#just havent had many complete digital drawings of her yet :(

[joshuamj]

Was trying to use some color in my few remaining sketchbook pages, and i really like this Mira, so here tumblr u get a special treat that my other socials dont get <3

[ukeealyptus]

crocker corp arg day 14 & 15 recap!!! These are kinda long ones so im gonna put them under a read more :)

DAY 14

((sollux i love u even tho u only talk at 1am for me ily and im glad u liked our tea party  )). He can still read all of the channels in this server but is being polite and only talks in his and usually only answers the questions we ask in his channel, unless they're urgent, funny, or just seem to stick out otherwise. 

 Sollux is still kinda adament about remaining stuck in his position; he fears anything he does ends in death (we get it, you're a doom player). Dirk is still the same. Sollux visits him often because the AGT chamber is a pretty secluded area, and his coworkers are. . . annoying. Dirk proves better company. He can't tell us what Dirk's powers are being used for. 

 Concerning their own god tier powers, Sollux tells Daven't that "if we decide that you would be a good candidate we will be in contact". They know all of our classpects, not just 16. Sollux knows them because he has access to confidential information that only Condy has. 

 He deflected talking about the current AI or Felix by questioning why we love him. ((sucks to suck dude we genuinely like you.)) Apparently there used to be a worker named M who we would have really liked, but he's essentially dead now. Something happened to Mituna- he fucked up and isn't there anymore. Sollux constantly reminds himself that what happened to Mituna could happen to him.

 Sollux gave Felix leniency because he is pretty young maturity and brain development-wise. Felix is a brain copy of a troll, just the same as the current AI. He was really surprised to hear how Felix is doing now, and thinks it's amazing that he can comprehend emotions and love!!! Sollux will contact Felix and ask us to let him talk to other people when he's ready. 

 Sollux doesn't remember the outside world or his past. He knows CC merged human and troll society. He won't look at Jane's file, only knows that she's powerful and important. He won't look at his own file for fear that another IT guy will see him or it'll be a trap.

Although he can't remember much, we can remind him of the things that he loves. Like his lusus, the mind honey, and bees! Bees are soft and he loves them! Bees are an animal! Sollux has a friend who is always talking about animals!!! Tavros went into his office once to try to get information about Tinkerbull, which was blacklisted for him. Sollux is gonna show him bees :) 

Sollux isn't allowed to use his psiioniics unless there's a life-threatening corporate attack. He's not really aware of how caught-up in the timeloop he is, but he doesn't remember having that conversation before. That could be a good thing. Sollux stopped by again last night! Here's the news: 

 Sollux showed Tavros bees and he loved them!!! 

We can now trade mun embarassing videos for discords, so we've gotten tavros's discord! I don't believe he's responded to anyone yet, but it's there. 

Sollux loves bees. He also likes cats!!! We showed him pictures of our cats and he said they were cute and their purring is cute and cuddling is awesome.

 Sollux let us ask about troll biology!!!!! Trolls have naturally sharp nails on hands and feet that are a darkish orange (the same color as the tips of the horns) They also have fangs, with seadwellers having the sharpest. Height isn't correlated to blood color, sollux is just Really Tall, but physical strength is correlated to blood color, though sollux can Lift.  Body temperature is also dictated by blood color- lowbloods are very Warm. 

 Now for society: mutations used to be culled but now they're discriminated. These can include physical deformation, too many/not enough horns/eyes/limbs, and certain blood types (for example candy red or a mutated bronze with psiioniic powers) . These stopped being cullable offenses after integration with human society. 

 Vriska makes fun of Tavros for his stutter. Highbloods give Karkat shit about his blood. Sollux doesn't really know Karkat, just knows that he works in filing. Kankri got demoted for talking too much. 

 The ai's are made of brain scans just so that there's less opportunities for coding era and it's easily reset. It's also a punishment for some trolls, where they are completely rewired, cloned, and made digital. Both Finn and Felix are likely reversed scans of Mituna- this explains why Felix's god tier is a Witch of Life, the reverse of Mituna's Heir of Doom. 

 Wiped memories are kept in the database. They can be retrieved and returned. 

JANITOR KANAYA WITH A BENDY STRAW CANON WE DID IT FOLKS 

 Sollux can send a message to Dirk for us. Tell him that we love him and we're working hard. 

END OF DAY 14

DAY 15

We have a lil more information on seadwellers from yesterday. Apparently CC has two sectors that are completely underwater. Seadwellers use waterproof laptops, which are "like the laptops everyone else uses, but wet." Condy most likely has two offices, one above and one below the water.

lotta new discords today!!!!! We can now talk to Tavros, Nepeta, Vriska, Terezi, Feferi, and Jake. thanks to everyone who subjected themselves to public humiliation for this   

 While most of the characters havent been online yet, Tavros talked to a few of us earlier!!! He's extremely sweet. As far as information goes, there were a few new discoveries.

 Tavros is very kind and trusting, he trusted me enough pretty much right away to tell me about Sollux showing him bees, which he had been told not to share. He even blocked Ardent pretty much automatically when Isi told him to. 

 Sollux refers to Tavros strictly by his ID, even though we know that he knows his name. Tavros says Sollux just does it to be respectful. They are good friends, and Sollux told Tavros about bees!!! 

 Humans are ranked higher than bronzebloods within the CC heirarchy; they hold roughly the same rank as jadebloods. 

 Terezi tends to take the heirarchy pretty seriously, and seems suspicious of how we managed to contact her. She works in paperwork (writing and filling it in), and draws with sharpies in her spare time. She likes the other tealbloods she works with and also likes the janitors, especially Kanaya. 

The tiaras almost absolutely have some type of healing/sustaining power- Tavros's legs were broken, but they magically healed.

 It seems that Dave, Rosaline, and Rose still have yet to return. 

Lastly, daven’t and i are now official invitees of the tour, as a few members of the og16 elected to step down.

 END OF DAY 15

[shidiand]

How do you imagine Tenco's Story ending in your head?

that is a GREAT but UNEXPECTED QUESTION freshlybaked "spider" bread and i'm really happy to have the opportunity to try and answer this ageless question that has burned within all of us in the tenco's story iv waiting room community since 2013. it is an incredible coincidence (or is it? 👀) that i was just talking to Risa about tenco's this (edit: yesterday) morning so i am extra double super in the mood to talk about Tenco's Story today. so excellent of a coincidence is this that i am tempted to refer you to them in case you wanted to hear their thoughts on the matter that would probably turn out super cool, but that is neither here nor there; let us talk Tenco's Story.

i of course must mention my unadvertised and modestly detailed commentary on tenco's i-iii at https://shidiand.tumblr.com/tencos, presenting slightly interesting facts in an unwieldy and difficult-to-use format, but as it dates back to june 2017, i want to take some time to understand my feelings about the series once more.

tenco's story is a series that has a lot of meaning to me.

i took on my current name of shidiand in november of 2013. i was still in 11th grade at the time, 4th year of high school, and a very socially isolated person. i should say i was introduced to touhou in 7th grade, 2010, so i was still working through a 3 years-strong phase of trying to simultaneously both find an outlet for and bottle up an endless wellspring of awkward weeaboo-gamer nerd energy at the time.

i had my first real foray onto the internet in 2010, tried out twitter, followed some RPers and other people who had Cool Touhou Usernames. didn't really go anywhere. i had maybe 50 followers, i dont really know the count but it was definitely a) double digits and b) pretty low. didn't know what to tweet about. didn't know how to hit it off with others. i think there was basically maybe only 3 other people i ever properly interacted with. oh shit i was playing league of legends at the time. oh my god. i really did play league of .. oh my god. let's move on.

aw shit im super digressing amn't i. well.

this is just how it goes when i write essays on tumblr.com.

i'm afraid you're just along for the ride at this point so please do your best to enjoy it.

i got kind of tired of twitter at the time because i didnt know what to do with it. didnt know how to interact with people and didnt find the people i was following interesting, so i ghosted on out of there by the end of 2012. didnt deactivate it until like 2015 but at that point that was just burning away my dark history. anyways. november 2013.

--im taking a lot of time here trawling through old files on my computer, my tumblr blog, notification emails still lying around in my gmail inbox from twitter, the dropbox i didn't actually use but it had several tenco's story pictures on it but i deleted them so this was useless, ... to trace the timeline of this story and im really seeing a lot of remnants of dark history here you know? did you know i wrote a letter to a girl i had a crush on valentine's day 2014, slipped it into her locker, and anxiously hung around nearby at lunchtime to see how she reacted at lunchtime? i certainly didn't, or at least i made darn ass sure to forget about this incredible virgin incident and not remember it, ever, until i came across the records of it that i thoughtfully preserved for the me of 5 years later today. ok well now i have to read the letter to see if it was as bad as it just sounded there brb

ok so the good news is that it was actually very focused on being positive and full of admiration for the cool things she did instead of being a confession letter so i am very glad i was able to be a respectful chad 5 years ago, but the bad news is that the jokes, the actual sentences i put together. oh my god. but i mean. well. at least i got the spirit. its certainly a step up from this other person in my grade, WEEABOO ANDREW, YOU MAY RECALL THIS STORY AND HIS NAME FROM PREVIOUS STORYTIMES, THE MAN THE MYTH THE LEGEND who came to school on halloween once cosplaying kirito from sword art online and got very possessive about people asking if they could hold his black replica plastic sword, and probably worse, dropped a "will you be my girlfriend" letter into the locker of my homie and fellow trombonist samantha, who was a little bit nerdy, hung out with the anime-likers who were actually sociable and fun to be around so you can imagine why weeaboo andrew was into her, which had i) a direct quotation from SAO chapter 16.5 (origin of the famous "glopping noise" line), and ii) a condom. jesus christ. i dont want to talk about this any more. next topic.

i also put this drawing of iku nagae and her skarmory (actually an albinoss from 18 DRAGONS) on the other side of the letter because it was the coolest thing i could think of drawing at the time. and i completely agree with 2014 me because it IS super fucking cool. hell fuckin yeah

https://shidiand.tumblr.com/post/76301993387/iku-nagae-ft-that-thing-that-supposedly-is-a

alright that was a fun little trip down memory lane but lets get back on track. november 2013. i started anew as shidiand. still awkward, still learning how to express myself and looking for my place among others. i followed some touhou bloggers, hung around r/touhou a lot as well. in december i got my first tablet for christmas, a wacom bamboo splash. i still use this thing! the usb cable disconnects if you bump it so i have to find just the perfect position to sit in whenever i want to draw, but its served me well. anyways. i was just starting to play around with digital art but i remember, probably just before new years, for some reason i wanted to find out more about tenshi hinanawi (i don't remember why. tenshi wasn't even one of my favourite characters at the time) so i went googling and right there on zerochan i found this:

https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=23525572

this was during my dark souls phase so i just went BANANAS at the sight of this. this was literally the coolest image i had ever seen in my internet life. That image alone made me want to draw in hopes that I could make something as cool as that someday.

it wasn't immediately after but i soon discovered tenco's story, and it was love. kannnu was my very first artistic inspiration, and for a long time, my only one. i absolutely idolized them at the time. since then, ive found other artists to look up to, in a more healthy manner, but to this day i still look up to kannnu, still admire their work a lot.

i played around with drawing, followed the lives of people on tumblr, started reading touhou fanfiction, made a new twitter. i met a lot of new people along the way. some people i havent stuck with, some i cut ties with, and some people i still keep in contact with today. over those long 5 years of being shidiand, i found a name (i used to use shidian and then shid, but someone called me shidi once and i realized that was a lot better), how to reach out to others, how to express myself, places that i could feel included in. this is why i owe a blood debt to evelyn, who permitted me to kneel at her throne and was like "yea ok you can join my discord server u seem cool". evelyn, if you were confused by me ominously mentioning this blood debt/blood oath in a tumblr reply 1-2 years ago, this is the context. those 5 years were like a coming of age of sorts, that i never had when i was in high school.

and my love for tenco's story, that inspired me to draw that day, has been with me since almost the very beginning of my time as shidiand. from the beginning, i have always encouraged people to READ TENCO'S STORY, like the kin of those who cry PLAY MELTY or WATCH SYMPHOGEAR. i think my very first sidebar description was something akin to a prayer, written in very choral language, hoping for the day tenco's story iv was completed, ..., "meanwhile, furious shitposting". kannnu's work, finding delight in whatever they chose to draw, has been at my side, all along. my true mentor, my guiding moonlight...

so that's why i still to this day love tenco's story so much.

let's talk about tenco's story.

tenco's story is a story told through single pictures. the plot is vague, and details are sparse. dialogue is rare. we only know what has happened; we seldom know why. furthermore, there are many gaps between scenes that the reader is left to fill in for themselves; we see only snapshots that form an hazy outline of the events that occurred, and must imagine the rest. motivations and explanations fail me. but even with a barebones plot, tenco's story has themes, and if nothing else, those have to be carried through.

the main theme, of course, is journey and travel, but there are also other ideas, too. i actually think they start to change as the series goes on:

book i, where tenshi runs away from home, is about striking out on your own. it's a very fun and unpredictable journey, together with a friend.

book ii, where tenshi and iku are separated, forces tenshi to find and rely on companions of her own even more. but they do so, and they are able overcome hardships, and there is food and festival.

book iii marks a climax, reasserting tenshi's goal of finding the sword of hisou. i feel like the journey shifts from a travel (visiting) to a path forwards (making your way through). perhaps this is just something i get from knowing the locations from dark souls (Anor Londo, New Londo Ruins, the Great Hollow), but the locations start to give more of a sense of verticality, like they're emphasizing tenshi's climb to the summit. the hardships and enemies are the greatest they've been yet, and right when they near the top, tenshi and iku start to bleed. the book ends on an uncertain note.

if i had to describe the type of journey and travel that tenshi and iku undertake, there's this sense of wonder at discovering new places, wandering from vista to vista in delight, but also a sense of conquering, making it through a difficult patch. the sequence from pages 2-44 to 2-51, taken together, convey this sense of overcoming the best. it's one of my favourite parts. again, although the tone definitely starts to lean towards struggle in book iii, i think tenco's sense of wonder really is the heart of the series. there's no map of the world, no predicting where tenshi and iku will end up next. and through their travels, though they come across many enemies, they also find friends -- places of refuge, places full of life, people who will look after them for a few days, companions who will stay with them for the rest of the journey. at the end of book iii, we see a long haired tenshi with purple hair being impaled by the sword of hisou (3-33, see also this extra illustration that risa pointed out to me http://sinnnkai.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-195.html), and regular short haired tenshi continuing on her journey (3-42). if we ignore the out-of-story images where tenshi has the sword of hisou, tenshi has actually only ever used her sunlight blade (2-24, 3-26, etc), so i think that the long haired tenshi on 3-33 is a different person altogether. (if i had to guess, she might be the purple haired woman in the top left of https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=35443328 as we have never seen that woman appear anywhere.) she probably has something to do with the flashbacks at the end of book ii and she might somehow be short-haired tenshi at the same time, but this is just speculation.

however, in 3-43, tenshi's hair is rather blue, so i don't know if this is the purple haired woman or not. if it is, tenshi is probably still fine and closing in on the summit, but if it isn't, then it's very worrying to see a picture of tenshi without any of her companions. it's very ominous.

meanwhile, iku, while climbing the red carpeted corridor, is stabbed, and disappears for a few pages. there's a black page, a shot of a shrine that strongly resembles the hakurei shrine, and a picture of iku standing behind someone in a tux, with the line "In the past, I was saved by the lady I was serving, you see?". and then iku wakes up in a field of flowers.

i think what this scene makes clear is a theme that has continued to appear and reappear throughout every book of "being saved, being aided by someone's kindness".

i think another theme that is implied and has to be addressed by this story of running away from home is "return". something im imagining is that the reason tenshi makes finding the sword of hisou her goal is because she wants to have something to prove herself with, to vindicate her when she comes home. but i don't think she needs to prove anything, and i ultimately think that she would be happier spending the rest of her life exploring.

so i think this should be what happens in the ending.

open on iku's journey, and give her a long sequence of travel without seeing tenshi. underline her newfound resolve. she climbs to the summit with albinoss, and finds the rest of tenshi's companions fallen. and in the last room is sword of hisou tenshi, who has lost herself, and it comes down to iku to bring her back. after a difficult battle, when both of them are on their last legs, iku is unable to stand any longer. but at this moment tenshi sees her companions struggling to get back up and reach her, and that's what brings her to her senses. and iku gets to see how many friends tenshi's been able to make on her own, and they finally and properly reunite. together, tenshi and iku carry each other out of the last room.

i don't think it's necessary to return to heaven. as a conclusion, dedicate some time to tenshi and iku travelling together. they're on their way back, revisiting old friends who helped them along the way, enjoying the journey. their last stop is the house of the elderly nawis (1-42). tenshi shows off the sword of hisou; she decided to keep it not as a trophy to show her family but as proof of the bonds of her companions. surrounded by friends, tenshi and iku decide to part ways with each other, knowing that the other will be alright. iku drifts among the clouds once more, and tenshi sets off for the horizon.

that's the plot that i'd write/just wrote. i don't really expect tenco's story iv to ever come out, though. i mentioned my first sidebar description earlier in this essay, but of course, you can see that it's been changed. 2 years ago, i read my hopeful prayer once more and was struck with a terrible melancholy, so now it reads this: "having come to terms with the fact that tenco's story iv will never be released, i can still live, knowing that the spirit of the journey will live on through kannnu's original works [...] meanwhile, furious shitposting".

on one level, tenco's story is a story, but in the process of following it, i came to think of the work itself as a journey too. you can constantly see kannnu's improvement between and even within each book. they have always drawn whatever they liked; what plot matters in the face of "I wanted to draw a beautiful sky." "I wanted to draw a fantastic battle." "I wanted to draw Dark Souls and Monster Hunter and Pokemon and Brave Fencer Musashi and Bokura no Taiyou and Touhou."

its not really kannnu's style to go back and tie up old ends. they just draw whatever makes them happy. so as i watch them continue to draw beautiful places and fantastic creatures, new characters heading out on journeys of their own or just enjoying their everyday lives, it's as if tenco's story never ended. the limits and consistency of that world ignored, and a new one springs up; in a way, the world of tenco's, which had such thin boundaries, just gets bigger.

but even so, having said all that, i still see them draw that short-haired tenshi from time to time. it makes me happy to see them remember tenco's story with such fondness. often crossing over with orion or roar or elweiss, you can see tenshi on another journey.