gaspard-de-la-nuit - Tumblr blog

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leorio practice, and a single kuwabara that got in here somehow

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pika x flowers

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more hxh dump

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One of my favorite yuri related things is actually this Japanese article I found once that was like. Directed at younger himejoshi. So I put it through google translate because I was curious and it had a bunch of tips like "if you have a friend who is also a yuri fan... maybe you can go see a movie about girls together! But REMEMBER. Be sure to let her know in advance if you want to be 😳 more than friends 😳" and I genuinely thought it was so funny and cute that it was like "WARNING: we know manga likes to string things along but you cannot do that in real life you need to make your intentions known" LMAO

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The Chimera Ant Arc. More or less. Greed Island server prompt for Poor Man's Rose challenge. Theme: obsession. This meme has been kicking around for a while and I'm late. Inspired by @remotepunch

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i love the greed island arc so much. gon and killua get isekai'd into ging's indie dev MMORPG with the tender mesage: whats up my stupid piece of shit son. i bet you want me to stop being such a deadbeat. well guess what? i'm not going to. play my video game.

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"Blah! It's me, the alien! I'm gonna getcha! I'm the alien!"

- the alien from Alien (1979)

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Gon is so silly

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Sorry for posting late! Busy day!

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Baaa I love them

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YIIIPIII

Who needs lineart when you've got sketches?

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Happy September 1st to that group of 4!

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September 1st Togashi tweet!!

Togashi says, "I've progressed on the storyboard by two chapters.

I'll refrain from sitting in the chair for a little while longer just to be safe and work on the storyboards.

I'm depressed because the coloring is on hold."

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I love how Killua calls Gon "that kid" when they're the same age 😭

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the new heart I've been growing in my garden is at a strange and delicate stage of development

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“The Heroine’s Journey” & Killua (HxH)

Dunno if you guys remember, but a while back I linked to a reddit post that argued that Killua has a “traditionally female” character arc (in contrast to Gon’s character arc, which was “traditionally male”).  

^^And Togashi does love to contrast them, as we all know.   

The post I’m talking about is here, I’m linking because it’s a bit too long to reblog. Basically I thought this argument was simplistic/reductive, and said so. But then  I started talking to Shimono on reddit and it turns out s/he was referring, not to “traditionally female” character arcs in general (whatever that means), but to a specific structure called “The Heroine’s Journey” by Maureen Murdock that’s meant to expand the “Hero’s Journey” we’re all familiar with.  

Here’s what Shimono says: 

HEr idea was that the usual hero’s journey we see in any story about men basically (almost all popular western fiction to be honest) was not reflective of what women usually go through in their coming of age stories , thus she defined a female coming of age journey that works differently.

https://mythcreants.com/blog/using-the-heroines-journey/ [you’ll want to click on this, it’s good]

Now, whether you agree with me that this fits on killua or not (i think both cases can be made, i think with some translation of the mythical terms into killua’S story it fits), i think it is clear that killua’s struggles are unlike what normal shonen protags (or seinen protags) go through. He is not the only one at that, but a very stunning example because he mirrors the very male connotated journey gon goes through.

I was pretty skeptical but to be honest it kind of fits??? The heroine’s journey is focused on a duality within the character, which in Killua’s case could be for example staying home under his family’s control (this would be the “feminine” goal) VS. leaving home to test himself and forge his own path (this would be the “masculine” goal).

^^1999 anime actually plays up this “duality” angle quite a bit… there’s a scene where he talks to his reflection, representing the “evil assassin” version of himself (that his family have told him is his “real” self), in the airship when his backstory is introduced. 

Anyway in the beginning of the story, the heroine rejects the “feminine” half of the duality (staying home, being an assassin) and embraces the “masculine” half (travelling with Gon who is, as we all know, a super traditional shounen hero with a traditional hero’s goal of getting stronger to impress his dad to understand himself - when we’re following Gon’s journey, we get these training arcs like Heaven’s Arena and Greed Island that are mostly in the train-to-get-stronger and fight-others-to-prove-your-worth shounen mold).  

^^And a lot of Stupid Shounen Stunts™, too.

The interesting thing about this structure is that it doesn’t end when the hero’s journey does, with adventure, recognition, success and external validation.  (Like when Gon wins Greed Island, or when he finds Ging.)  Instead it’s exactly at that moment of victory that the heroine realizes that’s she’s given up something vital, and that she needs to reconnect with the feminine / her childhood…in Killua’s case, right after the Chimera Ants are defeated he has to go home and specifically, reconnect with Alluka in order to rediscover something vital from his childhood that he’d lost on his journey.  

In the end, a happy ending is one that merges the masculine and the feminine, not one that forces a choice between them. 

Here’s a chart: 

So right now, we’d be on Step 6 - the reconciliation with the feminine. I mean Killua is literally travelling the world with The Goddess (Alluka) right now, right?.  He’s given up external validation in the form of training to get stronger / performing feats with Gon in order to take on a parental, caretaker role for his sister**.    

If we continue to follow this structure, the next thing we’d expect from Killua’s character arc is the reincorporation of the masculine (maybe… meet up with Gon again? I mean, a girl can dream), followed by the Union of the masculine and feminine….which could be something like Gon and Alluka getting along, or maybe something that allows Killua to maintain his independence from his abusive family while also not cutting ties with them entirely.  (The “Killua leads the younger generation of Zoldycks in a new direction” theory.)  And of course, I’d be Down For That because I don’t think Killua’s arc is over.  

Anyway, this was honestly pretty interesting and I’m glad Shimono was willing to expand on the original post.  Like I said, reddit contains multitudes. 

**To be clear, I personally don’t think we need to characterize all caretaking as feminine… but there’s some cultural baggage there, y’know?  There’s a difference between the shounen “protect those who are precious to me” and what’s Killua’s doing, where he’s taken it upon himself to see to Alluka’s happiness and emotional well-being from now til forever  (and in fact, he’s pretty much the same age Mito was when she  fought to take Gon away from Ging - if you want to talk parallels).