#brands you may not know

[krumpkin]

Horex VR6 Silver Edition 😁

And a quick video for those that have never heard it 😄

[poobirdy]

xin mo did not become the demonic op sword of all three realms for this!!! for @kawouwu who asked for binggeyuan sillies! thank you for your donation to svsss' gotcha 4 gaza!

[cradle-of-darkness]

more portrait style sylvies

[dustbunsinspace]

Part of 🟢 Leo gets Overwhelmed au🟢

Aah, I’m so happy I made it in in time! 💙✨ Merry Christmas, tumblr nation! Here’s a little comic about 03 Usagi and Leo going so see the Rockefeller tree after the events of the Christmas Aliens episode.

Little post about events earlier that night

Also this is literally how maskless Leo looks to me, he’s so moomincore ;

[the-mang0tree]

glub glub

[beatcroc]

something about perspective, representation, or finding beauty in imperfection, i don't know. i mostly just wanted to say that fake pep looks like shitty ice cream.

[vaguely-concerned]

lmao if you're a mourn watch (and possibly other urban-ish based backgrounds too I'm not sure?) mage, when you get the scene with strife coming to pick up emmrich for their date (bless) and he says that 'the thing about your friend is that for a city mage, he isn't afraid to play in the mud' thing, rook puts up the faux big wounded eyes and protests 'hey, I'm a city mage! 🥺'. (to which strife says 'well we can't all be perfect' and stone cold walks away. king. have fun out there with the lightning bugs and your lanky fancylad I've seen his fully unleashed rizz in action and you're a lucky guy <3<3<3)

[sciderman]

Which do you prefer, Spideypool or Poolverine?

glances at my decade-long running spider-man and deadpool blog

...hm. good question. i'll have to think about th

[fallowyrm]

if i had to design a fox mask it'd probably look something like this. inspired by @roe-deer-link who made me realise hey, i can draw masks even if i dont wear them!

[louferrignojrofficial]

i love that you keep us updated on lou signs of life

[recurring-polynya]

Good morning, happy Thursday, who wants to read a fun idea I had about giants in Soul Society?

So! I was reading this @littleeyesofpallas post about wuxing symbolism and was particularly struck by this passage in a section about the gate guardians:

There is no central guard but conspicuously Kirinji's name comes from Qilin, but apparently according to official height he's actually not nearly as tall as Kubo's drawings always made him seem. Not that he was on the same scale as the gate guardians even then...

No, I said to myself, of course not. He's powerful enough to control his size, because I was thinking of the part where Grand Fisher claims Isshin is too small to defeat him and Isshin responds with a lecture on soul reaper lore:

Now, bodies are not swords, but maybe the same mechanic applies! It certainly applies to Hollows. Earlier in this same scene, Kon mistakes Grand Fisher for a Menos Grande, and Grand Fisher is insulted by the comparison, but it's the same thing. Menos are huge and scary, but when they become Arrancar, they shrink down and become scarier. [Aside: I think this is why the Yammy-is-secretly-Espada-0 reveal doesn't quite manage to hit. It goes against the lore Kubo has been laying down for ages]

On a meta level, this is just a shounen storytelling tactic where X is an indicator of strength, but then later on, it's like "Reverse Uno! Not-X is the real indicator of strength!!" That's exactly how this zanpakutou-size thing is used when it's first introduced.

Exhibit A: Renji, a court jester, being impressed by the size of Ichigo's sword:

Exhibit B: A handful of issues later, Urahara, an intellectual (lol), sets us straight:

Genre convention or not, I think it lends itself some interesting world-building. Among low-powered people, size is impressive, but as you scale the ranks of power, it's kind of pathetic. Weirdly large people are like the petty bourgeoisie of Soul Society power dynamics.

But that's actually the perfect niche for a gatekeeper! In general, your typical Joe Shinigami is going to be able to take on just about any rando from the Rukongai, but maybe not a particularly strong ryouka. Ganju was able to take on Yumichika, after all. A single shinigami wouldn't be able to take on a planned rebellion, like in the Bount arc, and they've got to, like, sleep and stuff. The Gotei could, in theory, have an entire gatehouse and a gate patrol, etc, but that they are perpetually short-staffed as-is. Instead, how about one medium-powerful gatekeeper whose size makes them well-suited for fighting groups of people (or siege weapons), and who is going to be intimidating overall?

Furthermore, it's implied that Jidanbou isn't actually a shinigami. He wears a shihakushou, but his axes don't seem to be a zanpakutou (he doesn't release them and is distressed when they are destroyed). His neighbors offer this comment on him:

It's not quite right, though: after all, many shinigami are from Rukongai, including Gin, who is the reason Jidanbou is being healed at the very moment this panel takes place. I think what this guy means is that Jidanbou is of Rukongai, which is to say not of the Seireitei.

So what is he, then? Here's my big idea: I think that the gigantism in Soul Society might actually be a reiatsu-developmental disability! It's always been my impression that growth, especially for powerful people, happens in fits and spurts, rather than linearly, and that furthermore, big changes in growth tend to coincide with developments in reiryouku. Somewhere, either in childhood or adolescence, someone's spiritual pressure grows more quickly than their control over it, which results in their body growing uncontrollably. They become very powerful "physically", but their strength is all in their mass/reishi, which takes most of their spiritual pressure to control. This may end up limiting the upper end of power they are able to achieve and some cases means they get cut off entirely from the other forms of power used by shinigami (connecting to a zanpakutou, kidou). I think this might be especially common in children from the Rukongai, who lack access to education and training. I can also imagine it leading itself to cautionary tales in the outer Rukon that if you feed your hungry children too much, you'll end up with a giant on your hands.

This offers one explanation to why Jidanbou is a giant and his brother Jiroubou is large, but not remotely on the same scale (the Souls Data Book lists his height at 7'7" vs Jidanbou's 32'5"). There are a handful of other shinigami of larger-than-human height, which could be a milder form of this, or it could mean that some sort of special training or medical intervention helped keep their growth manageable. I think you can squeeze in a lot of interesting character insights into this headcanon, from Hachi (8'5"), who perhaps worked exceptionally hard in an effort to control his power and ended becoming incredibly skilled at kidou as a result (interesting that he, too, is not actually a shinigami). Or Oomaeda (6'11"), who gets by a lot on his family's wealth and clout, but is definitely on the weaker end of the lieutenant power scale. In his case, his large size kind of speaks to his entire "thinks he's classy, but is really just gaudy"/can't-even-tell-how-outclassed-he-is-by-his-peers deal.

Then, as a counterpoint, you've got Hitsugaya: immensely powerful from a young age, and one of the hallmarks of his character is how in-control of himself he is, down to having developed an actual visible power bar for his bankai. Whether this is some effect of his personality, or whether it's an intervention on Hyourinmaru's part, his growth has been choked off as a side effect. He's the direct opposite of Jidanbou, who additionally seems somewhat childlike in personality (crying over his axes, for example, or his attachment to his extremely dubious "rules of the city"). To me, it's very sweet that their friendship might have roots in opposite expressions of the same reiatsu-growth-fuckup.

Much in the way that the Shiba use some sort of magic that's distinctly different from shinigami-kidou, I guess I really like thinking about other ways power might manifest itself in Soul Society outside of the shinigami-industrial-complex. And also the way the Seireitei may or may not try to control those powers."Guard this gate!" they say. "We won't actually let you live in the city or give you city wages, but you can have a cool outfit and, uh...do it for the exposure?"

[strawberrycamel]

tagged by @redead-red to put repeat playlist from spotify on shuffle, and make a poll with the first 5 songs so!

tagging uhhh @kawaiijohn @kinglazrus @underforeversgrace @bibliophilea @ravenatural @usoppinggg

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

Do ferrets need a raw meat diet or is fancy cat food ok for them?? I'm getting conflicting answers, I hear a lot of people are against raw feeding dogs and ferrets, but a lot say kibble is bad

Anon.

Hope this helps lol.

[moeblob]

What Deacon thinks: what did that mean? did he want me to wear a collar too? why else would he mention my neck? i mean, if he /asked/ me i would wear one but he didn't so would wearing one be weird?

What Ymber meant: It's nice to be near someone who isn't tethered to this world to serve it with a physical reminder for all to see.

[voidwhalebone]

tears in my eyes i need these so bad but unforchie i dont have a spare 500 dollars just laying around so its not gonna happen but ughghghhh

[variousqueerthings]

I think it's also interesting to see how things change depending on the time in which they're being engaged with. so I see things about rose today that point out that she's written to be 19 when she meets the doctor and that's a big age difference (which... I understand the point is it's a big age difference because billie piper was 23 and eccleston was 40, and then dtennant was like 34/35 when he started which isn't so big of a shift but anyway the optics I get what people are getting at, but also I think it does oversimplify a lot of what's actually going on in the written dynamic, anyway-)

and also that the rtd run's Themes start coming together properly around s3 (although they are present from day one), and in some ways at this point, because nu!who has been running for... fuckn. actually quite a few years, which is wild to me as someone who started watching as a kid, and I wonder if classic!who fans felt the same way about their show and anyway -- she shifts from being Literally The First Companion You'd Seen For 17 Years (not counting the movie and fan things and the sketch) Who Was Defining A New Era For A New Generation to... a companion

comparable to other companions, comparable to the rest of the show

we sift through the writing to see what worked and what didn't (in our opinion), and we know how the ten-and-rose storyline Really ends, and how the ten storyline ends (sort, of because now that doctor and donna are Back), and we know what happens afterwards, and we talk about tenrose with a 2020s eye, and rose is "just" one of the people that travels with the doctor, one of several, and notably the one who gets most of the sunshiney doctor that buries a lot of the (wonderfully portrayed) angst of the latter half of the rtd show, and doesn't have as much lore as everything after that, so the story is "just" more simple overall

and to me she's kind of incapable of being just that. doctor who was still a risk that first season, it wasn't a done deal that it would have legs at all, never mind that it would continue for as long as it has. rose was created to be the Face of what nu!who was, moreso than nine/eccleston, because even with the extra angst and the eccleston gravitas, we know the doctor, the doctor is established, it's not actually the doctor that needs to sell what the new show is going to become and what the Feel of that new show is going to be (I mean, partly ofc, but-)

rose was doing so much heavy lifting and she succeeded! she was the face of who before dtennant or any other doctor or companion of his era and subsequent eras. she was created to appeal to a demographic of girls who wanted someone relatable in science fiction, because rtd wanted this to be for the girls, and billie piper came into it off the back of being a popstar and it changed her entire trajectory (for the better I think/hope -- there's a lot of bad shit in billie piper's past and I'm always sending her a fond thought)

nine/ten-and-rose were It! not calling it romantic or platonic or any secret third thing (haunting the narrative), but simply It! that's why it has so much staying power as a ship (which, my opinion on shipping has been somewhat *eh shrug* in later years, but in early-days when that was how you engaged with dynamics that got to you, of course it was going to be massive). it's so hard to properly describe how "for the time in which it was made" that this dynamic was written for, and how successful it was. it was rose that breathed doctor who -- and the doctor's character -- to life, as much as herself

she sets the stage for everything that comes next, both within and without the show proper

and I'm always so pleased that rtd at the time was thinking about what was needed to create this character and he opened with a shot from a girl on the estate with messy hair, clumpy eyeliner, and a minimum wage job, and went "that's the girl who's going to go on the adventure of a lifetime, that's the girl we're seeing the story through and relating to, because that's what girls (and uh... those who were girls at the time - and their parents and the boys) should be seeing."

I know rose isn't the first working class companion including classic!who, but she set the tone for nu!who and her family and background are important to why she is who she is, and is explored

"I've got no A-levels, no job, no future-" said the girl about to see the universe

she was very much for teenagers, and so she reads differently when you're an adult watching it back (much like those "teenager saves the world," novels you loved as a kid), but that's why she's 19 at the beginning. that's why she's billie piper (who does a perfect job). she was there to bring a new generation into this story, and it was perfect. and then she grows up. and we grew up. and she had adventures and it was brilliant and she survived and she made a life for herself. that's her story