#i just had to draw my babies after finishing the manga

[yumedoca]

"We've always been good friends...but one day we noticed that one of us was a girl..."

[reverie-starlight]

fluffy hawks drabble-turned-mini-fic because i love him. if you think the feather necklace trope is overused, this is probably not the place for you. also important to note: let’s say for the sake of my sanity that this takes place before seasons 5/6, okay? I know what's up in the manga, I'm just ignoring it to be happy :)

fem!reader, no physical descriptions aside from wearing dresses + enjoying it and reader could be perceived as chubby, but no explicit mentions of body type!! shopping for clothes is just hard and it’s briefly reflected on in this. lots of soft fluff. pet names (baby, sweetheart, pretty girl, etc) I just got a bunch of cute dresses and now I'm gonna make it hawks' problem. this is like. disgustingly soft and so incredibly self indulgent avert your eyes. please. very smiley and giggly. a bit suggestive at the end bc I have no self-control.

soft laughter and the sound of rustling sheets were the only noises heard in your shared bedroom that afternoon. surprisingly enough for both of you, keigo had finished his patrol early and caught you on the way up to your apartment. almost immediately after walking in and getting your shoes and coats off, he had grabbed you and sped off to your room, dropping you on the bed and launching an attack.

you were both so happy to have some extra time together that it boosted your energy immensely, resulting in a impromptu play fight. it wasn't very often that you got to be so playful anymore with things picking up for him at work. you were both still young, so when you got the chance to act like it, you definitely took it.

"keigo!" you shrieked as he pressed a slew of quick, light kisses over your face and down your neck. a ticklish sensation was left in their wake, even more so because of his facial hair. he just chuckled and rubbed his face against your skin to draw out more laughter. feathers flew around and brushed against your cheeks and other places he couldn't focus his attention on.

his arms were wrapped tightly around your waist to limit your movements, but you still squirmed around to try and get the upper hand. eventually, after a few more kisses to your chest and stomach, he loosened his grip to give you a fighting chance and you flipped on top of him, making sure not to hurt his wings, which ruffled in excitement.

"so what are you gonna do with me now, sweetheart?" he grinned up at you, eyes positively glowing with mirth.

you felt your own gaze go soft and cupped his face with your hands, rubbing your thumbs over the apples of his cheeks. "I dunno," you murmured, keeping your voice low in volume and sweet in its delivery.

your eyes wandered over his features, admiring him in the golden rays of sun coming from your window. "you're so pretty, keigo..."

he went a little red but smiled softly. "that's my line, angel," and then he leaned up to steal another kiss from you.

eventually you both settled down, laying in bed together and talking about your days. keigo told you about having to chase down a bank robber and some purse snatchers, and how a little old lady asked for help getting her cat down from a tree. you snickered at the thought.

the atmosphere turned serene as you both laid there. you were close enough that your breaths mixed and your foreheads touched, his hands absentmindedly running over your soft skin and the curves of your body. "so how was your day?" he whispered.

"it was okay. I had a shorter day at work, so I went shopping and I got some new clothes..." you sat up and walked over to where the bags were discarded before he tossed you on the bed. "want to see them?"

he whined a little when you walked away but quickly sat up as well, nodding his head at the second part. "I'd never pass up the chance to see you trying on clothes, baby, who exactly do you take me for?"

you smiled and shook your head fondly. "alright, alright. sit tight, I'll be back," you said and headed to the connecting bathroom, ignoring his grumbling about how you were depriving him of getting to see the best part.

and when you came back out, in a pretty little sundress, twirling so he could get the full effect, he stared at you in awe.

he knew from past shopping trips and many teary conversations with you that finding clothes you actually felt confident in could be… difficult. of course he thought you looked amazing in everything, and if he had it his way, he’d buy every single outfit you even glanced at, but there was just something so alluring about seeing you happy and proud in clothes you felt good in.

“such a pretty girl…” he murmured to no one in particular. it looked a bit like he was in a trance as he took in your figure. attempting to hold back a shy smile from forming at his words, you looked down at the ground to keep yourself from getting too flustered.

he grinned and held his hand out for you once your eyes met his again. taking it, he gently pulled you towards him to stand in between his legs and rested his chin on your sternum, not once breaking eye contact. his hands moved to toy with the hem of your dress.

“I mean it, you’re absolutely stunning. the prettiest girl I’ve ever laid eyes on... my pretty girl.”

you couldn’t hold back your smile this time and he adored the way your lips curled upwards, how your eyes flitted around the room, staring at anything but him, clearly affected by his words.

he sent a feather out to tilt your chin back towards him and he was suddenly reminded of something.

“ah right- I have something for you,” he dug something out of his pocket and proudly presented you with what looked like a thin brown faux leather string…

with a bright red feather attached to it.

you gasped and took the item into your hands, closely inspecting it. you treated it with the utmost care, as if it were your most prized possession. it very well might’ve been.

the string had a clasp at the back to make it easier to put on and remove, and it looped around the... stem? bone? (you made a mental note to clarify with keigo later) of the feather multiple times. it was secured with a thin silver wire to ensure it wouldn’t slip out before the rope continued on to the other end of the hook.

he actually had one of his feathers turned into a necklace for you.

“keigo, I… this is incredible, oh my goodness!” you beamed at him and leaned down to properly hug him.

he was incredibly perceptive. of course he knew that all those times you had jokingly asked him about keeping one of his feathers with you were actually silent requests. even if you’d never outright ask him, he could tell you longed to have a piece of him with you. especially when he had to wipe your tears before a long mission and you stared longingly at his wings. he took pride in the fact that you found comfort in them.

who was he to deny the love of his life? what’s one feather from his arsenal gone, anyway? it was going towards the cause of making you happy, and most importantly, there was the added bonus of keeping you safe.

“here, let me put it on for you,” he said, gesturing for you to sit on his lap and hand him the necklace.

you got settled and he happily clasped the ends of the string together at the back of your neck. the bottom of the feather rested just above the neckline of your dress and you touched it gingerly.

as soon as it rested against your skin, he took control of it and ran it across your cheek, making you giggle and pull away a bit.

“thank you, keigo, I love it.” you turned around on his lap to face him and pressed your lips against his.

he hummed into the kiss and pulled away with a sly smile. “of course, baby. besides,” he toyed with one of the straps on your shoulder. “it goes with your new dress, don’t you think?”

you put your arms around his shoulders, gently stroking the arches of his wings and nodded in agreement. he placed his hands on the tops of your thighs and gently squeezed. “wanna see if it goes with my other dresses, too?”

“oh, absolutely. but..." he shifted a bit and pulled you closer, so that you were fully pressed against him. "I don't think I've appreciated this one enough... what do you think?" he slowly trailed his eyes up from your legs to meet yours.

you tilted your neck forward to rest your forehead against his. "I think that you'll find some of the other things I bought more interesting than a sundress, keigo."

his sly smile turned into something more eager and you laughed when he dramatically flopped backwards on the bed with a groan. "you're too good for me, angel, seriously. what did I ever do to deserve you?"

you offered him a shrug and a tiny smile of your own. "exist."

his eyes widened a fraction and you could tell that your words deeply affected him from the way they welled up. he cleared his throat to cover up any emotion in his voice and sat up again to cup your cheek, murmuring "sweet girl, you'd better hurry up and try on those other dresses, because if you're not off my lap in three seconds, I'm gonna pounce, and we're not leaving this room 'til we're both spent."

butterflies erupted within you and he watched fondly as you gasped and ran off to keep your little fashion show up and running.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BONUS:

the following days after receiving his gift were... not surprising in the slightest.

you always knew when keigo was taking a break or in his office doing paperwork because he took every opportunity to bug you with his (your) feather.

every. single. one.

and you also knew before he even had the necklace made that if he were to ever give you one, this would likely happen. he was a menace, after all. part of his charm, he always said.

at first it was a bit embarrassing having to fight with a feather in front of your coworkers (who weren't aware you were dating a pro hero, so they probably thought you were some fangirl who bought faulty, cheap merch of his), but it very quickly became endearing.

cause yeah, if he knew you were going to be around people he'd make life difficult for you and then take all of your whines and complaints with a mischievous grin when he walked through the door, clearly lying when he said he'd take it down a notch.

but when he knew you were alone? or having a particularly stressful day? all you had to do was lightly tug on the necklace. upon your signal, he'd immediately take control of the feather and bring it up to caress your cheek, run along your neck or tap your nose.

honestly, you wouldn't have it any other way. you adored his playful side, and he knew he could get away with most things via feather necklace. even if it was only because you were too flustered to scold him for anything anymore by time he got back. complaints soon turned into requests for cuddles and wanting to return all the affection you received.

the feather necklace was a gift for you, sure, but it definitely benefitted him as well.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I edited this super quickly, so apologies if there's any mistakes! I'll find them eventually when I look back at this fic and end up contemplating my choices to post without properly editing :')

hope you enjoyed!! <3

[nkhrdstyvskrrtskrrt]

📎 YOSANO AKIKO ANALYSIS

UNDERSTANDING & ANALYZING BUNGOU STRAY DOGS YOSANO THROUGH THE LENSES OF THE REAL YOSANO AKIKO'S LIFE

WC. 4,000

DISCLAIMER: I am no historian or literary expert I am just obsessed and mentally unwell, if u cannot tell, teehee <333 If this will ignite any hate or hostility (not this post’s intention), please set your sights elsewhere and just scroll. I made this because I love her character and BSD in general to a bone-shattering degree. I hope you have as much fun as I did while researching and writing this, enjoy!! (also English is not my first language forgive me for any grammatical errors ty)

There might be a part two for this, but for now, this is all my tiny brain could offer >:))

IMPORTANT NOTE: There will be a lot of omitted, summarized information that has been subjectively extracted or abridged. This is not a complete, rich historical account but research done to make connections and parallels to better understand and theorize about BSD Yosano’s character. I did not finish reading the entire biography, which is why this is only the first section of a bigger whole.

However, if you desire to dig deeper about her in an unabridged manner please kindly refer to the source I will list below. One last thing, please don’t hesitate to add your own thoughts, I am encouraging you to do so, I will appreciate it so much actually!

My primary source;; Janine Beichman - Embracing the Firebird_ Yosano Akiko and the Birth of the Female Voice in Modern Japanese Poetry-University of Hawaii Press (2002). [pdf can be downloaded for free @/libgen]

Allow me to initiate this observation with a passage directly extracted from her biography (the one named above): 

“Yosano’s father Òtori Sòshichi (1847–1903), was the second-generation owner of the Surugaya, a well-known confectioner that specialized in yòkan (sweet bean paste) and sweet dumplings.”

With this passage in mind, I’d like to remind you of this scene in the manga that hinted at BSD Yosano’s circumstances and background prior to being selected as Mori’s assistant at the fortress. In this panel, she mentioned that she was tending to a candy store before getting drafted. 

Now, drawing from the passage we read regarding the real Yosano Akiko and applying this to BSD Yosano—it’s not far-fetched to assume that the candy shop she was tending to was run and owned by her family. Normally, we could say that familial separation, especially at such an early stage of childhood would be quite hard on the child. However, if we consider the following facts from the real Yosano Akiko’s childhood and parallel it to BSD Yosano again, we could conclude that the separation wasn’t as difficult nor emotional for her when Mori selected her, because she was called in this book an ‘infant exile.’

Starting from the very birth of the real Yosano, her father was severely appalled by her because she was a girl. Moreover, he deserted their home for a week without even looking at his daughter’s face. Her mother became distressed because of the week-long absence of her father, (fainted, even) and couldn’t breastfeed her properly, resulting in the infant Yosano being sent to a maternal aunt accompanied by a wet nurse.

Two years later, due to convenience rather than the will to come back, Yosano returned to her familial house because her aunt had a new baby of her own to look after and raise. Though at this time, a new baby was born, too, at the Otoris. And this baby grew up to be the brother to whom the adult Yosano dedicated her poem ‘Thou Shalt Not Die.’ 

Since the arrival of this baby boy, Yosano’s existence has become easier to tolerate—see this actual snapshot from the passage I am referencing:

‘ while at the Òtori home a baby boy had finally arrived, making it easier to tolerate the unwelcome girl.’

As if to rub in the author’s title for the real Yosano Akiko (infant exile) even their servants and relatives had a distaste for her and her personality, viewing her as the ‘difficult’ child in the family. Here’s another direct quote from the biography book:

‘The relatives chimed in disapprovingly: “‘The younger brother is better behaved; his older sister is a little much.’ From the apprentices to the little uncle on my mother’s side all predicted better things for my younger brother than for me. Having to listen to all that didn’t feel very good.” Even the servants rubbed it in.’

Additionally, Yosano Akiko herself wrote that she never knew the warmth of a mother or father’s lap and that her parents had an inherent antipathy towards her that was not inflicted on her siblings. She wrote, that other women are troubled concerning their in-laws, and how to operate as human beings alongside them but this same worry is her very reality in her own family’s household—blood and flesh—she served her parents as if they were her in-laws and endured hardships by their hand and in their name. Here’s a snippet from the biography:

‘“Other women become brides and struggle to manage a household, but for me it was the reverse: from the time I was a young girl I served my parents as if they were my in-laws, and endured emotional and physical hardships.”’

Another possible factor that enriched an equal sentiment of apathy within Yosano was despite the extremely young age of three she was coerced into attending school—which, as made clear in the biography, was something she disliked. What gave her parents this idea? Well, her father was quite the ardent enthusiast of the science of producing superior human beings. With this belief in mind, it’s no surprise that when he mistook the large forehead of the young Yosano as a sign of intelligence, he sent her to study immediately. 

But Yosano was too young, too passionate, and excited still to engage in play with other children, to have fun with her friends because she was hardly above infancy, only three years old. Despite the awareness of the adults around her that she’s not of school age yet, she was shamed for her disagreement—as said to her by one of her maids: “See what a good girl Miss Takenaka is. Aren’t you ashamed of skipping school?” 

Are you seeing a parallel? BSD Yosano, although just 11 years old, was chosen by Mori to be the core of his immortal regiment plan, because similar to the real Yosano’s situation somebody (her father) saw something urgent and, perhaps special or advantageous in her which is why she was pushed into studying—in BSD Yosano’s case Mori saw this potential within her and incorporated her into his plans, and drafted her from what seems to be her family’s candy shop.

One thing I’d like to emphasize again is that in this drafting of BSD Yosano, the fact that she agreed or at the very least went along with Mori even if it meant being separated from her family, is because she (if we parallel it once again to the poet Yosano) was never really seen as important or someone capable in her family, they did not have faith in what she can do or her future, they did not have confidence in her character. Regarding this sentiment here are two excerpts from the biography: 

‘The restrictions themselves (which were not uncommon then, at least in Sakai) did not hurt as much as the misjudgment of her character and what she might do were she free: “It goes without saying that in a house with many employees, and particularly in a morally lax city like Sakai, a daughter had to be strictly supervised. But there was no need to go that far with a woman who took as many pains to protect herself as I did. I thought the lack of understanding of my feelings that my parents’ attitude showed was outrageous and when alone I often wept over it.”’

And: 

‘Like her parents, the teacher hurt her pride by assuming that she was less intellectually and morally advanced than she actually was, but politeness kept her from objecting. 

And as stated by the creature in Frankenstein (see how I always find a way to mention it haha): “And tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?” 

Why should she nurture deep affection for her family—relatives and servants too, even her teacher—when they will not reciprocate even a pittance of the same love and care? Or even respect. Take a look at this paragraph from the document:

‘But the results of this parental coldness were not entirely negative. Just as 

ignorance of her ancestry liberated Akiko from the weight of family tradition, 

so multiple caretakers and the lack of parental affection weakened her sense of 

filial obligation. 

‘What gave her the strength to defy her family’s expectations 

and flee to Tokyo in her early twenties? Surely, the intensity of her love for 

Yosano Tekkan and her own literary ambition were most important; but would 

a more cherished daughter have been able to make the break so decisively? The 

seeds of the later revolt were planted in the infant exile.’

For this very reason, I conclude that if anything, being drafted by Mori was, in the 11-year-old Yosano’s eyes, an opportunity to prove her competence and worth and realize her goal—saving people’s lives (although in this, she has been failed). As a matter of fact there is a compelling possibility that this conviction to save lives was another element of the real Yosano’s personality and beliefs. It has been written in the biography that Yosano Akiko’s father was a fan of stories of heroism, stories that involved the act of protecting and saving, and what makes this relevant is that he also loved sharing these stories with his children.

From a young age, her mind was fed with these noble stories, and children are impressionable. That said, the young Yosano Akiko inherently possessed a special empathy and protectiveness over life, in support of this let us read through another snippet from a passage;

‘One summer when Akiko was around eight she was sitting up there in the evening cool with her siblings and some cousins, when one of the older children remarked, “A night when the moon and the stars are close means fire.” When the others had left, Akiko gazed up at the vastness of the sky. Feeling sorry for the children in any house that might burn and worried that the fire might reach her own house, “I tried to think of some way to increase the distance between the little star and the moon.”’

As additional support, kindly read this excerpt as well:

‘In the morning, Akiko’s parents returned from her sister’s house. As their own manager politely expressed his relief that the Takemura home was unharmed, Akiko thought sadly to herself, “I wouldn’t mind having the Take-muras’ storehouse burn down if only the Gusei girl had not turned into a charred corpse.”’

And the last addition to further highlight this:

‘So much in this story of the great Sakai fire is typical of Akiko’s view of the society in which she grew up. She shows us all the negatives of the situation: People turned out in force either because they wanted to keep the fire from spreading to their own houses or because they enjoyed a good disaster as long as it was someone else’s. Even her own family thought it natural to rejoice that their daughter’s storehouse had been spared rather than grieve for the dead Gusei girl.’

The young poet Yosano Akiko, even compared to the adults in her environment bore within her a deeper reverence for life, the actions of the adults and their selfish concerns did not amuse her, she thought very negatively of them. The grief and pity she felt for the single casualty, the girl, meant that the loss of life be it a loss of what people consider an insignificant person, mattered to her. For her, every death is worth grieving. And should never be a source of entertainment or material for gossip (the villagers made festivals and dances inspired by the incident). Taking all this into account, it’s not much of a shock that BSD Yosano was so driven to save lives, why it mattered to her so strongly, why, she was also so severely devastated about what her ability has been used for. 

A brief interlude before further digging into the real poet’s early history, I’d like to draw more emphasis on the previous points made—specifically how she’d rather have the storehouse burn (despite having a mother who’s from a lineage of merchants, and Yosano running the candy shop business as well) if it meant seeing a girl she didn’t know too deeply, live—leaping to the future, the poet’s adulthood, for a moment, to affirm further BSD Yosano’s principles regarding the preciousness of life above all else.

In her most, as called in one article, ‘inflammatory’ poem which is ‘Thou Shalt Not Die’ I want us to focus on this particular line in the poem:

For you, what does it matter if Port Arthur Fortress falls or not?

The poet Yosano Akiko was so adamant in stopping her brother, Port Arthur be damned, because it was common knowledge at that time, false or not, that serving the military was volunteering for your own death—there were rumors of the Japanese soldiers being sent to suicide missions—and for what cause, even? Well, that’s not the right question to ask, let’s correct it to what 11-year-old BSD Yosano expressed in her refusal against Mori’s command to continue healing: Should any cause matter over human life? 

Remember, she disagreed when he (Tachihara’s brother) told her that her ability could change the world. She hoped only to save those she could reach. She was aware, of her limits, of the consequences, and that she could not and should not aim for such causes.

Alright, now that we can clearly see how the real Yosano Akiko’s qualities reflect onto BSD Yosano. Back to the early past.

As young as eight, Yosano Akiko tended and shouldered a huge portion of their business’s management, because, as said in the biography her mother was “sickly” while her father was “irresponsible” so she felt that she had to shoulder their responsibilities, here’s a direct quote: ‘ So Akiko felt that she “absolutely had to” stay home and help her parents, managing both the store and the household.’

But because of this, she earned a position of authority in the household, (additionally, by the age of eighteen, she has salvaged the losses from her father’s stock investments.) analogous to—as she stated herself—how a servant acting on behalf of the master can carve out his or her own sphere of autonomy. 

Our Yosano, if we again, try to see her in the real author’s light, must have been reminded of the corner she was driven into in her younger years. Reminded, of how the adults around her could so easily burden her with duties disproportionate to her age and how powerless she was after all amidst all of it.

This time though, she had hope; hope that she could start anew and could finally leave behind a life riddled with mistrust, and belittling, that she could choose for herself what she would labor for and dedicate her efforts to.

That—in the absence of her hometown and the people she grew with, the absence too, of admiration and belonging would change. 

For a brief moment, it did. 

The soldiers adored her, praised her as an angel, and treated her as someone capable—one made her good coffee, drew her a portrait, and Tachihara’s brother even created a present for her with his ability. She was needed not as some fallback for responsibilities nobody wanted. She was necessary, in a way she approved of. She was not a better-than-nothing exile anymore.

Furthermore, quiet acceptance didn't shackle her speech and response to the adults surrounding her in the fortress. The author, Yosano Akiko during her time running the business, often had to put on a polite face and way of speaking to the customers and called out herself when she seemed childish; moreover, she had to endure the incredulity of the prominent figures in her life, and deal with its damages internally. Take this excerpt, for example:

‘Like her parents, the teacher hurt her pride by assuming that she was less intellectually and morally advanced than she actually was, but politeness kept her from objecting. Among her friends, Akiko could be open about her ambition and her pride, but with adults, she apparently felt she had to choose between a pained silence and outward disrespect, and the latter was impossible for her.’

Meanwhile, in the fortress, she could allow herself to be less restrictive with how she interacts with them. 

Even with Mori, her superior, she let go of the hesitation to speak her mind. It’s no surprise then, that by the end of it, her spirit was broken.

This opportunity for change—to make a change, meant the entire world to her. At last, she was able to help in the way that matters to her and appeals to her heart, she did not choose to be there because there were no other options. She was there for a purpose she believed in. Her service was met with gratitude, they accepted her presence, not simply tolerated it.

Until things went south. 

And it did in ways that reignited the severity of an existing fear within our Yosano. How, and why is this the case? 

The poet, until about fifteen years old, nurtured within her as she wrote, an ‘irrational anxiety about death,’ which ‘shaped her inner life.’ As if to fuel her unease, rumors circulated in Sakai (her hometown) about a certain family’s daughter who died bathed in blood after suffering for three days straight. This rumor made the young Yosano Akiko weep, imagining such a kind of suffering. And with these thoughts haunting her, she came up with a specific way in which she would accept death:

‘“If I am to die, let it be at night, so no one will see. I don’t want my suffering exposed to the light of day. I want to breathe my last alone at night in a dark room, letting death’s cruel hands claim me with lips firmly sealed, not a hair of my 

head out of place.”’

She even contemplated suicide, since it is the only way for her to die on her own terms.

Oftentimes, though, she’d take what she could to stay distracted from her mortality, which is mostly done by reading:

‘So here, in addition to the intellectual curiosity, the pleasure, and the inner

rebellion that motivated Akiko’s early reading, is another motive: escape from 

anxiety about her own mortality.’

She attempted to pacify her thoughts and emotions about death, through religion. However, despite her consideration, she ended up rejecting it. From the age of three or four, she hated the scent of incense being burned, going as far as to rush past the many temples that burned them. She disliked, too, sitting beside her parents with her hands clasped in prayer. Affirming and elaborating more on this, allow me to show you this passage:

‘The Buddhist teachings and legends they told her seemed no more than “fairytales for grownups” that could be of  no help to her in “preparing for death.”

Once she “asked if Gautama Buddha had really existed and, if so, what country he had been a citizen of ” and was told that she “would receive divine retribution” for her impertinence.

Every month her mother and her friends heard a lecture by a priest, but as soon as 

the lecture was over, the priest would join them in “ordinary gossip, speaking ill of people behind their backs.”

Akiko “realized that these believers were not even one-tenth as serious as I was about... life and death and that even after twenty or thirty years of visiting temples and praying they were still not saved.” If they had no hope, she reasoned, how much less had she. And so she 

concluded that it was “useless” for her “to expect to be helped by Jòdo Shin-

shû.”’

What did encapture her, and attract her (as said in the biography) then?

Alongside the stories of heroic virgins in Japanese myths, she too was moved by Sokkyò Shijin which was the Japanese translation of The Improviser, translated by—guess who? Ougai Mori. Yes, him. Now I want you to witness this excerpt from the biography:

‘“I envied the pure, noble life of virgin empresses like the goddess Amaterasu. The imperial virgins of Ise and Kamo also filled me with longing. When I look back now on how I felt then, I think that, while squarely facing reality, I flew off and thought of my future in beautiful, idealistic terms, and wanted to stay a pure, undefiled virgin, like an angel, all my life.”’

Considering the new information, we can once again connect it to our Yosano and conclude that BSD Yosano also shared the poet’s fear of death and mortality. Besides her disconnect with her family, she wanted to prevent others from experiencing the fear of dying in a gruesome and undignified manner, which is why she allowed herself to be drafted for war. If you’ll allow me to speculate further, I’d say dying for her (at least she believed) should be a choice, or at the very least should be aligned with the personal preferences and ideals of the person dying—and this principle of hers, augmented the horror she has felt and has bestowed upon the soldiers because what exactly did the weaponizing of her ability bereave the soldiers of, exactly? The control they have over their own death. 

She wanted to save them from death, and she did. Until they didn't want to—until, she didn't want to, anymore. But she, a child, never stood a chance against what she was actually there for. She was there as a tool to convey a new age of weaponry which were abilities.

The scene with Kaji must have allowed these memories to resurface, he called the train bombing incident an experiment, and in a sense she too was an experiment—like the soldiers, she was there to further the idea and be the evidence that abilities were the weapons of the future that will completely change the battlefield, without any guarantee that she or the soldiers would achieve success, or leave intact.

And they didn’t—not them, not her.

For now, this is all I have for our Yosano.

Or is it? Before we end this I’d like to speculate even more about the significance of Mori as a figure in our Yosano’s life—the poet was moved, her heart attached to the real Mori’s use of language in his translation, in how he wrote the nun—perhaps, BSD Yosano put an equal amount of trust and faith in Mori, his intentions, his treatment of her. Given the real Yosano’s experiences and applying the same to our Yosano, she has every reason to be distrustful and skeptical of suddenly being drafted out of all the older, more experienced people by another adult. So there must be something about BSD Mori’s language, too, that persuaded her and moved her the same way the real Yosano was affected by it. For the first time she believed—relied on him, despite experiencing so many disheartening memories dealt to her by older figures in her life.

Okay, I’m serious now, this is the end. I hope you enjoyed and most of all I hope you appreciate her more as a character, that would be the greatest achievement this post could make.

my main is @ice-devourer jic u wanna talk more abt this, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING OMG!

[kozachenko]

I've crawled out of my cave after playing Final Fantasy IX for a long ass time what have I missed?

Artist's Notes:

I'M BACK BABY! A while back I made a post with a new style experimentation thingy but I ended up deleting it because it was just kind of a boring face thing, I was planning on doing more art but then I started playing Final Fantasy IX and uhhhh yeah so that game has kind of taken of my brain for the past two weeks and I am 20 hours into the game because I love it so much. I wanted to draw Vivi because Vivi is just really fun to draw ok? I've kinda been feeling really burnt out with my lineless style, mainly because of how hard it was to do lighting. I'll show one of my initial art style tests on the bottom of this post. Again, used to have it be an individual post but it was just one face so it was kinda boring, so might as well include with this one on the subject of art styles. I wanted to kinda mix some aspects of my older style with the sketchy shading lines with a more painterly way of doing the lighting (mainly in the shadows). All in all, I think that's my favourite part about this drawing, it feels nice to finally be able to do some proper lighting again, and I want to experiment even more with my lighting and rendering in future pieces. Also, part of the pant shading got kinda lost in the sketchiness, so for next time I'll probably focus on the clarity of the more sketchy parts of the drawing, since I did go with my initial sketch for the final drawing. I also gave up on the background since I had no idea what to do for it, and I didn't put too much detail into the staff as I forgot which one I gave him in my current playthrough and I didn't want to risk spoiling myself via looking up references, but that's ok I like how the singular yellow circle on it matches Vivi's eyes. Also I was having a bit of trouble figuring out how to draw his body and how to pose him, but I like how the pose turned out a lot. It was inspired by his idle animation when in a battle in game where he does a little shimmy.

Ok I need to talk about Vivi's design because I love it so fucking much oh my god-

I absolutely love how his face is just in complete shadow and only his eyes stand out, it's so cool and unique and I love how they recontextualized the original black mage design from the classic Final Fantasy games. How they did it I won't say because I don't wanna spoil the game, but someone give this poor baby a therapist because he goes through a lot. Actually, same can be said for all of the FFIX cast, they all need therapy (again, I won't spoil anything, please go play the game for yourself).

While I do love almost all the characters in the game, even though Vivi is most fun to draw, my favourite character has to be Zidane (the main protagonist of the game). He's a really fun protagonist, and they could have easily written him as a misogynistic jerk who doesn't respect women but they didn't, and I really appreciate that. He's just an overall cool dude who's a really nice older brother figure to Vivi and also just has a cool character design (who I also want to draw eventually). Initially in the game I was planning on grinding levels for Vivi to make him the tactical nuke of the party, but then that title went to a different character (who was initially multiple levels behind the group since I grinded the party in the starting area way to much before they joined, but now they are two levels ahead of everyone and have pulled the team through a lot of tough battles, again I won't say who it is because it is kind of a spoiler and the way the gameplay actually ties into their character arc is just so good omfg). Once I eventually finish the game I'll probably write a full review on here, so no spoilers until then lol

Also, I've kinda been burning out a bit with making Touhou art, which also made me a bit burnt out with Touhou stuff in general (although I will continue keeping up with the manga) so getting into other things (i.e. Final Fantasy and even Fallout since I've watched the first season of the TV show which is a whole other post for another day) has helped me refresh and given me something new to think about. I've ended up in the exact place I feared ending up, where I would start drawing fanart for it not because I wanted to but because I felt like I had to, so I'm taking a bit of a break. When I do draw Touhou fanart again I'll try to draw for the sake of myself, and to all the other artists and fanartists on this platform (and on any social media for that matter), take care of yourself and don't forget to take breaks when you need to!

(Ok part of that last paragraph was definitley influenced by the good ol' "it's 9:00pm and I need sleeb, but the message at the end still holds up, always take care of yourself)

Oh yeah, and here is that one style experiment I did btw

Man I really fell down the "Yoshitaka Amano art enjoyer" to "Final Fantasy fan" pipe line didn't I?

[halliescomut]

My Personal Weatherman Ep 7- No Subs watch

Again a reminder, this is me reacting to the new episode of MPW that I get from an internet friend-y, but unfortunately (for me) they speak Japanese, but I do not, and the link they send has no subtitles, so I have no idea what anyone is saying. In fairness...I have been watching Japanese series for about 2 decades, so I can pick up on a couple words/phrases, but mostly my goal is to observe body language to kind of guess what the story is. It's a fun, silly little game. There may be moderate spoilers about sequences, though I try to keep things vague, and of course no dialogue spoilers. Let's go!

-Oooh! An on location segment for the weather. How exciting! (ALso I swear it looks like the location is just outside of Man-san's apartment building, and that's why they had the camera framed so close in.) And Yoh still watching Mizuki so closely.

-Oh, we have ARCs...is this actually a few weeks later, or is the BL manga publishing industry able to do a two day turn around?

-Man-san sounds very encouraging, at least.

-That is a clearly depressed and defeated Segasaki. Poor guy. Has still no one explained that Man-san's husband isn't after Yoh?? Really?

-Why is Yoh always so goddamn suspicious??? My god dude.

-I will say also, I don't love Mizuki's tone here, but I think that's me relating a bit too much to Yoh (since we're both on the same side of a D/s dynamic). I know I would be really upset to hear that distance in in Mizuki's voice if I were Yoh.

-Now we're getting the flashbacks from Mizuki's POV....interesting. I can't wait to know what he was thinking when he saw Yoh. His face is so precious.

-^^Literally all I could hear in my head at this scene: "Hands touch, eyes meet/Sudden silence, sudden heat/Hearts leap in a giddy whirl"

-Segasaki's college friends feel very much like friends of convenience. Like when you become best friends with a kid when you're 7, but it's mostly because you live in the same neighborhood.

-Aww, now we have Yoh in a cozy sweater.

-It is so sub of Yoh to just hand over his sketchbook without question, completely forgetting all of the portraits of Segasaki in there...and I REALLY wanna translate what Segasaki's response was, but I will wait.

-IDK what Segasaki is saying exactly, but I'd bet real folding money that's something pretty close to 'no matter what I couldn't stop thinking about him"

-The way Yoh came and grabbed him...what's going on??

-Aww, sick baby Mizuki. So cute. And the costuming makes them a matching set with their beige and blue. That's so cute.

-I just spent the last scene going like this, so....

-But now we have THE CURRY!!! The curry that made Segasaki finish falling in love with Yoh. I don't feel like curry is supposed to be that crunchy...but I could be wrong.

-His face, I'm dying.. And the little bonk on the head. Oh, if I wasn't already head over heels for these two dinguses, this would have been the last straw for me as well.

-Mizuki's love for petting Yoh is so fucking CUTE!!!!

-Yoh's smile as he draws Segasaki- so PRECIOUS!!!! (Sorry I keep yellling.)

-Poor Mizuki's face. 🥺🥺🥺 He really thought for a minute that Yoh left again.

-Dripping wet rain kiss!! We love it!!!

-Ooh...ooh....OOH!!!! God I really wanna translate Mizuki's little speech here, but I'm pretty sure the gist was 'you're mine, and I'm not letting you get away again". 🥵☺️😁🥰

This was an excellent episode. I mean the whole series has been, but this just....so good. I can't wait to understand more than 27% of it.

Finale next week (Booo!!!😠) but I will be happy to be able to watch the complete story over and over into forever. That'll be nice. Honestly this is the first BL I've every considered getting a physical copy of it's so good.

[fluffalpenguin]

@arcvmonth day 24: the manga

oh man oh MAN it's vj day!!!!!

it's pretty funny how all my gifs are mostly yuri-centered huh

Under the cut:

revisiting my review of the manga from last year

Headcanons and fic/comic ideas

rambling about an old WIP

small playlist! (with write-ups!)

First of all, here's the 3,000 words analysis/blog thing I wrote last year when I first finished it.

One and a half years later, I still largely agree with it! There's some headcanons I wrote in there that I completely forgot about, lol, so I'm glad past me posted it somewhere for current me to relieve it again! (The rants were also kind of funny to re-read too)

***

Next, headcanons!

Lately, I found myself wondering about Yuto and Yuri's outfits; specifically-

...Why are they walking around Maiami with dramatic red/black capes?

After some time in the kitchen, I decided that when Yuya was younger, he was really into good versus evil roles when rehearsing his dueltainment lines. And who else better to serve as his practice opponents than his two brothers who aren't off busy making rounds at the stadium on a D-Wheel?

Tying his own fluffy, white towel around his shoulders, Yuya throws a nearby black blanket to Yuto. The oldest is initially a little embarrassed about the notion, but no one can ever say no to the baby of the Sakaki family, can they? (He'll just have to live the shame down from the twins later on... They barely even respect him as they are right now, anyway) In the middle of the duel, Yuri walks in onto the two of them after having finished his homework (or tweaking his deck). He raises an eyebrow at Yuto's appearance, but gets the gist of the situation when he sees their duel disks activated and Yuya standing on top of the sofa in a similar attire. As Yuto steals Yuya's schtick and becomes a tomato, Yuri pouts about being left out and quickly leaves to hunt for something that will allow him to join the fun. When the duel ends, Yuto passes the baton to Yuri. As he watches the two rattle off silly, goofy lines like, I will destroy the planet, the universe, all the worlds! and, Never! I'll stop you, fiend!, Yuto sighs in relief. At least Yuya now has Yuri to LARP with. Maybe Yugo would volunteer too, once he returned from driving practice and hears about it. Though, he'd likely ask to play the part of the hero himself. Anyway, Yuto's already almost in middle school; he's getting a little too old to play with costumes now. Then afterwards, at dinner, with an angelic smile Yuya says, "Yuuto, can we play like that again sometime? You look so cool with a cape!"

Yuri on the other hand, always had a tendency for the melodramatic, his own personal spin of the theatrics he's seen from his dad! Deep down he really loves playing the villain.

(This was meant to be a short description but I couldn't help putting some fic-like sentences in there tehe also yes that's a reference to the conversation between Yuya and G.O.D./Eve)

***

(warning: angst ahead)

Another headcanon I have that I want to write/draw something for is that in the postcanon where Reiji, Yuya, Isaac and Ren travel through space and time together, Yuya has moments where he falters to his grief.

He's used to his brothers commenting and nagging him on almost anything and everything (A midnight snack? Think about your complexion, Yuya!) and his world is suddenly a lot more quiet. In his hurt, he starts to avoid Ren, not wanting to be reminded of what he's lost (He doesn't feel good about it).

Eventually Reiji intervenes and Yuya opens up a little. He's been unable to properly let himself grief for his brothers. All he wants to say is that he misses them.

But he doesn't feel like he has the right to do so, having being the one to seal their fates by personally destroying the one method of bringing them back to life. He doesn't regret his decision of course, but he's unable to stop himself from feeling this way too.

It has a happy ending; Reiji convinces Yuya to talk to Ren. Yuya shares stories about Yugo at Ren's request, making the both of them laugh. Yuya realises that there are other methods of bringing back people to life, too, even if only momentarily.

But it is enough.

***

Misc hcs:

Yuya's charisma and attitude is a combination of his three brothers fawning over his cuteness from birth and Yuya being so star-struck with Yusho's performances he attempted to replicate the movements ever since he could walk.

Being the oldest, Yuto feels a sense of responsibility for his brothers and pledged to take care of them in place of his always-missing parents. However, he oft times finds himself not having to do much because Yugo and Yuri are so determined to win over Yuya's heart (and be proclaimed 'favourite brother') that they also make sure to set a good example for the youngest when possible. This causes Yuto a little bit of an identity crisis (/j it's just for fun) until he settles into his role as the househusband cook.

"All of us... are connected by... the arc of destiny!"

Reiji and Yuya are supposed to be silhouetted by their fathers, so Yuzu is meant to seem like she's looking at Yuya, but is in fact looking at Yusho. I also think VJ Yuto should be allowed to smile more!

This drawing is meant to be my love letter to the manga as a whole, and ESPECIALLY the last duel between Reiji and Yuya. I talked about it a whole ton in the review linked above already, so go check that out if you haven't!!

I was really happy with the composition when I first made this, especially with Sora/Ren/Isaac Versus the Yus mirroring their duels! (Well, okay, I know Isaac didn't duel Yuto but.... just give this to me)

Anyway I really wanted a fun and positive energy for it! Every month I think about returning to this but I get slightly demotivated when I realise I have *zero* colour references for both Ren and Isaac... Please send in your headcanons...

***

Last but not least, last month I got brain worms for another animatic/hand-drawn MV for Eve's Fight Song! I'll never ever have to time to go back to it, but I wanted to take the chance to talk about other songs that make me ill when I think about them with the manga.

1. Myth & Roid - TRAGEDY:ETERNITY

Don’t give me an eternity Even if that’s all I can believe Press pause on the flow of time In the shadow of the blink of an eye I don’t wanna fall into a sleep ‘Cause now you are my remedy Now knocking on, knocking on, knocking on my brain Even for the temptation of a nightmare Fate demands a costly reparation for its fare

Translated lyrics mostly from lyrical-nonsense, but I made some changes for better rhyming and flow yahoo!! This song is what I imagine the OP would be in my dreams when it received an anime adaptation, I've always dreamed of making my own animatic to it!!

Not just the chorus, but the ENTIRE SONG (pleeeease go take a look at the lyrics) feels like it's made for the manga please please go take a look

2. MYTH & ROID - -to the future days

I cast my wishes to the future days If we can meet on the other side of eternity… I cast my wishes to the future days What should we talk about first? Sadness and even joy will, eventually Will sleep together That's the way life is If such a world could be granted Would nobody feel hurt anymore?

Yeah I like M&R quite a bit, how'd you know

If T:E was the hypothetical OP, this is my pick for the ED theme, like AAAAAAAA for me it encompasses the yu's story so so so so so so so well, though

And:

Both despair and also life come to end eventually Take this future into your hands and let it run its course Spin it ’round…… The hands on the clock spin around Like flowers, petals falling and fluttering Once we blossom, we dissipate in the moment THE BRIDGE THE BRIDGE THE LYRICS ARGHHHHHHHH This is definitely for me, the moment when the three yus start to fade during Yuya's battle with Eve, their last conversation they have with yuya..... *lies onto the ground in a pile of misery*

Rest of the lyrics HERE shoves it into your face

3. MAISONdes - Tokyo Shandy Rendezvous

It's no joke, no it's not! Tokyo Shandy Rendezvous Even when the time comes nothing will come of it Vague truths only become melancholy Come on and snatch me away now, take on me!

This is a fun one, when I watched the PV and in the chorus Lum was spinning I instantly went wow what if that was Phantom.. and then the lyrics bared their claws and sunk them into my brain and hasn't really let go since

Unlike the above two songs, not all of the lyrics are a perfect match, of course, but I adore how in general the whimsical yet lonely nature of the song feels like it fits Phantom so well!

4. Eve - Fight Song

As the night still refuses to end, let’s dream

Last but not least the song I posted the above storyboard for! CSM fans (as well as Eve fans, lol) are probably already familiar with the song, and full lyrics here, though like the song above, only parts of the song (particularly the chorus) really resonated with the vj brainworms in my head lol Even for me, y’know Let’s make a break for the future Towards the verge of death like we pray for A boy that gave his word Today, just like back then As if there’s no more future ahead

Sigh.... Yuto, Yugo, Yuri................ Just let out your voice Let’s take it easy We don’t even know common sense, so we know the world through wise eyes These overflowing feelings, behold Greet me with an applause

I love the first half a lot, I can easily imagine Yuya saying it to the other three... and of course, the latter, from him to the world! (or perhaps even G.O.D...)

As always thanks for reading GOODBYE I GOTTA GO DRAW SOME ARC-V OCS

[rainbow-pop-arts]

Huuuuggggghhhh, last part of my Trigun Maximum vol 8 thoughts for @trigunbookclub….

Some thoughts on TriMax chap 50-50.5 under the cut!

Eeeeeeew, Wolfwood’s cross has a spine!! (´д｀)

(Edit: somebody pointed out that those were just bullets, my bad bruh (ง ื▿ ื)ว but can you imagine-)

So this is where Wolfwood dies-

YOOOOOO, IT’S THE- IT’S THE- IT’S THE JUICE THAT WOLFWOOD DRINKS TO HEAL!! ( ◉ ◯ ◉ ) Looks like the juices he drank I saw in Stampede are in the manga! 

KID WOLFWOOD KID WOLFWOOD KID WOLFWOOD KID WOLFWOOD-

Oh my, looks like Wolfwood’s experimentation in Stampede also happened in the manga  

Silly scene (  ◕‿◕ ) after the hell they experienced (they’re gonna experience hell again anyways)

Yeeeee, Vashy and Wolfy finally got found! ( ⁀ᗢ⁀ )

OH MY GOD, Y’ALL……he’s wrapped in a blanket, something I always wanted to do to him 🥺 (he deserves it)

Vash and the others: *Discussing about Knives*

Me: Haha, Knives looks like a chicken :D

IT’S THE GUNSMITH WHO’S BUDDY-BUDDY WITH VASH!! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ

MERYL!!! She knew Vash isn’t dead, that’s so sweet 🥺

( ◉ᗝ◉ )!!!??? Did he just……exploded that dead plant?

Nooooo, Woowoo don’t gooooo  (ノ ˃̣̣̥ Д ˂̣̣̥)ノ

Woowoo spin-off

G i r l

So plants can get sick and there are doctors to treat them! But seems expensive tho, like really expensive. If only there are people knowledgeable enough to know how to create plants (Ó3Ò)

Big bro Woowoo 🥺

Aaawww

Anyways, this dude shows up

Got Wolfwood all beaten up

Dramatic ass

Yaaaaay, Wolfwood attacks and protects! ╰(▔∀▔)╯

Wolfwood says farewell to that girl who’s actually the baby that he took care off back in the orphanage

That’s all for TriMax vol 8! ★>d(,,･ε´-,,)⌒☆

Bonus thoughts: So uh…Knives’s plan is doing great…which is not good. Vash was imprisoned for months, luckily Wolfwood came to rescue him! But then Livio and the old guy attacked him. But hey, cool to know that Wolfwood’s past in Stampede is similar (or the same?) as in the manga! I hope in the next volume Vash, Wolfwood, Meryl and Milly have a reunion, I hope they got a plan to stop Knives, and I hope Knives calm down a bit. 

Anyways, for finishing this chaotic volume, check out this Wolfwood sketch I did when I had to draw poses in art cram school

[microsuedemouse]

In Eden

➤ In his final moments, Nicholas D. Wolfwood wished with everything he had for another chance. A different life. A better world.

➤ This is none of those things. Against all odds, though, he's still alive, and to squander that would be a disservice to the woman who saved him. So he'll try. He'll put his friends behind him and forge something new.

➤ After all, he can never go back.

Nicholas D. Wolfwood/Milly Thompson | 8 011 words | Rated T+ | Fix-It, Angst with a Happy Ending, Reunions, (Ambiguously) Catholic Guilt

“I did not wanna die this way!”

The last thing Nicholas D. Wolfwood expects is to wake up. So when he does, he assumes these are the final desperate attempts of his dying mind to grasp at something better. To claw its way out of this uncaring existence and into a kinder plane. He wished so hard for a second chance – a more loving reality – that the chemical misfires of his brain, steadily running out of blood, are now producing hallucinations of exactly that. Except that he isn’t waking up in the Eden he’d dreamed of.

Keep reading on AO3 →

hhhhokay so. this has been in my drafts since shortly after I finished watching the show, which was apparently... February? whoogh. I was never sure if I got the pacing/length just right, so I was never quite ready to call it finished. but recently @llamahearted posted another wonderful Millywood drawing and it reminded me that I still wanted to clean this up and post it!

listen, Vashwood is fantastic, but Millywood just hits alllll the right notes for me. I adore them so much, and I wish they could've had the happy ending they deserved. so I'm out here writing fix-it fic in which What If They Actually Didn't Die, once again. Nicholas's tragedy is really good, and its impact on Vash's story is really important, but also... what if.

also, I made up a bit of my own lore for the Chapel of the Gung-Ho-Guns, because the manga lore is so so silly. it's really only implied/mentioned in the fic itself, but I just wanted to pad out a few spots.

spoilery bit about the final lines of the fic below:

I was divided on revealing Goodwin's first name to be Eden, because I really liked the symbolism/symmetry of that, and of the idea of Nicholas never having learned that about her. but I'm also very in love with the idea of Nicholas and Milly having a daughter and naming her Eden. so I waffled a lot.

and then I remembered it's fanfic and I can do whatever I want. if I decide to write another fic where they do have a daughter named Eden, no one's gonna arrest me for using the same general idea two slightly different ways. also, you don't even actually meet the baby in this fic, so. who cares. it's FINE.

[pancake-breakfast]

Ugh, too sleepy. Almost done with manga. Can't fall behind now....

Stream-of-consciousness thoughts for TriMax Vol. 13, Chapters 7-9 below.

Chapter 7: Catch-As-Catch-Can

Yeah, don't overdo exercise training, kids. Not only is passing out DEFINITELY not good for you, but you can get seriously injured even if you have a spotter. Even if you only get a minor injury, it can put your training back weeks or months.

Awww, Livio looks so young here! Look at his short, floofy hair! I hope he grows it out a bit again. Maybe not quite like he had it before, but yeah.

Do people actually do finger push-ups, or is that just something for badasses in animation and comics?

Training montage!

Aw, man! He got to wear a Wolfwood outfit? I feel robbed.

Ok, Satosugu.

Ah, she's doing that thing again. I think.

Oh, what? Elendira's finishing move is a really big nail? Lame.

She's really putting lot into all this, though, isn't she? She looks a bit rough.

Oh, shoot. It's the nuke.

She senses something. I WONDER WHAT.

Yeah, it was Livio.

I like his simple mentality here. Very straightforward.

NO! No one's allowed to drink vials anymore! NO MORE VIALS!!!

Him? Wolfwood??

Chapter 8: Tipped Wings

CW: Gore

TBH I don't know how the hell Livio won this fight. Assuming he technically won at this point.

Heh. Yeah. "Him" was Wolfwood. But of course Livio knows him as Nicholas.

Aaaaand we're back to my favorite wet cat, Legato Bluesummers.

How does he know Elendira has been defeated? Did he have a little feeler in her? Was he skimming her brain kinda like when he had a little mind convo with Vash?

Dude. I thought you wanted to win this. You guys can't both die to each other in this fight. I will genuinely be annoyed if that happens.

Guernica? You mean the flail thing? That thing had a name???

Heh. I appreciate Legato calling Vash a force of nature here. After all, he is the Humanoid Typhoon.

Awww, look at baby Legato raiding the leftovers from July. Also, hasn't it been like 25 years since July? Just how old is Legato??

Ohhhhh, this is where Stampede got his character design. Like, yeah, they straightened his hair, but I recognize that short little jacket.

Welp, Knives has seen better days. Actually, this is a lovely turn on the way Rem is often paneled with Vash. Instead of a small Vash and a dominating, hopeful figure of Rem, we have a small Legato with a very, very broken Knives dominating the upper third of the panel.

Yes, because the thing Legato needs is another reason to have a psychotic break.

Geez, he's just... scooping up Knives' guts to try and... what, shove them back in? Carry them with them?

He's soooo sad, too.

Knives. What. The. Fuck. Just let the boy cry, idiot. He adores you. Also, talking while you're half corpsified is creepy. Cut it out.

Aww, Vash is still trying to save him. Gods, I wish Vash had found him instead.

Goodbye, weird machine gun doll flail thing. We barely knew thee.

Oh, dang. Legato got the jump on Vash.

Chapter 9: VS

I have no idea what's going on here. At least it led to weird, dramatic Legato pose?

Legato, no. This is not how it should be. This is not how anything should be.

Mmm, Wolfwood memories.

Vash is right. This isn't a fight anymore. But I think Legato knows that.

Oh, would you look at that. Thanks, literally the first panel on the next page.

Ok, but did Nightow have to draw his fingers this sexy here??

Legato's trying, but he's not getting through Vash's defenses.

Huh. Interesting that the Earth Fleet guy with his vastly broader knowledge of Plants would state Vash is a rarity. I like that all his sisters seem very fond of him, though.

Chronica is bitter about Domina. It might have been a bit of a mistake for Knives to off her.

Knives says this, but Chronica knows this, so... I wonder what she's actually planning here.

Wait, just who are they attaching a cable to??

Of course Milly and Meryl would have Vash's back.

Hahahaha, this really highlights the contrast between the two characters.

Love and peace, yo.

Gods, Legato just keeps coming at Vash. He's getting ripped apart by Vash's defenses, but he just keeps at it.

What? Vash? What are you doing?? You... you need that box, don't you???

Ohhh, they're doing shonen battle showdown pose. It's on now.

Aw, dammit. I guess it's on in the next (and final!) volume.

Archive

Trigun Vol. 1: Covers + 1-3, 4, 5-6, 7-8, 9-10 || Vol. 2: Covers + Extras, 1, 2-4, 5-6, 7-8

TriMax Vol. 1: Covers + 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 || Vol. 2: Covers + 1, 2-4, 5, 6-7 || Vol. 3: Covers + 1-3, 4-5, 6-7 || Vol. 4: Covers + 1-2, 3-5, 6-7 || Vol. 5: Covers + 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 || Vol. 6: Covers + 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 || Vol. 7: Covers + 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 || Vol. 8: Covers + 1-2, 3-4, 5 + Bonus || Vol. 9: Covers + 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 || Vol. 10: Covers + 1-3, 4-5, 6-8 || Vol. 11: Covers + 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 || Vol. 12: Covers + 1-3, 4-6, 7-9 || Vol. 13: Covers + 1-3, 4-6

Extra Credit: Trigun Vol. 1: Nebraska vs. Vash's Motivations, Vash's Loneliness, Vash's Depression (pt. 2 of post), Soupy Brains || Vol. 2: Coin Factoids || TriMax Vol. 1: Lina, Vash, and a Haircut || Meryl, Vash, and the Pursuit of Happiness || Vol. 5: Knives, Vash, and Hatred for Humanity || Vol. 6: Coping Series: Wolfwood, Meryl, Vash || Vol. 8: The Uncoordinated Counterattack || Vol. 9: Justice, Punishment, and Mercy, The Tolling of an Iron Bell || Vol. 10: Crucifixion Symbology (pt. 2 of post), Merging of Families, Being Childlike (And Why God Hates Chapel) || Vol. 11: New Hair, New Outlook

[duhragonball]

32 episode in out of a 64 episode run and the closest we've gotten to Super Saiyan 4 is butt-pliers.

I'm just... trying to fathom this. Wasn't Super Saiyan 4 one of the few things Toriyama actually gave the crew that made GT? Why did they take forever getting there and waste all that time on completely asinine shit? They literally turned Goku's (at the time) strongest transformation into an asspull when they had plenty of time to devote to Giru saying his own name and Tuffle smirking.

I can't wrap my head around the fact that some people say this show was better than Super. Super had some low, low lows, but I genuinely think I'd rather watch any episode of that than GT. I knew it was created largely to keep the DB content machine churning out a new episode in that prime time slot, but I hadn't expected it to be so... obvious about it. Like it's not actually trying to be anything more or less than 20ish minutes of television. Say what you will about the Star Wars Prequels, George clearly didn't make them because he wanted more money. The story was poorly executed and had some major flaws, but it was a genuine story with a beginning, middle and end and all the other stuff a story needs. Your section on great "ideas", poorly executed only further cements the fact that GT has no ideas, and on the rare occasion they do it's utterly squandered in favor of Morishita's episodic structure. GT feels like they started working on each episode the day after the previous one aired, and frankly I wouldn't be shocked if that was the case.

Sorry for the rambling ask, but it's really incredible that halfway through this show they still can't do better than the Roaming Lake. Because as bland as it was, it was at least a story.

I need to clear up a misconception here. Akira Toriyama did not design Super Saiyan 4. It was, in fact, designed by Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru, who was one of the main character designers for the Dragon Ball anime franchise.

Later on, Akira Toriyama did a drawing of Nakatsuru's design, and this is probably what led people to assume that it originated with Toriyama.

In fact, the drawing was included in the GT DVD box set, along with a message from Toriyama about the show, where he praises Nakatsuru's uncanny ability to imitate his own style, to the point where even he, Toriyama, had trouble remembering which designs were Nakatsuru's and which were his own.

What Toriyama did contribute to GT was mostly used at the very beginning: The logo for the show, the new looks for the main characters, designs for some of the machinery (most notably Giru and the GT Ship), and he drew some images of Goku, Trunks and Pan on some alien worlds, which probably helped inspire a few of the early episodes.

And Toei didn't waste any time using that stuff, because they knew which way their bread was buttered. I'm certain they would have loved to have even more input from Toriyama than what they got, because they knew he was the driving force behind the franchise's success. But he was finished with the manga, so his limited contributions to GT were all they were going to get.

The thing you have to understand about Super Saiyan 4 is that it was part of Plan B. Plan A was the Grand Tour, with Goku, Trunks and Pan roaming the universe hunting the Dragon Balls. But according to Kozo Morishita, that plan fell through when they decided the scripts just weren't working. So they changed the focus to a battle-oriented plot, and that's how we got into the Baby Saga. And of course, it wouldn't do for Goku to get a new transformation right away, so it took a while for him to get there.

Afterward, SSJ4 kind of became the symbol for the GT brand. They put it on the cover of the DVD set I bought. SSJ4 Goku was on Volume 1, even though he doesn't appear in that form until the very last episode on the set. Then they put SSJ4 Gogeta on the cover of Volume 2, even though he only shows up for half an episode near the end. But come on, what else were they gonna put on those covers? Giru? Rage Shenron? That pervy space deer? People love SSJ4, and GT's the only anime where you can get it.

If they had it to do over again, maybe SSJ4 would have been given the focus from the very start, kind of like how Dragon Ball Super remained squarely focused on the different "godly" Super Saiyan forms. But GT never had a focus beyond "more Dragon Ball cartoons in the golden timeslot". They kept changing the plans until they ran out of show. So even when they managed to do something right, it usually wound up being too little, too late.

This is why the "good ideas, bad execution" defense never made sense to me. I literally saw someone on Twitter use that very line today. I think they said "concepts" instead of "ideas", but same thing. I mean, if you like Super Saiyan 4, fine, but it doesn't make sense to praise the show and then say the execution was bad. The execution is the thing you're watching. That's like eating a really lousy cake and saying it was still okay because the cook had some good ideas about baking. No, that's not how this works.

A lot of GT's success seems to stem from the willingness of fans to overlook its flaws. At the end of the day, it still features a ton of popular characters, and it resembles DBZ closely enough that it can be a serviceable continuation of the property. I have to assume the "asspull" scene just doesn't bother some fans the way it bugs you or me. I'm not sure anyone finds it hilarious or anything, but they don't find it insulting, and that might be enough to earn GT a free pass in the hearts of a lot of the fandom.

And that may have been the guiding principle for making the series as well: Just get it done, because it's better for everyone to have some Dragon Ball on TV than none at all.

[kiribread]

Spirit Realm au designs!

Hello! I'm out of school for the summer and I got some time and motivation to draw so here's some designs I finished! just ignore how my art style changed each time I did one of these 💀

There's also mirrored events from the manga mentioned so if u don't want to read them stop at Edgeshot's thing!

Tw: Talk about death and school shootings

Emiyo died before the age of quirks during the witch trails.

She wasn't a witch but when she was killed she, like others during that time, she became a witch spirit

She just liked cats and plants 😭

She was only 17 when she died :(

There was a sort of "clan" that was formed between witch spirits that have nature-based powers that she joined

The clan was good and all for quiet a while but soon went down hill once the leader mysteriously disappeared and their twin sister took over

Many people left the clan once she came to power but Emiyo wasn't able to

It basically went from a really chill family to a really strick one if that makes since.

Anyways

When she was out she ran into soon boyfriend whose name I have yet to figure out

Long story short they start dating and planning to elope. She got pregnant and used her magic to hide it but like a week before they were to elope the leader found out and shunned her in the manner.

When she gave birth she was forced to abandon the baby in the middle of a forest in the living world. it was the last time that she has been able to go outside :(

The baby is Kamui woods btw

She was a lab born with her quirk being the same as the OG series (up until she died at least.)

She was a UA teacher that had recently died protecting a student (a month or 2 before Edgeshot.)

She lives in the same world and district as edgeshot. I don't have the world name yet but the district is called the Nature District.

She works in an all in one women's shop that basically has stuff like clothing, medicine, hair and skin care to even having a salon and spa!

She mainly works in the spa and clothing part of the building.

Her and Edgeshot hang out a bit since they don't have any other dead friends (Midnight would if it weren't for a certain event...)

Bakugou hangs out with them too time to time when he visits

She adopted Violet which I will get more into in her part.

She was naturally born! (got her quirk via genetics)

She lived in the midwest usa for her whole life before kickin the bucket.

yall want to take a wild guess how she died💀?

if you guessed school shooting, you'd be correct!

Basically a shooter shot up her class a bit but she didn't get shot so after waiting a few minuets after the shooter left she used her quirk to heal the people she could. But by her luck the shooter came back to the classroom and shot her 😭

saved 7 lives at least 🫡

(I should mention that she has like a stock pile aspect of her quirk so if she like absorbed some plant healing stuff she could save it for later)

So since she was under the age of 20 she got automatically sent to the spirit realm

Due to having no other family or friends in the spirit world she stayed in the orphanage for a while

She went into town a lot out of boredom and to run errands for herself and others

One of the places she happened to visit a bit was the women's shop

She talked to midnight anytime they were there at the same time and ended up getting close. Close enough that midnight adopted her! They're the purple hair duo >:D

She's been helping the woman's shop with midnight ever since

I've posted his design a while back but I didn't say anything with it so i'm doing it now!

He was lab born with the quirk ribbons

Ribbons was a quirk that allowed the user to manipulate the quirk energy in and around him. The ribbons came in many different colors depending what or who the quirk source was. Since there was such a high concentration in his own body he could manipulate himself similarly into one of those ribbons

However due to his mental state the quirk had a miss function and he had to go to quirk reformatory and he was no longer able to manipulate ribbons outside his body so now his quirk was renamed Foldabody. This also made his mental health even worse 😭

He died in the lab incident using his body to patch up Bakugo's heart that had been pierced

Because of this, this opened a small vestige realm (room really) opened up between them

Bakugo can go between the vestige to the spirit realm at will but is generally not a good idea to do without edgeshot accompanying him.

He owns a library in the Nature District with his sister that he also lives in (his sister already had a place to live since she died way before him)

The vestige realm for him and bakugo is in one of the rooms (only edgeshot can enter it form the spirit realm side so no need to worry about intruders)

He likes hosting events for kids in the gathering room areas especially for the orphaned ones to give them things to look forward too

He occasionally has events that are more adult centered but kid events are more fun :)

This also helps him with transitioning to his sudden new way of "life" which he struggles with as many freshly dead fokes do

That's all the designs i have as of right now for this au so im caught up in this department at least!🫡 pls send asks about this au if u got questions i like talking about it 👁👁!

[accessible-tumbling]

[ID: Text that reads: A Note from the Author - Keiji Nakazawa

The atomic bomb exploded 600 meters above my hometown of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 a.m. I was a little over a kilometer away from the epicenter, standing at the back gate of Kanzaki Primary School, when I was hit by a terrible blast of wind and searing heat. I was six years old. I owe my life to the school's concrete wall. If I hadn't been standing in its shadow, I would have been burned to death instantly by the 5,000-degree heat flash. Instead, I found myself in a living hell, the details of which remain etched in my brain as if it happened yesterday.

My mother, Kimiyo, was eight months pregnant. She was on the second floor balcony of our house, had just finished hanging up the wash to dry, and was turning to go back inside when the bomb exploded. The blast blew the entire balcony, with my mother on it, into the alley behind our house. Miraculously, my mother survived without a scratch.

The blast blew our house flat. The second floor collapsed onto the first, trapping my father, my sister Eiko, and my brother Susumu under it. My brother had been sitting in the front doorway, playing with a toy ship. His head was caught under the rafter over the doorway, He frantically kicked his legs and cried out for my mother. My father, trapped inside the house, begged my mother to do something. My sister had been crushed by a rafter and killed instantly.

My mother frantically tried to lift the rafters off them, but she wasn't strong enough to do it by herself. She begged passersby to stop and help, but nobody would. In that atomic hell, people could only think of their own survival; they had no time for anyone else. My mother tried everything she could, but to no avail. Finally, in despair, she sat down in the doorway, clutching my crying brother and helplessly pushing at the rafter that was crushing him. The fires that followed the blast soon reached our house. It was quickly enveloped in flame. My brother yelled that he was burning; my father kept begging my mother to get some help. My mother, half-mad with grief and desperation, sobbed that she would stay and die with them. But our next-door neighbor found my mother just in time and dragged her away.

For the rest of her days, my mother never forgot the sound of the voices of her husband and son, crying out for her to save them. The shock sent my mother into labor, and she gave birth to a daughter by the side of the road that day. She named the baby Tomoko. But Tomoko died only four months later -- perhaps from malnutrition, perhaps from radiation sickness, we didn't know.

After escaping the flames near the school, I found my mother there by the roadside with her newborn baby. Together we sat and watched the scenes of hell unfolding around us.

My father had been a painter of lacquer work and traditional-style Japanese painting. He was also a member of an anti-war theater group that performed plays like Gorky's "The Lower Depths." Eventually the thought police arrested the entire troupe and put them in the Hiroshima Prefectural Prison. My father was held there for a year and a half. Even when I was a young child, my father constantly told me that Japan had been stupid and reckless to start the war.

Thanks, no doubt, to my father's influence, I enjoyed drawing from an early age, After the war I began reading Osamu Tezuka's comic magazine Shin-Takarajima (New Treasure Island); that had a huge impact on me. I began slavishly copying Tezuka's drawings and turned into a manga maniac. Hiroshima was an empty, burnt-out wasteland and we went hungry every day, but when I drew comics, I was happy and forgot everything else. I vowed early on to become a professional cartoonist when I grew up.

In 1961 1 pursued my dream by moving to Tokyo. A year later I published my first cartoon serial in the manga monthly Shonen Gaho (Boys' Pictorial). From then on I was a full-time cartoonist. In 1966, after seven years of illness, my mother died in the A-Bomb Victims Hospital in Hiroshima. When I went to the crematorium to collect her ashes, I was shocked. There were no bones left in my mother's ashes, as there normally are after a cremation. Radioactive cesium from the bomb had eaten away at her bones to the point that they disintegrated. The bomb had even deprived me of my mother's bones. I was overcome with rage. I vowed that I would never forgive the Japanese militarists who started the war, nor the Americans who had so casually dropped the bomb on us.

I began drawing comics about the A-bomb as a way to avenge my mother. I vented my anger through a "Black" series of six manga published in an adult manga magazine, starting with Kuroi Ame ni Utarete (Struck by Black Rain). Then I moved to Shukan Shonen Jump (Weekly Boys' Jump), where I began a series of works about the war and the A-bomb starting with Aru Hi Totsuzen ni (One Day, Suddenly), When the monthly edition of Jump launched a series of autobiographical works by its cartoonists, I was asked to lead off with my own story. My 45-page manga auto-biography was titled Ore wa Mita (l Saw It). My editor at Jump, Tadasu Nagano, commenting that I must have more to say that wouldn't fit in 45 pages, urged me to draw a longer series based on my personal experiences. I gratefully began the series right away. That was in 1972.

I named my new story Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen). The young protagonist's name, Gen, has several meanings in Japanese. It can mean the "root" or "origin" of something, but also "elemental" in the sense of an atomic element, as well as a "source" of vitality and happiness. I envisioned Gen as barefoot, standing firmly atop the burnt-out rubble of Hiroshima, raising his voice against war and nuclear weapons. Gen is my alter ego, and his family is just like my own. The episodes in Barefoot Gen are all based on what really happened to me or to other people in Hiroshima.

Human beings are foolish. Thanks to bigotry, religious fanaticism, and the greed of those who traffic in war, the Earth is never at peace, and the specter of nuclear war is never far away. I hope that Gen's story conveys to its readers the preciousness of peace and the courage we need to live strongly, yet peacefully. In Barefoot Gen, wheat appears as a symbol of that strength and courage. Wheat pushes its shoots up through the winter frost, only to be trampled again and again. But the trampled wheat sends strong roots into the earth and grows straight and tall. And one day, that wheat bears fruit. End ID.]

Barefoot Gen introduction by author Keiji Nakazawa, from the 2004 English edition.

[createherebk]

Interview: Aatmaja Pandya

What are some of your earliest memories of making art? What's your first memory of comics?

Art-making has always been part of my life, in the way it is for all kids. I do have a really specific elementary school memory of having to make a Halloween diorama for a school assignment. We had this program on the school computer that would let you design and print one. But I made one with paper shapes instead because I knew it would look more distinctive and even at that age I liked that handmade touch. When I think back on that it makes me laugh so much - what a little snob! But to this day I really value analog process, so I guess it is pretty indicative of the person I became. 

My first comics were graphic versions of the Ramayana and, like, stories about the god Krishna. My parents must have bought them for me and my brother in India. Weirdly I wouldn't consider them artistic influences at all - my strongest earliest influences are manga - but I think it's proof of the power of comics that I remember those stories so clearly and fondly now. 

What makes a good story? 

I ask myself this question all the time and the answer changes all the time too. We live in an era of easily consumed art and this isn't necessarily the fault of creators. Big companies are in control of a lot of our media, and art as a corporate product is designed to reach the maximum number of people but is made with as few resources as possible. So inevitably, a lot of mediocre art gets made. I find it pretty unnerving how many books or movies I feel totally lukewarm about, or how many just leave my mind completely after I've finished them. As a storyteller I find that so tragic!

So, at this moment I think a really good story is one that provokes strong emotion. One with some very visible humanity, I guess. Just technically speaking, I also love a really tight, snappy story with a sense of humor and an element of surprise. 

What was your time at SVA like? How has it impacted your career?

I loved my time at school. I'm just a dweeb and have always liked learning environments. Art school was a pretty fraught experience for some friends and it was out of reach for others - I got lucky with my teachers and peers. It was definitely a huge financial gamble, though, and the fear of professional failure has been the fire under me basically my whole career. I owe a lot to my community but in a way I also owe a lot to that pressure. 

I know you're currently working on your first published book that is both written and drawn by you. How's that going and any updates you want to share?

Yes I am! Thank you for asking about it!

It's chugging along - it's a challenge in a way I wasn't expecting. My first book project had a script ready (by author Marika McCoola) and in a way it was much easier, even though the actual labor of drawing a graphic novel is not an easy thing. This time along the book is my special little baby and I want it to be super, super fun and interesting and emotional... it feels like I could tweak it infinitely and I wish I could! I'm also just finding it difficult to hold the shape of this story in my head. I've done lots of short stories and I can usually visualize those in full, but this one is going to be 250+ pages for sure and needs a lot more brainstorming, both on paper and in the literal brain. Thankfully, I really enjoy the process of writing and layout. The feeling of a story clicking into place after you've been fiddling with it for ages is the best feeling in the world. Sometimes I think I write just to feel that satisfaction. 

How much planning goes into your books and do you stick to it? Does a page ever dictate or change the narrative as you work on it?

It depends on the project! Artists either follow rules or instincts and I am definitely an instincts person. Traditionally a comic page has four or so steps - script, thumbnails, pencils, inks, and then tones/colors if the project asks for it. I used to follow this system when I was younger, but these days drawing the same thing over and over just makes me nuts and I find that it takes a lot of life out of my drawing. What I do now is write a rough outline, do a rough thumbnail pass on paper, and then I scan those into a digital program. I use them as a guide and move straight to inks, and then do a clean-up pass so I can retain as much energy as possible while improving readability. If a page or scene is giving me a lot of trouble, I will flesh it out in more detail. I also like to have some flexibility so I can adjust the narrative if it's needed. In my opinion, if you're bored while working on your own story, the game's already over. 

I don't find that a page changes the narrative as I'm working on it, exactly, but I often start thumbnailing with a couple of key "scenes" in mind and structure the story around them.

What advice would you give to aspiring cartoonists?

Unfortunately it's probably advice they've already heard elsewhere - just draw! Draw just for the pleasure of making marks on a page! Start with something small - adapt a story if writing one is daunting. Try not to get caught up in perfectionism. Try and make everything you do better than the thing before it. And try to hold on to the pride and pleasure of creating through it all. Artists make art because we can't live without it!

[alexthemenace]

Inktober 2019 archive

Posting all my Inktober 2019 pics cause it was the only year where I successfully did a drawing for every day of the month. And also used actual ink for these which I know is not required but I wanted to. Most of these were never posted outside the "Rebel Taxi" Amino so I wanna document their existence and share them with the public. My gimmick with these was to do them in 5-15 minutes as a challenge to come up with ideas on the spot. And also so I wouldn't spend too much time on these since my college projects took priority. I also had my purple Halloween neon lights on when I took these pictures so that is why they're all purple (minus day 31's drawing). Anyway, here they are in order of the days I made them.

Day 1: a generic east coast rapper on the mic rocking a show. Mostly inspired by Chuck D of Public Enemy and maybe subconsciously Todd in the Shadows. Oh and totally forgot that I was watching Vin Diesel's 1997 feature directorial debut, Strays, before I drew this which had a very gritty 90s NYC setting. At the time I was very impressed by his short film directorial debut, Multi-Facial, so I wanted to see if his feature was just as good (it wasn't).

Day 2: a defeated young man submitting to an alien/holy light shining down upon him. You could also interpret it as seeking of a higher power. Inspired by the CD artwork of OutKast's ATLiens album. This was later turned into a self-portrait oil painting for class which turned out really great.

Day 3: vaguely retro comic book Batman crashing through a window upon a crime scene. This was done right before I went to see Joker in theaters. The perspective and anatomy is meh but it was a quick drawing so I can live with it. Apparently I took 20 minutes with it according to my notes from Discord in 2019 which wow.

Day 4: Close-up of Cesare from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This was one of two drawings where I intentionally broke my 5-15 minute rule as I did this in about an hour. I used a reference of the iconic scene of him waking up but I still tried to be quick so the face looks less like Conrad Veidt and more like David Bowie imo but I'm still quite proud of it.

Day 5: a possessed woman. Took a wee bit longer to do but this was a fun exercise to draw longer hair like this (something I still don't have a lot of experience with) and to play a bit with perspective and anatomy without a reference iirc. She is also supposed to vaguely be from an older era far from civilization - hence the lack of clothing (she is tastefully censored though). Apparently I wasn't happy with how stiff she turned out back then but I think in hindsight it works quite well.

Day 6: a bald child from a mental ward stares at a man laying face down on a haystack. The girl was loosely based off Eleven from Stranger Things. The man in the haystack also reminds me of that one Junji Ito manga but I don't remember if that thought that came to me while making this or that's just hindsight. Also I didn't start with a finished concept in mind for this one so, very randomly put together.

Day 7: Nostalgia Critic 2Pac. As it says, it's Doug Walker if he modeled his Nostalgia Critic character after 2Pac's aesthetic. I personally really like this one. Have also been told he resembles a Beavis and Butt-head character which I see lol but that's ok. Apparently I was watching JAR Media's video on if Nostalgia Critic was cringy and for some fucking reason the idea of 2Pac came to mind lol.

Day 8: a baby with a dripping spear celebrating the head of a medium sized therapod dinosaur they successfully hunted. This one was inspired by Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal which I was a very big fan of at the time. Censored cause I like my Tumblr account and don't wanna risk losing it.

Day 9: Count Orlok from Nosferatu opening a door. I think it turned out nicely but don't really have much else to say about it other than the fact that I didn't use a reference.

Day 10: sullen twink laying bare on the ground. This was inspired by that iconic image of Maria from Silent Hill 2 laying down on the ground by the Heaven's Night neon sign. I think I just particularly like this kind of imagery since a mood piece I shot later that month incorporated a shot that is exactly like this (minus the lack of clothing). Also, the uncensored drawing actually shows nothing explicit since I intentionally had that area covered in shadows. But I worry Tumblr will think otherwise and smite down upon me so it's better to be safe than sorry. Also the perspective on his right leg is off so better to not see it in full anyway.

Day 11: gentleman combing his hair in a mirror that reveals a skeleton doing the same thing. The pic crops off the bottom part of the drawing which shows his legs and the tail flaps of his suit. But I always thought that part looked extra janky so I never include it. It was a rushed drawing anyway.

Day 12: Tim Burton inspired child sitting in the corner of a room, looking very sad. Supposed to represent being overwhelmed with life and emotions. I recall I also had Dib from Invader Zim in mind when drawing this. I don't tend to draw in this art style much so I'm pretty surprised even now how good it turned out. At the time I was doing a presentation for my Directing class on Tim Burton - so he was definitely on my mind for this.

Day 13: imprisoned droid waking up in the middle of the night. Apparently I was thinking of a bunch of movies when I did this plus I think Scud: The Disposable Assassin and my own avatar. Also I just like robots with this kind of thin pill shaped build.

Day 14: my idea of man that has fully evolved into only being able to eat, sleep, and stare at a screen. I didn't sleep the night before so I thought to draw a human that has devolved into a lazy slob who only eats and sleeps and as a result is incredibly out of shape save its legs to move around as it scours the land for any food before deciding to fall asleep for days. Thank you Discord notes from myself in 2019 for helping me remember this exact story lol.

Day 15: Undead Pan Pizza of RebelTaxi singing his pathetic little heart out. The design is based off of Jack Skellington (namely the proportions and spooky qualities like the stitches across Pan's face) during one of his more sad song numbers in The Nightmare Before Christmas. It's worth noting this era was sorta the last big hoorah for my obsession and fanboyism of Pan. I had a mild burst of being hooked one last time around Fall 2019 after losing interest in his podcast around the beginning of that year (a podcast I previously would follow religiously). I still liked him after this era and would definitely have periods of renewed interest but not to the same extent as before sadly.

Day 16: an imprisoned boy looking at the light coming through his barred window. This one used more pencil than ink to break away from mostly keeping it ink. It's very janky but the idea speaks to me. Apparently was also trying to think of a portrait for my oil painting class so this was one of the ideas that came to mind (didn't end up using it for anything though).

Day 17: a spooky little sickly old guy. I apparently was inspired by a character from Courage the Cowardly Dog when I did this. No clue which episode now though unless you guys can remember what he looks like.

Day 18: guy getting his face vacuumed off. I like that one episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy where Eddy's face get sucked by a vacuum. I got nothing else to say.

Day 19: self-portrait of me directing. It's a cutesy little drawing of me! And also the outfit I wore when I directed my mood piece that day.

Day 20: a large and vicious snake lizard hybrid. It's pretty self-explanatory. I think ultimately it's more just a snake with forearms and a spike tail. I guess I just was thinking at the time "what would be the ultimate snake?" Like a snake that can beat any snake. Also this was done on day 21 since I didn't have time on day 20 for it.

Day 21: large older guy hiding a knife behind his back. His looked is based on a friend of mine I went to college with and how he looked on set a few days ago when the light glistened over him. Although instead of a knife he held a script. He also vaguely reminds me of Al from Toy Story 2.

Day 22: sleep paralysis demon taunts twink. I like twinks, ok. Also I think just noticed something about that demon that I forgot I did but oh well. I think it'll be fine.

Day 23: guy with a very, very itchy head. I really like the pose and facial expression so it's actually one of my favorites here despite it being relatively mundane. Also, the itchy head may have been cause my head was itchy while drawing this but I don't remember. But I do remember part of the influence here was how sometimes great feelings of stress and anger would trigger an itchy head for me.

Day 24: a corpse brought back to life in a very rough and unfinished form. Obviously a bit of a Frankenstein's monster meets I guess Sally and Dr. Finkelstein from The Nightmare Before Christmas influence here. I may have had Pearl from Steven Universe in mind when I did this too since me and another friend definitely saw the resemblance.

Day 25: a twink who hit their face a little too hard on the bathroom sink. Twink. The full picture isn't really that gruesome imo (the face isn't visible) but I was trying to censor the liquids a bit for obvious reasons I already disclosed earlier. Also, he was loosely based on me but don't think too hard about that. I just had a bad day directing on set was all.

Day 26: Cute, unamused Hot Topic employee being bitten on the left leg by his pet lizard. Yet again another twink but this one's outfit is based mostly on my wardrobe at the time (minus the Jack Skellington shirt but I did/do have some pajama pants of him). And I guess I find reptiles cool so, only just noticing a bit of a reoccurring subject here (along with twinks).

Day 27: a melting zombie-like corpse crawling away from a puddle of acid. A tad more gruesome, sure, but I think it's a pretty cool drawing. And also it's like, a zombie, so it's not that inappropriate for standards here I hope. Apparently took a while to come up with an idea for this one.

Day 28: that one guy from Jacob's Ladder with a bag over his head and no legs walking with his arms. When I drew this, I had just seen Jacob's Ladder the night before for the first time and it became an instant favorite of mine. So, I drew a character from it. Him walking with his arms is based off of Mugshot's mode of travel from Sly Cooper.

Day 29: Jimi Hendrix inspired voodoo guy with a crystal ball. Pretty self-explanatory. Had fun with the texture and lighting although I was never quite satisfied with how I did the shading on his hair. The straight lines make his fro look like a porcupine lol. Regardless of that, it's a pretty cool drawing. Also worth noting is that during this time I fell back in love with 60s music. The Doors and Beatles in particular were major points of obsession for me. Especially their psychedelic period and ofc Jimi Hendrix was part of that era so that deep fixation for psychedelic and hippie music made its way into this.

Day 30: lizard amphibian fish mishmash girl with pony tails happily waving at us. This was definitely my least favorite of these and if not for my next and final drawing, would've been a lackluster way to end this. It's not awful but eh, just never really personally resonated with me. Also, she is wearing a seaweed braw so don't panic moral guardians of the world. For some reason Mrs. Bighead from Rocko's Modern Life came to mind when I drew this. Along with a certain friend of mind, @fishboigazer-blog, (which if you or a mutual is reading this lol hey).

And that's it for now since I can't fit more than 30 pics. Which is fine by me cause Day 31 deserves its own post since that one I did spend a few hours on as opposed to the rest of these. That one I also did actually post to Tumblr back in the day so I may just reblog it come Halloween.

If you actually read this far, thank you! I spent hours trying to put this together in a way that is satisfactory to me and hopefully gives plenty of insight into my process. This has been a very long time coming and hope to actually post more original stuff on here instead of just endlessly reblogging things.

[shinahbee]

Spring favorites 2023!

------------------------------------------ GREETINGS ------------------------------------------ May 27/ 2023

Hello, it's been 3 months now, but I’ve been busy with other things, mainly shop prep and convention prep since I will be attending my local anime convention as a vendor this year! I was so happy I got accepted because let me say the job hunting has not been going well and I thought that I was cursed or something.

I'm like well at least one thing turned out well for me this year so far... I have updated my shop content and would very much appreciate the support!

http://shinahartshop.etsy.com

thank you so much for the support if you purchase anything, and now on to the long blog post because there is a theme of trash people this month...lol.

Sheena

waiting for my friend to come back from vacation to finally finish the last of us, this is the problem when you watch something with another person and they leave for a while...lmao I watched the game play so I'm good in terms of plot but imagine if you never did.

I’ve been out of the drama loop for a while but I have been watching boys plant, which s the rebranding of the produce series...its still the same in my opinion, the way they focus only on people that are popular because they are trying to make you pick them, while others have zero screen time at all.

ugh...I watched it but felt nothing, not like when I really was invested in X1, they had so much potential as a group to grow but Mnet did them dirty and I'm still pissed off at that. I had no favorites anyways, these boys don't really know what they are getting into. The only one that surprised me was pentagon's leader Hui came onto the show as a contestant and how he got there was because he didn’t get that much work after coming back from the army and noticed that his group had become irrelevant, which is really sad cause I remember he wrote songs for the last produce series and now he’s on the show not as a mentor but as a contestant to compete with other younger singers who cater towards the new k-pop fans.

sigh...I hope everything goes well for him even if he doesn’t make it into this group.

--------------------------------------------

MANHWA/MANGA/WEBTOONS --------------------------------------------

Recap:

I’m just going to put up the ongoing list only. I also eliminated some titles because they are now completed or I dropped them for now Ongoing

Ongoing

Liveta (hiatus)

Pearl boy

Kings Maker (S3)

One night mate (hiatus)

Night fragments (hiatus)

The pizza delivery man and the gold palace

the foul

killer crush

Instatiable man (hiatus)

I became a lousy side top

tread lightly on thawing ice

Updates on ongoing titles:

Okay so some updates are happening I'll save the most controversial for last.

the pizza delivery man and the gold palace:

it's been on hiatus since January but it's finally back with some steamy scenes between woowon and seoan, they are both really precious and I really like how thier relationship developed over the course of the story so far. I have never really realted to another character before woowon and I'm hoping to see more of how he will overcome his life struggles, because right now I'm also going through some sh*t and it's really important to have support from people you care about, like seoan.

wowoon has not dated for 6 years and is a little overwhelmed by the affection seon has been showing him with and they are so cute....I'm going to present you with a spicy screenshot and they way they look at each other is...chef's kiss perfection. lol.

kings maker S3:

kings maker is back finally with wolf gang and shin's daughter, well I guess it's wofgang's baby by blood cause of the ritual in which they used his blood or something...I don't remember the details, but he got a cute baby girl and she's so adorable, I might draw fanart of her soon cause I can't resisit.lol.

so far it is through her point of view as she is went from small baby with incredible strength to a little toddler wanting to be queen soon and the fastest possible way is to get her dads to retire and married off lol.

look at her, she's so cute!

so far we just follow her around the palace and see what shenanigan's she's up to but there’s not actual plot as of yet, but it honestly just come back a while ago so it's really too early to say. all I'm hoping for is to see some more sys and randolph content, i’ve been deprived of that for a good while so that would be cute to see.

sigh ...now for the most controversial...Pearl boy

of course this would bring all sorts of people to the threads with it's recent chapters, I think the last time I left off was when dooshik was in the middle of saving jooha from the captives..the porn crew. In the end a human is a human and dooshik was brought down by the daehwi the twin with the long hair, with a gun...my man was shot and was lieing there getting beaten by ugly ass thugs. Jooha in this situation had realized that dooshik was the one who saved him from the same thing that happened 4 years ago and you get to see a bit of backstory behind that and how that interaction went. dooshik also had  a flash back to when his mother was around and how his life had fallen apart when his mother essentially only cared of herself and possibly put dooshik through a lot of things..ie. growing up fast and having to take care of a grown ass adult, possibly getting him to quit judo, the way that he looks at his jacket made it seem like it was something important to him that he had to give up.

I can't imagine everything that he went through and still believed that life is essentially still worth living, especially when he told jooha the best way to take revenge was to live a happy life. Ideally yes that would be the right way to go, but in this situation they are dealing with  a person with power, reporting him to the police is not going to do any good cause we all know one thing...police suck! they only speak money, they care more about getting a higher rank in the field than actually helping people in trouble, just reporting pilwon would only put him in jail for 1 day and then he's free cause bail money...

so it's not going to do any good, dooshik realizes this and after a heartwarming moment between jooha and himself while in the hospital bed recovering, he finally lost all his senses and became enraged. Let's just say that he used almost the same method the porn people used on jooha but with the twin that he captured " the short haired one -daekwang" who I honestly don't get why people like...you don't even know his character well yet. now this was the most controversial chapter that made people really hate dooshik, morally yes it was inhumane and nobody wants to see it because it's unsettling.

but  people seem to have forgotten this daekwang guy is involved with kidnapping young men with his porn filming crew since a long time ago, years ago when jaeil was almost involved with these people...but managed to get out of it. they drug these boys ( dooshik's ex boyfriend was drugged and ended up dying from overdose) and make them film porn to sell to old rich creepy men...this was their "business" and suddenly there are people defending his ass...I'm like what are you on about? dooshik should not give them a taste of thier own medicine because it's wrong...did you forget what he did not only to jooha but other people? some people were like he should have just killed pilwon and it would be fine, yeah pilwon should die, but these people are also doing his dirty work for him, that man never needed to lift a finger to get what he wanted cause he had subordinates that were desperate enough to follow him.

Don't know if you are aware but there are so much manhwa/manga/webtoons with a similar plot where the bad guys never suffered their repercussions and get off Scott free, I'm glad that at least in this webtoon people do suffer for their actions. Most manga that focuses on revenge in the end never follow through with it.

if your boyfriend decided to get revenge for you for being r*ped by having his men to do the same to one of your assailants ...how do you really feel? most people put their morals before what they actually would do and say things like yeah it's wrong, It's not going to change anything...yeah it won't change the fact that I was a victim, but I won't think that it's wrong...cause in a way what goes around comes around and instead of waiting for a higher power to deal with it, if you want something done do it yourself....am I against it? no...that's because i'm petty and to have my assailant feel what I felt in that moment, it would make me feel better, even if what happened would not change anything...I hope that makes sense.

me though...I would have chopped off his dick...

but some people...they keep saying he's turning into pilwon and that is so not true, that a-hole can and will probably die a mundane death after his lackeys aren’t around anymore. Dooshik cannot process the pain that he's in so he became a person using interrogation as an act of revenge and committed himself into torturing and murdering to get what he wants, which is to get rid of all of jooha's demons. Does he find this enjoyable? NOPE look at his face, he looks like someone who witnessed his loved one die. People started making sh*t up saying that he was enjoying watching someone get r*ped...and that caused others who can't read korean look at the raw images and deduce the same thing without reading the actual chapter and understanding the dialogue exchanged and looking at character expressions.

I can't with this fandom, I know every fandom sh*tty people but this one in particular has a bunch of them, I don't interact with anyone for the very reason that if you say one thing another person will be quick to bring you down.

sigh....it's honestly really sad to see someone whose so strong really lose his sh*t and mentally suffering after being with him for 80 chapters...I want to see this part of him even if is ugly since I have been saying since the early chapters of pearl boy that dooshik's character is one of a kind. this boy made me cry....I don't cry for any fictional being. lol

anyways i'll let you decide on what you think of him with that, the story is far from over so there’s lots to unfold still, so I wish people would honestly just f*cken wait till the story is done to start spewing non sense and making up false theories

see trash segment for examples of some dumb sh*t....

I swear these people are all minors or something, y'all should not be reading this at all if you think this is going to follow a shounen anime plot..eww. go watch your anime and stick to that.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to some spicy reads (21+) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- okie dokie onto some trash titles, lol. not really I have another segment for that, this months theme is " trash semes ...but are they really?" the answer is yes they are trash humans that do inhumane things but I can't completely hate them. in contrast to dooshik and what he was doing...the first two are literally absolute a-holes, they let you know that from chapter 1 onwards

because it's been three months and I had to narrow it down for once and just stick with a theme. forgive me if I forget some of the plot cause its been that long and I don't want to revisit these stories to get every detail since they are so long.

1)Beware of the full moon in march

"Ex-convict Park Mokhwa wants nothing more than to keep his head low and stay out of anything that has to do with his past. However, his new-found tranquility as a florist is shattered by the appearance of Kim Nakwon, corrupt cop and unabashed hedonist. Nakwon is sure that Mokhwa’s the key to cracking an important case, and he’ll do anything to get the taciturn man to talk. The best way to make someone confess is to cause them pain, and Nakwon thinks he knows just what’ll hurt Mokhwa the most. But despite Nakwon’s best efforts, Mokhwa continues to stay silent. It’s not often that life doesn’t go the way Nakwon wants it to, so his obsession with Mokhwa only grows stronger..."

Yeah the summary pretty much says it all, mokhwa is an ex convict that was wrongfully put into jail for killing his step sister's boyfriend and after his release was shunned by his aunt and uncle and is now just working a a local flower shop as a florist. he was approached one day by a cop named nakwon and was accused of still being involved with his ex mafia boss, whom nakwon is looking for.

nakwaon forces himself onto mokhwa and assaults him to really strike fear and embarrassment within mokhwa so that he will cooperate and tell him what he needs to know. Yeah ladies and gents this guy is a big duche from chapter one onwards, he's a corrupted cop and uses force and humiliation on suspects in order to get them to admit their wrongdoings and arrest them, but he's a dick for the assault part cause that was unnecessary, he just thought because mokhwa is technically bigger and a criminal that that's what he gets. I'm like sir..where is your proof? another reason for hating the police... nakwon will not take no for an answer and so he begins to do monitoring on mokhwa and even told his boss that he is under suspicion.

his boss is a nice lady who treated mokhwa like a little brother and so he calls her noona (sister) even if they aren’t related. nakwon came to visit mokhwa everyday and noticed little things about him that usually people will leave in their thoughts but he was just complaining about everything this man was doing form his customer service skills to the way that he dresses...

but because they visit each other everyday, mokhwa started to get accustomed to nakwon's company, even if he is unlikable. mokhwa had been shunned by his actual family and had always been alone so having this person come and see him every day, made him feel a little better. nakwon really wanted to get info out of him and so spends most of his time watching nakwon do work and sometimes providing help when his customer service skills were lacking. one day when nakwon came to visit there were a bunch of other men in the flower shop with mokhwa and it turns out they were mokhwas men when he was still in the mafia, the guys heard that he was out of prison and works here so they came to see him, it turns out his men have been doing other things since he was in jail and they became a moving service and does deliveries...this part I don’t really remember, think they are still in the mafia but doing other things.

mokhwa had to prepare some flower baskets for parents day and so there were a bunch of orders to fulfill which then his men helped out and nakwon reluctantly took charge since non of them knew how to do it. even if mokhwas men knew that nakwon was a detective they think he wasn’t a bad person and so treated him like a "friend of the boss" they even went to eat bbq and drink all night. nakwon at this time had started to have weird feelings towards mokhwa, it seems like he's just confused as to why he's so interested in him? they spent some time together in a small hotel and nakwon felt weird that mokhwa was the most exposed he's ever been in a bath robe and it made him want to tough him. mokhwa was so shocked that he just let him do it and so they just toughed each other and instantly regretted it after. nakwon took some time away from mokhwa and some news of the mafia boss visiting him made him doubt that mokhwa had nothing to do with the mafia anymore and so he felt enraged/betrayed by that and went to assault mokhwa again....f*cken dumbass, I hate characters that take their anger out on others because they can't understand their own feelings...its so stupid.

well anyways, he kind of felt bad after he saw the condition he was in and tended to his wounds...which makes zero sense after what he just did. mokhwa easily accepts the offer reluctantly, that is when nakwon realizes that even if he’s treated like utter sh*t you treat him a little well and he will forgive you...which made him feel terrible, well at least he has somewhat of a conscience..

nakwon was busy trying to put this case to rest and actually met with the former boss of the mafia but under a different name at a social gathering, turns out this gut had a lot of money and was starting a new business, but of course like all mafia is doing shady things under ground. nakwon got informed by one of mokhwas men that one of the old subordinates has turned on them and was going after mokhwa. mokhwa was then captured and drugged along with his noona and to spare her he open the door to the car and pushed her out before they knocked him unconscious.

the florist noona was brought to the hospital for treatment and someone witnessed her pushed  out of a car. Nakwon was dealing with finally arresting someone involved the mafia he wasn’t supposed to do anything with mokhwa's case but hearing that he knew about the kidnapping and risked a big shot getting let go and went to essentially track down mokhwa.

he finally was able to locate the warehouse where mokhwa was taken but during that time mokhwas was being torutured by one of his old followers which turned his back on mokhwa during his time in jail. when nakwon arrived he saw that person next to a beaten and bloody mokhwa and literally went feral...lol

if you kill/injure a person you will have to step down from your position but he didn’t care one bit...he made sure that mofo was dead! so in a way i'm glad he's committed. after he finally processed his feelings and loss, he bawled his eyes out wanting mokhwa to come back to him alive and broke his own had as an act of repayment for the time he injured mokhwa's hand out of anger...this guy is dramatic as hell. if you can't guess it, mokhwa is okay, he was barely breathing but he was able to be taken to the hospital in time when the other police officers got there. Nakwon had to return the gun a step down for the time being while this whole thing is being investigated and he was okay with that, after accepting the fact that mokhwa became his world he broke off prior engagements with his ex-girlfriend and began working at the floral shop while mokhwa was in the hospital at the time. When mokhwa was released from the hospital he was wondering why nakwon acted that way, he was half unconscious but still heard him pleading for mokhwa to wake up, he was sure that he was someone who will be alone forever but after seeing nakwon wait for him to return back to the flower shop he was glad that he still had a home to go back to.

and that is the end of season one, there is still many things unanswered like the issue with the ex mafia boss and mokhwa and how they knew each other, why mokhwa is not saying anything pertaining to his ex-boss and finally will we see nakwon in his true form..lol. I mean expressing his feelings for mokhwa now that he knows he's in love with him.

2)Love history caused by willful negligence

"The only flaw of actor Lee Wooyeon, who is on the road to success without facing a single slump, is that his manager never lasts. With a time period of three months to observe him as a manager. Choi Inseop becomes Lee Wooyeon’s manager in search for revenge. He was not the Lee Wooyeon who was loved by people, but another Lee Wooyeon. Inseop had to uncover the truth. Because he had made a promise."

Firstly, I just wanted you all to know that wooyeon let's you know what kind of dick he is right in chapter one, he does not get any better than this so don't expect much. He is the kind of person that knows how to manipulate a social situation in his favor without letting anyone discover his true nature. When I mean true nature, it just means that he has a lot of inner thoughts about people...I would compare him to the protagonist in the netflix series "you" the guy stalks a woman he's interested in and has this whole narrative of how she is supposed to be in his eyes. Woo yeon just has disturbing thoughts about people and sometimes when people push him over the edge they get their asses kicked.lol.

to be honest, I can't hate the guy,I mean how many times have you thought a person deserves to get their asses handed to them? or in my case how many entitled a-holes you had to deal with on a daily basis at work.lol. some times you just want to kill them and wooyeon does that...with a brick  in an alley way...

he's like i'll see you in the alleyway later my friend ...

His company ceo and his company manager were worried that they will not be able to cover his ass any longer so they decided to go look for the perfect candidate to become wooyeon’s personal manager. wooyeon had a knack for switching managers every few weeks because they keep quitting, it turns out they cant handle the pressure of dealing with wooyeon and he manages to get them to quit on their own accord. The new manager showed up pristine and on time, his name is inseop and he is a self proclaimed fan of lee woo yeon...this is going to go well, like any celerity this automatically does not sit well with wooyeon cause he could be a "sasang fan" - extreme stalker fans and so he was on guard and will eventually get inseop to quit on his own soon.

But as time goes by wooyeon notices that inseop knew exactly what he preferred in terms of music and expectations of a manager and it made him curious as to how he knew everything. Inseop claims he is a fan of his but sometimes it seems like wooyeon suspects that it wasn't the case because he didn’t get that feeling form him.

inseop was in fact somewhat of an acquaintance of wooyeon back in their college days and this whole scheme to become his manager was to really avenge his friend that was treated badly by his possy of friends in college. So inseop was planning on exposing wooyeon’s affairs to the public through a news article but it wasn't enough to change public opinion so he needed his " weakness" in order to expose the fraud celebrity. Okay just a little tid bit...i don't think public opinion matters that much, celebs do dumb shit on a daily, exposing someone isn’t going to stop people from liking them. they might be cancelled for that one thing but It won't really ruin their career unfortunately.

but this matter was a lot more complex than on the surface as inseop's friend jennie was already suffering from mental health issues and that whatever happened in college lead to her passing and inseop cannot let her death be in vain.

after getting involved with wooyeon’s life he just wanted the necessary info for his exposure and just go back to America like nothing happened, but he found out that the more involved he was with wooyeon the more he began to see certain good aspects of him, sure he was a dick, but wooyeon had saved him from a couple of sexual assaulters he had encountered in a quick stop bathroom. Due to some past traumatic experiences with a past attempt at assault he was reminded of the time when jennie has saved him then. Inseop didn’t want to be grateful because he was going to essentially backstab him when the time comes, but internally he was very grateful. Then these a-holes came back later and attacked wooyeon and he almost drowned, but inseop dived into the lake to save him, this made wooyeon even more curious cause in his mind he was like " isn't this what you wanted? you wanted me to die didn’t you?"

I'll mention this now but it's explained later on that wooyeon is a sociopath, so he does not understand the feelings of other people, he does not understand what is considered right from wrong in a social context and how to deal with people. so he does not get why inseop would save him even though he clearly does not like him.

I guess this was the starting point of them starting to be interested in each other, not romantically but you can tell it was some sort of attraction. Inseop had saved him again when wooyeon's horse for a drama was scared to death by something and started to swing wooyeon off, inseop injured his hand trying to stop the horse, he didn’t have to but he essentially took his role as manager really seriously.

This is when it was explained how inseop knew about wooyeon and their encounter, so jennie was in love with woo yeon, or phillip as he was known in America, he was a quarterback who played football and was famous for his looks and dated some cheerleader...ya'll have seen american shows right? but jennie like other people who liked wooyeon dreamed of communicating with him and essentially gathered info about him to present to her friends...lol as you do, that friend is inseop..or peter which is his American name. Peter had a frail heart which made it difficult for him to go to school and so daily activities, he would offent have to get check ups so that his heart failure will not worsen and was he was spending most of his time bed ridden. Jennie came to visit him and they became best friends, she would often tell him about phillip and what he looked like and make up scenarios about thier encounters. Inseop was curious as to what this "prince" looked liked since he can't go to school often he has no idea who that is.

this part is so cute to me...when peter's mom asked him to get oranges for her marmalade, he went to the local market and grabbed a bag of oranges and saw a bunch of boys play basketball across the street near the market, there was a guy who stood out amongst them and somehow...he knew that was phillip I don't remember if the ball almost hit him and he ran off and almost got hit by a car or something but phillip saved him and inseop tossed him an orange as thanks.

he quickly got home and headed to his room cause he felt weird after that encounter. lmao inseop silly...it's called falling in love. I really liked that scene cause it was such an innocent and cute encounter, like how a novel would be written. he them met phillip again when he was able to go to school, his father wanted inseop(peter) to be apart of the korean association  that meets every Saturday, mainly to be in touch with his heritage as a korean-american.

lol. can relate cause I had to go to chinese school on Saturdays. he then realized that Philip was part of the korean association as well and was in his class...and sat beside him...okay raise you hands...how many of you sat beside your crush in class?..like a seat away or in front or behind them...he was called by the teacher to read a poem and peter could not get those words out of him head, he memorized the sound of his voice to his handwriting and would steal glances of him when he wasn't looking, he didn’t tell jennie any of this because he wanted this moment to be in his memory.

if you can't tell by now, inseop despite whatever happened between them in college liked and have always liked wooyeon (Phillip). This of course is still prevalent in the current time line as he admits that he has thought about being in a romantic situation with him and dreamed of kissing him but he decided to but his feelings down for the sake of avenging his friend, which is a terrible thing to do considering what happened to jennie was not wooyeon's fault at all. She became delusional in believing that letters she exchanged with someone was phillip, but in fact it was a bunch of the petty mean girls that were apart of his clique that got a hold of that letter and decided to bully her by writing to her back adding to that delusion. When inseop pointed out that he doenot think its phillip cause he knows what his writing looks like jennie didn’t believe him, that added to the mental instability she currently has made her depression worse and she began to have mood swings. inseop didn’t know how to deal with her sudden change in temper all the time that it made him anxious..

okay PSA time, please get professional help if you are struggling, there are a lot of phone services you can use to talk to someone, if you don’t want to do that, write it out...write whatever comes to mind and don't leave it all inside, you will honestly feel a lot better. But unfortunately for jennie her mother was abusive and not even seeing a therapist was going to stop the abuse, she only had peter as her friend and it was hard for him to bare all of her suffering when he isn't doing well himself, I can't imagine how inseop must feel knowing his friend was suffering and there was nothing he could do about it. But blaming wooyeon is not the answer, so i'm guessing he's only doing this so that he can put an end to his feelings for both wooyeon and jennie, I think he knows in his heart that wooyeon is awful but he’s not a bad person and revenge is pointless when the person you want to avengee is no longer in the world you live in. So we are at the point where inseop finally got the " weakness " he was looking for and now he is planning to give that to the reporter and go back to America.

sigh...but its really just hurting him cause he's been in love with wooyeon for so long, even saying to himself that he's an sh*t person when he does not believe that. ugh...someone needs to protect this boy, I have read the novel and it has it's ups and downs, but i still think the ending was worth reading so I really hope this novel gets published in English, cause those original book covers are so beautiful, I want the whole set.

I will leave it a this for now cause season 2 just got started and we are in for a ride.

--------------------------------------------------------------- Trash segment (21+) ---------------------------------------------------------------- a.k.a the part of the series where I shit on your favorite manhwa/manga/webtoon etc. Joking but not really, you have been warned.

This is the new section where you’re going to find titles that I dropped and the reasons why I discontinued the series all together, fair warning if you triggered by people criticizing your favorite series then you may want to skip this section all together. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and not every series that is “popular” or well liked by others will be like by all...therefore if there is content that makes a person uncomfortable enough to stop the series, that is on them and please don’t judge them for their morals. to those who consider quitting series, if it bothers you then just stop! no one is forcing this down your throat you can quit whenever, but don't harass the creator on social media if you dislike their story it's disrespectful.

Trash List:

So to recap, the series that I mentioned dropping so far are

Love or Hate

Yours to claim

Wistful summer

Anti-p.t.

The sound of fire

Kiss damnation

Cherry blossoms after the winter

Chasing Mr. CEO

Who’s a sweet cheater?

Another sequence

Love is a fantasy

Missing love/married man

My reason to die

This month there is no trash manhwa to present only trash people...insert every possible eyerolling meme here...

yes, I'm calling out some people on their dumb comments that literally are just there to start something and they clearly have zero knowledge on the plot but saw a bunch of people commenting on certain screen shots and decided to jump on the bandwagon of hate.... I was going to blur their names but nah whatever...lol.

this person clearly does not read the manhwa, just saw some screen shots and made their own theory and spat nonsense....this is what I'm getting because if you actually read the webtoon you wouldn’t be telling dooshik to die...lmao I can't... it's so stupid...I hate it the most when people just call him "the seme" I'm like he has a name and if you don't know it t clearly means you don’t read it.

this person says it s a terrible plot, and goes on with really bad grammar that i have no Idea what on earth they are saying...using terms like the top and bottom..instead of their names when you are trying to prove a point... I literally have never seen these people before in any pearl boy thread it's like they came out the ashes one day just to cause trouble...I'm literally like...who are you?

this person just needs to leave...they have been tweeting dumb comments for the past two weeks I'm honestly sick of seeing this troll every time I use the hashtags, ended up having to block them cause the tweets were annoying me.lol.

but nothing tops the comments that are like...and this is why I don’t read it anymore and still provide screen shots of the recent chapter...well clearly you did cause you bought the chapter. LMAO. I'm like no one cares if you stopped reading or not...just stop, why are you still here? I had to mute some people on twitter because they started going on about it and it really pissed me off.

that's like waiting in line for 2 hours to tell an actor you hate them...you waited in line and spent money on this...you know when your teacher use to say there is no such thing as a dumb question? that maybe true but there are such things as dumb comments.

Please don't be one of these people, if you have a problem with the story and don't enjoy it anymore just leave, do not go on the writers/creators social media and cause trouble just cause you don't like their story...ugh.at the end of the day this is all just fiction...

Oshi no ko and skip to loafer currently watching these two only and so far really enjoying them, I will review it when I finish but that’s all I have to update so far. though I will say one thing, I did not expect things to turn out the way it did at the end of episode 1 of oshi no ko, that surprised me and I can see why people are hyping this up, but we shall see as it continues.

my friend had been listening to NCT's new unit's new song perfume...so that’s all I hear when we hang out together lol. ----------------------------------------------------------------

Ending note:

Omg sorry for the 3-4 month wait, I'm seriously burnt out on writing anything, to be honest I could have finished this sooner but I have been leaving it on the back burner until I felt like writing again.

  I've been preparing for a shop update and also a convention coming up...It’s my first time as a vendor! didn't think that I'd get in cause the selection is supposed to be a lottery, but I did and so now I have to make a good stock ready for that event in july. I doubt any of you are know of it, cause its a local convention for me, but i'll announce it on my social media closer to the date.

anyways, I'll try to be on time but can't make promises please let me know if you are reading this by liking the post, cause I feel like I'm writing into a void lol.

thanks, Sheena

[mortano-feels]

A lot of people I knew would be considered trans men or non-binary if we were teens in this time. But that was just internalized misogyny and living in a sexist community. Most of them got better and started loving themselves after they finished school. Having your brain fully developed is a game changer.

I knew three trans men. They all were die hard fujoshis and fetishized gays to a pretty embarrassing extent. They were more or less decent people until they learned about being trans and then "I wish I was a boy so I could be gay🥺🥰" turned into "actually I'm a gay man!🧔🏳️‍🌈" 💀

My other fujoshi friends tho grew up, got real jobs, stopped being twitter addicts and realised how cringe they were lmao.

As someone who's been in yaoi community for a long time I think it actually got much better about stereotyping gays as dick only m/f dynamic! At least in comics. Like ten years ago every single bl manga was about an alpha macho super tall wide as a door manly man and a baby boy fragile twink who was smaller than seme's leg. Even in dj where top and bottom canonically had the same body types.

Fanfiction and arts are still somewhat 50/50 about that [some fujoshis really like writing or actively learn how to draw to make their gay otp art, which isn't bad in itself but can be harmful in some cases] but at least now there's a variety!

Het content is shit more often than not. Hentai only got worse. And most lesbian content I find still sucks imo.

The generalization that a significant amount of fujoshi will become trans men is such a baseless, feel good assumption. I don't know many trans men who have been specifically interested in fandom mlm made by women. the way cis women consume + produce mlm works reinforce sexual stereotyping and assign stiff gender roles between men. Fujoshi, intentionally or not, reproduce m/f dynamics pervasively in mlm Fandom works.