#BLORBO FROM MY BRAIN

[skyrim-forever]

big plans tonight

[temunitu]

reblogs appreciated. feel free to talk about yours in tags. doesn’t have to be tmnt related, this is just my blog with the biggest following.

edit: if you hit the nuance button you’d better explain what the nuance is

[ren-054]

I wish “I need [insert pronoun] in my mouth” wasn’t so easily sexualizeable because I have the urge to say it all the time about characters I like but I KNOW the moment I say it someone’s gonna be like “heh… is that so?” NO that is NOT what I meant, I need that strange man in my mouth out of LOVE and ANIMALISTIC CURIOSITY

[poppitron360]

People shit on Shakespeare for being boring but my guy wrote real person fanfiction and tortured his ocs and told cringe jokes and had hidden gay subplots and played with gender too- he just did it in

a squiggly font

[lokimortal]

An older doodle of my skrunklies. My blorbos.

[saltyspittoon]

finally got around to designing one of my hollow knight ocs, this is Jinan! lore under the cut

they escaped the abyss through deepnest n got into the queen's gardens from there, eventually ending up at the white lady's chamber

they stayed cuz mom :] n white lady took it as an opportunity to be an actual mom again (without the figurative sword of damocles hanging over their head like with the hollow knight)

thanks to being nurtured by a pale being, jinan got to fully grow up, though tbh theyre still a big baby about everything. very naive n fearful about most things (they'd be terrified of hornet)

currently they're trying to teach themselves nail combat to protect white lady from the remaining mantis traitors. theyre not very good, but it's the thought that counts <3

[elliottjpg]

La bande à Lulu – Arsène Lupin’s gang !

I started rereading the OG Lupin books, and suddenly three new OCs happened to me. Woops-

At the height of Lupin's career, his band had about 60 members. These OCs are the core gang. (Also Victoire is mine now, sorry uncle Maurice)

They all admire Arsène immensely, they have unwavering trust in him and would probably throw themselves out a window if he asked. They all call him "Boss" (Isidore is the only one who sometimes calls him by his name) and use the formal "vous". He calls them "my lad/lass" and the familiar "tu". They all love each other but it's very much not a healthy relationship. These people are all freaks. (all this is pulled from Lupin's interactions with his accomplices in canon)

In my head, Isidore is the unnamed accomplice who appears in "The Safe of Madame Imbert".

Additional lore on Sophie: when Lupin met her, she was cross-dressed and had a fake mustache, and he tried to hit on "him" in a bar. She picked his pockets, then eventually revealed her gender and handed him some of his stuff back. Arsène was baffled that someone had managed to steal from him without him noticing, so he stalked her back home; she spotted him, confronted him, they had a fight and she bit his arm hard enough to draw blood, upon which Arsène went "Wow, what a remarkable woman, do you want to work for me?" and Sophie went "You're crazy. Sure!"

(Lupin trying to recruit someone who's just robbed him / tried to kill him is canon btw)

[spookberry]

Color Guardians at Pride

[pixellangel]

throws sprite art of my epithet oc mori terabye at you and runs away

[wolf-pearl]

That feeling when,,, your personal blorbo from your brain,,, becomes the whole discord server's blorbo

[skyrim-forever]

This is where I live baby

[gointothevvater]

@kawaiibaphomet has done some of my favorite St. Cecilia arts 🥺🖤✨

[xxgoldie]

having ocs and selfships and stuff is so funny when u aren't an artist. like yeah this is my blorbo from my brain. they have to stay locked up in my brain. they are shaking the bars of their cage but i don't have the key, sorry.

[jercythesiscrying]

a writer/creator watching me take their story to make an au for my otp that does not fit either of these characters in the slightest but im doing my darndest to make it happen anyway

[saltyspittoon]

finally designed my other vessel oc, info under the cut

Oisín, the Hunter's Disciple. oisín was a yet-to-be-named vessel who had escaped the abyss through deepnest right after the hollow knight was first sealed and things seemed "fine". they made their way to the palace grounds and to the throne of the pale king. the pale king had previously heard rumors from his court that other vessels had also been escaping, so he decided to kill two maskflies with one stone by assigning this particularly tenacious vessel with hunting them down and bringing them back to the abyss. so they did just that for the following years, even after the infection returned and the white palace disappeared. during one fateful excursion in greenpath, they happened upon the hunter, who took something of a shine to his fellow hunter as he felt a kinship with the little vessel. he took them under his wing so to speak and dubbed them Oisín. now they hunt anything and everything just for the joy of the hunt.

due to their extended time in the presence of the pale king, they were able to grow into adolescence, but now they're basically stuck as an angsty teen forever since he's gone. they have an uneasy truce with hornet, and they were the one whom originally killed what became broken vessel

[elliottjpg]

On this beautiful (two days after) Trans Day of Visibility, I give you a transgender kabuki actress!

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暁の物語 Akatsuki no Monogatari

光 Akane

(O-Akane or Akane-hime to be polite)

Asakura Heijirō (朝倉 炳次郎), better known by her public name O-Akane, is an onnagata: a cross-dressing kabuki actor specializing in female roles, as well as an oiran: a high-ranking courtesan; and she is Hikari's lover.

Born to a poor family but blessed with amazing looks and an ambitious mind, Akane turned to (male) prostitution very early on by necessity. When kabuki theater came into being, she found her calling: being onstage was not only a way to attract clients, but also to express herself, and to indulge in the femininity she had been hiding her whole life. She was soon able to make a name for herself, as both an actress and a cultured, high-ranking courtesan, allowed more choice and luxury than most of the women of the pleasure district.

She is the kind of courtesan who knows her own worth and knows how to use it to get what she wants. She is cunning (although not cruel), resilient and ambitious, which allows her to live a relatively enjoyable life in the pleasure district. Being able to live as a woman is more than she could hope for, and she can both put up with a lot and fight very fiercely to keep this privilege.

She met Hikari when he was visiting the pleasure district. He saw her perform onstage and was immediately struck and fascinated by her, enough to court her for many weeks before being allowed to meet her. Their relationship quickly grew beyond that of a client and a courtesan, into a romantic -albeit unusual and unstable- relationship. Akane feels that Hikari is the only person who truly understands her, both as a person, as a woman, and as a trans individual.

Hikari being a traveler, he only spends little time with Akane, which makes it all the more precious to both of them. Hikari sometimes still has his doubts about Akane's true feelings, which are something prostitutes often play with. Akane truly does love him, but she can't bring herself to dispel his doubts, because both of their lives are too complicated for clear-cut feelings.

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Akatsuki no Monogatari (the Tale of Dawn) takes place in the very beginning of the Edo era, in the transition years between the warring period of the Sengoku-Jidai and the two hundred years of peace under the Tokugawa shogunate. It is a story about change and beginnings, both of a person and of a country.

Some name lore and historical context under the cut!

Explanation of Akane's name:

Like most men of her time, Akane has a "public" first name (Akane), a "private" first name (Heijirō), and a family name (Asakura).

-Akane is the stage name she chose for herself. It is typically written 茜, which means "deep red" or "madder plant (Rubia cordifolia). But it turns out it can be written with 80 different kanji or combinations of kanji, one of them being... fucking hikari 光. Because kanji is a system created by the devil. So of course I had to pick that spelling.

Note that in the Edo era, women's names were typically written in kana, not in kanji. In a formal setting, she would normally be referred to as O-Akane, or Akane-hime (princess Akane - she is not a noble, it's just a fancy title like milady).

-Heijirō is Akane's male adult name that she received upon coming of age. It is normally written 平次郎 which means "even second son" ("even" being an auspicious adjective; men's names were often composed of a positive word and their order of birth). Except it turns out that "hei" can also be written with the kanji 炳, which means... bright and shining! Like fucking 光 (which means light). So I obviously had to choose that spelling. Maybe Akane was given the name "even second son" and changed the spelling herself to "bright second son".

-Asakura is Akane's family name, the spelling is inconsequential, I chose it simply for the sound.

A remark on Akane's gender identity:

She personally identifies as a person of feminine nature, insofar as she can conceptualize "identifying as a woman" in this historical context. In modern terms she is a trans woman; in the Edo era's society, she is a man who cross-dresses 24/7 For The Art. Yes that was a thing. I could not make this up if I wanted to. From what I understood of my research, Edo society kinda considered onnagata to be its own gender role.

To quote the book "Kabuki" by Masakatsu Gunji: "In the attempt, not just to express femininity, but to become a woman, [...] the daily lives of onnagata were lived in the same way as women in almost every detail. On the third day of the third month, they celebrated the Doll Festival; they did sewing in their spare time; and their clothes were those of women in every respect. This intense effort to become a woman, by being ultimately doomed to failure, served to create for other men a kind of abstract of femininity that somehow summed up its essence better than any individual woman ever could."

Disclaimer on historical accuracy:

I really cannot speak for the accuracy of Akane's costume. I did my best by referencing old ukiyo-e prints of oiran (courtesans), but at the end of the day this is a very approximate attempt on which I slapped some modern furisode (long sleeve ceremonial kimono) patterns. At least it looks rad.

Also, historically, it's not very realistic for Akane to be an onnagata. In the early days of kabuki, all the actresses were women, and a lot of them moonlit as prostitutes - the plays were a way to advertise themselves and attract clients. A shogunal ban was eventually placed on women in theater, displacing the problem and creating an opening for young male prostitution (and the basis for the future onnagata). Then young men were banned from kabuki for the same reason, and cross-dressing male actors had to be registered with the shogunate lest the audience thought there was an actual woman on stage (a scandal!).

From what I understood of my research, the direct ties between kabuki and prostitution seem to have been severed after the second ban (on young male actors), which was followed by an attempt by kabuki actors to appear more respectable. By the time kabuki was established as a proper art form and the onnagata became highly regarded trendsetters and fashion icons, actors were no longer prostitutes.

Akatsuki no Monogatari takes place in the early decades of the Edo era, so in the first years of kabuki, before onnagata became a thing. But sometimes, you just have to bend history a tiny bit to treat yourself to a cool transgender actress/prostitute.