#mononoke spoilers

[oneciro]

His new look is soooo cool (〃ω〃)

[dharmafox]

Guys. Guys. I think I've been looking at this elemental alignment thing all wrong.

Were we ever actually told that the Medicine Sellers themselves were Ri or Kun aligned? I don't think we were. I think we were specifically told that the Medicine Sellers' swords were Ri and Kun.

We don't really see those elemental alignments until the swords are drawn. Hyper invokes fire; the first Kusu really doesn't. If anything, he looks more water-aligned.

And Shingi invokes earth: he looks far more earthly than Hyper, more human, as a few people have mentioned (albeit still pretty nonhuman). By contrast, the second Kusu looks very ethereal - less human than the first Kusu, as has also been pointed out.

I'm not so sure the Medicine Sellers' main forms are meant to align with the elements of their swords. More than anything, they seem to align with balance.

First, their outward natures appear to counterbalance the alignments of their swords: fire/water and earth/heaven. These are opposite Trigrams in the I Ching:

Second (and I know I've said this ad nauseum), they're embodiments of yin and yang. They're masculine and feminine, human and beast-like, ancient and youthful (someone even said on here a while ago that the Medicine Seller's Japanese speech makes him sound like an old man).

They're also associated with Buddhist images of clear perception: the mirrors they both carry, the designs of their eyes which both invoke the Buddha eyes.

This kind of clear perception requires seeing yin-yang: being present in the now between past and present, releasing identities such as "self" and "other." It requires seeing the true nature of the world, the connections between apparent opposites.

Most obviously, both main forms use balancing scales to detect mononoke.

I think the function of the Medicine Sellers' main forms is not only to use the power of the Trigrams, but to use the power of balance and perception to bridge the gap between the heavenly Trigrams and the human world. These are the forms that communicate with the humans, the ones who come to understand their troubles, the ones who can sympathize with their feelings and even risk getting sucked into them. They're neither purely human nor purely divine.

The perceptions and understandings of these forms link the human world back to the elemental alignments: to Ri, Fire, in the series, and to Kun, Earth, in the movie. The main forms show these heavenly natures exactly how they need to be used to correct the earthly overbalances that created the mononoke.

[mistspinner]

brain has been going brr for several hours about how the Medicine Seller apologizes to Kitagawa/Karakasa after exorcising her (and seems chill with Asa including the totally-not-haunted doll in the ceremony and generally treating it as a friend)

[lychi-kinesis]

*SPOILERS FOR THE TOTK DRAGON QUEST*

I drew this as an excuse to draw Zelda in her new dress and then that never happened. ALSO THANK YOU @katydoodles FOR DOING THE BACKGROUNDS <3

[cheeseeatinggoblin]

that one scene in princess mononoke but it's the archivist and his boyfriend and i'm totally not crying over it or anything

[ananayellow]

Literally

[riotrenegade]

i need a gif of the split second scene where kusuriuri strokes his sword and i need it for entirely heterosexual and normal reasons <-Lying

[khoracat]

[valtsv]

i wasn't sure how to feel about this when i read it yesterday, because of how loaded a term "forgiveness" can be, but the more i think about it the more i love how it really demonstrates the sheer kindness of the silt verses' definition of forgiveness. it's not "you have to forgive to become a better person" - VAL herself says in the scene that this is referring to that she is not going to get better - but "you always have the choice to be kind, and that is what can set you free".

[ruiniel]

you're so pretty when you fall

[slowthypiglordblr]

The Ghibli Squad

They about to crash Julia's (Brea and Boscha's kid) costume party, but Azura brought along a mysterious potion only referred to as "Insta-Drake.

New Hexsquad au by @aweirdlatina

by @watermelonsand7

[dharmafox]

Been sitting on this one for a while, but it canonically makes sense now, sooo... 🤷‍♀️

[maqiisan]

zelink x princess mononoke

[c-kiddo]

honestly obsessed with this quote from the cool down thing from ep 1 of downfall from taliesin: "honestly, this is just caduceus' wildmother. this is literally just a version of caduceus going, "perhaps i wasn't clear. i'm hungry all the time, and i'm violent - hi, im nature. nice to meet you."" like, the idea that nature/the wildmother is not only beautiful and warm and holding (as depicted often with the wildmother and caduceus, she's often described as holding him in commune like a mother holds a child) but also the wild sea (for fjord) and also something that is always hungry. like the wolf that asha is, even when she's in the shape of an elf woman. and also like, i wonder if there's a connection there to caduceus being so thin (unhealthily thin, as described when he's first introduced. something like how uncared for nature gets swallowed up by vines, or dies without water. kind of like the savalirwood and the grove and and)

also inchresting to me that taliesin says this is a version of caduceus. like what do u mean by that. a version of what he worships? im guessing something like that. but also a person he’d be if he wasn’t treated with kindness? like how exandria is being ravaged and burned and destroyed, the air choked with smoke and ash, by the calamity? like hungry feral wolves?

and i am also thinking abt how the first conversation tmn ever have with cad they ask him if he’d be willing to kill people because he’s soft and among nature and standing in a garden making them tea, and he replies of course, have you seen nature? violence is extremely natural. (and thats not framed as something good or bad, its just true.) like word im hungry all the time and im violent! lets fucking gooooo!!!!!

[the-mononoke-facade]

Also Asa is gay as hell. Kame? Not sure yet if she's bi and oblivious or just very affectionate and not meaning to come off that way

Which is funny because I would've put my money on it being the other way around

And WHY DID YOU HAVE TO SEPARATE THEMMMMMM DAMN YOU

But yeah, holding onto Kame's old hair comb? Only sending her off when it seems to be getting too dangerous for Kame to stay in the interest of "not letting her dry up?" Kame being the target Mugitani and Awashima can attack to get to Asa to try to hurt her without attacking her directly? The blushing???

The shrugging off Kame's "oh doesn't everyone want to become a concubine" and going for "nah, fuck that, gimme the giant calligraphy brush" like

This woman is a lesbian

[sawceelcd]

oh god, its you

that i lie with