#a chinese woman named tora

[accidentalcookies]

👋 Nyello, basically all my ocs are people of color because I am a people of color lol

For whumpees specifically, I have mainly two: Shaoyuan and Vayas! I joke that it's like the world's worst roulette wheel in my head for them because whoever I'm hyperfixating on is whoever gets fucked over in my fics 😂

Shaoyuan is Chinese and a trans man! I have a whole multiverse of universes for him, so his backstory varies slightly depending on the au, but the tl;dr of things that stay consistent between all of them is that he's one half of a set of twins, usually forced to go through a sort of Training From Hell™️ that involves fratricide to become a hypercompetent living weapon, then regretting the fratricide and deciding to lay his entire life down upon the goal of getting his two baby siblings out of whatever system he's in before they're forced into the Training From Hell™️. He's a chill, deadpan sarcastic guy who looks and behaves like the platonic ideal of a stealth assassin—yet, defying all expectations, is extremely kind and loves kids. Honestly, imagine an aloof but caring black cat, then take that cat and turn it into a human, and you've basically got Shaoyuan.

Vayas is from a fantasy, non-Earth world entirely, so technically our Earth countries don't exist in his world. But if he and his family were to be born on Earth, his father would be from India and his other father (trans) would be from China! So, mixed Indian-Chinese. He's cis, but he's funky with it, and just broadly queer in terms of orientation. The aus I have with Vayas can vary Wildly, much like with Shaoyuan, but the general thread that stays the same between them is that Vayas is the son of two high-ranking members of their respective societies, is immortal in some way, and is raised in such a way as to encourage his ironclad moral compass that makes him unafraid to stand up against what he sees as unjust. Often he's something of a psychopomp, someone who guides restless spirits to find peace, and/or someone who hunts monsters in order to protect innocents (I have an au where he's a witcher). Personality-wise, I always describe him as some unholy cross between an insufferable genius and a knight in shining armor 😂 He's loud, dramatic, often blunt to the point of rudeness, and honestly just bitchy 😂 But at the same time, he'll lay down his life without question to save a stranger's life. If you've seen the post I'm thinking of, he's that trope of a character who sees themself as a shield, whose life purpose is to protect others.

honestly there needs to be more diversity in whump

mainly because i'm sick of hearing about people's cis white male whumpees HAVE SOME ORIGINALITY

when all your whumpees look the same its rly hard for me to care about any of them

if you have a main whumpee who isn't a cis white male pleaaase comment or reblog with some infodumping bc i'd love to hear about them!

[canmom]

Animation Night 149: Toei

Hi there. It’s Thursday. You know what that means (yes, it means i’m freeeeee)

Today we will be rolling back to some of the earliest days of anime!

The story of Toei goes back to 1946. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, there were very few games in town when it came to Japanese animation (or, to be fair, animation in most places). During the war, animators had been recruited to make propaganda films such as Momotaro: Sacred Sailors, among them Akira Daikuhara.

In the immediate aftermath, Kenzō Masoaka (of Benkei tai Ushiwaka, for anyone who remembers AN24) began the first effort to make an animated film post-war. This film was titled Sakura: Haru no genso (Cherry Blossom: Spring’s Fantasy); it was followed by a series of three films about a cat called Tora-Chan. But Masoaka’s studio struggled, constantly closing and re-opening. At the time it was operating under the name 日本動画映画 Nihon Dōga Eiga or Japan Animated Films, or just the abbreviation 日動映画 Nichidō Eiga. In 1956, they were bought by live action studio Toei (itself approaching 20 years old, founded in 1938) and renamed to Toei Dōga, where they started making increasingly elaborate animated films.

Toei of this era was sometimes called the rather patronising name ‘Disney of the East’. There is some truth to it, in that their ambition, especially in the early years, was certainly to make animated films as elaborate as those of old Walt. Their first feature was 白蛇伝 Hakujaden (1958), based on a Song Dynasty Chinese legend about a lost pet snake who transforms into a woman in the hopes of reuniting with her former owner, a monk who thinks that’s sus, and two pandas who try to sort it all out; in English it’s variously translated as The White Snake Enchantress, Legend of the White Serpent or even Panda and the Magic Serpent.

Part of the goal of the film, to Toei Dōga president Hiroshi Ōkawa, was a gesture of reconciliation towards China after the whole ‘invading and occupying’ thing.

The film was Rintarō’s first animation job; it also left a massive impression on a young Hayao Miyazaki, who wrote the following in Gekkan ehon bessatsu: Animēshon (1979), trans. Beth Cary and Frederik L Schodt in Starting Point:

What I’m saying here is that when young people feel attracted to the heroes of a tragedy [context: such as The Diary of Anne Frank], whether in animation or other media, a type of narcissism is really involved; this attraction they feel is a surrogate emotion for something they have lost.

From personal experience, I can say that I first fell in love with animation when I saw Hakujaden, the animated feature produced by Toei Animation in 1958. I can still remember the pangs of emotion I felt at the sight of the incredibly beautiful, young female character Bai-Niang, and how I went to see the film over and over as a result. It was like being in love, and Bai-Niang became a surrogate girlfriend for me at a time when I had none.

It is in this sense that I think we can achieve a type of satisfaction, by substituting something for the unfulfilled portion of our lives.

The feelings evoked by Bai-Niang may go some way to explaining the role of similar girls in Miyazaki’s movies...

Hakujaden has some curious properties as a work of animation. It was, especially for the time, astonishingly elaborate and straining the technical capabilities of the industry (although the claim on Wikipedia that it had 13,590 staff seems rather dubious lmao). The drawing count is stratospheric thanks most scenes being animated on ones and twos - the opposite of the limited animation techniques that anime would later perfect. Despite that, it is also the work of an inexperienced team, and compared to later works its animation can feel awkwardly timed, the flood of inbetweens turning everything to mush.

Nevertheless, there are two stars of the show in terms of animation. One is Yasuji Mori, who would later be one of Toei’s star animators, creating scenes such as the dance at the beginning of this post - as well as teaching Miyazaki after he joined Toei. The other is Akira Daikuhara, who was way ahead of the game on effects animation, creating the film’s transformation sequences. Daikuhara would go on to be one of Toei’s main animators of human characters, while Mori tended to take the animal/mascots; he has been a relatively forgotten figure, although that’s starting to change with articles like these ones by Matteo Watzky, whose research just digs deeper and deeper.

Toei’s early films tend to follow the precedent set in Hakujaden, adapting folktales from (mostly) China and Japan. In 1959 they covered a Japanese story in Shōnen Sarutobi Sasuke; 1960, they took on Saiyūki (Journey to the West); then Anju to Zushiōmaru (The Orphan Brother, 1961) and Arabian Nights: The Adventures of Sinbad (1962).

In this period of Toei, there was a lot of ambition, and also a feeling of inadequacy compared to the elaborate animated films being made in other countries. Hayao Miyazaki, who joined Toei in the 1963, wrote in 1982:

I used to create feature-length works for Toei Animation, but compared to the works just mentioned, they were obviously far inferior, at least technically. Sort of like showing rabbits slipping and falling, that sort of thing. We wondered if we would ever catch up to the level of what was being done in America, France or Russia, or if it were even possible to do so. Frankly, we really didn’t know.

To begin with, we didn’t even know what we had to do to reach the same level of excellent as the best works out there. We knew we had constraints, such as short production schedules, small budgets and so forth, but above and beyond that, we began to develop an inferiority complex: we wondered if we even had the basic talent needed to proceed. In retrospect, the only thing that probably kept us going, and drove us to pursue such a long-term goal, was our determination.

Miyazaki’s words should be taken with a grain of salt, since they definitely suit his personal myth-making. Still, conditions at Toei in the 60s were rough, leading to the first major unionisation struggle of anime history, which I wrote about in AN70. The studio started bringing on part-timers paid hourly rather than a salary, and created severe pay discrepancies, which were met with strikes and departures from the studio. Saiyūki took such a tole on its director Taiji Yabushita that he was hospitalised; Yasuji Mori would later create the term ‘anime syndrome’ for this sort of overwork because it was not the last time by any means.

However, I’m going to zoom over all of these to get to the わんぱく王子の大蛇退治 Wanpaku Ōji no Orochi Taiji (The Naughty Prince’s Orōchi Slaying, more commonly translated The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon) in 1963 - not because it’s necessarily more important, although it’s remembered as one Toei’s best films, but because I happen to have a fantastic analysis of one of its key scenes on hand thanks to AniObsesive and Toadette.

Wanpaku Ōji breaks from precedent in many ways, particularly its visual design, which takes on highly simplified shapes reminiscent of the then ultra-modern UPA style by way of haniwa figures. The story at least follows the pattern, adapting a Shinto myth in which the storm god Susanoo battles (guess what) an eight-headed dragon Yamat no Orochi. Susanoo is motivated by the death of his mother Izanami, and goes on a journey to try to find her, which leads him to the village of Princess Kushinada - a village with a dragon problem, which they’ve kept at bay only by sacrificing Kushinada’s seven sisters. Susanoo, horny for a princess who looks like his mum, decides it’s time to intervene.

The dance scene above comes in the middle of the movie, in which the goddess Ame-no-Uzume performs an increasingly mystical dance. It was an ambitious experiment of Makoto Nagasawa, who had joined as an inbetweener on Saiyūki, with large spacing and broad motion to create a snappy feeling. Animation Obsessive writes:

Typical motion at Toei, Nagasawa said, would be “neatly in-betweened from the first [key] pose to the last [key] pose.” In other words, in-betweens smoothed out the movement and made it longer, more complete and more realistic. By contrast, Nagasawa’s drawings of Uzume are often at wide intervals, with minimal in-betweens. Sometimes, she basically teleports from one frame to the next.

Even when the intervals aren’t that wide, the way Uzume moves remains big, broad, clear and non-real. Nagasawa pushes her gestures, increases her speed, shows us only what he wants to show us. The action is crisp, always holding its abstract shape. No naturalistic touches distract from the core form of what Uzume does.

Alongside Nagasawa, Yasuji Mori was now coming into a role close to that of the now-standard 作画監督 sakuga kantoku aka sakkan or animation director, an experienced artist whose job is to correct the drawings from many different key animators to keep them on-model. Modern anime productions tend to have a strictly hierarchical approach where the characters are designed by one or a few character designers, usually also the lead sakkan. At Toei, things had been a bit more fluid - the individual animators would often design the characters they were going to animate, with a division of labour closer to the old Disney style. On this film, it became more of a hybrid: Mori drew the final model sheets, but the animators would submit suggested designs to him.

For the most elaborate scenes, such as the dance, they went to great lengths to record a suitable score and record live-action footage with professional ballet dancers. I encourage you to read the AniObsessive article for the details.

At the time of Wanpaku Ōji, Toei was starting to face competition. The already-renowned mangaka Osamu Tezuka had founded MushiPro, which was rapidly taking over TV, and the sphere of TMS satellite studios were starting to get going and siphon away many of their best people such as Yasuo Ōtsuka. Still, the animators at Toei were determined to try and stand alongside international animators:

The team was well aware of the trends in world animation at that time. According to Nagasawa, they were watching work from Canada (Norman McLaren), Czechoslovakia (Jiří Trnka), Russia (The Snow Queen), France (The King and the Mockingbird) and so on. It was all bold, new animation. In The Little Prince, Toei took up the challenge this work presented, without simply copying it. The team contributed to modern animation while staying rooted in the ancient, and in Japan itself.

Subsequently, Japanese animation is sometimes divided into a ‘Toei tradition’ vs. a ‘MushiPro tradition’, of full vs limited animation respectively, followed by the various successors such as Ghibli on the one hand and Madhouse on the other. As ever this is not really very accurate, and both ‘lineages’ crossed over extensively (just look at Kanada).

Toei’s own output adapted to the times. Takahata’s Horus: Prince of the Sun (AN 70) might be the last of the ambitious movies in their old style; after this, the fairytale films were gradually replaced by gekiga animation such as Tiger Mask, super robots like Mazinger Z, and then at the end of the 70s increasingly science fiction adaptations of Leiji Matsumoto’s works (AN 146). In the 80s, shōnen exploded onto the scene and Toei made a lot of Dragon Ball and Saint Seiya, later joined by other franchises like PreCure, Digimon and One Piece. So Toei remains one of the largest and most robust animation studios in Japan. They’ve got a lot of salaried staff, a union(!), and regular work in the form of wildly popular franchises. But occasionally they’ll make something cool and weird within that remit, like Hosoda’s One Piece film (AN61), Kyōsōgiga (AN98) - or Interstella 5555 which we watched last week.

So! Tonight though we’re going to go back and look at those ambitious early days, where it started, with snakes and dragons and a bishōjo who’s 美 enough to inspire the entire career of Hayao Miyazaki. Animation Night 149 will begin at 20:00 UK time (UTC), (13:00 California time), at twitch.tv/canmom - hope to see you there!

And next week I have a serious treat for you, because the Inu-Oh BD finally dropped. Can’t think of something more perfect for #150 than returning to Masaaki Yuasa.

And now to spend the rest of the day until 8pm on intensive gamdev 😵‍💫

[dwellordream]

“...Unfortunately, we do not have the names of the women who had a relationship with Bodonchar, but we are told that he took one from a defeated clan and then received a concubine as a dowry (a housemaid of the mother of another tribal chief), both practices common among the Mongols.

The incorporation of women by marriage into a Mongol clan was fundamental in establishing the status of the sons and daughters of the nomadic tribal chiefs. It seems that it was not the way in which women entered the clan but the status (either as chief wife, secondary wife or concubine) which determined the influence of their descendants.

For that reason, the sons of the kidnapped women - both those born of Bodonchar and those born before by another man - founded their own tribes, which were fundamental in the development of the Mongol Empire. For example, the fate of two different family lines is marked by this distinction.

On the one hand, the relatives of Jamuqa, first an ally and then an enemy of Chinggis Khan, were among the descendants of this ‘foreign’ boy. On the other hand, a child born of a concubine, despite being a son of Bodonchar, were not even allowed to participate in performing sacrifices with the family.”

“...The case of Numulun is important because, chronologically, it is the first reference that we have in which all the different aspects of a khatun’s autonomy can be observed in a single person. She is portrayed as being in charge of the entire economic activity of her ordo (Mongol camp) and ordering the fundamental activity of feeding the herds of her subordinates.”

“...The first woman is Tora Qalmish, a daughter of the tribal chief Sariq Khan. She was given in marriage to Qurrjaghush Buyuruq Khan, in exchange for her father affording him protection, following the traditional nomadic practice of marriage alliance. We do not know much about her, but there is a reference to her involvement in shamanic rituals - or ‘magic’, as Rashid al-Din prefers to describe it - that allows is to consider religion as another aspect of Mongol life in which women were involved.

In fact, there are references indicating that women acted as shamans in traditional Mongol society, but the available sources refer to female intervention in religion from a more political point of view, as was the case with Borte’s confrontation with the supreme shaman Teb Tenggri explained below, or else depict the shamanic rituals as sorcery.”

“...Finally, a daughter-in-law of the same Qabul Khan also caught the attention of the Persian historian. Her name appears as Matai Khatun and, interestingly enough, no reference is made to her husband. The story is situated in a context of enmity between Qabul Khan and the Chinese emperor.

After being captured by a Chinese envoy, Qabul manages to escape, make his way back to Mongolia, and organize his defense, relying solely on the support of his daughter-in-law (Matai). The story is a good illustration of female intervention in military affairs. There is no specific reference to Matai’s participation in the battle, but Qabul asks for her help in attacking the Chinese envoy.

...There also other references to female participation in military action, including the most probable legendary accounts of a daughter of Chinggis Khan participating in the conquest of the Persian city of Nashapur and Qutulun, daughter of the Ogeteid Qaidu (d. 1303), who allegedly defeated every man brave enough to fight against her.”

- Bruno De Nicola, “Women and Politics from the Steppes to World Empire.” in Women in Mongol Iran: The Khatuns, 1206-1335.

[heroesforsaken]

𝕃𝕠𝕒𝕕𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝔸𝕝𝕝 𝕀𝕟𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝕠𝕟 '𝕀𝕔𝕖'

(  greta onieogou. she/her. cis woman. thirty. dc. )  would you look at TORA OLAFSDOTTER roaming around the avenger’s tower! they’re supposedly ICE and work with GLOBAL GUARDIANS / JUSTICE LEAGUE, identifying as a HERO. they ARE NOT around here often, so i wonder what’s got them here today. it’s been said that they’ve been acting off for TWO WEEKS, so maybe it has to do with the tower. lets just hope the new york times doesn’t have much to say about them in the future.

statistics:

name: tora olafsdottir

age: thirty

faceclaim:  greta onieogou

alias: ice maiden

powers/skills:

highly skilled hand-to-hand combat

ice + snow manipulation

flight 

enhanced strength

alliance: global guardians + justice league

threat level (out of ten):  8/10

history file: here

notable changes from 2012 to the timeline they were pulled from:

because of personal preference, as well as most of my knowledge of tora being prior to her revamped background, she is based in the original background in which she was a princess of an isolated group in norway of a magical race of people, eventually revealed to be an nordic ice goddess.

last memory before ending up in nyc, 2012:

preparing to eat some chinese take out in bed 

questionnaire:

how are you feeling? physically and mentally.

“i’m doing great! i’m very fortunate that although the world has seemingly been turned upside down for everyone, that i have been able to land on my feet. it’s just a little set back - we can’t let ourselves be deterred by a minor interference.”

where are you living? the same place you lived in 2012, or displaced to a random apartment? explain to the best of your ability.

“with my allegiance to the justice league, i’ve always traveled a lot, just not typically through time... so i’m staying in an apartment until we can get back home and get moving again. nothing too fancy... but it’s home, you know?”

what do you think we should do about the situation at hand? try to go back home? the original mission of stopping thanos? rewrite the entire story?

“i think we have to do what’s right - even if it hurts. it’s our obligation to look out for the good of everyone... to do no harm... and if we don’t go back and stop thanos... i think all we’ll be doing is more harm than good.”

what will you do about the situation at hand?

“ anything that i need to do, even if it means working with those brainless idiots who got us stuck here, even metal man, or whatever the fuck he calls himself these days. ”

is there anything that you think needs to be done?

“i think we need to work together to get back home, and set things write. we need to stop thanos before he is able to harm anyone else, we need to follow our vows and protect those who need us most, and protect those we love most of all.”

if need be, would you be willing to team up with the government and shield to recoup and help the situation at hand?

“of course, anything that i have to do in order to make this all right.”

what are your worries?

“it would be a lie to say that i don’t have many regarding this situation, though try as i might to be optimistic.”

what do you think are the pros about this situation?

“i think that it gives us time to come together as a united front.... if everyone can put their egos aside for the time being that is. we are stronger together than we are apart, and if we are to stop thanos the man titan... i simply hope everyone can see it the way i do.”

anything else?

“i think that about covers it! thank you so much for your time!”

[missmyloko]

What’s In a Dance? Part 11

A bit short this week as Christmas preparations are underway ^^

Tora, Tora (とらとら) - Tiger, Tiger

Image courtesy of Moekokome on Instagram. Another ozashiki song for holiday fun time ^^

Lyrics

Senri hashiru yona yabu no naka wo, 千里走るよな藪の中を, From 1,000 Ri out in the middle of the grove, Minasan nozoite gorōji mase. 皆さん覗いてごろうじませ。 Everyone, please take a peek. Kin no hachimaki tasuki ni, 金の鉢巻きたすきに, Wearing a golden headband and cord, Watōnai ga en yaraya to, 和藤内がえんやらやと, Watōnai, with much effort, Toraeshi kedamono wa. 捕らえし獣は。 Has captured a beast. Tora to-ra to-ra tora, とらとーら とーらとら, Tora, tora, tora, tora, Tora to-ra to-ra tora, とらとーら とーらとら, Tora, tora, tora, tora, Tora to-ra to-ra tora! とらとーら とーらとら! Tora, tora, tora, tora!

The Breakdown

While being a very fun game, this song has a great amount of back story that makes it even more fun to enjoy! This song/game is basically a glorified Jankenpon (Rock-Paper-Scissors), where the guest and geimaiko are separated by a screen. By the time the song gets to the “Tora Tora” part they have to choose one of three roles to play: Watōnai, The Hero - Spear Stabbing Pose Watōnai’s Mother, The Old Crone - Hunched Over Pose The Tiger - Crawling Pose Watōnai himself is a legendary historical figure, whose real name was Koxinga/Coxinga (who, you may have guessed by the spelling, was Chinese). His character can be seen in Kabuki and Bunraku plays under the name of Koukusenya Kassen (国性爺合戦), which is the Japanese way of spelling “The Battles of Koxinga.” I won’t go into great detail about him here, but he’s basically a hero. In order to make the game fair one character has to be stronger and weaker to another, so this is where we see the addition of the Tiger, who’s mentioned in the song, and Watōnai’s mother, also known as The Old Crone, who is not. The order of who beats who is as follows: Watōnai defeats The Tiger (a bit obvious) The Tiger beats Watōnai’s Mother (ouch) Watōnai’s Mother beats Watōnai (hehe) The Mother is often referred to as The Old Crone because her pose is that of an old woman who’s leaning on her cane. The refrain of “Tora, Tora” is sung until one side is victorious over the other, with the penalty usually being a shot of alcohol. As for other background information, this song is pretty straightforward, besides one part right at the beginning. A Ri (里) is an antiquated unit of measurement, which was approximately 3.9km (2.4mi) long. So, 1,000 Ri is 3900km (2,400mi), thus telling the listener that it’s a pretty far distance. 

Each Kagai’s Version

Since this isn’t a dance that’s considered an official part of any dance school’s repertoire (just like Kin No Shachihoko), it’s done with the same music and movements in each kagai. To that end, here are a few examples of it being played:

Two Maiko and a Guest This version, featuring Umeraku (梅らく) and Umesaya (梅さや) of Umeno in Kamishichiken, shows the maiko explaining the game to the customer and then acting it out. One Maiko and Many Guests A much longer version, featuring Miena (美恵菜) of Ishihatsu (石初) in Miyagawa Cho, shows the game played again and again with different guests. It also includes captions for what each figure is (sorry, it’s in Japanese), so it’s pretty good to show how this game works. Tanekazu (たね和) is the jikata here who constantly keeps the beat up! A Hangyoku and a Geisha A lively pair from Asakusa in Tokyo, it’s a great way to illustrate how the song and dance don’t change across the country ^^

______________________________________________________________________

The lyrics provided were translated by myself and gathered from multiple sources; I began with a set that a friend had listed, compared it to two other sets (this was one of them), and figured out which made the most sense when written out as some versions just wrote the hiragana versions of a few kanji and it made the meanings a bit more ambiguous to people who are not fluent in Japanese. In the original version some older forms of common kanji were used so I updated them as this may also confuse people.

[dragoninmypocket]

Name meanings master list

Some of these are well-known in the fandom, others not so much. Some seem deliberate, others coincidental, others totally random.

Lief: beloved and heir (of which he is both)

Jasmine: flower name

Barda: in Norwegian Bard is a given name and means ‘battle peace’. Otherwise derived from the English word ‘bard’ meaning poet

Lewin: derived from the name ‘Leofwin’ which means beloved friend (I can’t find a link between Lief/Leif and Leof because I’m not a linguist but both mean beloved so they must be related)

Jay: jaybird ( <3 )

Lindal: linden tree valley. In Old English this was a masculine name. As a feminine form (Lyndall) it means lime tree. Could also have been derived from ‘Linda’ which means pretty (naw)

Doran: stranger, exiled (!!!!)

Min: in Chinese this means quick, clever or sharp

Jarred: variant of Jared, a biblical name meaning ‘descent’

Anna: grace

Sharn: I have always assumed Rodda derived this from ‘Sharon’, a popular name in Australia a few decades ago (I know a lot of people with mums called Sharon). Sharon means a fertile plain. There is also a Welsh name, Sian, which is pronounced like Sharn and means ‘God’s gracious gift’

Ranesh: Hindu name which means Lord Shiva

Marilen: possibly derived from ‘Marilyn’ (combination of Mary and Lynn). Makes me think of Marilyn Monroe, who besides being talented and beautiful was very famously believed to be ‘the other woman’ in a relationship 

Steven: crown

Adin: possibly derived from ‘Aidan’ which means little and fiery

Zara: princess

Alton: town at the source of the river

Neridah: sea nymph

Faith: to trust (often without proof)

Ak-Baba: in Turkish the word akbaba means ‘vulture’

Rolf: wolf

Ichabod: no glory

Tora: derived from feminine form of ‘Thor’. Thor was a Norse god who just happened to wear an enchanted belt that doubled his strength 

Names taken from places around/near Australia: Broome (Western Australia), Manus (island off Papua New Guinea and in the news constantly because we suck)