#Magical journeys for kids

[decadentkidturkeywagon]

Discover the Enchantment of “Mia and Max’s Magical Garden Adventure”

In the heart of every child lies a world of wonder waiting to be unlocked, and the newly released story “Mia and Max’s Magical Garden Adventure” does just that. This beautifully crafted tale invites young readers, aged 5 to 7, into an enchanting journey filled with discovery, friendship, and the magic of imagination.

The story begins with Mia, a curious girl, and her playful dog, Max, as they stumble upon a shiny key in their backyard. What follows is an adventure through a hidden garden filled with oversized flowers, talking animals, and a rainbow tree that glows with mystery. Along the way, Mia and Max form meaningful connections and learn the value of curiosity and kindness.

What sets this story apart is its simplicity and accessibility. Designed to captivate young minds, the book features clear and easy-to-follow language alongside delightful illustrations that are perfect for coloring. Each page encourages creativity while reinforcing the narrative, making it a wholesome and engaging experience for both children and parents.

For those looking to add a touch of magic to their children’s reading time, “Mia and Max’s Magical Garden Adventure” is now available online.

👉 Read the full story here: Mia and Max’s Magical Garden Adventure

This heartwarming tale is more than just a story — it’s an invitation to explore, imagine, and dream. Don’t miss the chance to introduce your little ones to Mia and Max’s enchanting world!

[jellytheteawolf]

More opera magical monkeys

Macaque magical girl persona is meiying jun/phantom lord. I got that from the shadowplay ep in s2, where the cn title of the episode calls him that

He is also wusheng based, but I went for a less bulky silhouette. I tend towards making macaque taller and sleeker, while wukong is shorter and bulkier

Closeup (wow haha)

Also doodles.

Our naur... I have a crush on TWO GUYS (pov wukong)

I need them to makeout rn (I say as the creator)

[journeytothewestresearch]

A Catalog of the Monkey King’s Magic Powers and Skills

I am happy to announce that I've finished my 177-page catalog of Sun Wukong's powers from all 100 chapters of Journey to the West. Fans of Lego Monkie Kid and Black Myth: Wukong, fanfiction writers, and artists will certainly find it useful.

[ew-selfish-art]

Dp x Dc wherein learning magic is similar to learning how to play music. 

So basically, the creation of a summoning spell is like a full composition/song made of smaller components or ‘notes’ for things like gravity shifting, and geolocation, and transportation etc. which is why Magic can be taught and spells can be man-made. 

Danny, however, is the equivalent of having Perfect Pitch. He can compose entire songs of spells without really thinking about it due to his royal titles (ambassador/king/high prince) but doesn’t really know how to be specific which lands him in some trouble with Clockwork. His portals are coming along a lot better with the help of Wulf but its critical that Danny learns how to control the range of his magic *something something, for the timestream something* *blah blah according to the will of the ancients blah blah*. 

So put on the course to learn Magic, Danny decides to hunt down the House of Mystery and study up by himself. He’s doing community college online, what could a little bit of Magic self study really do to his schedule? This place has literally every magic resource he could need! 

Turns out he has a roommate in the House of Mystery- John Constantine does not take well to the fact that half of the spells Danny is creating are causing him issues with the JL. Random shit appearing, random shit disappearing, portals everywhere and don’t get him started on the fucking ICE present on every bloody thing the magic reaches. Not to mention there is no reason a normal human kid should be able to have this much power behind his spells. 

John attempts to teach Danny the basics like a little kid gets stickers placed on the keys of a piano. The problem is Danny has the ability to compose entire scores of Magic all on his own, and absolutely abhors the training wheels John is putting on him. 

Danny: You’re patronizing me! 

John: You deserve to be patronized. 

Just like, Danny learning Magic in various ways that you might teach kids to play musical instruments from the various Magic users in the JLD. Causing chaos along the way, found family, the whole nine. Stickers on the instruments for notes, taking away guitar strings that are ‘more advanced’ and replaying Twinkle, Twinkle little star over and over again. 

Danny can play the Magic equivalent of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake but cannot play Chopsticks. 

[booberrybawls]

Whats been ruining me to the core recently is the difference between Dead Kid Loki in Young Avengers and Crime That Will Not Be Forgiven in Agent of Asgard

I just. Look. In Young Avengers Dead Kid Loki is basically as Kid Loki was in life. He makes a joke about needing to crack heads to make a Hamlet. He has expressive hand gestures and trolls New Loki to insanity. He looks like himself except green to show he's a ghost.

Then you get to Agent of Asgard and Dead Kid Loki is a disembodied head with gaping black eyes SCREAMING that his murder is a crime. He's a kid with blood all over his mouth standing freakishly in corners. New Loki looks up into mirrors and his reflection is this corpse yelling at him.

Part of me is like. Did YA feature a sillier more familiar Kid Loki because Kieron Gillen was writing it and he is the author of Kid Loki, so he writes a ghost from Kid Loki's perspective

Meanwhile Al Ewing wrote a more horrifying Kid Loki because Al Ewing writes Teen Loki, and therefore he writes a Kid Loki from Teen Loki's perspective

Or does it have to do with the end of Young Avengers? Teen Loki realizes he's been fueling hundreds of specters of guilt in his life and only by admitting aloud the truth that he murdered Kid Loki will the specters fade (all of them except Kid Loki.)

Did that change the very nature of Kid Loki's ghost? Did the truth make him uglier and scarier to look at? Did confession make the guilt worse?

Its eating me alive grf

[spacetimeaccordionfolder]

If I had a nickel for every time a protagonist I love attempted suicide and then had therapy with God/ ghosts I'd have 3 nickels.

which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened thrice.

[chaztalk]

Of the 150+ anime I watched this year, these are my highly recommended

[tsuki-in-faerun]

K TANAKA FOR-FUCKING-EVER

[yo-yo-yoshiko]

TimeFire with the stinkiest little smile~! I left this scan relatively unadjusted because I thought the streaky-ness of the ink on the helmet looks pretty cool!

And the version before I added the red and splatter:

[magpie-murder]

im fuckin dying im in pain im suffering (tried searching loki god of stories playlists on spotify and its all tv show stuff and One was a very nsfw title)

i'm very sorry that your interest in the comic book version of him started right when the second season started using names and titles from 616 loki stuff /gen

all of the cross tagging and etc has made it incredibly difficult to find 616 stuff for the past few days

these are songs that remind me of them, not songs i'd think they’d listen to, but here's some of the songs on my 616 playlists:

i don't have spotify but i hope this helps make it shareable anyway. feel free to repost this to pinterest or woteva

[300iqprower]

Ya know SMTIV, what this is actually perfect. Remember what I said about how Nasu could never be asked to show even a modicum of respect to Tezctalipoca as a figure, and how the "Tezcatlipoca" in FGO in no way has the spirit of their alleged origins?

Well I don't care much for this design either.

In fact I don't like SMT's (or more specifically Soejima's, who is still very much talented as I'll make clear) Tezcatlipoca design at all. I personally find it ugly and having an aesthetic I'm not that fond of, particularly the sort of "Bigfoot sighting" pose he has going on.

But i don't hate it, and I certainly am not morally opposed to it like FGO's, because even if I personally dislike it, ya know what it is? It's still undeniably based on Tezcatlipoca and keeps that spirit in several ways evident through design alone, let alone the way he's implemented into the game itself. It's a design that feels like it respects the culture it's taking its name from, and I'd much rather it do that than have an aesthetic I'm more fond of but lack any representation of its source material.

Just on a surface level you can see the ways in which this is meant to be Tez.

Holding a human heart with one arm, which were sacrificed to him in Aztec rituals

His body is visibly black and navy blue and made of a stony substance, which is a reference to the association many aztec gods but especially Tez had with obsidian rock, and the main symbol of Tez is an obsidian mirror.

Despite this, his other arm and legs are dissolving into smoke at the end, which is a reference to his main title of Smoking Mirror.

His skull-like head is pretty clearly meant to invokes a Calavera, which even if you didnt know the name of you've probably seen if you've ever witnessed a Day of the Dead festival.

That's all just the surface level stuff. There's plenty more if you know to look for it.

While one of his arms is visible, neither of his legs are, which fits with how Tezcatlipoca lost at least one of his legs to the giant crocodile Cipactli when the world was created

While blue isn't the primary color Tez is associated with, the use of teal/navy blue specifically fits with how he was often depicted with an almost interchangeable combination of grey-ish dark blue and black.

Despite my "bigfoot posture" remark, it very much fits Tezcatlipoca, whose spirit animal was the Jaguar, an animal well known for stalking and ambushing prey (rather than chasing it down like African big cats are known to do).

the way the smoke curls around as if forming an extremely distorted prosthetic foot matches how Tez's missing foot is specifically portrayed in the Codex Yohualli Ehécatl (AKA, the source of the image on Tez's wikipedia page), particularly with how the coloring shifts to orange-yellow at the end.

The most shaky but still worth noting claim: The emphasis on the blood flowing from the heart, combined with the gems embedded in Tez's head, could even be a reference to the Ezpitzal, which while looking very different in mesoamerican art still is no doubt connected, given how the key traits are flowing blood and embedding precious stone in [a crown above] the head.

So....do I like this design? No, personally, not really. I'm way too much of an edgelord to settle for such a toned down and subtle design for a figure like Tezcatlipoca.

Do I respect this design? Absolutely, zero question. It's the kind of design you could never get if they didn't at least TRY to research Tezcatlipoca, let alone do so well (at least i can only assume well based on the result). That's the difference between this design and "some white guy from the GAP who likes guns". You can tell they gave a shit, not just in general but specifically in regards to the culture being referenced.

(Oh, and also unlike FGO Tezcatlipoca, I don't need to be told "someone famous drew it" to be able to figure out someone talented drew it. )

[rexscanonwife]

Ok new poll time even though my mind is lowkey made up already

[jellytheteawolf]

More of my kunqu opera au except it's shadowpeach...

It's actually so over I can't believe fucking gay monkeys have a grip on my brain like this I'm lowkey embarrassed but WHATEVERRRRR

Zoom out + no flower ver

Closeups

Macaque is my bbg I love his stupid ass sm I can't believe this FUCK

Also I think it's so cute that wukong has stage fright like yea ur doing great (hits the gong once) his ass could NOT perform opera but that's okay macaque carries the performance /lhj

[journeytothewestresearch]

Is there any sort of symbolism for Sun Wukong's shootling lazers out of his eyes after bowing to the four cardinal directions? Also is there any other mention of his lazer eyes or is just this one time in the beggining of the novel?

The laser beams only appear in the beginning of the novel.

I've previously suggested in this article that they are one of several events from the historical Buddha's biography that the author-compiler of Journey to the West borrowed in order to make Sun Wukong's early life more familiar. The pertinent section reads:

Upon his birth, the Buddha is said to have “shed in every direction the rays of his glory” (fig. 3) (Beal, 1883, p. 3). The source continues to describe this light, as well as the Bodhisattva’s first few moments outside the womb:

His body, nevertheless, was effulgent with light, and like the sun which eclipses the shining of the lamp, so the true gold-like beauty of the Bodhisattva shone forth and was diffused everywhere. / Upright and firm and unconfused in mind, he deliberately took seven steps, the soles of his feet resting evenly upon the ground as he went, his footmarks remained bright as seven stars. / Moving like the lion, king of beasts, and looking earnestly towards the four quarters, penetrating to the centre the principles of truth, he spake thus…” (Beal, 1883, pp. 4-5).

The historical Xuanzang (on whom Tripitaka is based) notes in his travelogue that the Buddha even walks towards the cardinal directions: “After he had been born the Bodhisattva walked seven steps unaided to each of the four quarters … [u]nder each step a large lotus flower sprang up from the earth” (Xuanzang, 1996/2016, p. 158).

Wukong too produces a great light in every direction: “Having learned at once to climb and run, this monkey also bowed to the four quarters, while two beams of golden light flashed from his eyes to reach even the Palace of the Polestar” (fig. 4) (Wu & Yu, 2012, p. 101).

Therefore, both shine their lights in the four cardinal directions.

Fig. 3 – Baby Buddha producing a radiant splendor upon his birth (larger version). Artist unknown. Found on this article. Fig. 4 – Bright beams of light shine from Wukong’s eyes as he bows to the four directions (larger version). From the Japanese children’s book Son Goku (1939). 

Sources:

Beal, S. (Trans.). (1883). The Fo-sho-hing-tsan-king: A Life of Buddha by Asvaghosha Bodhisattva. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/foshohingtsankin00asva/mode/2up

Xuanzang (2016). The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions (2nd ed., R. Li, trans.). California: BDK America, Inc. (Original work published 1996)

Wu, C., & Yu, A. C. (2012). The Journey to the West (Vols. 1-4) (Rev. ed.). Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

[sketching-shark]

You know it can be pretty fun and funny to compare and contrast Xiyouji retellings but it is genuinely wild just how different the stories of Sun Wukong’s tudis are.

Tudi #1: An unnamed prince of the Jade-Flower District in India that the pilgrim group passes through on the way west & who becomes an amazing martial artist under Sun Wukong’s tutelage. Is also endowed with “divine strength” by the Monkey King. He’s a minor character, but he clearly admires and respects his shifu

Tudi #2: Liu Chenxiang, the demigod hero of “The Magic Lotus Lantern” folk tale. Faced many hardships and traumatic events on account of his uncle Erlang Shen killing Liu Chenxiang’s father and imprisoning his mother Sansheng Mu underneath a mountain for the crime of falling in love with a mortal. Some versions of the story say that Sun Wukong was his shifu in the martial arts. The Monkey King is also often presented as the one who made a magical axe that allowed Liu Chenxiang to split open this mountain and be reunited with his mom. His relationship to Sun Wukong is a little more tense, but overall he’s presented as admiring and being very grateful to his shifu.

Tudi #3: Qi Xiaotian, the generally cheerful protagonist of the cartoon Monkie Kid who Cannot Catch A Break Ever. Mr. “Have-Some-More-Trauma-While-Everyone-Dunks-On-Your-Shifu-all-while-Sun-Wuking-frequently-makes-things-worse” himself. Seems to still at least love the Monkey King, but a part of him also seems to be wondering why. Oh no.

[booberrybawls]

One of my favorite things about all the comic Lokis is that they're so individual and yet so deeply linked. Kid Loki likes bacon, Kid Loki is wiped from existence. His replacement not only keeps his love for bacon but actually nurtures that love for bacon until he's learning to cook full meals on his own and making dinner for his friend. Young Avengers Loki engineers the trademark Loki Magic Cell Reception spell. SKALD Loki, three comic runs and two ego-deaths later, gets pouty in Immortal Thor when his brother doesn't appreciate the magic cell reception they gave him as a present. Kid Loki wears a helmet with little wings on the side copying Thor's helmet. When AOA Loki is in the middle of his AXIS arc, meaning the bad in him has been turned good and he's acting as a hero, he gets a new crown WITH LITTLE WINGS ON THE SIDE REMINISCENT OF KID LOKI'S CROWN

all the times Loki quotes himself from another life, I won't even get started on that

GUYS. KID LOKI LIVED IN FRANCE. KID LOKI WAS FRENCH. HE PROBABLY HAD A FRENCH ACCENT. HIS NAME WAS SERRURE BEFORE IT WAS LOKI. FRNECH DO YOU HEAR ME AND THEN HE DIES AND THEN MOTHERDAMNING AGENT OF ASGARD LOKI HAS THE BALLS TO STAND ON A ROOFTOP LIPREADING FRENCH FOR HIS LITTLE AGENT OF ASGARD HEIST MISSION ALL LOKIS AFTER KID LOKI KNOW FRENCH BECAUSE KID LOKI KNEW FRENCH DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME

godofstories loki identifying as genderfluid until she's mashed up with grunge bastard peach fuzz boy KingOfJotunheim and the resulting concoction is whatever the loving hell SKALD is. neither of their gender identities won over the other, do you know what I mean one of them didn't cancel out SKALD is both and all of them very considerate of them

(yeah godofstories!Loki and SKALD Loki don't count as the same person in my mind because godofstories! had to physically and mentally merge with KingOfJotunheim Loki from That Other comic in order to create SKALD Loki, right)

there's something about how the moment after the merge takes place, SKALD Loki smiles and their teeth have the same gap tooth as godofstories! and they wear the glasses and silly Tshirts that KingOfJotunheim liked to wear there's something about that like

Loki is the culmination of all of their past lives and past identities and past experiences and even if they never ever stop changing and becoming they will always be close to who they used to be and I think that's worth slamming my head into a wall for