#kage rambles

[deaddreamweaver]

is this a safe place

[slumbering-shadows]

I finally bit the bullet and just made a new xbox account. My old one was originally made on my mom's email (I was very young and she watches too much dateline) and since it is a microsoft email, there is??? No way to change the email attached to the account without straight up deleting the email itself??? because Microsoft hates me personally i guess. Anyway that means that

1) when my mom changes her email password and forgets to tell me, I am locked out of my whole ass xbox until she answers me which could take anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 days. which doesn't seem like a lot but it is MY xbox. with MY games. and I should be able to play it on my schedule not hers.

2) I cannot personalize my account because it changes her email information. rip my mother's professional image because she still hasn't noticed I accidentally changed her pfp to a chibi stefano valentini like 6yesrs ago

3) if there's some sort of security issue where Microsoft says its time for 2 step verification, I either have to wait for her to send me the code from her email, OR, I have to get her to send me. the code. That Microsoft will text her. In order for me to sign into her email on my computer to grab the xbox code myself. both of which require both of us to be available at the exact same time bc those codes expire in 1 minute usually

4) cannot enter giveaways

5) my mother is petty and vindictive and I'm always terrified that if she gets into a Mood she will simply change the password and never let me into my xbox account ever again which will cost me (what I thought was) hundreds of dollars and literal years of progress

well turns out I only digitally own like 3 games. The rest of them are on disc or my husband's. So I'm not out so much money! However. There's no way to transfer my progress between accounts I don't think. Which means I get to completely replay diablo 3 (AGAIN!!! FUCKING AGAIN!!! THIRD FUCKING TIME!!!!!), the witcher 3, monster hunter world, and assassins creed origins.... from scratch. you know. huge long games. that I've sunk literally hundreds of hours into already. fucking hell

[kage-mochii]

Hello Kage Nation!!!!!

Here's a little doodle dump from the past few months. I've kinda been struggling mentally so art and social media in general has been pretty tough to handle. I do appreciate anyone sticking around on this blog tho despite its lack of activity. Means a lot that people enjoy my art enough to be willing to wait eons to see something new

I'll try my best to get some more art out! Maybe try to color more of them since I really need to practice with that

[mochiajclayne]

"If I die, we both die, Sasuke."

Definitely lots of layers going on to which I interpret as:

Naruto knows he doesn't want to exist in a world without Sasuke. His resolve is clear: he'd bear the burden of Sasuke's hatred and die together with him. He doesn't want to die like a loser but he doesn't want to die as the hero that killed his friend to protect the village, either. This is a blatant rejection of what Hashirama did when he fought against Madara. Naruto chooses Sasuke above all else. If Sasuke dies (literally) and Naruto lives, he would spend the rest of his days devoid of his driving force, even the prospect of becoming hokage doesn't fill the empty space which was originally meant for Sasuke--the one who reached out first and saved him from his own darkness. His bond with Sasuke became exponentially bigger than his worldly dreams.

Sasuke, on the other hand, would fall deeper into darkness. Dealing with loss, heartbreak, grief, misery. As much as he takes action on severing his bond with Naruto, when confronted with the idea, he couldn't handle it to the point that he doesn't want to record the memory of Naruto dying with his Sharingan. He knows how far he'd fall and he could never recover from it--he'd end up powerful enough to conquer all but like how Naruto finds irrelevance in a world without him, he'd spend the rest of his days with a resounding emptiness filled with hollow excuses until it runs out and he'd go mad. Perhaps destroy the world because his one and only died in his hands long ago and nothing else matters, be reckless and die in the process.

And both of them are aware of all of this because they were able to see each other's hearts. They would not function without the other. They're connected by wretched fate but their bond goes beyond the organized shinobi system that enabled their burdens and justified their twisted circumstances. At the end of the day, that bond led them to understand one another and they hope it would influence the same system that failed them in ways more than one.

[hel-phoenyx]

Not me realising something I have a tendency to put in all my favorite OCs is a peculiar relationship to the symbolism of their names

[barbaricjester]

hi, I'm Kageki (it/it/it/it/it/it/it/it/it/it/it/its)

This is me hitting you with the it/it/it/it/it/it/it/it/it/its beam

[quicksilverdrabbles]

If I made Saturn a follower would you guys like her

[kagedbird]

I made @quicksilverdrabbles cry at work from the angst that's coming down the line in Cicero Loves You, Listener! so uh

:) Hi.

[jjands]

Bosse: I'm so sorry you suffered because of me

Miranjo: no I'm so sorry you suffered because of me

These bitches also made others suffer and die, including bosse's wives (one dead) and living sons, but they only care about each other 🧍🔪 bosse is a creep

[deaddreamweaver]

i love how i drop off the map for months but my mutuals still are mutuals and reblog and like my silly little posts on the hell site

[slumbering-shadows]

I've got adhd but also chronic pain so unfortunately when my brain snaps into Must CLEAN mode I end up not being able to move for a week ✌️

[kage-mochii]

"We are our own company now. We asked to be let out. And we let ourselves out."

Any We Know The Devil enjoyers out there? Is it just me on this hill?

If you haven't seen this game I BEG you to watch a playthrough or play it yourself. It absolutely changed me, and it's such a wonderful message about LGBTQ+ and how even if people try to repress you, you deserve to be who you really are. You'll find your people, and they'll never be able to silence you again.

I'm not a religious person anymore, but this game is so beautiful with its religious symbolism, the way it portrays the way some religions see the LGBTQ+ community, how they try so hard to suppress it, mark you as bad or troubled. But there's always a little devil inside of us, aching for change, to be welcomed, to be loved. Maybe we should let her out sometimes.

[aerypear]

Something about this post rubs me wrong and I'm sure kage will articulate what it is later when they see it. 💀

i promise its not ableist when people say you should try things that arent kids shows and fanfiction

[reverie-starlight]

every time I scroll through dash and I see a mutual/someone I follow I’m like “oh I should boop them” and then when I check my notifs I see my moots and I go “oh I should boop them” every time without fail and every time I see a random person booped me I go “oh I should boop them” it’s a vicious cycle really.

[holyfailed]

❛ i’m pretty sure i didn’t meet you for nothing. ❜

"Kage....that was almost sentimental of you." Theirs was an odd companionship, she knew, one that would only further cement the Council's idea that she had gone rogue, a problem to take care of rather than a girl to guide, but nowadays Jordan didn't have much use for those propped up on their moral high ground. The goodness of strangers, the willful ignorance, had served her poorly in the past, had molded her into the woman she was today, one who found comfort amongst those that she knew would do what they had to to keep their people safe, who weren't afraid to get their hands bloody. And Kage was, if nothing else, certainly not afraid of that.

An odd companionship, yes, but one that suited her just fine.

"You believe in fate then? Predetermined moments? I think you kind of got the shit end of the stick with me."

[hotwaterandmilk]

I've been scanning the Yami no Purple Eye art book and it got me thinking about why I still feel so strongly about Shinohara Chie's horror-tinged works in particular. They don't have the sweeping settings, period detail or political intrigue of her historical titles, but they're still the works of hers I revisit most often.

I love the way Shinohara captures the physical and psychological horror of being a teenage girl. How truly overwhelming it can be to come into a new physical state and be hit by heightened strengths and fears. All while grappling with how to reconcile this new, hungry state with the "good girl" you were before the change. It's the way she combines this age-old puberty parable with an escalated 80s bent on 40s Hollywood female monstrosity that never fails to linger in my mind.

Let me unpack my rambling thoughts on this a bit and yeah they are pretty rambly I'm sorry I've got that neurological thing going on and it makes being articulate harder than it has ever been before. Forgive me!

Spoilers, bloody images and rambling re: Yami no Purple Eye, Ao no Fuuin, Umi no Yami Tsuki no Kage and Mizu ni Sumu Hana below.

The heroines of Shinohara's longer horror works are all seemingly average girls who are awakened to something horrific within them as teenagers (be it Rinko as panther, Ruka to psychic abilities, or Souko as an oni). Suddenly they're overcome not just by abilities but feelings, appetites, desires. They go from being good, average girls to young women battling forces within them stronger than anything known to science. There's always a boy there to support them through this, but they feel otherwise isolated or dangerous, unable to seek support from anyone else.

Yami no Purple Eye is frequently compared to the 1942 film Cat People and understandably so - in both you have a beautiful young woman descendended from "cat people" whose beastial side can take over when base urges overcome their normally sweet demeanor (though this film is absolutely not the first example of a 'cat person' in speculative fiction). The major difference, I would posit (aside from the more explicitly sexual nature of Cat People's change), is that Irena is an adult and while she also struggles with her identity and powers this battle is not new to her, she is hopeful for a way out but also somewhat resigned to the way things are.

Rinko from Yami no Purple Eye is new to being a panther, she is fearful of her secret getting out but also fearful of herself, of her purple eyes and her "unnatural" urges. While so much of Cat People is a relatively subtle look at female sexuality as a monstrosity in itself, Yami no Purple Eye shows a transformation that at puberty can be harnessed as a form of protection but also remains linked to the animal kingdom and not "enlightened" modern human society.

While Rinko's incredible strength saves her from all sorts of precarious situations, it feels new and out of her control. It isolates her from normal humans and it paints a target on her her back for Kaoruko, the primary antagonist of the series. I think what makes these pubescent power awakenings so alarming for all Shinohara's horror heroines is this lack of control. They didn't willingly trigger their transformation, they don't understand it properly, and they cannot control it. Ultimately each of them goes through a period of feeling incredible isolation from human society, which is common in a lot of speculative texts where the lead finds themselves estranged from society at large.

In Umi no Yami, Tsuki no Kage Ruka has the double-whammy of losing her normal life and her twin sister, Rumi, who has become deranged while coming into her own psychic powers. Although Ruka has the support of love-interest Katsuyuki, it is this love rivalry which put a wedge between her and her sister in the first place. At times, Ruka feels lost with all the destruction triggered by the sisters' transformation, held by Katsuyuki but with a 1000 yard stare in her eyes. Both Ruka and Rumi know deep down that only they can defeat one another, but how do you defeat your identical twin? How do you fight what is essentially your shadow self and your base instincts run riot?

It requires an understanding of the transformation, an acceptance of the change that has taken place, and a peace with what must come next - all of which takes Ruka the better part of 18 volumes to achieve. Mizu ni Sumu Hana takes a shorter route on a similar theme with the two Rikkas and the seeds, giving us another set of two near identical yet drastically different girls fighting for survival.

And being a teenage girl in these stories is very much focused on trying to survive. Another consistency across all these series that underscores the isolation of the heroines is the loss of those around them. Family members and friends are murdered or manipulated indiscriminately. Even if Shinohara's heroines try to seek support from someone other than their love interest, it is very quickly put to a stop by an opposing force. For a young woman in these worlds, struggling to understand her new body and changed mind, there is no option for support outside a male romantic interest.

That in itself is horrifying (though admittedly not as well-examined within text as I'd like, it certainly does feel like a comment) but it becomes a hell of a lot worse if your love interest's goals are at odds with your own. We see this with Souko in Ao no Fuuin who is revealed to be an oni that must survive by consuming humans. Her (false) memories are human and she has only recently learned of her oni nature so understandably she doesn't want to be a predator, yet she must eat people to survive. Akira, her love interest, rather than being a dutiful normal boy like Shin'ya in Yami no Purple Eye, is from an opposing family tasked with destroying her.

Eventually Akira's affection for Souko outweighs his duty to eliminate her and the two work together to try and figure out a way for her to become human and thus no longer require defeating. But initially in Ao no Fuuin, Souko is entirely alone with her growing hunger and power, unable to confide in anyone and unsupported by a romantic interest which proves just as isolating as it sounds. Like Rinko, Souko has gaps in her memory, a sensation that she's done something unnatural but a desperate need to be wrong about it, to be proven human despite all evidence to the contrary. As both heroines have entered their teenage years they have lost all they knew of stability, family and normalcy to have it be replaced by the uncanny, unnatural and unacceptable.

To have the body and mind become unreliable in your teenage years, to feel overwhelmed by forces you didn't know were within you, to feel like you're the only one experiencing such horrors... I mean it's all a big puberty metaphor isn't it? And yeah, to a degree these stories are simply turning the horror dial up to eleven on a cross-cultural feeling of coming into the power and bodily changes of adulthood before your mind can catch up with them (though in the case of Shinohara's stories every lead is shown to be attracted to the opposite sex and not explored as being anything other than cis, so there's definitely a lot left unexplored regarding pubscent queerness in her worlds).

All of Shinohara's long-form horror heroines seem to go through a period of grasping back for the safety and "normalness" of their childhood selves, of who they were before their body and mind betrayed them. Souko repeats to herself countless times that she is human not necessarily because she knows it to be true, but because she wants it to be true. She longs for who she believes she once was and we see similar grief for Rinko and Ruka, now awakened to their new lives as teenage monsters, as they reflect back on the comforting dullness of the recent past with a newfound appreciation and longing.

Ultimately, however, Souko was never a normal teenage girl. Rinko's power was dormant but she was always of panther blood. Rikka was always going to be used as a pawn between black and white dragons. Only Ruka, whose power was awakened after surviving a near-fatal bacterial infection, ever had an entirely normal human childhood and even then she must accept that what she and her sister had in their innocence can never be rediscovered. For some of these heroines there was never a "normal" to go back to and even for those that did have a glimpse at average life, it is ultimately gone from their grasp regardless. Time marches ever onward and for these young women there is no ability to wind back the clock, they must continue forward like all of us, even if their awakening to adulthood is more violent and bloody than most.

While everything I've touched on so far seems absolutely godawful, I think it's important to tie this all together with a bow of hope. Shinohara Chie's long-form horror and suspense stories put all their leads through the wringer, but they are never without hope. There is some degree of happiness out there for all her heroines, victims of circumstance and blood. However, it is not the happiness they had anticipated for themselves as adults and I think that is key to the whole exercise. Shinohara's heroines can at times be passive, clinging desperately to the idea that they can reverse what cannot be reversed. But in the end they must accept and embrace their new bodily powers. Just as we all must accept adulthood even when it doesn't adhere to our childhood hopes and dreams.

Rinko goes through absolute hell to try to get her happy ending and ultimately she doesn't get it, but her daughter Mai does manage to carve out a sense of happiness just by being with the man she loves. Souko can shed her obligation to the Kimon and be with Akira because her previous incarnation's daughter willingly takes on the role of heir for her. Ruka can live on but to do so must kill a willing Rumi and accept that what happened to them will ultimately be forgotten by the greater consciousness. Both Rikkas are revived and can choose their ultimate lifespan as the lost lotus flowers blossom once more.

None of these are your traditional happy ending, but what links them together is a sense of sacrifice. Part of the journey into adulthood, into surviving the horror of having a body as a teenage girl, is accepting the flawed state of adulthood. It comes at considerable sacrifice and it isn't necessarily what you dreamed it would be, but it is yours and you got where you are as an adult through the blood, sweat and tears of your younger self. There's a beauty to that and to Shinohara's flawed heroines and their often patchy narratives. Having a body can be horrific, it can be overwhelming, and it is inherently isolating... but it is essential to experiencing the beauty we do have in this world.

And idk I just think that's neat.

Shinohara isn't an artist to everyone's tastes and I do think there are strengths to her historical tales that perhaps aren't as present in her more horrific works, but her super powered horror stories manage to capture a type of pubescent alarm that a lot of other authors cannot master. While all these works do feel dated to a degree and present a limited scope of gender and sexuality, there's something I find timeless about revisiting the horror and joy of being a girl both cursed and blessed with the burden of a body.

-

Edit 14/10/24: I would like to point out that my use of the term "horror" here relates to consistent thematic elements presented in these series rather than their specific genre labels, roots in other sub-genres or relation to other foundational texts outside of Shinohara's oeuvre.

Shinohara's speculative work is frequently labeled battle/suspense manga (with some shorter works earning a 'suspense horror' description at their most intense) and I am in no way disagreeing with these labels or trying to relabel the above titles as strictly horror. Nor does this post seek to break down the full context of these titles as they fit into the development of 80s/90s/00s shoujo.

This post exclusively reflects my personal thoughts on the bodily perils faced by Shinohara's super-powered heroines in the aforementioned texts through a horror lens (which in turn reflects my area of focus back when I studied film).

Everyone will have their own intrepretations of these texts and these characters and that's what makes hearing people's opinions so interesting - always open to hearing yours if you stumble onto this. ^^