#hkrsztt rambling

[elefseia]

very moe suzette, because i can

[shoujorose]

10 and 16 for Hikaru and Alex for that ask meme!

10. What is a weird quality that they have (ie their hands are always cold, they’re always hungry, they snort when they laugh, etc)?

For Alex, I think he has rather...odd tastes in food, mixing things together that he likes without regards for if they'd actually taste good together or not. Somehow, he still likes it (his tastes are not nearly as discerning as his later self xD;;).

It's not really bizarre when he's older (in light of...everything else), but when Hikaru's young he really enjoyed going out at night to nowhere in particular. He enjoys the night air, the stillness — and even before he found Maiden Moon, and was a follower of Lady Sun like most religious folk, he couldn't help but find the moon beautiful.

16. How has their childhood affected the way they view an aspect of their life (people, education, society, themselves, etc)?

Alex has a very positive, but extremely naïve outlook on the world in general due to his upbringing. He didn't live in a town of great wealth, but neither did it particularly have any poverty; he was treated kindly by pretty much all around him, he never saw much discrimination or anything. In a lot of ways, I'd say he's even more sheltered than someone like Suzette, despite her literally being nobility coddled in velvet; she at least has an understanding of how cruel people can be, something Alex thoroughly lacked.

And on the flip side, Hikaru’s childhood has caused him to be incredibly jaded and mistrustful. Wherever he’s gone, he’s been discriminated against for one reason or another; he really just...can’t win. He has this strange, unfortunate mixture of fear and resentment towards society at large, but also to himself — whenever bad things happen to him, he can’t help but immediately feel that maybe the way he’s been treated all along was right, and he’s truly damned after all...

[elefseia]

Thanks for the tag, Abby!

Last song: Skin-Deep Comedy by Mili

Last Watched: Do YouTube videos count? Recently I've been binging Kaz Rowe's videos about history and queer history. The last one I finished was about weird novelty architecture in Los Angeles.

Currently Watching: uuuhhhhh...I mostly watch YouTube, so I'm not sure how to answer this. 😭 For a while I was rewatching Gravity Falls, and I really want to start up again—it's one of the few cartoons that I really liked as a teenager that I think holds up, it's SO good.

I don't know who to tag here since it seems many people I know have been tagged, so I tag anyone who's inclined to do this!

Thanks for tagging me @hellvira

Last song: Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits lmfaoooo my parents loved them growing up so I know all the words to major hits money for nothing so far away and sultans of swing

Last watched: full show I watched was Abbott Elementary. Superrr funny and sweet, definitely a new fave of mine. Last movie I watched was Pacific Rim last night as I was packing. Love the concept of drifting. Sharing memories and emotions is an amazing ship concept which I love as evidenced by SilverV

Currently watching: Better Call Saul. I tried to start it for years and finally recently got into it. I’m a big Breaking Bad fan and I love the depth they give to Jimmy in this show. Funny I’m starting it as the last season begins, which is exactly what I did with Breaking Bad.

@talossiannights I’m tagging you because you’re the only other person I know on here that hasn’t been tagged already 😂 but I’m interested in your picks

[elefseia]

thinking about the terrible realization I made the other day and what can only be bad things that comes out of it

[elefseia]

I hate that I want some mushy, intimate hkrsztt art so bad...but they’re so hard to draw being intimate :’) (not necessarily in a sexual way, just like. cuddling and shit)

it’s so weird and dumb, I can perfectly envision them in my mind; but, whenever I try to draw them being intimate, it just looks kind of off. and for those two in particular, there’s not really any reference photos I can find to show how they should look, so it’s just...ffff

I can see them being cuddly and adorable in my brain, but my hand never wants to make it so :(

[elefseia]

One of my favorite bits of Beloved lore is the origin of Asàshí’s name, and its capital’s name.

In ancient times, the legendary founder of “modern” Asàshí, Asa, went to the more northerly part of the continent and founded her own city in a large, flat plain. This was named Asàshí — Asa’s City, predictably enough.

Eventually, over time, Asàshí conquered the other states of the continent, until it controlled the whole continent itself. This sprawling civilization was called Asàshí, after its original state.

but wait, how do we differentiate Asàshí-the-country from Asàshí-the-city? Easy, they just started calling the capital Asàshí-Zhaùlá, “Asàshí City,” using a later, different word for city.

The capital of Asàshí is Asa’s City City.

[elefseia]

seeing a bunch of fanart of a new character from a big franchise that looks like one of your friends’ OCs is like...it’s like if a new actor became super famous, and they just happen to look like your nephew

sir, who is this person you talk about. that is my nephew

[elefseia]

thinking about when I asked Meg who the Tumblr sexyperson of my cast would be, and she said it'd be Maiden Moon. I say it'd be Chêne.

the one conclusion I've drawn is that I have done something very bad and may yet one day come to regret my hubris

[elefseia]

so a lot of my friends have a Yu-Gi-Oh AU with their OCs, right, and mine are sort of tangentially a part of it (I say as though anyone seeing this doesn't know about this AU, which I think you all do agsjshsk)

so I realized. Maiden Moon/Aurelia would fit in perfectly as another one of the ancient spirits that possesses someone, à la Yami Yugi/Atem and Yami Bakura

so now. now I present you

Yami Hikaru

[elefseia]

things that make my friends think of me:

— vintage shoujo anything

— big buff man boobies

— the literal moon

[elefseia]

I can’t believe I’m naming a part of my book series after a lyric I wrote to. A Touhou song

[elefseia]

one of my favorite parts of Beloved’s worldbuilding that’s only somewhat alluded to in SoS is how Lady Sun is just a blatant, rampant liar, for fun.

the royal families of Soléiâ and Asàshí actually have a worse understanding of the broader cosmic order than your run-of-the-mill backwoods hick in spite of being in direct contact with her, because she feeds them all sorts of bullshit about how she’s the One True Goddess, all those other deities are just different facets of her/made up by ancient people/etc (whatever narrative works best at the moment), which is just...clearly, not remotely true.

the older, actually correct understanding of the gods is still predominate in the population because Lady Sun doesn’t really care about Wrong Think, especially not amongst a bunch of ~stupid peasants~; as long as she’s the most beloved in society (which, even among polytheists, she most certainly is), she doesn’t care. but she wants those who she’s actually close to to believe she’s the Absolute Bestest Ever even though like. fucking nothing she tells them is true, it’s great KDJHKJFD

[elefseia]

one of these days I should probably make a proper article about the magic systems in Beloved, huh

it’s funny, they’re never explained in-depth, but...there’s actually three different magic systems in Beloved, all that do different things and work in different ways, it’s just never really pointed out because anyone that uses one magic system probably one or both of the other ones (within the first volume of SoS, Hikaru uses all three types of magic)

[elefseia]

it’s interesting; as time goes on, and the more I develop Alexa, the more it feels like her butchness is just...completely, entirely incidental? her attraction to “masculine things” isn’t born from any aversion to femininity; she’s not a “I’m not like other girls”-girl, I guess. she’s not the way she is because of any political statement or something, she just likes what she likes, and had an unusually open and accepting family

I feel like she’s almost the opposite of a lot of the characters I see of her archetype — often, characters like her have some disconnect with femininity, perhaps even actively distancing themselves from their own womanhood. if anything, Alexa wants to connect more with her femininity — she’s not fond of how people automatically gender her as male cause her body and presentation...but she struggles to find a way to assert her femininity in a way that’s both true to herself, and also reads as “feminine” to society (which is certainly not something slightly self insert-y — )

...my poor OCs, it’s like the older and more gender fucked I get, the more complicated they get too ffffff

[elefseia]

one maddening thing about studying shoujo manga history is that you REALLY have to dig to find good information; it seems within the past year or two it’s a little better, I’ve found some good YouTube videos about it; but even so, even in academic works, it’s hard to find truly accurate information

it’s definitely taught me about how...discerning you have to be with anything lsfkjdff

[elefseia]

not long before I finished SoS, I decided to age Hikaru and Suzette up a few years, and that was such a good idea

sometimes I think about how, when I was a teenager, Suzette was going to be 22 for a long time...now that I’m older, just. no fucking way skdjhkjf

she is still young and full of life, but not THAT young jesus christ