#missing it a little these days ngl

[kaiisers]

logged into my kpop writing acc and saw someone leave a nice comment on my first long fic and I’m 🥹

[riddlerosehearts]

i'm so casually/vaguely interested in good omens that i was sad about "season 3" basically just being a movie for about 10 minutes before i moved on. but i can't stop thinking that if people really cared that much about terry pratchett and his legacy, they might wonder if he would've even wanted a good omens seasons 2 or season 3... considering the book did not have a sequel and he literally had his hard drives destroyed with a steamroller as one of his last wishes when he died because he didn't want other people to capitalize on trying to complete and publish his unfinished novels... or they might also be more upset on terry's behalf that neil gaiman spent decades of friendship with him hiding what a rotten person he really was, and that if anyone or anything is damaging terry's legacy it's entirely neil's fault. also, terry's legacy consists of dozens upon dozens of other books that have nothing to do with that guy anyway!

[tartagliove]

little update!

hello!! I hope everyone has been well c: in my time away from this tumblr account, I've graduated from college, gone on vacation, and found a job! but I've also gotten back into writing a bit, and I've really missed interacting with my friends' fics and creations on here.

sooooo... I'll be coming back to tumblr! I'm taking some time to rebrand and set up a little return/birthday event, but if everything goes according to plan, I'll be back officially on the 17th of August!

I hope to see you then! ^u^

[recurring-polynya]

Good morning, happy Thursday, who wants to read a fun idea I had about giants in Soul Society?

So! I was reading this @littleeyesofpallas post about wuxing symbolism and was particularly struck by this passage in a section about the gate guardians:

There is no central guard but conspicuously Kirinji's name comes from Qilin, but apparently according to official height he's actually not nearly as tall as Kubo's drawings always made him seem. Not that he was on the same scale as the gate guardians even then...

No, I said to myself, of course not. He's powerful enough to control his size, because I was thinking of the part where Grand Fisher claims Isshin is too small to defeat him and Isshin responds with a lecture on soul reaper lore:

Now, bodies are not swords, but maybe the same mechanic applies! It certainly applies to Hollows. Earlier in this same scene, Kon mistakes Grand Fisher for a Menos Grande, and Grand Fisher is insulted by the comparison, but it's the same thing. Menos are huge and scary, but when they become Arrancar, they shrink down and become scarier. [Aside: I think this is why the Yammy-is-secretly-Espada-0 reveal doesn't quite manage to hit. It goes against the lore Kubo has been laying down for ages]

On a meta level, this is just a shounen storytelling tactic where X is an indicator of strength, but then later on, it's like "Reverse Uno! Not-X is the real indicator of strength!!" That's exactly how this zanpakutou-size thing is used when it's first introduced.

Exhibit A: Renji, a court jester, being impressed by the size of Ichigo's sword:

Exhibit B: A handful of issues later, Urahara, an intellectual (lol), sets us straight:

Genre convention or not, I think it lends itself some interesting world-building. Among low-powered people, size is impressive, but as you scale the ranks of power, it's kind of pathetic. Weirdly large people are like the petty bourgeoisie of Soul Society power dynamics.

But that's actually the perfect niche for a gatekeeper! In general, your typical Joe Shinigami is going to be able to take on just about any rando from the Rukongai, but maybe not a particularly strong ryouka. Ganju was able to take on Yumichika, after all. A single shinigami wouldn't be able to take on a planned rebellion, like in the Bount arc, and they've got to, like, sleep and stuff. The Gotei could, in theory, have an entire gatehouse and a gate patrol, etc, but that they are perpetually short-staffed as-is. Instead, how about one medium-powerful gatekeeper whose size makes them well-suited for fighting groups of people (or siege weapons), and who is going to be intimidating overall?

Furthermore, it's implied that Jidanbou isn't actually a shinigami. He wears a shihakushou, but his axes don't seem to be a zanpakutou (he doesn't release them and is distressed when they are destroyed). His neighbors offer this comment on him:

It's not quite right, though: after all, many shinigami are from Rukongai, including Gin, who is the reason Jidanbou is being healed at the very moment this panel takes place. I think what this guy means is that Jidanbou is of Rukongai, which is to say not of the Seireitei.

So what is he, then? Here's my big idea: I think that the gigantism in Soul Society might actually be a reiatsu-developmental disability! It's always been my impression that growth, especially for powerful people, happens in fits and spurts, rather than linearly, and that furthermore, big changes in growth tend to coincide with developments in reiryouku. Somewhere, either in childhood or adolescence, someone's spiritual pressure grows more quickly than their control over it, which results in their body growing uncontrollably. They become very powerful "physically", but their strength is all in their mass/reishi, which takes most of their spiritual pressure to control. This may end up limiting the upper end of power they are able to achieve and some cases means they get cut off entirely from the other forms of power used by shinigami (connecting to a zanpakutou, kidou). I think this might be especially common in children from the Rukongai, who lack access to education and training. I can also imagine it leading itself to cautionary tales in the outer Rukon that if you feed your hungry children too much, you'll end up with a giant on your hands.

This offers one explanation to why Jidanbou is a giant and his brother Jiroubou is large, but not remotely on the same scale (the Souls Data Book lists his height at 7'7" vs Jidanbou's 32'5"). There are a handful of other shinigami of larger-than-human height, which could be a milder form of this, or it could mean that some sort of special training or medical intervention helped keep their growth manageable. I think you can squeeze in a lot of interesting character insights into this headcanon, from Hachi (8'5"), who perhaps worked exceptionally hard in an effort to control his power and ended becoming incredibly skilled at kidou as a result (interesting that he, too, is not actually a shinigami). Or Oomaeda (6'11"), who gets by a lot on his family's wealth and clout, but is definitely on the weaker end of the lieutenant power scale. In his case, his large size kind of speaks to his entire "thinks he's classy, but is really just gaudy"/can't-even-tell-how-outclassed-he-is-by-his-peers deal.

Then, as a counterpoint, you've got Hitsugaya: immensely powerful from a young age, and one of the hallmarks of his character is how in-control of himself he is, down to having developed an actual visible power bar for his bankai. Whether this is some effect of his personality, or whether it's an intervention on Hyourinmaru's part, his growth has been choked off as a side effect. He's the direct opposite of Jidanbou, who additionally seems somewhat childlike in personality (crying over his axes, for example, or his attachment to his extremely dubious "rules of the city"). To me, it's very sweet that their friendship might have roots in opposite expressions of the same reiatsu-growth-fuckup.

Much in the way that the Shiba use some sort of magic that's distinctly different from shinigami-kidou, I guess I really like thinking about other ways power might manifest itself in Soul Society outside of the shinigami-industrial-complex. And also the way the Seireitei may or may not try to control those powers."Guard this gate!" they say. "We won't actually let you live in the city or give you city wages, but you can have a cool outfit and, uh...do it for the exposure?"

[birdyverdie]

School is starting soon!! I can't believe I'm excited for the stressors of classes OURGH...

[cynicallyneutral]

how do u like ur toast? i’m bored as hell and will do literally anything but draw. lemme know which and why, and what do u put on it (if u do)

[luthifer]

i already got angry abt this to my sister but ive been watching a lot of animal videos lately because period happened and i always want to cry on my period and since i can't do that normally I HAVE to watch things to make me cry or i'll just sit there vaguely uncomfortable and it gives me headaches

Anyways, the fact that there are some people who "love" an animal for years just abandon it when they move away. What the fuck is wrong with you. Not even bringing it to a shelter of any type, not bothering to look for a home for the pet you've had for years,,,, you just leave it abandoned on the street or in an empty house????

[jenthebug]

I got bounced again, this time because Nice MA saw my eyelids getting droopy as soon as I walked in the door.

I nearly fell asleep on the way to work.

That's 8 hours PTO gone.

💢 I HATE THIS 💢

I feel like I'm walking a tightrope between "able to work" and "disabled" and I would really like to fall on the disabled side of it but I honestly can't afford it (or can I? Budget project today?). There are days when I'm fine. And then there are days like today, when I get yeeted as soon as I walk in because I'm obviously too tired to work.

And I can't even go back to sleep because I pounded my coffee so I'd stay awake for the drive home.

I don't like being unreliable.

As long as I'm here, though, I'm gonna make it pleasant for myself. Time to get comfy, rest, and do some low impact productive things like catch up on calls and emails.

[widevibratobitch]

actually im kinda happy with it lol probably because ive given up quite some time ago but yknow. its not that serious.

[sharkneto]

Me on a normal day: Man, all ducks are so great. Just seeing any duck or goose is a highlight. Sure I've got some favorites, but at the end of the day, any duck is a good duck :)

Me, participating in @north-american-duck-poll: You're All So Wrong How Is Tumblr So Wrong About Ducks I'm Going To Fight All Of You Until You Start Voting For The Correct Ducks

[majihugs]

Missing Majima and his weird little moves ❤️

[wishmemel]

only way i got through the day was hallucinating megumi beside me the entire time

[notmoreflippingelves]

Every year, I tell myself that I should really consider taking off work for Father Brown premiere day, and then it comes around and I forget to do it, and I spend all day thinking about how I would so much rather be sitting cozy under a million blankets and going back to Kembleford than being forced to do boring work things.

[ofcowardiceandkings]

the sinus headaches are already not great but Extra Shit has been added to the pile and im just sat on that right now trying to figure out what the fuck to do

[snackugaki]

My beloved baby daughter child Venus de Milo, IDW iteration

getting my skill up to where I’m capable of doing okay realistic rendering that I now begin the journey of... learning to paint in that hazy, dreamy, airy, unfocused, soft, suggested form and shape style pray 4 me

just toggling my power level on and off because most of the shit I draw is for laffs and gigglitos and really, how much drawing do I really gotta do to land the joke? not a lot by my standards (because I am a chronic sufferer of Tired Bitch Syndrome)

... I know I’m gonna be so emotionally unprepared for where Venus’ story goes in the IDW comics, I feel it in my gibblets

spoilery tags maybe sorta? read at your discretion

[whoblewboobear]

It’s strange, I’m used to hyperfixating hard on things like HARD (beats my 2yr long beetlejuice musical obsession back with a stick) but Starbreaker- not even fantasy high itself took me over to the point of feeling like a teen about. Like I haven’t had this much fun in fandom in years. I haven’t like- interacted with people this much in fandom in years (which is still not enough but if I beat myself up about social interaction again I’ll jump off a cliff)

But there’s never been a concern of like “this obsession won’t fade for a while but it’ll lose popularity” and that’s fine and surprisingly it hasn’t. But it is different. It’s like adapting to it constantly as the thing itself changes even when there are aspects that you’d like to stay the same. Like that ‘I don’t go to this school of thought, but I’ll still take the class bc it’s interesting’ sorta thing.

And then there’s that feeling of WANTING to contribute but the thing has become such a beast that it’s like oooh I’m so out of my depths here.

Also like constantly having to look myself in the eye and be like ‘bitch you don’t have to talk or contribute to EVERYTHING’ and the sooner I accept that and accept that it is what it is, ill miss things, I won’t get enjoyment out of every aspect and every aspect isn’t for me and that that isn’t a bad thing, I’ll stop having moments of feeling weird and out of place. I have my lil corner and that’s okay