don't plan to choose a specific topic apart from Aspec selfshippers. I'd like this to be a zine for us all to freely contribute with whatever makes us happy, especially since it's our first time organising this. Maybe in the future we could choose something else for other similar projects, but for now I'd like this one to be like a welcoming white canvas for us all!

- Proshippers cannot participate. Please refrain from answering this form if you are one of them.

- NSFW content will be welcomed as long as it's tagged properly! It would be great to dedicate a part of the zine for these works if enough participants would like to contribute with NSFW pieces.

- Participants will need to have Discord as it is easier to organise something like this there than in Tumblr itself.

- I am planning on adding info of what characters' each piece is about so those who are uncomfortable sharing f/os can easily avoid other selfships with them. As it will be easier to do this at the beginning of fics and not so much in illustrations, I thought of adding these in the index, too. If you've read until here, I would appreciate to know your opinion on this and any other ideas you think would be great to add/change!

- Also this will be a free zine!!"

I also wanna thank @lost-in-azalea-forest and @wurufuluv for supporting my idea and already helping me with these first steps in organising it all, I really hope we all can enjoy this!

#f/o community #self ship community #self shipping #self ship #f/o #selfship #self shipping events #zine #fanzine #aspec community #lgbtq #self shipping community #self shipper #self shipping zine

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lunapegasus · 6 months

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Never thought I'd say this since sonic is my special interest but I'm gonna be taking a break from the fandom for a little while, aka this blog. I know I don't actually post a whole lot but I'll be fr inactive. This is just temporary btw. I'm currently in the middle of working on a piece (about metal sonic) for an upcoming free zine that you'll hear about soon and so I will be sharing that here when it comes out but there will be no other art aside from that for the near foreseeable future

#if you like to see someone spam the same meme post 85 times in a row I have another blog #its just like a generalized blog lol there's no art there and minimal fandom stuff. It's fallenstream if that matters to anyone #ngl I'm technically not actually completely stepping away from the fandom anyway. I mean I am with this blog #but I'm the owner of a sonic server I gotta be a mod aka be involved lol #my post tag or something #not sonic

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nattravn-art · 7 months

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In regards to these news, I'd like to precise that I've opted out of "third party sharing" (AI scraping) on this blog, my main @nattravn-stuff and my other secondaries.

I'm no big artist, but I still do not want my work to be used for AI purposes.

Following is personal feelings. The TL;DR is: I don't think I'll keep posting my personal art on tumblr/my socials any longer. That doesn't include zines/promo art and occasional fanart.

Quite frankly, it hurts and I'm tired of this all.

Drawing has always been a way for me to express myself and share what I love, drawing characters I love whether it's mine or other people's, whether it's fandom characters or OCs. However since a couple of years now, I've gradually lost the joy of sharing it on social sites, hence why I've posted less and less here.

I know I briefly mentioned it before but my mental health is not always the best, to put it simply, it never really was. Nearly two decades ago, finding online art communities was a lifesaver. First it was on forums. Then, after a wrecking art school year, I'd promised myself I would never draw again. I did pick up a pencil after a bit of not drawing due to OCs and fandom characters. Despite my art being bad at the time, I joined Deviantart. I'd found a community full of fantastic people there, and this community encouraged me to draw more of what I loved and post it online. I don't know where I would be artistically nowadays, or if I would still be drawing at all, if it wasn't for this community. Then I'd found tumblr, which was a fun way for me to share art among other things. DA was about to decline so I just stayed on tumblr, even if there was less engagement there for me aside on some specific fanart pieces.

I never was a popular artist and honestly, I didn't intend to be one. I just drew what I loved and appreciated the engagement. During DA days, I used to be more excited to share my stuff with the world than drawing, then the joy became equal between creating and sharing. That source of joy started vanishing for me, and it has affected my art. It affected it first because it felt that art only became "content" to be "consumed", it felt that it lost its personality and meaning. Then AI generated "art" and "artists" happened and it feels that it finished killing that joy for me. Today's news was the last nail in the coffin.

Not is all negative thought. Over the past year, I feel that I started regaining joy creating by telling myself that I don't need to share my art. It feels kind of stupid to type that tbh, but making art had been so tied to posting it online to me that I'd almost.. forgotten that. I started liking drawing for myself again. I started liking getting an idea and figuring how to express it visually again, even though the process could be so frustrating... I guess these are pretty words for me to just say "I love OCs and characters and want to draw my, my spouse's, my friends' and strangers' brains blorbos and the blorbos from my games too. I'm not sure I enjoy posting them on socials though."

All this to say that I've come to terms that I don't think I want to post my personal art on tumblr/my socials any longer, as long as it doesn't bring me joy. I will continue drawing and partaking zines and art events that bring me joy (such as Art Fight, or art challenges). I will also share art for promotional purposes + and I may post occasional fanarts if my brain gets in hyperfocus.

Eventually, if you're here reading this and liked seeing my personal art on your dash, I'm sorry and I hope you understand.

PS: if we're mutuals and you're on TH, shoot me a message I'd love to see you there!

#not art #personal

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partiallypoison · 1 year

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okay, so i wanted to write a post with a bit more information on the mcr reunion zine, since i already have a lot of people interested :)

please note that nothing is set in stone. there needs to be A LOT done before i even think about applications. the most i've done is a lot of research and gathering my thoughts about what exactly i want. however i wanted to explain myself better in case anyone is on the fence about whether or not they want to participate!!

warning: i typed way too much but hopefully it answers any questions you might have at this stage <3

first and foremost, it’s going to be a charity zine. regardless of size, i don’t want to do this for profit. that money is going to be donated. which charity, i’m not sure, but i’m open to suggestions!

for the subject matter: it’s going to be about mcr’s reunion and everything surrounding it. i want the zine itself to be almost like a scrapbook, in that it captures events of the reunion. a summoning video, the shrine show, the foundations of decay, specific shows and/or parts of shows (speeches, outfits, drum sayings, songs played for the first time in years, singing with openers/special guests).

you won’t be assigned your topic unless you don’t specify one. however, it’s first come, first serve for topics. i won’t have twenty people drawing cheerleader gerard. you have to submit multiple topics in order of preference. if you don't get any of your assigned topics, i'll do my best to assign you one as close as possible/work with you to adjust it so it's not too similar to others'.

yes, you can work on the same show/topic as someone else as long as what you want to do is different than the other person. example: two people want to do the 9/11 brooklyn show. one wants to do something about playing skylines and turnstiles in new york city on 9/11 and the meaning behind it all. the other person wants to do an art piece about desert song being performed for the first time in years. both can be in the zine, because they're different, even though they're the same show.

writers are a bit different. they can write about something if there’s already two art pieces about a show, but only one writer can do that topic.

both of those things can change, of course.

i’ll create a list of as many topics as i can think of for inspiration. the list won’t be the only topics allowed, though! there’s like 70+ shows to choose from with different things happening each show lol

depending on how many participants there are depends on how many pieces you can do. i’d say maybe two, unless you’re doing art and writing, then possibly more. if you want to do multiple pieces, i'd have you let me know in the application.

however, i wouldn’t give you all of your preferred topics at once. you’d get your first one, then i’d continue down the line. your second one would be like going back into the queue for your second show and getting renumbered hahah.

the zine will be in chronological order, with mostly art and a few written pieces here and there.

i am open to different forms of art (illustrations, collages, etc.) and writing (poetry, analysis, etc.).

collaborations are always welcome, and even encouraged!! make something with your friends!!!

there WILL be an application process, especially for something this size. i’m picturing something big, with lots of participants spanning across different platforms (hopefully). you will need to include examples of your work in it in order to be considered.

HOWEVER, i don't want people to be discouraged because of the fact that there will be a chance you will get rejected. my goal is not to reject people. my goal is to create a huge project created with love by as many people as i can get. this is a love letter, and i want it signed by as many people as possible. that's why i'm opening this multiple art forms and writing!!!

depending on the size, there may or may not be merch! prints, stickers, charms, buttons, whatever. that just depends on how many people we get for the zine itself. you can apply to do merch, or if you're not selected for the zine, i might reach out about you doing merch instead :)

and yes, i will be looking for people to help me organize this. i’ve never done this before, but by god do i want to do this for my chemical romance. if you have experience organizing big zines, please reach out to me with the name of the zine you helped organize and what you would be willing to do to assist me. i'm doing a lot of research but i know i wouldn't be able to do this on my own. i have some friends willing to help but i don't think any of us have organized anything like this before!

i think that's about it. i'll hopefully have something more concrete than just my thoughts and ideas within the coming month or so. my goal is to have this ready for pre-order by halloween (aka the First Day of the reunion) at the latest. maybe by 9/12 (aka mcr's 22nd anniversary). the next thing you might see from me might be a sideblog for the zine, and then hopefully more information about the zine itself.

thanks for your interest! feel free to ask questions, but know that i might not have answers yet.

#tagging this as #mcr reunion zine #for archival purposes

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cherriko-art · 6 months

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I just want to thank the Tumblr community from the bottom of my heart for helping me find joy in drawing again. For helping me find art a little less scary with every comment I get. And to remind people, once again, how much of an impact positive engagement has for creators, no matter how small or big.

Long, midnight ramble on my struggles with art below.

Late night thoughts, but lately my motivation for drawing has been rekindled as a way to release the brain rot on the fandoms and games I've loved recently. I lost my love for art for a really, really long time and for someone who's been drawing since I could pick up a pencil, and has identified as an artist my entire life, literally witnessing myself lose my love for art and drawing has been a really painful process. Especially since it happened over a relatively short period of time. Over 20 years of loving and creating art, only to be extinguished in just a small period of 2 years. When I came to a sudden realization that I hated drawing, I mourned over it for a really long time. I missed the joy I got from drawing, the pride in my art, the passion to learn and hone my skills. I used to think I could never imagine a future where I wasn't constantly thinking about the next thing I wanted to draw, but now I am living that future. Art is never on my mind anymore. I try to draw and I become filled with anxiety and dread. There's not a single thought about picking up my pencil and creating. The only things I had drawn in the last 4 years were for zines and it felt like work, not joy. Drawing felt like a job, and it stopped being the center of my universe. I stopped being active on social media, bc I was only on here for art. But even looking at other people's art left a bitter taste, and I didn't want to look at any of it anymore. Several times over the last few years I've tried to rekindle my love for art, tried starting small again. But it always fizzled out quickly, and I'd abandon it again. Sometimes I scroll through my Instagram and it hurts to look at, because I distinctly remember how much joy I got from drawing every single piece, what my thought process was, and how excited I felt in creating. It's been so long since I've felt happiness in drawing.

Lately, I've drawn some things bc my emotions for the brain rots in my head were Too Big and I couldn't think of releasing these big emotions in anything other than what I know. In art. I just drew something, didn't think too hard abt it, and posted them. Like barfing your overwhelming feelings on paper then throwing it away. But the engagement I've gotten on these emotional-dump drawings have been so wonderful, no matter how small or big, and it's made me so happy. Very specifically from Tumblr. Tumblr has reminded me what it's like to actually interact with fandoms again. Instagram/Twitter/etc has become such a competitive platform for content creators, that any sense of (the minimal) community and fandom interactions have been completely wiped out. But Tumblr has stayed true to it's roots through all these years and never have I been more grateful.

For the first time in years, I'm excited to draw again. I actually want to draw. I finished multiple drawings in the last 2 weeks, more than I have in years. Instead of feeling numb and exhausted after drawing like I had been, I'm actually filled with adrenaline and excitement to draw more. I'm excited to participate in fandoms again, engage in communities. This is all because other people's positive engagements on my little drawings have motivated me to draw more.

Drawing has become a very daunting, anxiety-filled, unpleasant experience for me. I lost my love for art years ago. But the positive engagement in my recent art has pushed away some of that anxiety, and it's becoming increasingly easier for me to pick up that pencil again. Drawing is starting to feel fun again. I don't know how long this will last, if it will fizzle out like it has time and time again. I don't know if art will turn back into the Big, Bad Monster again. But for now, I'm just relishing in the feeling of art feeling like freedom again. And I have the Tumblr community to thank for that.

So for everyone on here, thank you.

#cherry rambles #midnight thoughts #in ND terms art has been my special interest my whole life then some bad experiences ended up with art causing me a ton of anxiety and drea #since art became a trigger for negative emotions my brain switched off its interest in it #bc art was no longer a source of dopamine #then all of a sudden a life-long special interest fizzled out instantly into dust #anything related to art became dust in my mind #i had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever #and that hurt more than anything #bc no matter how hard I tried I couldn't rekindle that joy in drawing anymore #adhd peeps if ykyk #but after a few positive interactions on my recent art my brain has now latched on again it is SO happy #and now all I wanna do is draw??? bc its giving dopamine again??? all of a sudden my brain is like HELL YEAH ART!!#and god its like I can /breathe/ again for the first time in years #I feel like ME again - the person that loves art

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flame-shadow · 1 year

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Hi! Let it be known yor art is very scrumptious, I adore the way you approach character drawings, and the overall style is very pleasant! Lots of creativitive design choices and it's lovely to see every time I stumble upon it! I make effort to reblog artis I like, but don't consistently have the energy to look up all of their work, so I thought I'd ask if you mind sharing some artwork of you tgat YOU'RE specifically proud of?

I hope you have a great day 💜

hi!! first off, thank you so much for your compliments 💕💕

and gosh, i wouldn't blame you for not looking through all my art even if you did have the energy, since i share so many sketches and stuff that dilute the higher effort things haha (not to put down my sketches, since it's what i like to do, but i know it can be a lot to scroll through)

so yeah, i'd be happy to share some of my prouder pieces! [im gonna try to make sure all images have IDs in their alt texts, but if i miss one, oops]

a more recent thing is the lepideity/herald and this goldfinch

(I haven't worked on the infinipede sketch in a while, but I still plan on making it in a similar style to the herald since I dig how that looks)

Then some stuff from last year:

[characters belong to @/chipper-smol, @/wugfish, @/sofd-maybe, and myself respectively]

The art I did for the Bug Fables zine would be here if I could share it, but I'll have to settle for this preview:

And I'll finish off with a couple Hollow Knight fanarts <3

There's plenty of art from further back that I'm also quite proud of, but I limited it to this and last year so that this post wouldn't be too long. Thank you for the excuse to share some of my faves, and I hope you have a great day too! <3

#flame answers #im also quite proud of some of my recent crochet work like the table runner! it's a new hobby/skill #and it's refreshing and humbling to be a beginner in a new craft :)

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every-captain · 2 years

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Here she is! My 2022 year in review! Some thoughts about the year under the cut

2022 has been a really great year for me! I did 12 zine projects this year, may of which are represented here. I completed my longest comic project this year (8 pages) and was very proud of it. One of the panels for that comic is here representing April.

I graduated from college in August with a degree in illustration! I genuinely never believed I'd end up going to college, and I am incredibly proud of myself (and surprised) for how hard I worked and the success I experienced.

In September I started doing The Artists Way which has been absolutely amazing for my mental health. I've been walking more, learning more tools to calm my racing thoughts, and doing lots of actual traditional painting, which is something I've never let myself enjoy before.

In October I started making cards again too, which has always been something I really enjoyed doing. I got my shop set up online to open officially this year with cards and paintings and prints for sale.

In November I did my yearly Outfit of the Day challenge and got further than I've ever gotten in it before, and really enjoyed the process.

The entry for December is still unreleased, since it was done for a zine that hasn't come out yet, but I might edit this post later as soon as I'm able to share that particular piece.

All in all I am super proud of myself for this last year. It's been one of the best years in recent memory, and I hope that 2023 can continue the trend!

#year in review #artists wrapped #artist wrapped 2022 #art summary 2022 #art review 2022 #year in review 2022 #year in art 2022 #captains art log

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melancholy-thots · 5 months

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Aether Operations

Yeah. It's been a while. I'm hoping to come back and I thought I'd do it with the weirdest possible post I could make.

I'm going to go off the rails about a ttrpg zine that I have owned for months and only just now found out the name of.

Around this time last summer, the semester had just ended and I went on a vacation to the nearest Actual Big City to visit a friend. Said friend works sometimes, kind of freelance, at a gaming store. So during my friend's shift, I spend the entire time marvelling at all the cool gaming stuff. Especially the table top role playing games.

Ever since my first time playing Paranoia, I've had a bit of a love for weird ttrpg stuff. So when I saw the whole bookshelf in this store just dedicated to the weird, the indie, the not-dnd, I was ecstatic.

One thing that caught my eye was this gorgeous piece of art on what looked like newspaper paper. Then I unfolded it. Unfolded it again. It turned out to be this MASSIVE zine that has an entire ttrpg complete with character classes and world map.

I cannot stress enough, this is tied for the most beautiful art I own. Every single part of this weird little folded sheet of paper leaves me speechless.

But the title is written in an unreadable font and the price tag system wasn't really helpful. So for the longest time I've just had this piece I adore with my entire heart and no idea what it is.

But I was watching a youtube video today about fake video games and one of them gave me vibes so hard of this zine that I had to try. I googled "ttrpg zine spirit bone meat" and I got it. Top of the results. Aether Operations. Turns out there's a whole webbed site where I can buy weird funky booklets like this many of which I remember considering at the shop.

So yeah. No real thesis here. Just go look at this thing. Maybe support them with money. Definitely keep your eyes peeled when you're out in the real world. These weird little gems pop up in the least expected places.

#personal #ttrpg #aether operations #zines #serendipity

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yvesdot · 3 years

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yves.’S 2021 YEAR IN REVIEW

(2018) (2019) (2020)

(view the image in highest quality here!)

A look at something I wrote every month in 2021. All of the above excerpts can be read in order at this link, and I've included a few notes below on the pieces and months in question. It feels as though I spent so much of my time writing for Patreon and editing Forest Castles and so on, but there was still a lot of fresh content every single month!

JANUARY - In Her Arms (unpublished)

COVID's been pretty bad, hasn't it? I think it's been pretty bad. Wrote this piece almost a year ago now to deal with it, and have workshopped it several times since. Eventually I'll get a version I'm happy with, and then you'll see it published!

FEBRUARY - KAY Valentine's Drabble 2 (read online)

I made sure to come up with something to post for Valentine's Day 2021-- a cute little moment between Kay/Atlas, and then Constantine/Julia. Still warms my heart to read over this... that transphobic dad of Kay's isn't always completely useless!

MARCH - mortālēs (unpublished)

I've had a lot of ideas for erotica this year (all excerpts here are SFW!) but haven't managed to post them yet-- I'd probably put them on a separate NSFW writing blog, as I've mentioned before. Well, here's one, inspired by my sudden apparent interest in historical m/f.

APRIL - Silvia (unpublished)

While in the car on the way to a more wintry setting, I listened through the entire Miike Snow self-titled album, and was struck by a sudden intrigue caused by this song. Here was something out of the box, intense, explosive in its unrequited emotion. I could see it all playing out in my head, so clearly I knew I was coming up with a 'true' narrative totally disconnected from the original... but, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't set it to paper. I'm going to let it percolate.

MAY - Forest Castles (first two chapters)

Again, I did edit FC year-round, so I only displayed it here in months where I honestly couldn't find any other new writing (probably hiding in the depths of my Drive.) This was a fun scene to write, though who knows if it'll survive later cuts.

JUNE - THE LOVER RISES FROM THE ABYSS・恋人が黄泉から生えてくる (read online)

I wrote this flash piece in either early June or late May, and then I was stuck revising it for quite a while. You can read about the process of that on Patreon! I worried over it until I felt it couldn't be worried over one second more... and then I edited it as I posted it on Tumblr ^__^

JULY - Something Weird I Heard About Rebecca (available in BLOOD&BREATH zine)

I wrote this so long ago! And, honestly, I expected to spend even longer editing and submitting it, but when the Blood & Breath submission form came around, I knew it was perfect. Preorder the LGBT vampire zine before January 5th to read the story in beautiful, physical form!

AUGUST - Forest Castles (first two chapters)

Day One Hundred And Seventeen Billion: Eliza Is Still Stuck In White Castle. To be fair, though, I remember when I thought I'd never reach White Castle! I hit quite a block around here, which I am still unsnarling, and I like that I've chosen to lean much harder into Eliza's princess nature.

SEPTEMBER - WTWBingo drabbles (read online)

Oh, God, what a timesuck! In addition to The Death of The Author (more shortly), in joining the WTWBingo event, I found myself tormented by hundreds of ideas for drabbles! Thanks so much to the WTW folks for inspiring me to write 10,000 words of these stories.

OCTOBER - The Death of the Author (read online)

I love Halloween. I love Halloween writing, and I love Halloween Episodes. More than all of that, though, I love murder mysteries, and so I am thrilled to present to you, with no further context whatsoever, The Death of the Author.

NOVEMBER - The Proposal (unpublished)

More erotica, with an eerie amount of people waiting on it. Very, very simple romcom MILF nonsense, which apparently is not only a thing I can write but something other people might want to read. I absolutely loved this piece, and it was responsible for my incredible 8K start on Day One of NaNo.

DECEMBER - Exhaustively (read online)

Exhaustively's had a big edit, and I'm now formatting it to release in limited edition paperbacks, in honor of beloved Archivist Max @goose-books! I highly recommend taking a look at it in this graphic (instead of just in the transcribed version) for full formatting joy. Also, I wrote 10,000 words in a day... but that didn't make it in here.

Man, was I prolific this year! I really enjoyed my writing, and I explored all sorts of artistic nooks and crannies (as Patrons especially will appreciate, what with all the experiments and behind-the-scenes things posted to Patreon this year. Fun Patreon surprise coming for free shortly...)

I also spent a lot of time on non-writing writing things, such Exhaustively's formatting, and, well, this Year in Review! I tried to show myself how much of my work wasn't just sitting and writing but reading and thinking and promoting and posting, and I think it worked... though I do miss just-plain-writing this week, as I wrap up all these New Yearly loose ends.

This upcoming year, I want to work more steadily on Forest Castles. It's hard to fit in with all my other priorities, especially when I don't have too much time to write a day. Do I need to set aside an amount of time daily to get it done, or is it better to dedicate full days? That's something I am still exploring.

Finally, this year I began using 4thewords, and I quite like it! Makes writing addictive and much more naturally fun. If you'd like to join up, feel free to DM me any questions, and my referral code is LOMDY47116.

And please, if you feel inspired by this post, make your own! That links to my template, which shouldn't be too painful to use. Just hop in there and change my name to yours, and tag me when you're done so that I can see it!

As always, you can read all of my posted writing here, and if you’d like to support me, I have both a ko-fi for one-time donations and a Patreon for exclusive monthly content. Thanks for being here this year! It's been a big one for so many reasons, and I'm so grateful to have had you along. Have a wonderful 2022, and I'll see you then.

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