#I WAS EXPECTING LORE DROPS

[the-haven-keepers-collective]

*vague emotional screeching in the distance* /pos

[faceeeeee]

I’m finally getting up to schedule w/ commissions and stuff so yknow what that meanssss

[aseuki]

That breakroom gossip comic was so fun! Do the little reapers have any more fun stuff to share? Loved getting to see their “releaxed” escapades during the holiday update 😂

[Holiday Update]

Uses this as an excuse to airdrops a whole legend we didn't have time to dip into last time in here

As usual, many thanks to @alagaesia-overlord for letting me borrow her OC Strix and also for co-writing the script!

[atlantablack]

Maglor who stayed in Middle Earth all the way through till present day, or close to it, and then for whatever reason finally ends up going back to Valinor, but he has enthusiastically picked up all the modern day curses and slang and sometimes when he talks he's so completely incomprehensible to his family that they're not sure if they want to cry or hit him

aka: Maglor comes back to Valinor and instead of getting a traumatized son/brother back like the expected, they find that Maglor did in fact get over his shit eventually but was just having a blast becoming an agent of chaos and now he's brought all that back with him <3

[thorough-witness-enjoyer]

I. Am. Going. To. Be. SICKKKKKKKKKKKK

[kacievvbbbb]

I dont think i can put into words how still unfathomably angry I am that gege gave us two fucking layered interesting characters in Yuki and Nobara and then did fucking nothing with them.😭 When I catch this damn fucking cat 😭😭😭😭

[0vergrowngraveyard]

needed some background noise while drawing last night so i watched tubbo’s call with dream

why is the green guy so fucking stupid

[myriadlabrynth]

i'm late but i just saw this now. Different outfits and hearing that Seto is sleepy cause he stood up playing online games, that's somehow unexpected lolol

[tthelady]

HSR 2.5 SPOILERS

THE ENDING?!

[chao-club]

work fries my brain but i've been wanting to doodle

im probs gonna only do 5 bc my attention span can't handle more than a couple doodles but if u wanna drop ur fankids off I'll draw them interacting with one of mine !!

[cybertron-smash-or-pass]

i knew it would happen but oh my god. oh my. fucking god. i couldn't imagine it would be so bad when requesting. i was thinking about the lola propaganda and emo boy lovers and the gross freak haters. i couldn't possibly imagine that he would get such a GIANT pass percentage. yes there's six more hours to go but i know it's going to get worse over the night. As the blog curator is he really now the most passed on character I'm curious

Currently Masterson is still at a higher percentage than Beast Machines Rattrap, who I believe is our current Least Fuckable character. Masterson clears the bar by a whole percent.

And with your help we can set the bar even lower. It's not too late to Get His Ass

I don't know beachcomber too well but any humanfucker bots are welcome here.

Admittedly I was thinking at least a little bit about the rescue bots when I wrote the post because I swear to Primus every one of the main cast of bots is trying to fuck humans. Not even necessarily their human partners specifically (boulder and heatwave absolutely are tho), but at some point, every one of the bots has Said or Done Some Shit in the show that reads like they're interested in getting with humans. Prowl "I've fantasized about being human before" TFA walked so the rescue bots could sprint.

(I've also just kinda had Boulder/Graham Brainrot lately, so that might be contributing lmao)

[irminsuls]

genshin impact gif challenge ✦

[1/?] story quests → diluvies chapter, act i: the remains of the past day

"you will see much in the human world, from the delightful to the depressing. and one day, when you have dwelt among humanity long enough, you will be placed to bring judgment over all as the spokesperson for fontaine's past."

[bossuary]

If you are hoping the Dalish hold miracles, child, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. Even if the demon is driven out, the soul is left scarred. It can never recover. Not truly. Like a wounded animal, it will fall prey to scavengers. The only cure is death.

-Keeper Marethari, Dragon Age II - A New Path (quest)

[kcgyatt]

Random thought but other than X, who will see the true nature of the world? I have a feeling that the power isn't just gonna be revolving around X, but finds a way to be witnessed by other heroes.

There are only 2 heroes that are actually trying to gain the title of X unlike the other heroes who just ended up there cuz they're just built like that. Those 2 heroes being Queen and Dragonboy.

I'm not sure about the other heroes having the ambition to be the strongest because they mostly wanted to express their goodwill to the people and then they happen to trust them. This also could be added by the heroes' side jobs or whatever they do in their free time to gain trust.

For example, we have Lucky Cyan being a singer most of the time; she composes music that touches the hearts of the people. (How cool!) Loli looking like an influencer and acting cute in front of the camera but being actually rebellious out of the studio is what I expected from her. (I'm still confused on how the people in the bar didn't recognize her as the 6th hero. I might be wrong on this influencer thing but I'll just roll with it.) The Johnnies sponsoring the Wild life protection and all that also on camera, and maaaanny more.

(I'm drifting off from the topic goodness)

Back to the subject, what I'm actually curious about is Dragonboy and Queen. Why do they want to take the throne off of X? What is their motive here? Why are they the only two people that actually has a big chance of gaining more powers just like X?

Okay, first of all.. Queen's motive, in short, is to win the tournament and bring order to the world. (From the JP TBHX site.) There isn't many details of what she actually does or what her story contains from the PVs. When looking back from the trailers and openings, we realize that she's actually very mysterious! And if we're delusional enough, that means she holds so much importance in her entire character that they had to shorten her screentime. Because if given too much, it'll spoil too much! Expected from the 2nd ranking hero!!!

She's part of the few who barely gets any screentime. (eh, I think… I'm basing this off of my memory.) In the 2nd PV, she appeared in 1:12, in the 3rd PV, 1:01-1:06, Choose Your Hero! video, 1:01-1:07. How short….

Somehow, we managed to get a bit of crumbs on the 3rd PV. It showed her what she looked like when she was a child and her entering the Tournament grounds. Not enough info, fuck! It looked like she was closely observed from the start. Obviously, it's natural to guard your child if you're a nepobaby, but there might be another reason she's getting stalked constantly. And the reason is…. Not revealed yet! BUT. That reason is definitely gonna be why she's going to see the truth. Not as an accident, not because of coincidences, but let that be the vague guide to that truth.

Even one person, from the opening, is observing her card so closely. And why is that? The reason!!! explodes…

(Xtra thoughts of Queen)

My honest impressions of her is that she's a very isolated fellow. Just from her being in the Hero Tower and honing her skills are enough to explain that "Damn, that ho is either getting strict treatment or she's giving herself the strict treatment." (Definitely the latter though.) She also belongs to an agency that pursues high efficiency. Having 2 heroes like The Johnnies and Lucky Cyan with talent, how could she not have some too? Not some, but ALOT. Goodness.. keep it up girl…

"She's the pinnacle of female heroes, Queen is superior in many ways. She hopes to win the tournament to bring order to the world." Superior in so many ways that completely overshines Lucky Cyan's and The Johnnies ability to do stuff. Go no.2! (I feel like she gets a little pissed when she hears that.)

Just from the vibes she gives off is quite similar to X but still off-putting. It's like she's on the right track but she doesn't know where she's going? She looks to be very aware that she knows that there's something going on behind the scenes of the Tournament. She acknowledges that there might be something very suspicious behind her back. But she lacks on having the power to know so that may be the reason why she strives for the throne! I might be a genius guys….

Her urge to gain more power is VERY strong. It's very admirable. Please be no.1 but don't cause harm to lovely X.. He still needs to stream every Saturday 7pm..

(DragonBoy time!!)

Moving on to DragonBoy.. What the hell is he. Where do I even start with you? You're on the same case as Queen, but worse! I'm honestly so lost I can't even find a source to start with.. I'll try though..

As for the times he appeared.. It's so unbelievably dry. He doesn't even show up on the 2nd and 3rd PV, and just slipped through the opening, hello??? He showed up at Choose Your Hero video though, 0:48-0:52. How sad.

I can't think of how he gained his powers. I could only neglect him and say that he probably got trust from beating up criminals in public and they mistook him as some brutal yet heroic guy. I mean, he is nice! Volunteering to maintain traffic order outside a primary school and liking classical music is one thing.

I don't think he's bad… haha… sweats… He just needs to learn how to keep his shirt buttoned. The contrast of his appearance and his very gentle-like personality is not that surprising since I've seen this trope a lot of times. But the way Dragonboy executes it makes it different. He genuinely beats the teeth out of the villains mouth with blood spewing out, and having to listen to Erik Satie the next minute is crazy?

Really rebellious image and having tastes that is equal to that of an old man's = I like. His wordings are probably slightly formal but the tones he uses are so shitty. Sneaked in a little headcanon woops.

I actually don't know what else to say about him. I'm just gonna say that he's on the same page as Queen; being all mysterious and shit while having extreme importance in the story. How could anybody just leave out Dragonboy out of the image even though he's literally the 3rd ranking hero? I will if nobody does aha..

But like.. I'm still raising high suspicions of him. Li Hoalin in his twitter account literally captioned Dragonboy's 1st PV with, "Is he really a hero?" DON'T MAKE ME DOUBT IT NOWWWW… What if his power source is similar to corrupted Zero but more tamed.. like… that isn't a possibility that can be crossed out right?…

His powers are quite alike to the flickering effect of Zero's before they transformed. And that power may be related to the true nature of the world. Is that why Dragonboy has a connection with it or something? I can't do anything more than that, I don't get how or why you got a lot of fans..

As for the other heroes ranging from 4th to 10th, they might just coincidentally see this true nature of the world and fucks with it I guess, but doesn't gain additional powers unlike X?… It wouldn't think that they're worthy no…

Anyways, yap sess coming to an end. I just thought of this in the afternoon and surprisingly, i remembered most of the details!

I. need. to. know. more. about. them. JUST MY HEADCANONS BEING CANON IS ENOUGH. PLELLEASSEE…

I really wanna know Dragonboy's story. It used to be E-soul that had the least amount of screentime but after his 2nd PV released, it was CRAZY lore. I actually didn't expect so much from him, no offense!

I didn't bother fetching the images cuz I'm lost.. all I could do is rely on memory guys heh..

[the-mononoke-facade]

Alright, so there's been some talk about whether Shusu is actually a different medicine vendor from Ri Kusu (show Kusu), and at first that was my assumption (or my preference since I found the characterization in the book went all in on the detached, stoic side of things than any of the other things that make Kusu an interesting character). But the more I think about it, the more I'm like "is he though?"

And my wondering about it comes from two places, first being that the theme of disentangling harmful attachments is what the book is named after, and the other is the descriptions of the taima sword both sheathed and released, as well as the descriptions of Hyper/Shingi thoughout the book

(spoilers for Shu, since I've seen more people asking about it lately, as well as including suppositions based on recent lore drops and some minor spoilers for Karakasa based on trailers and the like)

Starting with the descriptions of the sword and Hyper, despite the sword being depicted on the cover being a now seemingly defunct design from older promotional material for Karakasa, the sword is described in the first story, Kama Itachi, as having the kinds of colored stones that are characteristic of the Ri taima sword when sheathed.

When released, it's described in multiple stories with some variation of being "an enormous, glimmering blade," which is also what we've seen throughout the show for the Ri sword. The Shingi of Shu is described with gold, serpentine patterns snaking all along his exposed skin (also tanned but given Shingi also has darker skin, that specific detail might just go with being a spirit of the sword), Kama Itachi mentions gold brocade (it's unclear from what I was ever able to translate of it if it was referring to the robe or the markings, so take that with a grain of salt), Toutetsu mentions the kumadori markings on Kusu's face becoming more elaborate from how they started (compared, again, to Kon Shingi and Kusu where their respective face markings don't seem to have a whole lot in common except maybe the eyebrow area), and then Tamamo no Mae outlines the crimson eyes and silver hair. All of that sounds an awful lot like Hyper and the Ri taima sword (and you know, I kinda figured Fuguruma Youbi would have a better description to pull on as well given how like half a page was Tamenaga just contemplating Kusu's beauty and like, me too man, me too, but ah well)

Could it be a matter of these characteristics being in line with how swords associated with any of the hexagrams with fire as a component seem to show up? It's definitely not impossible, and I certainly don't know enough about how I Ching works to make any certain statements on that, but if I were to speculate on a little bit I noticed poking around a hexagram lookup table, with the hexagrams that are composed of two different elements, it seems to be less about one element being dominant over the other so much as two elements meeting in a certain arrangement to create a new result (and even with two hexagrams composed of the same elements, which of the two elements is on top of the hexagram can drastically change the meaning). So then if each permutation creates a unique end result, wouldn't it also follow that the respective swords would all be pretty unique from each other? How would you even determine that "yes, this is the trigram element this sword is associated with"? By the top of the hexagram? The bottom? The yin/yang alignment of the sword? To my mind, it makes more sense for all the swords (and therefore the spirits attached to them) to be unique to their own hexagram (again, not an expert by any means, I'm open to other takes on how that could work, this is just my working idea of how it works)

So if the swords ARE all meant to be unique, then it's a safe assumption that the sword in Shu is the Ri sword. Does that necessarily mean it's the same medicine vendor wielding the sword? Not necessarily, we don't have any information on what happens to a sword should a medicine vendor fall trying to slay a mononoke; does it disappear? Does the sword spirit die alongside that medicine vendor (especially if it happens after the sword's been released)? And what happens to a medicine vendor if a particular sword doesn't need to be in play at that particular moment, given that it seems from the lore drop that the number of swords in play can go up or down? Does he disappear? Does he get stripped of the qualities that made him a medicine vendor and continue living on as a human? Some kind of unaffiliated ayakashi waiting in reserve for when the sword needs to come back into play? Enter the collective unconscious? Is it possible for this sword to show up the same as it is for a different wielder? All of that is the realm of theories and headcanons for now, but it's not impossible that it's a different hand wielding the same sword (and if it's a different entity, is it a reincarnation of the same soul or is a new one selected?)

With my second sticking point being the theming of letting go of harmful attachments that is the book's namesake, which is a common theme that also runs throughout the arcs of the show (Tamaki and the cat being stuck to haunt the Sakai manor without having gotten any justice for the atrocities commited by the family, the zashiki warashi letting go of being ripped away from the women they chose to be their mothers in this life as well as Shino's letting go of the exercise in futility that would have been using her body and sacrificing the baby she already has to try to right that wrong, Genkei's fixation on his guilt over Oyou's sacrifice, Ochou's futile attempts to meet her mother's selfish expectations, the todaiji feeding the greed and obsession of the suitors and its own obsession with being desired, Ishikawa's drive and tenacity to find the truth persisting even after her death)

From that angle, the various stories in Shu are pretty much in line with that theme as well: Tokuemon's deep-seated grudge against his abusive father, especially when that abuse was suffered in service to an ancient obsession of his family for riches and honors; Hori Mondo's obsession with his late master and the honor that should be able to be assumed with the ruling samurai class which is disproven by his master's successor, who himself is obsessed with proving himself capable of filling his father's massive shoes, Ishiuemon's obsession with increasing his own power at the expense of Zen, who becomes obsessed with becoming Ishiuemon's wife even as she was nothing more to him than a pawn; Kei's attachment to the notion that she's owed something going right for her after a life that's been filled with hardships, Hagino's obsession with her husband's all-but-confirmed infidelity even at the cost of her daughter, Takaharu's not being able to keep it in his pants for the sake of the family he already has, Koharu's obsession with gaining her mother's affection; Shunsui's obsession with being a popular author and narrator and tainting Ofumi with that obsession when he betrays her trust to help get her love letters over to a more accomplished author that Shunsui both reveres and is jealous of; Jinjirou's obsession with getting his family's sacrifice properly honored when everyone around him seems keen to shrug it off; Tadayoshi's obsession with getting his daughter Kaede safe behind the walls of the Ooku and Kaede's drive to meet his expectations even as they bear down on her

I had mused a while ago that the feminist theming, in contrast, seems to be missing, putting more focus on the woes of the men in the story often at the expense of the women around them, but in hindsight I almost wonder if that's actually the point (and I think I'll find a more solid answer to this in Oni, from what I've gleaned so far, so this might be another "put a pin in it" thought as well...but that pin's going to be in for a very long time at the pace I'm going through this book lol). Another common thread with Shu is the letting go of how things used to be with a lot of the expectations chaining these characters coming from the Sengoku era, which just don't work going into the "peaceful" Edo era. While women's rights prior to Edo weren't exactly robust, they were stripped down over the course of the Edo era.

It could be taken, then, that this comparatively larger focus on men at the expense of the women around them is another reflection of moving into and accepting Edo-era paradigms, and also giving a peek into the unintended (or maybe "unintended") consequences of putting safety and control over freedom. From that angle, a medicine vendor meant to embody not just a woman's desire but also what a woman wants to be would also then become gradually less considered over time (and while he never had the kind of involvement in Shu that he does in the show, there is a general trend over the course of the stories of his engagement falling off a little more with each story). Ending the book with Nuppera-hofu, with Kaede losing her face as her father lost sight of why he was fighting so hard to get her into the Ooku ("she'll be safe there and won't disappear like my wife and eldest daughter did"), where it's not even clear which sister is the one being sent to the Ooku by the end of the story but what does that matter when the goal of getting to the Ooku was achieved, then leads in very nicely to Karakasa, where so many women have lost their individuality in service to "the greater good" until it hits a tipping point, the karakasa becomes active and starts upending everything that the Ooku was built on, and possibly even projecting that outward to reflect what's happening in the rest of the country as well

So then to bring it back to whether Shu Kusu is Ri Kusu or not, if being more passive, or more "feminine" starts to fall in line with the increase of systemic oppression women face in this new era, then in order to reclaim some of his own power and agency, Kusu would need to start to be more active, not a spectator but an actor, and then that leads into Ayakashi Bakeneko, where he's at his most emotive, his most active, and pushing the hardest to be in control of the situation, before gradually over the course of the show relinquishing more control to start to shift back into more of a passive spectator role as women start to chafe under the abuses they're suffering in this restrictive period and fighting to get some of their power back, having the second Bakeneko arc happening somewhere in the 1920s (still obviously a lot of problems, both the old deep-rooted ones and the new ones coming from the reactionaries that don't care much for these seeds of more equality between men and women starting to grow, Moriya being the poster boy for that group and their trying to act like they're the victims in all this while they start running out of justifications for "putting women in their place"), but with more power being reclaimed, he then wouldn't need to be quite as active or "masculine" to be able to have the power or influence needed to get the truths from the humans he needs to perform his duty, so then the differences in characterization could be reflective of what is needed for the era in question. It could also be a matter of the Ri sword and the need to cut away attachments becoming less and less necessary over this general period of human emotion, to where the sword is taken out of play by the end of Shu and the wielder of Ri we see in the show is either a new medicine vendor, or the same one but with a mandatory vacation thrown in there to discombobulate him on how human emotion sphere looks by the time he gets back

Anyway, that's a lot of rambling to say there's a case for it being at least the same sword if not also the same medicine vendor as the show, and it's a matter of the framing and themes of Shu not doing any favors to him for highlighting the things that make him a cool character