#minute human figures

[heavyheavycream]

"cold"

[jeeaark]

Ok but imagine. greygold porting back and finds the emps panicking and trying to figure out to locate them and then turns around and sees they are completely fine. Except for a now beautiful full stash on their squid face.

Aight, I imagined, I loved, and I'm ✨inspired✨ Although perhaps not the cute stash bit as Greygold got a lil too GloomGold saying goodbye to Lae'zel, but have a silly nonetheless-

Bonus when Greygold's feeling better again:

[a-most-beloved-fool]

there are many neat reptilian characteristics that one can give Cardassians. I've seen shedding scales, tails and claws, scent marking, and people making them ectothermic.

but consider:

Color changing ridges. Just for funsies. We already tend to headcanon that the ridges and spoons (chula, if you prefer) turn blue when aroused, mimicking the make up they wear in canon, but it would be a bit interesting if the ridges were Fully color changing, a la chameleons. Especially if they changed color based on emotions.

Because their culture is very focused on the Good of the State, it would probably be taboo to have your emotions plainly visible (too much risk of your colors giving away the fact that you aren't 100% content blindly serving the state). I think it would be typical to wear make up to cover up the color changing scales, or to wear paint in 'positive' colors.

Soldiers and the Obsidian Order might even find a way to chemically neutralize the color changing, either temporarily or permanently - it could be far too much of a liability, if someone got captured and interrogated.

Most non-Cardassians would be entirely unaware that this was a normal part of Cardassian physiology. Novels might have oblique references to the colors when describing emotions, but any book that spoke too clearly of them would be almost sure to get banned. Bashir would be slowly taking notes about which colors in novels seemed to correspond to which emotions, but he'd have no idea that it was because Cardassians could Literally Turn Those Colors. He'd just assume their color theory was different, and that they were Really into color metaphors for some reason.

Could be interesting to explore the cultural implications and see what kinds of new mischief happens on the station due to it.

[b4kuch1n]

simulated earth (it does not matter)

transcript

[thenookspace]

God fucking damnit I misread sith Obi-wan as siren Obi-wan ONCE and now I have THOUGHTS about small town siren Obi-wan disguising himself as an eccentric music tutor/boardwalk busker to explore the ~human world~

[itsahotminuteinbetween]

I've never drawn a human before, here's an Earth doodle for practice

[bakuhatsufallinlove]

Who Wants To Talk About Japanese Orthography In Manga???

Me, it's me, I do, and I have been chomping at the bit to get the chance to.

Orthography refers to the conventions of written language to represent sounds. That may bring to mind the idea of rigid grammar rules or spelling standardization, but in a linguistic sense, orthography simply describes observable trends across language use. This isn't about authority--I am not going to talk about what schools teach or say people should write one way or another. This is about examining how real people use written language creatively to convey different things in popular media.

This is a huge topic, so I'm only going to use examples from MHA to highlight Horikoshi's style.

First, let's get a run-down of the main parts of written Japanese and how they tend to be used.

We've got kanji and kana; kanji are logograms, while kana are syllabaries. Kana refers to both hiragana and katakana collectively, but we will delineate the two from here on.

The Wikipedia page for kanji, describing this more succinctly than I'm about to.

For clarity, I'm gonna color-code each one.

Let's take a quick look at all three in action.

Chapter 65

By virtue of being the syllabary that grammar particles are written in, hiragana can get away with a lot that kanji and katakana can't.

You can write simple sentences in hiragana alone, like so:

The sentence is perfectly comprehensible like this, but it reads as casual or perhaps a bit immature, like the person is either leaving out kanji for speed or simplicity (like online) or they aren't confident using kanji. Although, the word hito (person) is extremely common and its kanji is simple, so this would probably look more natural:

But there are also kanji for the word kawaii, so you could also write it this way:

On the other hand, writing the whole thing in katakana looks weird as fuck:

bECAuSE iT kINDA reADS LIKE THis, or maybe L I K E T H I S

It seems almost alien, overemphasizing the phonetic sound of the words, implying there's something notable or unusual about them.

But what if you write it like this?

Both ways use katakana to put flavor on a specific word. The first puts it on person, which could be used in a situation where someone hasn't been named yet, but the speaker tonally emphasizes your knowledge of them--like "oh, you know who."

The second emphasizes cute, which could read as sexually suggestive, teasing/joking, or even a threatening tone, depending on the context. "Real cute, ain't they?"

Basically, the connecting grammar bits need to be in hiragana, but nouns, verbs, and adjectives can typically be written in any of the three systems. That introduces choice into the matter, and these choices may have some cultural connotations.

This is a subtlety in written Japanese that manga loves to take advantage of. Orthography contributes a lot to characterization and tone, so individual creators develop little quirks as part of their own writing style.

Now let's finally take a gander at some of Horikoshi's!

Kanji instead of hiragana for semantic emphasis

Chapter 48

Best Jeanist could have used only hiragana for the word "good" (いい, ii), which is a very common way to write it. But he's not just commenting that they are nice kids, he's talking about them as "goodie two-shoes" and even puts brackets around the idea. The kanji emphasizes the cultural idea of a Good Child™, a well-behaved, morally upright, obedient young person.

Kanji instead of hiragana denoting a serious or severe tone

Chapter 36

Katsuki's "you" pronoun omae being written with kanji comes across as markedly serious, especially compared to how his dialogue is normally written. This is actually the only time Katsuki says omae and it is written with kanji--all the rest are in hiragana, which tends to read as more casual.

Hiragana instead of kanji denoting a gentle tone or youthful/childlike language

Chapters 129 and 183

Katsuki and his omae show us how kanji use can be seen as more mature and serious; Eri's dialogue does the opposite of this by using hiragana when it could use kanji, emphasizing her youth and innocence.

Katakana instead of hiragana or kanji for emphasis or slang

Chapters 209, 207, and 2

As I detailed above, one of katakana's most common uses is similar to italics or all-caps.

But you also tend to see slang written with it, and depending on the slang, the word being in katakana can immediately clarify it from other, perhaps more standard meanings. In Jirou's case, her personal pronoun uchi can mean a couple other things, so it being written in katakana clarifies her usage. It could arguably also imply she is taking a bit of an argumentative tone--Katsuki's slang is typically written in katakana for both of these reasons!

Katakana denoting regional dialect/accent, nonstandard pronunciation/muddled speech, or confused articulation

Chapters 102, 208, 394, and 2

Ochako gets flustered and defaults to her regional Kansai dialect. Instead of "chigau wa" (Tokyo dialect), she says "chau wa" repeatedly.

Katsuki and Toga both drop the w- sound from a word. Katsuki says "ore a" instead of "ore wa," while Toga says the word "kawaiku" as "ka'aiku" and "kawaii" as "ka'aii." Notice how the katakana which represents the vocal omission/hiccup is actually smaller than the others? That's also a little stylistic detail for communicating this kind of nonstandard speech.

Izuku repeats All Might's words, chikara wo, in a confused daze because he isn't following All Might's point. By removing the kanji especially, this kind of katakana emphasizes him sounding the words out without recognizing the underlying meaning.

Basically, Japanese has some excellent ~vibes-based~ orthography because of how the language is structured!

Of course, you find this kind of thing in English as well--especially in the age of the internet, where people note that "how dare u" reads as tonally distinct from "how dare you." As you develop language fluency, you tend to pick up these things subconsciously more than anything, but it's one of my favorite things to analyze and compare.

These are just a few examples and my own interpretations of them. I'm sure there are many more uses and flavor-nuance I'm not picking up on. Since any given choice can be read a few different ways, context is very important. My examples aren't definitive proof of anything, but it can be fun to keep these kinds of details in mind while reading.

Shueisha and Shonen Jump surely have in-house standards for text, and mangaka must operate within that range. That said, I have indeed seen every one of these examples in other manga as well.

And on the independent side of things, doujinshi and online manga are basically the wild frickin' west--I have seen tons of totally crazy, highly creative ways to take advantage of the unique flexibility found in Japanese, but that's a post for another day.

I will probably write more about this kind of thing in the future when I can pinpoint some more observations, but I hope you all enjoyed the ride. <3

[silna-pdf]

Pinterest was feeding me a bunch of cute Retro-Futurism outfits so naturally I turned to Kara as my muse. It’s inspired me to want to create a design for everyone….. but that’s a big project

This was the first doodle spawned from the references, ft Alice too <3

Initially I was going for kind of an 80s idea of futurism but considering Kara’s silhouette in the game is more of a squarish-babydoll blouse shape I figured 60s fashion would suit her better. Alice would stay 80s inspired though

[zukosdualdao]

another thing about the crystal catacombs is that it seems clear to me that katara and zuko MUST talk a little more in between what we actually see, because when zuko says, “i’m sorry, that’s something we have in common”, they are both sitting-slash-kneeling, and in the next scene (after a switch to other plotty events) they’re both standing, and katara is apologizing for yelling at him. i don’t think it was a particularly LONG addition to the conversation (i imagine katara asking what he means, zuko wanting to connect but not really knowing how to talk about it further due to The Abuse Trauma, katara apologizing for yelling because she thinks that’s why he’s not opening up, etc.) but what i AM trying to figure out (for fic-writing purposes) is what caused them both to stand back up?

[andessence]

@desperuntion | plotted starter.

"Did he enjoy you, Daniel?" Armand asks, turning his head to the approaching figure in the blue glow of the television sets. He's muted the volume of two warring sets of dialogue to focus on his lover, newly awoken, and he's even curled his legs up beneath him on the couch to suggest that Daniel claim the emptied space beside him.

Did he enjoy you? Louis, he means. Daniel had stayed out until after sunrise, and so Armand had not been able to see him off to sleep when he came home from his rendezvous. (With Armand's one-time companion. They're all being very modern about the mutually felt interest. That's what Daniel had called it. 'Very modern.' Armand thinks the understanding seems more like that of the ancients.) But the glass of water and bottle of ibuprofen on Daniel's nightstand were the quiet vestiges of Armand's care, even after the coming of the day had relegated him to his coffin. And late to bed, late to rise, as it followed; Daniel had not emerged from his room until well after nightfall, before which time Armand readily occupied himself with his screens. Now, however, he's eager to exchange the TVs for Daniel's conversation.

He might have asked if Daniel had enjoyed himself, but knows that this degrading alternative will excite him. And Armand has to play along, show his approval of Daniel's extracurricular engagement; he can feel a quiet nervousness radiating from him the second he enters the room, even without peering into his mind. Perhaps he frets that in the hours apart Armand had changed his mind and revoked his permission? He must be assured that this is not the case — that even the giving of permission was in some way theatrical, unreal. There is precious little Armand would not allow Daniel, really.

"Come, sit. Regale me."

[flour-is-a-spice]

My roommate and I were talking about hobbies Connor would take up post-pacifist ending and we agreed that he would be a big fan of poker

[six-six-cicada]

unauthorized fucking thing.

[triglycercule]

im on vacation how can i make this about the murder time trio. mtt fresh out of a flight and the minute that they leave the airport dust stops horror and killer for the smoke break. because being around a smoker is like that. and while horror is dying and coughing from the cigarette smoke and killer is pretend coughing to make dust feel terrible theyre both simultaneously roasting the shit out of dust for being such an addict smoker. cancer speedrun GO says horror. refreshing his signature smell says killer. dust just glares at them and blows smoke in their face (horror literally takes damage he's at 0.7 HP)

[inkdrawndreams]

Once again the scanner has destroyed any semblance of shading I could manage. Anyway, sure is great that this incarnation of Man-Bat doesn't accidentally transform any of his relatives hahaha...

[carmsgarms]

I'm having a terrible fucking day gang send vibes

[djsangos]

this squid shows up to your social function says theyre your dj and starts off with the sickest mix of baby shark youve ever heard what do you do in that situation