#referencing a common type of posting

[rowanhoney]

I think curating my dash to exclude the majority of fandom and depth of the net bred discourse has saved me, personally

[weirdmageddon]

the shift in lore literacy in homestuck’s fandom

i was thinking about how the people who got into homestuck after it ended—whose interactions with the comic are in a static, archived state, not an ongoing thing—missed out on information that was more common knowledge in the fandom at that time. i don’t know if this is true since i’m not on tiktok, but i wouldn’t be surprised if it was. the fandom certainly isn’t the same as it was before.

ive found that many people reading homestuck now simply do not understand things in homestuck that were common knowledge back in the day, with calls for “homestuck literacy classes to become mandatory” in response to baffling takes because so many people just now seem to have glazed over the comic without absorbing important plot points, and i think i know why this may be. i ended up writing a post reflecting on my time with the comic, my perspective and how ive seen this change. i still think and write about homestuck because it still fascinates me. earlier i quote retweeted that call in my thread talking about the temporal relativity of dave and rose’s god tier ascension in the green sun, saying “my homestuck literacy is 100% so guess im doing my part as a teacher by pointing out whatever i think is really cool about it”. this post im writing now started out as a reply to this tweet i got in response.

i joined the fandom in 2013. i was 11. i had been aware of it since at least late 2011, early 2012 when my friend ryan in fifth grade told me to read it but i couldn’t get past the first few pages. i remember writing a journal on deviantart around this time (late 2011-early 2012) that was mocking people who typed like gamzee, which ironically was very karkat of me. and i remember someone on flipnote hatena i was following was making flipnotes with the alpha kids.

i dont know what caused me to flip the switch into reading it but 2013. i got into it somewhere between april (i think closer to april—i remember it being quite a span of time between the last update before HOMOSUCK dropped.) this was the most recent page the comic, meaning there was no > [S] ACT 6 ACT 6 at the bottom.

i got into it during a pause in updates, which looking into it, was the year 4 megapause. i wasn’t sure of the month until seeing the news post detailing the reason for the hiatus and the status report of the comic’s development at that time. pretty cool i could narrow it down by referencing the dates of those updates and the news post to correspond with the pause!

according to readmspa, the year 4 megapause was a 59 day hiatus from Apr 14, 2013 ==> (EOA6A5) running to 12 Jun 2013, [S] ACT 6 ACT 6. then for a few months there were the first updates that i was apart of the fandom for.

and what an exciting time during the story get into the webcomic! when the updates resumed in june, part 4 of homestuck had begun. here was a glimpse of the updates in that span of time before the next hiatus began in october.

that hiatus was none other than the gigapause, the longest hiatus in the comic, which started october 2013 and lasted for a YEAR, and i already posted about what happened on the date of return.

but here were the main events happening in the story at the time i first actually got interested in it. i wasn’t aware of the full context of them then like i am now, but i was looking at the most recent updates anyway with interest:

the alpha kids just emerged as god tiers from their slabs in derse and prospit, blown up by the condesce and caliborn / lil cal-possessed b2 jack noir.

the journey to the new session started 24 hours after jack called an early reckoning in descend—for context that was about when dave entered around midnight central time and before jade even entered. it’s pretty easy to forget that side 1 of homestuck basically happens within the span of a single day—and at this point in the story, the 3 year journey (which was also 3 real life years) had just ended. john and jade emerged from the other side of the yellow yard through the fenestrated plane on LOMAX. john’s real body was asleep upon arrival in the new session, while his dreaming projection out in the dream bubbles came across vriska’s ghost ship to learn lord english lore with vriska and aranea, and go on the treasure hunt where they found the ultimate weapon at the X mark out in in the furthest ring. in the dream john stuck his hand in the juju, started warping all over canon which removed his real body from the ship on LOMAX. he zapped around for a while but eventually zapped back to LOMAX, now awake, completely out of the loop of what everyone else is up to, and bored as fuck. what was everyone else getting up to while john was asleep?

jade was now once again within the domain of the green sun. im pretty sure her space god doggy essence comes with the power to sense what was anywhere within the domain of the session since her face looks like she arrived at that spot with intent (and she literally has jack noir’s exact powers from bec’s prototyping. also this panel). she immediately dispatched b2 jack to the edge of the incinisphere, defending the newly god-tiered jane and jake. i think even if they weren’t in any danger, she would have warped to them instantly anyway because she COULD now, and i can imagine she wouldve been sooooo eager to meet everyone. even davesprite comments about her rapid departure.

the pre-scratch refugees arrived during the only time serious shit ever went down in the nobles’ months-long inert void session. the condesce used her freak psychic bronze-cerulean powers to commune with jade’s bestial side and mind controlled her, which is super dangerous as someone with the powers of a first guardian. she then used jade’s powers to corrupt jane with the tiaratop. no funtime meetup allowed!

the trolls’ meteor with rose, dave, and the remaining trolls was pulling up into the new session with no way to slow it down. grimbark jade warped there once it was in the incinisphere and took active control. she warped everyone off the trolls’ meteor and sent them to LOMAX.

as john was losing his mind on LOMAX waiting for everyone, the meteor crew warped in. after 3 years he finally reunited with rose and dave, and at least saw the trolls in person. close curtains, end of A6A5. this was the newest [S] flash page at the time, one of my first impressions of this comic, and still one of my favorite flashes. knowing the context of the flash in the story only enhances the retrospective joy i have at getting into the comic at the time i did because it’s such an anticipated moment in the story for everyone, while for someone with no context of the story it was still enjoyable.

so that’s what was going on plotwise when i joined the fandom.

from this time, through those few months of updates and through the gigapause, i was familarizing myself with the characters in the story and overseeing the state of fanbase, getting myself acquainted with the story and wrapping my head around everything.

at that time i found that a new-ish group called colab HQ who were producing a let’s read homestuck series on youtube. hearing the voices and the pacing of it like that really, really eased me into it (maybe it was my adhd that gave me trouble actually starting it?). i caught up to a certain point using lets read homestuck and from that point was able to continue with the comic on my own, and by the time the gigapause came to a close i was fully caught up. i remember the rebranding of colab hq into voxus about a year and a half after i discovered them.

but.. back to the main point of my post. even these posts from hussie’s tumblr exist in archived states. how many new fans know about hussie’s old tumblr? i don’t know, unless theyre a new fan that must scour the internet for more deep more dives on homestuck and its fandom as a whole. but since hussie deleted his tumblr (it exists archived now on homestuck.net which, alongside from the unofficial homestuck collection, has nearly singlehandedly kept the most important relics of the fandom and lore archived), that page is not an active part of the fandom now, because it’s gone. it’s a pile of bones. it’s not living and breathing. it’s in an archived state. the whole thing is already there. homestuck and its fandom history is something you now binge instead of slowly consume and meld with as it comes out. it’s now this rapid information intake that you might forget about if you read it now instead of engaged alongside it. you’re not surrounded by people actively talking and theorizing about developments anymore. the ability to have those sorts of conversations during the ongoing development of the story reinforced concepts, ideas, and lore over and over as we tried to make sense of it.

being in a fandom when the author is still delivering the story is like nothing else. it allows you grow alongside the characters and engage meaningfully with the media and people in the fandom space around you. it feels like you’re participating IN the media itself, especially if you’re interfacing with the creator. it’s in always having something to theorize or talk about and speculate. and people become very aware of these sorts of forgotten story facts because they were applying the logic of the newest official post from hussie into making their sburb ocs or something and share resources and discussion posts about “what just happened in this update?? recap????” it was this cultural osmosis thing. i think this is why homestuck literacy is now at an all time low, at least from what i can see on twitter.

reading homestuck then vs now is like the difference between serialized shows with spaces between episodes to discuss stuff and time to reflect and learn and become attached to the story, narrative, worldbuilding and its characters, vs the netflix model where it’s all dropped all at once and people forget about it after binging.

at this point in time im getting the sense that “homestuck elders” now are no longer just people who were there since 2009-2010, but now also people who were there while it was still updating, probably stretching into 2014-2015. there are many sources of lore that were common knowledge in the fandom at the time that, since becoming susceptible to the deletion of content and link rot, and with the thanosing of mspaforums, are no longer accessible at the source. and a lot of people moved on after it ended, especially following the epilogues, the kate drama, and the whatpumpkin-sarah z drama, leaving a void of information behind if not for archivists and people such as me who continue to keep old facts relevant in discussions. my friend has called me a fandom scholar before and seeing this post i think i get what they mean.

EDIT: there is a series of video essays ive watched multiple times (because theyre that good) and they are exactly what modern fans need to see more of. they really help contextualize the comic and the themes present in it help you appreciate the basic fabric of homestuck a hell of a lot more. i highly recommend them and encourage any fan of homestuck to watch them, or someone considering getting into homestuck to watch the first one.

i think this is arguably as close to the “mandatory literacy class for homestuck” that person was talking about as you can get, especially the first video.

additionally, there is also the website https://rafe.name/homestuck which is essentially a sparknotes for homestuck and can help you follow developments in the comic itself.

[wombywoo]

Hello!!

I wanted to ask if you would be willing to share how you go about finding the references for the injuries you depict in your work? Your pieces where the CoD boys are sporting injuries, fresh and old, are always so lifelike and to my untrained eye seem entirely medically correct.

I have been trying my hand at drawing the boys retired and resting as well, but I’m finding it difficult to decide what work injuries to add and how to find the respective references.

How do you decide what injuries to portray? And how do you go about finding the reference material?

Your huge fan, amustikas

Oooh ok ok! I'm gonna post my answer publically because I think others would find this interesting too!

To preface, I am definitely NOT a medical professional, and as such, a lot of the stuff I choose to depict in my art is not so much..ah, medically accurate as it is....aesthetically pleasing 🤭

I'll start with scars, as a lot of us enjoy slashing up Simon's face with them, lol. Generally, I'll do a cursory google image search for the type of scar I'm looking for (be warned, these can be graphic) with searches like 'burn scar' 'surgery scar' etc. But I find that for things like cuts and lacerations, real-life scars are a bit innocuous and lame 🤷‍♀️ Unfortunately not everyone's skin wants to retain that perfect slash look™️😔

So what I usually end up referencing are costume prosthetic scars ✨

As you can see, they're pretty gnarly:

And you definitely don't have to go this intense, but I find that the dramatic, carved-like appearance of these translate better to art than a realistically healed wound 🤙

The other thing to consider is the prevalence of injuries in the military. From what I've gathered, the most common will be back/shoulder/limb injuries, just a general fucking up of the whole musculoskeletal system in general due to constant overuse 🤕 Hearing loss, shrapnel/blast/burn injuries are also common, as well as all the negative psychological effects :') goooood times (not)

I think it's neat to look up real-life examples of these things, but it can get a bit intense if you're squeamish...

SafeSearch is OFF, the horrors are REal 😳

So yeah...I tend to tone things down, all things considered...😅

For this particular piece:

I researched broken humerus injuries and treatment 👍 Poor boy 🥺(Yes, I am aware that I consumed entire articles and did a shit ton of research about this just to go ahead and put a female's x-ray in this fucking picture sdfghjkl rip💀😭)

But here you can see the actual process for applying the brace for this particular injury:

Neat, eh?

When I draw Johnny with a knee brace, it's usually a real authentic one you can buy on amazon:

Product placement blast!!!💥✨ Bezos, where is my cut?? 🫰

As for ones like this:

I tend to just...scatter some wounds around and patch them up accordingly, lol. Bruising around the eyes is common with any head injury, and surgical stitching will offer a nice puckered skin effect mmm 👌 (I swear I'm normal abt this)

I'm sure the medical malpractice lawsuits are stacking up for me now, but again--it's usually more about the ✨visuals✨

My parting advice would be--go nuts! Feel free to maim and mutilate and mangle to your heart's content 🥰

Thank you for the question, Amustikas! I love your art as well 💗🫶

[astronicht]

Hi I hope this isn't presumptuous, but so, that post you made about Tolkien making the lads leave their weapons outside the hall and CS Lewis thinking the hall was gonna get burned down by a lady who also wanted to kill herself... what's the historical precedent for that? Is there a trope in medieval lit where people like... do that? I ask because uh. I am obsessed with Children of Hurin and there's a scene where that like, happens. And I'm obsessed with that scene, and would love to know if there's like, cultural/mythic context that would enrich my knowledge!

OH BOY, sorry I'm getting to this late, it's been uhhh a summer, but one, this is a very good question!! And two, yes there is absolutely precedent, particularly in early medieval literature, and high medieval literature set in the early medieval (circa 500-1100 AD) past. I'll let someone else debate how often people actually historically locked their enemies into a hall and burned them, but especially in Old Norse literature (and if Fellowship felt like it leaned a little more on Old English literature, Two Towers, where Eowyn appears, felt a little more Old Norse) this is common. Off the top of my head, you've got many Icelandic family feuds ending in burning the whole family in their hall, like Njal's Saga (Old Norse), Attila the Hun dramas (yeah he's a big guy in the burning halls circuit, but actually not in the way you might expect) like his cameos in Volsung Saga (Old Norse) and Nibelungelied (Middle High German), and my vague recollection of a few Irish and Welsh versions that no search engine is giving up for me right now.

This, predictably, got long and slightly off topic.

Disclaimer: As usual, I should say I come from an Old English-centric background, and Old English literature is actually notable among all its neighbors for not burning down too many halls. Second disclaimer, all links are not proper citations, they just go to wiki.

Hall-burning in literature is, to my understanding, part of the concerns of a few early medieval cultures in which revenge is not only expected but in many cases legally reinforced and codified, and one in which conflicts could spiral to engulf -- figuratively, or literally and in flames -- entire families. Many medieval Icelandic sagas are focused on this exact type of destruction of whole families or friendship/community units. Most relevant of these to Eowyn, Two Towers, and the vibes of Edoras (since alas I am only partway into RotK and can't speak to Children of Hurin yet!) is Volsung Saga, which is set on the Continent, not Iceland, and actually has to do with Attila the Hun. As mentioned before, an incredible amount of stuff turns out to have to do with Attila. We will come back to him!

So, on the particular post you're talking about, a few people iirc have replied pointing out that the hall in TT is clearly supposed to be based on a hall from Old English literature, namely the hall in Beowulf, which famously did not actually get burnt down. And that's all true! I was not posting with much nuance; I was mostly having a joke at the expense of CS Lewis. However, I was also referencing a very very common trope in Old Norse/early medieval stories, and I personally think JRR was as well (AND I think Beowulf was also very consciously referencing the exact same motif anyway) (no one has to agree with me, a tumblr blog, on any of these points).

The thing about the hall when our heroes approach is that the scariest damn thing in that hall is Eowyn. Certainly not every hall-burning story requires a woman with no other recourse to set the fire (in fact, the "warrior band approaches unknown hall which might have a grudge against them" is a trope that can get you killed in a pretty homosocial environment, as I guess Aragorn at least was aware, being a big reader). Still, the presence of a woman who is swiftly running out of options does fit what I'd consider one of the or perhaps The best known version of the early medieval burning hall trope: Gudrun, who shows up in at least a dozen different texts in both the Scandinavian and the German language traditions, including Volsung Saga, a text which itself often gets paraded around as the basis of lotr (which I'm sure it is, in that JRR appears to have simply and very fairly based lotr on every piece of early medieval vernacular literature I can think of).

In a portion of Gudrun's story (which of course changes a bit in each retelling), after her first marriage she is unhappily married to Atli, who is none other than our main man Attila the Hun. After Attila kills her brothers for reasons (in one version, her father), seeing no other way to take the necessary revenge and no other way out, she kills the two sons she had by him, serves them to Attila for dinner, has Attila killed, and then sets fire to the hall with everyone in it. After this, she attempts to drown herself.

The self-destruction of this act is a really important beat, and has only gotten more-so as a comparison to Eowyn the further I've read into RotK (currently, I'm at the houses of healing after merry and eowyn take on the witch king). It's a lot clearer in the book than the films, for me, that Eowyn going off to battle was not so a straightforward empowering and/or freeing move, despite allowing her some agency, but more the one path she saw as available to her with which to die with honor (which was pretty much exactly what Gudrun was facing as well). Like Gudrun, whose first husband was a great hero but has died, Eowyn's romantic choice is a hero who is presumed dead (sorry Aragorn they did Not believe in your ghost skills). In fact, in some versions Gudrun does put on armor and fight with her brothers before they're killed. She kills Attila with her own hand, with the help of another man who needs to avenge a blood feud against Attila.

So while Eowyn didn't get forced into marriage to Attila Wormtongue (with apologies to both historical Attila and that one historical skald also called Wormtongue who was reportedly hot) and burn the whole place down, she's still trapped, and like Gudrun chooses destruction alongside her household.

Reading her arc feels so much like watching Tolkien write a fix-it for Gudrun. What if she got this one little chance, and this one other little chance, and this one more -- tiny little shifts in the narrative that allow her to get out, and not through fire, and not through death.

Anyway, this got away from me. I hope it added some context to the Children of Hurin arson case! Thanks for the ask

[trungles]

Cross-posting an essay I wrote for my Patreon since the post is free and open to the public.

Hello everyone! I hope you're relaxing as best you can this holiday season. I recently went to see Miyazaki's latest Ghibli movie, The Boy and the Heron, and I had some thoughts about it. If you're into art historical allusions and gently cranky opinions, please enjoy. I've attached a downloadable PDF in the Patreon post if you'd prefer to read it that way. Apologies for the formatting of the endnotes! Patreon's text posting does not allow for superscripts, which means all my notations are in awkward parentheses. Please note that this writing contains some mild spoilers for The Boy and the Heron.

Hayao Miyazaki’s 2023 feature animated film The Boy and the Heron reads as an extended meditation on grief and legacy. The Master of a grand tower seeks a descendant to carry on his maddening duty, balancing toy blocks of magical stone upon which the entire fabric of his little pocket of reality rests. The world’s foundations are frail and fleeting, and can pass away into the cold void of space should he neglect to maintain this task. The Master’s desire to pass the torch undergirds much of the film’s narrative.

(Isle of the Dead. Arnold Böcklin. 1880. Oil on Canvas. Kunstmuseum. Basel, Switzerland.)

Arnold Böcklin, a Swiss Symbolist(1) painter, was born on October 16 in 1827, the same year the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church bought a plot of land in Florence from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II, that had long been used for the burials of Protestants around Florence. It is colloquially known as The English Cemetery, so called because it was the resting place of many Anglophones and Protestants around Tuscany, and Böcklin frequented this cemetery—his workshop was adjacent and his infant daughter Maria was buried there. In 1880, he drew inspiration from the cemetery, a lone plot of Protestant land among a sea of Catholic graveyards, and began to paint what would be the first of six images entitled Isle of the Dead. An oil on canvas piece, it depicts a moody little island mausoleum crowned with a gently swaying grove of cypresses, a type of tree common in European cemeteries and some of which are referred to as arborvitae. A figure on a boat, presumably Charon, ferries a soul toward the island and away from the viewer.

(Photo of The English Cemetery in Florence. Samuli Lintula. 2006.)

The Isle of the Dead paintings varied slightly from version to version, with figures and names added and removed to suit the needs of the time or the commissioner. The painting was glowingly referenced and remained fairly popular throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The painting used to be inescapable in much of European popular culture. Professor Okulicz-Kozaryn, a philologist (someone with a deep interest in the ways language and cultural canons evolve)(2) observed that the painting, like many other works in its time, was itself iterative and became widely reiterated and referenced among its contemporaries. It became something like Romantic kitsch in the eyes of modern art critics, overwrought and excessively Byronic. I imagine Miyazaki might also resent a work of that level of manufactured ubiquity, as Miyazaki famously held Disney animated films in contempt (3). Miyazaki’s films are popularly aspirational to young animators and cartoonists, but gestures at imitation typically fall well short, often reducing Miyazaki’s weighty films to kitschy images of saccharine vibes and a lazy indulgence in a sort of empty magical domestic coziness. Being trapped in a realm of rote sentiment by an uncritical, unthoughtful viewership is its own Isle of Death.

(Still from The Boy and the Heron, 2023. Studio Ghibli.)

The Boy and the Heron follows a familiar narrative arc to many of Miyazaki’s other films: a child must journey through a magical and quietly menacing world in order to rescue their loved ones. This arc is an echo of Satsuki’s journey to find Mei in My Neighbor Totoro (1988) and Chihiro’s journey to rescue her parents Spirited Away (2001). To better understand Miyazaki’s fixation with this particular character journey, it can be instructive to watch Lev Atamanov’s 1957 animated film, The Snow Queen (4)(5), a beautifully realized take on Hans Christian Andersen’s 1844 children’s story (6)(7). Mahito’s journey continues in this tradition, as the boy travels into a painted world to rescue his new stepmother from a mysterious tower.

Throughout the film, Miyazaki visually references Isle of the Dead. Transported to a surreal world, Mahito initially awakens on a little green island with a gated mausoleum crowned with cypress trees. He is accosted by hungry pelicans before being rescued by a fisherwoman named Kiriko. After a day of catching and gutting fish, Mahito wakes up under the fisherwoman’s dining table, surrounded by kokeshi—little wooden dolls—in the shapes of the old women who run Mahito’s family’s rural household. Mahito is told they must not be touched, as the kokeshi are wards set up for his protection. There is a popular urban legend associated with the kokeshi wherein they act as stand-ins for victims of infanticide, though there seems to be very little available writing to support this legend. Still, it’s a neat little trick that Miyazaki pulls, placing a stray reference to a local legend of unverifiable provenance that persists in the popular imagination, like the effect of fairy stories passed on through oral retellings, continually remolded each new iteration.

(Still from The Boy and the Heron, 2023. Studio Ghibli.)

Kiriko’s job in this strange landscape is to catch fish to nourish unborn spirits, the adorable floating warawara, before they can attempt to ascend on a journey into the world of the living. Their journey is thwarted by flocks of supernatural pelicans, who swarm the warawara and devour them. This seems to nod to the association of pelicans with death in mythologies around the world, especially in relationship to children (8). Miyazaki’s pelicans contemplate the passing of their generations as each successive generation seems to regress, their capacity to fulfill their roles steadily diminishing.

(Still from The Boy and the Heron, 2023. Studio Ghibli.)

As Mahito’s adventure continues, we find the landscapes changing away from Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead into more familiar Ghibli territories as we start to see spaces inspired by one of Studio Ghibli’s aesthetic mainstays, Naohisa Inoue and his explorations of the fantasy realms of Iblard. He might be most familiar to Ghibli enthusiasts as the background artists for the more fantastical elements of Whisper of the Heart (1995).

(Naohisa Inoue, for Iblard Jikan, 2007. Studio Ghibli.)

By the time we arrive at the climax of The Boy and the Heron, the fantasy island environment starts to resemble English takes on Italian gardens, the likes of which captivated illustrators and commercial artists of the early 20th century such as Maxfield Parrish. This appears to be a return to one of Böcklin’s later paintings, The Island of Life (1888), a somewhat tongue-in-cheek reaction to the overwhelming presence of Isle of the Dead in his life and career. The Island of Life depicts a little spot of land amid an ocean very like the one on which Isle of the Dead’s somber mausoleum is depicted, except this time the figures are lively and engaged with each other, the vegetation lush and colorful, replete with pink flowers and palm fronds.

(Island of Life. Arnold Böcklin. Oil on canvas. 1888. Kunstmuseum. Basel, Switzerland.)

In 2022, Russia’s State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg acquired the sixth and final Isle of the Dead painting. In the last year of his life, Arnold Böcklin would paint this image in collaboration with his son Carlo Böcklin, himself an artist and an architect. Arnold Böcklin spent three years painting the same image three times over at the site of his infant daughter’s grave, trapped on the Isle of the Dead. By the time of his death in 1901 at age 74, Böcklin would be survived by only five of his fourteen children. That the final Isle of the Dead painting would be a collaboration between father and son seemed a little ironic considering Hayao Miyazaki’s reticence in passing on his own legacy. Like the old Master in The Boy and the Heron, Miyazaki finds himself with no true successors.

The Master of the Tower's beautiful islands of painted glass fade into nothing as Mahito, his only worthy descendant, departs to live his own life, fulfilling the thesis of Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 book How Do You Live?, published three years after Carlo Böcklin’s death. In evoking Yoshino and Böcklin’s works, Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron suggests that, like his character the Master, Miyazaki himself must make peace with the notion that he has no heirs to his legacy, and that those whom he wished to follow in his footsteps might be best served by finding their own paths.

(Isle of the Dead. Arnold and Carlo Böcklin. Oil on canvas. 1901. The State Hermitage Museum. Saint Petersburg, Russia.)

INFORMAL ENDNOTES

1 - Symbolists are sort of tough to nail down. They were started as a literary movement to 1 distinguish themselves from the Decadents, but their manifesto was so vague that critics and academics fight about it to this day. The long and the short of it is that the Symbolists made generous use of a lot of metaphorical imagery in their work. They borrow a lot of icons from antiquity, echo the moody aesthetics from the Romantics, maintained an emphasis on figurative imagery more so than the Surrealists, and were only slightly more technically married to the trappings of traditionalist academic painters than Modernists and Impressionists. They're extremely vibes-forward.

2 - Okulicz-Kozaryn, Radosław. Predilection of Modernism for Variations. Ciulionis' Serenity among Different Developments of the Theme of Toteninsel. ACTA Academiae Artium Vilnensis 59. 2010. The article is incredibly cranky and very funny to read in parts. Contains a lot of observations I found to be helpful in placing Isle of the Dead within its context.

3 - "From my perspective, even if they are lightweight in nature, the more popular and common films still must be filled with a purity of emotion. There are few barriers to entry into these films-they will invite anyone in but the barriers to exit must be high and purifying. Films must also not be produced out of idle nervousness or boredom, or be used to recognise, emphasise, or amplify vulgarity. And in that context, I must say that I hate Disney's works. The barrier to both the entry and exit of Disney films is too low and too wide. To me, they show nothing but contempt for the audience." from Miyazaki's own writing in his collection of essays, Starting Point, published in 2014 from VIZ Media.

4 - You can watch the movie here in its original Russian with English closed captions here.

5 If you want to learn more about the making of Atamanoy's The Snow Queen, Animation Obsessive wrote a neat little article about it. It's a good overview, though I have to gently disagree with some of its conclusions about the irony of Miyazaki hating Disney and loving Snow Queen, which draws inspiration from Bambi. Feature film animation as we know it hadonly been around a few decades by 1957, and I find it specious, particularly as a comic artistand author, to see someone conflating an entire form with the character of its content, especially in the relative infancy of the form. But that's just one hot take. The rest of the essay is lovely.

6 - Miyazaki loves this movie. He blurbed it in a Japanese re-release of it in 2007.

7 - Julia Alekseyeva interprets Princess Mononoke as an iteration of Atamanov's The Snow Queen, arguing that San, the wolf princess, is Miyazaki's homage to Atamanoy's little robber girl character.

8 - Hart, George. The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods And Goddesses. Routledge Dictionaries. Abingdon, United Kingdom: Routledge. 2005.

[taekooktimeline]

Between February 14-27, 2023 (photos taken around February 20-21, 2023); July 21, 2024 (posted) -

Tae shared some fantastic photos on his Instagram stories, including two with Jungkook. According to Tae's post, he was missing Jungkook so much that he reached out to him and asked him to join him in Hawaii. Not surprisingly, Jungkook immediately took a 9-hour flight from Korea to be with Tae. This shows the depth of their romantic relationship and gives us a glimpse into their private lives, which we don't often get to see. This private trip would have remained unknown to us if they hadn't chosen to share it. It's fascinating to see this side of their relationship beyond what is publicly advertised or documented. The first photo Tae posted showed him writing, "Jungkook-ah, I'm in Hawaii right now, come here / come quickly, I miss you. This guy kekeke he took the plane / got on the plane and came right away." It's really heartwarming to see Jungkook's immediate response to Tae's longing as he hopped on a 9-hour flight to be with Tae privately. This is such a beautiful and genuine display of their affection for each other.

translation -

Tae wrote on the second photo - “He’s so pretty, I’m dying / I could die,” and put that adorable comment directly on Jk out of every place he could’ve put it in the photo. And Jk’s firm neck grip!

translation - 

Another translation of both photos (seriously, how romantic is Jk to hop on a plane when Tae says he misses him😭) -

I’m not a native Korean speaker, so unfortunately, I may miss some of the language’s nuances. However, a few people on SM have said that Tae’s phrase “so pretty I could die” carries specific connotations, specifically a strong declaration, “I love him so much/ I love him to death,” and it’s not typically used in common settings. Essentially, what he wrote can simultaneously mean that JK’s beauty overwhelms him and that he loves him deeply, without boundaries.

However, with that being said, I also want to acknowledge some Korean speakers have cautioned this is a stretch to read too much into this. I hesitated but decided to share the below perspective because I know some will wonder why I didn’t include it. Ultimately, you can decide how to interpret what Tae wrote. For me, personally, I’m going to defer to the translation given by those translator accounts I trust, which is “so pretty I could die.” I don’t think it needs to be interpreted more heavily. It’s a beautiful, candid moment that Taekook chose to share with us, which I’m so grateful for. At the end of the day, the photos themselves make a powerful statement, and that’s what truly matters.

https://x.com/kookaayu613/status/1815683347924107380?s=46&t=StSwHjW0_Domk_lHUFMaCg

CTTO for the above SS

The tracksuit photo Tae shared was when Taekook went skydiving at Kauai Skydiving, which you can find more information about at the link below - 

https://x.com/btsmap_1/status/1814924850483347608?s=46&t=StSwHjW0_Domk_lHUFMaCg 

During “Seven” promos, Jk hinted at skydiving with Tae in his Spotify interview -

https://x.com/jk_97oqol/status/1814922271875870778?s=46&t=StSwHjW0_Domk_lHUFMaCg 

And how cute is this? Sure, you can eat Hawaiian pizza just about anywhere. But it seems Jk was hinting about his trip to twice reference Hawaiian pizza (and the second time he referenced it was when Tae came to support him during “Seven” promos during Inkigayo, and Jk played with his Chanel ring and hinted at living with Tae during the live).

https://x.com/moni_vook/status/1815830528869998931?s=46&t=StSwHjW0_Domk_lHUFMaCg  Recap of Inkigayo live - https://www.tumblr.com/taekooktimeline2023/724666248895545344 

So many of us have said Tae’s Type 1 photobook has photos that radiate intimacy. They have a sense of vulnerability, rawness and openness to them.  His posts today confirm Jk took some of his photos (the below doesn’t encompass all that are speculated to be taken by Jk ) - 

CTTO

Tae also posted to his IG these below photos (among other photos) from Type 1. I can’t help but think even more these specific photos were taken by Jk, especially now that it’s confirmed he was there. They have an indescribable quality to them that radiates a moment in time being captured by someone who adores the muse. Of course, this is just my opinion so please decide as you like.  

CTTO

Mujin, Tae’s hairstylist, was spotted at Party City with the balloons - 

Both Tae’s and JK’s managers accompanied them, surely to help ensure their privacy and safety on their vacation. 

K media went wild over Tae’s posts - 

Fun facts, Jk’s outfits info:

The first is: Paradise Found -  Mens Jungle Bird Tom Selleck Magnum PI Rayon Shirt (Green Leaves Blue)

The second is: Supreme × Emilio Pucci collaboration

https://x.com/archivekukk/status/1814918682021364084?=46&t=StSwHjW0_Domk_lHUFMaCg

And in the skydiving photo, Tae is wearing Jk’s sweater!

https://x.com/keeponlovingv2/status/1814910057160847675?s=46&t=StSwHjW0_Domk_lHUFMaCg 

Interestingly, Tae had shared these songs on IG that same month Taekook were in Hawaii  -

And this trip occurred around the time Jk sang “To Find You” three times on live. 

https://x.com/angel_hemaya/status/1813552618704429159?s=46&t=StSwHjW0_Domk_lHUFMaCg  Raw - https://weverse.io/bts/live/2-114998351  (9:34-18:04)

Lyrics -

[doberbutts]

Feminist theory is not the same as feminist activism, which is what I specificied in my ask, intentionally. There is feminist theory about men's issues (yes Bell Hooks is by far the most famous theorist in this space), and that is good, but it is not the same as activism to improve men's conditions in the here and now. I wanted to give a different perspective, and have a discussion about something that I feel is a problem that has lead to and continues to lead to a lack of progress for men. I mean, the other ask you got saying thst feminism persistently centers men just by talking about our issues, that proves my point. That is an incredibly common view. Not even working towards solving men's problems, just talking about them occasionally is considered too much. There is an obvious solution to that, which I said previously. Regardless, I am and will continue to believe in the cause of fighting to improve things for both women and men, because we all deserve better. Anyway, I won't bother you anymore, but I hope you know this was written in good faith about something that is important to me.

Theory informs activism, so if you want to see feminist activism that does what I'm talking about, find the feminists talking about what I'm talking about.

Respectfully, despite referencing the other ask, you seem to have not read it if your stance is still "what has feminist activism done for men", because I gave pretty direct examples there.

But you're right. That sort of feminism is harder to find especially nowadays. A lot of people's feminism regards men as "ewwww boys are icky" and "men are 100% solely responsible for all of women's problems". Which was the entire point of my post that started this conversation. It's also compounded by the fact that a lot of times this doesn't look as big and loud as rallies and marches, and so it gets ignored. In reality, the feminist activism that follows the theory I'm describing looks like parents teaching their sons that gentleness and femininity is not bad. Dads who wear nail polish and tutus to support their sons' interests. Boys being encouraged to watch and read the "girl books" and "girl movies". Dads who do not abandon their sons' need for physical affection as they age out of fear of homosexuality.

It looks like restructuring the ways we look at sexual assault and rape so it doesn't automatically exclude the most common way men are attacked. It looks like teaching young men that they do not need to take abuse from a romantic partner or family member on the chin just to be a man. It looks like teaching men that "masculinity" does not need to be defined by stoicism and that the concept of "manning up" is harmful. It looks like teaching boys that there are ways to communicate affection that aren't violent or sexual in nature. It looks like teaching teenagers that playful ribbing is one thing, but tearing your friends down all the time so you can be the biggest man on the block is toxic behavior, and only leads to more isolation because all your friends learn to be mean to each other.

It teaches young men that pleasuring your partner involves more than just a penis, and sometimes doesn't even require a penis at all. It teaches them that their worth is far less in the length of their shaft or the hardness of their muscles or the number on the scale, but far more how they treat others. It teaches them that height and beard length and shoe size and how much alcohol they can consume or their favorite sport team aren't indicators of "manhood", because they are men regardless of the answers to any of those things. It teaches them they can be any type of man they want to be, they don't have to be what the patriarchy tells them are their only options.

And I know this, because I have watched plenty of my butch friends who are devout feminists and have been their entire lives teaching these things to their sons. This is established feminist theory that has existed for a long time. Many followers of this theory do in fact practice what they preach.

Genuinely, I don't really care what you call it. If you want to call it "man's liberation", go for it, I don't care. But to me, this is just feminism. I'm not going to call it men's lib because the feminism I was taught by the women in my life covered these things. Same as how I don't use the word "transandrophobia" because the trans theory I was taught by the trans women in my life told me "transmisogyny" covered these things.

Anyway. I urge you to go read some black feminist theory and then spend some time talking to practitioners of said theory. It might just surprise you how similar the conversation is. It might surprise you to see how their kids and families interact. I'm not saying all black people, because not every black person who is a feminist is specifically a *black feminist*, but when you find someone who fits this description you will know.

[febuwhump]

febuwhump 2024 survey results

has it been six months since febuwhump? yes. yes it has. nevertheless, here's the cold hard data (analysis) of the survey from febuwhump 2024: feb five.

firstly, this year was our most popular yet! with 1417 works in the official collection across 329 fandoms, we made (and shared) 103 fics more than 2023, and 770 more than my first year running febuwhump in 2021! this isnt even including all the art and fics posted to tumblr, or wasn't shared during the event, which would put our total so much higher!

the prompt list had 4000+ notes and i received 115 responses to the survey.

there were 62 people in the hall of fame, up from 51 in 2023.

the blog hit 2,683 followers, up from 1,946 at the end of the 2023 event.

across two independant check, based on the average word count of 2,000 words per fic in the 2024 collection, and aware of the multi-chapter fics (some of which were finished after the event), it is estimated that 2.8 million words were written for febuwhump 2024. which is just. fucking insane.

now, onto the survey results!

firstly: in what way did you participate in Febuwhump this year?

with extra write-ins not pictured, fanfiction was the overwhelming winner with 92 responses (82.6%), followed by original fiction (22.6%) and artwork (11.3%). interesting to me personally is the 4 responses who wrote poetry and the not-pictured 1 response who created web-weaving! which is very cool and i would like to see it.

fandoms

according to the survey:

the most popular fandoms written for were the star wars universe and legend of zelda universe (8/115 responses)

21 responses included original fiction

the majority of responses also referenced more than one fandom, meaning less people stuck to a single fandom or topic the entire time.

according to the collection:

21 anime/manga fandoms were represented

51 books/literature fandoms were represented, 12 being specific star wars subseries

24 RPF fandoms were represented, including bands and minecraft servers

the most popular fandoms written about in the collection were:

star wars (all media types) - 253 works

star wars: the bad batch - 80 works

torchwood - 66 works

original work - 56 works

my hero academia - 54 works

why and how

next, there were a lot of really lovely responses about why participants took part in febuwhump, a few favourite and repeated responses being that it seemed fun, they'd done it before and so wanted to do it again, and they liked to write about their favourite characters suffering. also, multiple people have been doing it for three of the four years i've been running it (of five total), and several were encouraged by friends!

the majority of participants discovered febuwhump through tumblr, the admin's tumblr, ao3 fics and discord servers. a handful said there's apparently a google doc floating around that houses a whump event calendar. i would be interested in seeing that if anyone's got it.

did you participate in Febuwhump 2020, 21, 22 or 23?

the majorty of respondants were new comers to febuwhump at 66.1% "no" to 33.9% "yes". the majority of comparisons to previous years referenced a noticably bigger community, more interaction on the blog, and the admin being more "confident" (oh, you guys), however several noted that the prompts felt more repetitive or samey this year than they did previously.

are you a Febuwhump completionist or participant?

a fairly even split, 51.3% of participants didn't finish compared to the 48.7% who did. however, only 88.1% of those completionists submitted to the hall of fame.

for those who didn't complete, the most common amount of prompts completed was 2 (13.6%), 3 (11.9%) and 12 or 6 (6.8%).

the most common place to share prompt fills was tumblr (74.8%), ao3 (72.2%), or choosing not to share at all (7%). several write-in responses said that they were planning to share in the future but hadn't yet. and while 76.4% of people submitted to the ao3 collection, those who didn't claimed it to be because the fics weren't ready to be shared on time, they weren't following the rules so didn't add to the collection, an inability to find the collection on ao3 (i swear i'm working on it) or shyness/fear.

what went well/even better if:

the only actual criticsm of the event received was that the blog was posting in a "spam"-like way, to the point that the participant almost unfollowed (and another suggested a reblog tag so it could be ignored easier if people didn't want to see the works throughout the month).

several comments asked for a later deadline for submission to the collection/hall of fame, which is going under advisement, but the current position is that by doing so, it makes the event a different event. there are no stakes to actually create once a day if, at the end of it, you actually get 2 weeks of extra time.

another couple mentioned there being too many dialogue prompts and vague prompts. this will be considered during the next voting period and prompt collation - potentially, if i allowed less dialogue prompts into the final 100 vote, less would make it through to the official 28, however the voting itself is out of my hands (unless voter fraud occurs once again).

the main suggestion for improvement (8 times out of 44 suggestions) was for an additional mod to help with reblogging more. (which imo flies in the face of the "spamming" from earlier, but there is surely a middle ground). this is likely to not happen, because i like running the event alone, despite the major burnout i receive every single year without fail. but thanks for your concern lol.

on discord:

31.3% of participants were in the discord server (which, this year, ignored the first year's 100 user cap and had 172 total users).

43.6% of people who didn't join the server did so because they hadn't heard of it, while the majority didn't join because they were either shy (the minorty) or don't use/like discord (the vast majority). i don't know if tumblr still does groupchats and if that would be a viable alternative, or if there is another forum/chat location that would work better (or to have in tandem), but i am open to suggestions.

of the people who were in the channel, most (33.3%) used it "rarely", followed by "most days" (25%) and "for half the month" (22.2%)

febuwhump 2025

the majority of responses wanted next year's colour scheme to either be red or green, but shout out to everyone who wanted orange, the person who said "children's hospital" and the other person who gave me this specific hex code: #4BEC13

which is vile, but also another vote for green.

finally, here are my favourite suggestions for febuwhump 2025's colloquial name. previously, we have endured febuwhump 2: electric boogaloo, febuwhump 3: tokyo drift, fourbuwhump and feb five.

febuwhump 6 suggestions:

fe6uwhump (which, i'll be honest, is a real contender)

"I don't know"

febuwhump 666

febuwhump: revenge of the sixth

"I don't know, sorry"

"febuwhump sex and make all the prompts kinky"

"??? i have been thinking about this for 10 mins"

febuwhump 6(9)

feBEEwhump

"i am bad at this"

"could not care less"

febuwhump feb five 2: electric boogaloo

apparently, i accidently made this a mandatory question and that made some of you mad :(

and that's the wrap up survey, six months late! any questions/queries/want to see some of that cold hard data? send me an ask. i'll actually respond to it i swear! (probably!)

[ooctlt]

I really like this blog most of the time, but sometimes you take reasonable earnest asks that are trying to be thoughtful, and are such a dick about it.

Like if it's the characters being dicks, fine. But you could say something in the tags or post to indicate you're not just viciously mocking someone for trying to engage.

I still haven't submitted an ask since seeing your response that led to comments along the lines of "anon should go die in a hole" for asking, pretty reasonably, why harrow would want to stay with people she didn't seem to like or want to be around or interact with.

(i know, because she does like them and does want them around but doesn't know how to show it) but it's an ASK blog. How do we hear that from her unless someone ASKS

i understand it might be surprising and a bit hurtful to see an ask answered with the characters being mean/flippant, and for that i do apologize that it wasnt made clear that it would be a common thing in this blog. id like to issue the disclaimer: there is always the possibility that the characters here will not take your question well. they might answer rudely, and instigating behavior is not only encouraged but expected on both ends. this does not reflect my personal opinions as the artist; there are over 250 asks even after i constantly compile duplicates, and i will answer the asks that i personally like.

i will assume you are referencing the two most recent posts where gideon acts rudely and i repost an old panel: for the former i thought anon was really sweet for being so heartfelt and encouraging, but gideon isnt the kind of person who needs to be told shes brave for doing that by a stranger. it was a simple act of survival. and harrow is still very much in the passive deprogramming phase. the latter response was meant to kickstart (spoilers) what i will call the "dicks last resort" arc, where i clean out the inbox and share more simple, low effort, but potentially rude responses*. this is because i have roughly drawn almost daily for 87 days straight, and would like to recuperate without being burnt out because i love this blog and i love art.

this leads me to my next point: some of these answers will be curt and short and rude, because they are easy to draw. if i only prioritized the "good" asks or to make certain ask responses kinder, or longer, it wouldnt be a daily blog. it would be a monthly blog where 5 asks get answered among 100s. i didnt anticipate people asking about harrows piercings, and i considered shutting it down by just having harrow say she likes them etc. but i did want to give more insight into harrows character even if she wouldnt say so herself, and that took roughly 3 full unemployed nights. if i treated every ask in good faith the same way i wouldnt have time for anything else, because they take more effort and have to be seriously considered for the future. i can retcon their favorite ice cream or play off griddlehark fighting - it takes more to keep track of a narrative about people talking Around their issues

* by rude responses i mean "this will affect the 679ers negatively, much like making your sim 🧑‍🤝‍🧑➖➖ someone" there are a few asks planned to hurt in the same way one drafts a bad end in a visual novel, and this type of interaction is encouraged. of course if you dont want them to get worse dont send asks telling gideon she should flirt with MILFs (you cant send this ask now i already said it), but i encourage the banter.

TL;DR this is the "characters think you are weird for personal questions" blog. i am sorry i didnt warn of the ask-response banter, because i also enjoy drawing these characters being dicks. i do like when aggravation and conflict leads to character development. "how do we get earnest answers unless someone asks" sometimes you will never explicitly get that from them, and thats what the dead ends are for: to let you know to try something else and read between the lines

[natalyarose]

𝓈𝒶𝒷𝓇𝒾𝓃𝒶 𝒸𝒶𝓇𝓅𝑒𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓇 (𝓋𝑒𝒹𝒾𝒸 𝒶𝓈𝓉𝓇𝑜) ♡

My little sister introduced me to Sabrina Carpenter and I gotta say I loove her!! Not necessarily my type of music, but the older I get, the more I realise how every genre has something so beautiful to offer and it just makes me so happy to see ART and joy in this world of any kind :')

My first thought is she's gottaaa be Sun influenced- the pastel, literally sunny visuals, the bubbly smile & attitude, the 'lightness'. I find Solar women possibly the easiest to spot- even Sun women I've met who have 'darker' personalities & aesthetics still offer this light energy. I checked, and she is Krittika Sun! (I know she's getting very popular now so this is all probably old news to a lot of people lol but just thought I'd share).

ALSO, I've noticed people remarking on how she is bringing the element of dance and full 'performance style' back into music. Krittika is intimately connected to the art of dance.

Then she has Moon conjunct ascendant in Purvabhadrapada, in the 1st house! Classic Jupiterian sass & vocals (Jupiterians often have gorgeous and or very powerful voices since Jupiter traditionally rules the throat) + Purvabhadrapadas position as the archetypal 'femme fatale' is referenced in her song 'Feather'. Religious imagery is common to see with Purvabhadrapda natives too given the bhadrapada Nakshatras relation to sacrifice.

Since she has Purvabhadrapada Moon; this makes her yoni animal the lion- glamorous, proud, strong.

I noticed someone comparing her energy/demeanour/look in her music video for her song 'Espresso' to Sharpay in Highschool Musical, who is played by Krittika Ascendant, Ashley Tidsdale. Definitely a nice depiction of Krittika energy- being in Taurus, we see Venus (beauty, pleasure, luxury, art) combined with Sun (joy, warmth, self love, authority). Edit - y'all I think I got confused between different birth time sources, but Ashley is in fact mostly Bharani ascendant HOWEVER, with Venus in Krittika ruling her chart.

As well as Sun & Jupiter Nakshatras' abundant qualities, I think Sabrina having Moon in the 1st definitely helps to garner likability & widespread appeal. Moon reflects whatever is around it, so she's going to be somebody who as an artist, is naturally attuned to public opinion. Moon in the 1st can have a knack for identifying what is popular, and reflecting it back through their persona or art in their own way.

With Sabrina's Sun, Moon & Asc consisting entirely of Purvabhadrapada & Krittika, this makes the energies of the 'brahmin caste' extremely relevant to her. Brahmin Nakshatras tend to be associated with spirituality, knowledge, education, prestige or a 'priestly' quality. Of course, not always especially since the ways in which each Nakshatra works is very unique; but heavily Brahmin influenced people tend to find themselves in very privileged positions in life- even if they're in a rough spot, they carry themselves with an aura of importance and therefore tend to easily attract what they desire.

As I talked about in my Vishakha women post, especially Vishakha but honestly strong Jupiter influence in general is often somewhere in the charts of those who have the type of fame where they are ever expanding & deeply influencing the masses.

Anyway, I'm eating up her music videos lol, the solar energy is so uplifting- sorta makes me nostalgic for the 2010s, when mainstream music & trends was a lot more solar inclined in that way. Some may have considered it shallow (my edgy 12 year old self sure did lmao) but honestly I think there can be something very spiritual about artists making music that's just fun, joyful and silly.

Thankyou for reading & I definitely want to do more small observational/analysis posts like this! ♡

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Actually could we put some light on the class difference clash epel is experiencing in school. The situations looks a little weird to me. Cuz in epel's robes vignette it starts with the other pomefiore students asking him about carpet brand preference and he has no idea what to answer. They end up having a misunderstanding that never clears up. Epel proceeds to make a table manner mistake which Rook helps cover up with a lie so epel won't be embarassed (rook can probably sympatise) while vil is more strict. It is in this vignette we see that instance of vil first making epel lie about his favorite food for unclear, debated reasons.

In Epel's labwear vignette we hear some of the NPC students whisper about him and they seem to be asuming he must also be from some rich family due to the clothes he wears (which vil gave to him and makes him wear) and maybe also because he's in pomefiore. I know that it's just like vil to give people clothes he thinks will fit them best,and some of it might be so epel blends in pomefiore better, but could Epel actually be more likely to get picked on if he was perceived as from a lower class? NRC is a prestigious boarding school but it's not like he's the only character with more...average circumstances. Compared to the literal royalty and celebrity attending.

[Referencing this post!]

Mmm... I mean, aren't the mobs (in the Labwear vignettes) already bullying Epel because they perceive him to be of high social status? I don't think it would make a difference if they knew he was of a low social status since the mobs were already bullying him (again, under the impression that he's rich) to begin with. What I'm saying is that bullying would have occurred regardless of Epel's socioeconomic status. It's not necessarily nice, but it seems to be the norm for NRC students to verbally bash one another.

I don't really recall other major or frequent instances of middle class (Trey, Jack, Ace) or low-income students (Ruggie, Deuce) in the main cast being bullied. In fact, Trey and Ruggie are pretty well-liked and respected within their own dorms despite not being as wealthy as the majority of their peers are. (In this post, I go over how roughly 75% of the main cast come from at least upper middle-class backgrounds.) The bullying seems to be centered mainly on Epel, and I think that's probably because his peers perceive him as being small and cute--and therefore delicate, meek, and easy to push around. Epel just seems like the ideal target from a quick glance. Notice how B-kun comments on Epel’s face first:

I think it's also worth noting which dorms the bullies in Epel's Labwear vignettes come from: B and C are from Savanaclaw, and A is from Pomefiore. Savanaclaw mobs are notoriously belligerent and are usually the go-to mobs to pick fights with their peers for what are very minor things. The Pomefiore mob bully seems to be an outlier; most other Pomefiore mobs, at least as depicted in Epel's Ceremonial Robes vignettes, are polite and refrain from this type of behavior.

Importantly, (Savanaclaw) C is the one that calls Epel a “little rich brat” and (Pomefiore) A says Epel is “daddy’s fancy little lad”. This wording makes both sound resentful of the rich, thinking them spoiled—so it makes me think maybe A, B, and C are actually not rich themselves and are the less privileged picking on someone they think is wealthy but unable to stand up for themselves.

Now, within Pomefiore itself, it does appear that many of its students are upper class or at least sticklers for appearances. Their knowledge of brands and aesthetics itself is not damning evidence (anyone of any class could know this too; there’s also lots of non-rich people who obsess over brands). However, the fact that all of Epel’s first year peers already seemed familiar with how to handle a full set of cutlery at a formal meal does indicate high socioeconomic status, as the common man would not know how the heck a salad dork differs from the fish fork. (Most people use 1 fork or 1 spoon for the entire meal, and forget about having courses.) Buuut we shouldn’t assume that this one vignette is representative of all Pomefiore students, just as we cannot assume the one mean Pome A is a good example of all Pomefiore students, since there are limitations with the game. (Another famous game limitation is all Savanaclaw mobs being beastmen and every other dorm having zero beastmen mobs; in the manga, we see humans in Savanaclaw and beastmen in Heartslabyul. Riddle also verbally confirms that Heartslabyul has a cat beastman in the second Beans Day event.)

I think there’s definitely intersectionality at play as well. There’s something to be said for a culture clash in addition to a clash of classes. Epel is the only one in the main cast from a decidedly rural area where there isn’t much to do (ie no brand name shops) and everyone is close and casual with one another (ie there is little in the way of formalities). This likely contributes to the disconnect between Epel and his Pomefiore peers.

Now, where is this all leading to? Am I claiming that bullying based on socioeconomic status doesn't happen at NRC? Of course not! I have no doubt that it happens, but I don't think it's specifically the rich-on-poor type. In Epel's case, it seems to be the poor-on-(perceived to be) rich kind, but the opposite also occurs (in book 1, Riddle insults Yuu's pitiful education, something which is typically associated with the lower class; magic and magic education in particular is associated with the upper class). And, of course, we have the middle ground of people of similar socioeconomic status going at each other (for example, Leona and Malleus's rivalry). What's sort of sad is that the environment at NRC is conducive to animosity and no adults ever intervening because: 1) the students are so prideful, who would actually have the guts to tell an authority figure they were being picked on? and 2) the students tend to try and retaliate or get into fights instead, which only escalates the situation.

At NRC, I get the impression that class is one thing you could get bullied for, but that power and/or connections are much more important factors. Let's revisit Ruggie, who is the most impoverished of the main cast. If we assume that the less well-off students are predominantly the ones who get picked on, then shouldn't we have many examples of Ruggie being bullied? But he isn't. In fact, the big, burly Savanaclaw mobs (who are known to be combative) seem to defer to him instead of bullying him. Leona even leaves Savanaclaw in Ruggie's care while he is away in book 6, fully expecting that the mobs will listen to Ruggie. Why? Well, Ruggie is not physically or magically strong, but he has Leona's backing. It's through this association with the powerful Leona that Ruggie gains the respect and the following of the others in his dorm. This is something we consistently see in other characters, including Epel's own dorm leader. Because Vil beats him in combat, Epel agrees to listen to what he says even if Epel dislikes it. We see mob students bend the knee to the main cast once they've gotten glimpses into their power or abilities (Leona versus the Savanaclaw mobs, Idia versus the Ignihyde mobs, each in their respective Dorm Uniform vignettes).

Circling back around to the concept of Epel being bullied! Would the Pomefiore mobs turn on him if they realize he's actually not wealthy? Maybe...? We don't really know enough about the individual personalities of the mobs to judge for ourselves. If they did bully Epel for that though... I feel like those mobs would be in for an ass whooping from Vil (and Rook) for being so petty, vindictive, and disregarding decorum. Vil can rub people the wrong way with his demanding and stern attitude (I'm one of those people sometimes), but he wouldn't stand for such "ugly" behavior. It sullies the good name of the Fairest Queen and the dorm made in her image that he oversees. Those are my thoughts on the topic! I apologize if I ended up straying a little from the initial ask (I felt like I wasn't even truly talking about Epel for half this post ashdbsadlbayw).

[the-way-astray]

Ok just saw that your asks are open

Ik that you do not like Keefe (for valid reasons)

But here's something for you to analyze/think about

Not necessarily to change your mind about him bit if it does it does

Ok so

At the end of neverseen Keefe said "sometimes things have to get worse before they get better"

Yes he was referencing to him running away and for lodestat Yada Yada what have you

But I FULL heartedly believe that it was foreshadowing for the entirety of his chara arc throughout the series

Cause as of stellarlune he is at his lowest of lows

However you want to classify that us he's there

The way he treats his friends, his relationships with them, his mental state, ability state, common sense

All of it

And do I think it's gonna get worse than what it already is

YUP

But here's what that quote implies

It DOES get better

Never says when or how

But just that it does

I fully believe that after he gets past the roughest patch (whether that's him currently or even him in book 10) that he'll slowly start to realize how he's been and start trying to be better and get the help he needs

And tbh

I don't think it'll be anytime soon

I feel like he needs to have the (inevitable) argument with Sophie to finally realized it

Cause trust me as much as I ship sokeefe I really do believe they need to have an argument

Maybe even not speak for a book

But it'll be good for him in the end and hopefully he sees how he's been acting these last few books

Thoughts on this?

okay, sorry this took so long to get to. every time i try to answer it, it doesn't come out quite right. but here's my best shot.

i would agree with the idea of "sometimes things have to get worse before they get better" as an arc for keefe. that would be cool. and obviously, since at the time of this writing, the series is unfinished, there's always a possibility shannon could turn it around for herself. i've talked about this briefly in some post from a while ago, but there is a chance shannon will execute a flawless character arc for keefe in unraveled. is it likely? not really. but i wouldn't say it's impossible.

what makes me think this will not happen? in short: the fact that his flaws, the real flaws, not "cares too much about sophie" or "is too willing to self-sacrifice", have not once been villainized or called out as something seriously wrong in the series.

here's a list (referencing this post, where i list out all the things i dislike about keefe, there's more than just what i listed here, but these are the character flaws):

"i hate the way he manipulates, gaslights, extorts, and pressures sophie (and other people) into telling him shit they wouldn't ordinarily." this is never made out to be a bad thing. the person on the receiving end usually just grumbles something like "empaths", then after five seconds it's dropped. you don't see it affect keefe's relationships, you don't see people become uneasy around him, keep their distance from him because oh, that's the guy that's going to spill my secrets, it never feels like this affects keefe's relationships in any negative way. there is no long-term damage. it is completely swept under the rug, and it is never, ever seriously villainized. if shannon wanted to execute a "sometimes things have to get worse before they get better" type arc for keefe with regards to this flaw, she'd have to start by having it be a negative thing. then only can keefe work toward a better place. but shannon skipped that crucial step. so how can i assume that she's trying to develop keefe out of this, even if the development goes forwards and backwards and all over the place?

"i hate what a terrible friend he is." there are so many examples of this that i can't remember exactly what i was referencing when i wrote that. in any case, basically the same as what i said above applies. keefe needs to first be villainized for his toxic behavior if he's to grow out of it. take his comments toward fitz in the famous healing center scene, as an example. yes, the scene is told from keefe's perspective, meaning obviously he's not going to hold himself accountable. but maybe elwin steps in and reprimands keefe for what he said. maybe keefe detects sophie's anger toward him for the comments he made toward fitz. maybe he's even told off by fitz himself. there are a variety of ways to make it clear that this is not a good person to be. only then can keefe's journey even begin. if shannon is to do a "sometimes things have to get worse before they get better" type thing for keefe with regards to this, then things have to get worse for him. he needs to feel the consequences of his actions, which he never does.

"i hate the way he simultaneously pedestalizes and infantilizes sophie." once again, this is never made out to be a bad thing. if anything, keefe's pedestalization of sophie is meant to endear the audience to him. his infantilization is disguised as """"""witty"""""" jokes, so that is also probably supposed to make us like him. shannon actually managed to take keefe's toxic traits and sell them to the audience as good qualities. could be a masterclass in writing if she did something with this, but it's very clear she actually believes that these are good things. once again, if keefe is to develop out of these things and find a better place, even if he makes a few mistakes and "gets worse", so to speak, at various points along his character arc, that would still require his arc to actually like. begin. shannon hasn't even reached that part. so once again, how am i supposed to expect that she'll write any kind of arc with regards to this?

"i hate the way he's so jealous, so passive-aggressive, so toxic to his supposed friends." i've talked about this very, very briefly before, but i'm almost certain that we're supposed to see keefe as being "in the right" during the healing center scene, at least as the way shannon intended for it to be taken. one second . . . okay i found the post where i said it. here's what i said verbatim: "#i really feel like. shannon genuinely did not mean for him to come off so mean#she was definitely banking on the fact that everyone hates fitz#it's FITZ that's the one that's the butt of the mean joke by KEEFE so nobody will care! right? right guys? guys?#and honestly she's probably correct about that because most of the fandom DOES like keefe and hate fitz so like". now obviously i cannot be 100000000% sure, but from years of reading and rereading these books, i've become pretty confident that shannon genuinely wants us to perceive keefe as an otherwise-perfect angel whose only flaw is recklessness and his tendency to self-sacrifice. so those are the only flaws for which she writes a proper arc. and once again, if she wanted to write any sort of arc for him, even one that isn't perfectly linear, she would first have to start my acknowledging that keefe is the possessive, jealous, toxic friend here. but she doesn't.

"i hate the way sophie has to constantly babysit him because she doesn't know what stupid thing he'll do next and i hate the way he doesn't care about that, despite claiming he's doing half the things he does for her." this is the last one i'll mention in this post, promise. his stupidity is the flaw, by the way. i would say it's acknowledged. so congrats, shannon, you've reached the first step. better than i can say for the last four points. but that's where it ends. it's never developed from. keefe doesn't know how to work on a team and is incredibly stupid, something i ran into the ground while writing my rant. and come unlocked, 8.5 books into the series, he is still incredibly stupid and doesn't know how to work on a team. he consulted exactly zero people before running away to the forbidden cities, and while you could argue that it was ultimately his decision, i do think he should've at least gotten other people's opinions. this decision was so monumentally stupid, i cannot wrap my head around it. i'll talk about it more in my part two rant, but in my opinion, it's his stupidest move yet. now, what about the "sometimes things have to get worse before they get better" arc idea for this? doesn't this mean that this could just be a low he's hitting in his arc? well personally i'd say no. because he never reaches a point where he feels like he's working towards not hijacking plans because he wants to genuinely be better and stop. the famous nightfall scene comes to mind, and as i've mentioned before, the reason this, in my opinion, isn't indicative of his arc progressing is that he apologizes entirely out of a desire to appease sophie and win her back to his side, and not because he actually wants to change. so that doesn't count. in legacy, sophie thinks to herself that if she doesn't go with keefe to london, he will find a way to get there himself, once again showing that he has no desire to consider other people's opinions. sophie actually only agrees to go because she's scared of what stupid shit keefe will get into if she's not there to babysit him. she caves to his hijacking, instead of nipping it in the bud, the way she tried to in nightfall. so i'd say there isn't any spectacular moment before unlocked where keefe is getting better with regards to his hijacking plans because he thinks he knows better than everyone else.

okay, now that i've hopefully sufficiently proven that keefe's arc is not a "sometimes things have to get worse before they get better" arc, at least not in the way it's executed in canon, i'll move to the rest of your points:

"as of stellarlune he is at his lowest of lows/The way he treats his friends, his relationships with them, his mental state, ability state, common sense" (sorry for formatting this like the lyrics of a freaking song, but i wanted it all in one paragraph lmfao.)

i disagree with this. i actually think his arc is looking up, with regards to his flaws, at least, in stellarlune. he seems like, to put it very, very bluntly, a morally better person. like he did some thinking in the forbidden cities and decided to get his shit together. this is why i say that i have to read unraveled before making my mind up about whether keefe's arc truly sucks or not. because if shannon has him acknowledge all the things i mentioned and make an effort to be better for himself, because he wants to be, then i can see how i could be swayed to the "keefe has a good arc" side. i do still think the chances of this are incredibly slim, though.

i would tentatively say the way he treats his friends is better in stellarlune. he certainly seems like he mellowed out a bit. he also only has like a couple hundred pages of that book to himself, and even less to showing what he's truly thinking on the inside, so it's difficult to tell for sure. his ability state and mental state are as shit as ever, agreed. but i'm not really talking about that? i'm talking about his arc and the flaws that i dislike about him, that i believe should be developed or at least called out for him to be a decent character.

"And do I think it's gonna get worse than what it already is"

same, but i think that low will be hit in unraveled. i think what we're seeing in stellarlune is actually him getting better from some major low he must've hit in unraveled. but once again, none of this has anything to do with why i dislike keefe. i dislike him because his flaws are never acknowledged or developed out of as the series progesses.

"I fully believe that after he gets past the roughest patch (whether that's him currently or even him in book 10) that he'll slowly start to realize how he's been and start trying to be better and get the help he needs"

one thing that i absolutely despise when it comes to writing character arcs is when like 90% of the development happens in the last like 10% of the series. it always feels incredibly rushed and incredibly forced, and it can be done well almost never. it's my opinion that arcs, and all the major progress and setbacks, need to happen evenly throughout the series so that you really feel like the character at the 25% mark is a different character than the one at the 75% mark, with regards to the thing being developed. i don't see that with keefe. he's a toxic friend in everblaze, he's a toxic friend in legacy. he's stupid in everblaze, he's stupid in legacy. he's manipulative in everblaze, he's manipulative in legacy. there hasn't even been a realization on his part.

having said all that, i do think there is a way to write his arc in unraveled that could at least make me tolerate him. and i do agree that there's a slim possibility that shannon could magically decide to develop him in book ten. but also keep in mind that book ten or book eleven is the last book. so there's a strong possibility that i'll still consider it too little, too late. but they are future books. i'll have thoughts when they come out for sure, but for now it's hard to tell what i'll feel about them.

"I feel like he needs to have the (inevitable) argument with Sophie to finally realized it/Cause trust me as much as I ship sokeefe I really do believe they need to have an argument/Maybe even not speak for a book/But it'll be good for him in the end and hopefully he sees how he's been acting these last few books"

i agree. i've actually talked about this briefly in my keefe rant, except i've talked about how i wanted them to fight in nightfall, not in book ten. here's that part, copy-pasted verbatim:

“Sometimes I still worry that some tiny part of her holds it against me. That she’ll never fully trust me. That she’ll always see me as the guy who betrayed her and stole from her and ran off with the enemy.” (Unlocked, Keefe's diary entries, 494) This would be really cool to explore if it was actually done. Sophie holding this against Keefe and struggling with that in the aftermath of Lodestar would be an awesome way to develop their relationship and have them overcome that hurdle and give them both some much needed development. But we know that aside from a single line at the beginning of Nightfall, Sophie never really blames Keefe. She just immediately forgives him for his time with the Neverseen. It’s pathetic writing. Something like that should have consequences. But it doesn’t, because then our poor Keefe will have to be *gasp* villainized. There could be this whole arc about how Sophie doesn’t trust Keefe the same and it impacts their relationship subtly and both of them feel it but don’t want to talk about it and it’s this giant, gaping hole. Then finally there’s a climax where Keefe confronts her about it and maybe she yells at him and he agrees that he’ll do anything to get her trust back. Then he does it. He does the smart thing, takes the smart advice. And he learns. He understands what he did was wrong and is truly a different person now. Honestly, the fact that Shannon explained this out shows me that she’s aware the possibility of this arc exists, but unfortunately, didn’t actually put it into action. Would it have been the most original conflict ever? No. But it would’ve been much better than whatever this dumpster fire of a lack of an arc she actually wrote is. I think I might’ve genuinely enjoyed Sophie and Keefe as a couple if she’d just made them have some distrust that they overcome through genuine work and growth.

anyway, if i didn't answer your question the way you wanted, feel free to shoot me a follow-up ask. i think i got it, but if i misinterpreted, tell me.

tldr: the reason i don't buy keefe's arc as a "sometimes things have to get worse before they get better" kind of arc is because that would require keefe's flaws to actually be acknowledged and villainized by the narrative, and for them to have actual consequences that affect him, which they do not. this leads me to believe shannon doesn't see these things as flaws, and therefore will never give keefe the development he needs to have a good arc.

[superfurytamago]

Every Japanese comedy reference in Jujutsu Kaisen chapters 240 and 241

EDIT: Added one more reference to Audrey that I completely missed out when I was writing this post. Putting my self-proclaimed Japanese comedy otaku title to shame!

I was a Japanese comedy otaku way before I got into manga and anime, which is why I get way too excited whenever I spot Japanese comedy references in other forms of media. Granted, the plot is totally coherent even without knowing the references, but please indulge me as I find myself a rare opportunity to talk about Japanese comedians. All English panels are sourced from Manga Plus and Japanese panels are my own digital copies.

Preface about Japanese comedians

Japanese comedians usually form duos called "combi" in Japanese. Some may form trios or even quartets, but duos make up the overwhelming majority. Solo comedians are becoming more common, but like Takaba, most if not all of them had started out as a duo that didn't work out over time.

Nabe Nabe Entertainment and Pony

Reference to Watanabe Entertainment, a major entertainment agency in Japan. The most famous comedian group under Watanabe's management will be the comedic trio Neptune, and the above panels reference them indirectly as well.

Another talent management agency mentioned is Pony, which is a reference to Sony Music Artists Inc (SMA). Yes, they manage comedians as well lol. Agencies have distinct styles of management, which eventually shows in the type of comedians they manage. Kenjaku assumes that Takaba is with Pony because SMA has managed to propel an impressive number of solo comedians to fame despite the comparatively smaller scale of management. They also lean more slapstick than the "cooler" forms like skits and monologues. In fact, Takaba reminds me of Koume Dayū:

Laughing Dog? Vocabula?

Both Laughing Dog (Warau Inu) and Vocabula (Vocabula Tengoku) were incredibly popular variety TV serial programmes that Neptune appeared in during the 1990s and early 2000s. Takaba admires Neptune, which is why he chooses to sign with Nabe Nabe rather than Pony, even if the latter may actually manage him better.

Kenjaku wondered for a second why Takaba didn't cite Vocabula as the reason he admires Neptune, because Vocabula was the one that gave Neptune their shot to fame, and they absolutely reached superstar levels of fame during the time. Laughing Dog came later, when they were already established as household names.

The reason why Kenjaku walked back on it with "I guess that's obvious enough" has to do with the nature of the two programmes. Laughing Dog was a sketch comedy programme like Chappelle's Show, while as the name may suggest, Vocabula focused on wordplays, puns, and parodies. Comedians were voted based on how they performed the jokes. Here's a short clip of Neptune on Vocabula:

While here's a sketch from Laughing Dog (the second, third, and fourth green leaves members are Neptune lol):

Of course Takaba was inspired by Laughing Dog, "I guess that's obvious enough".

Backbone! My backbone!

An actual short gag (ippatsu gag or lit. one-shot gag) by Haranishi from the duo FUJIWARA:

It's not the first time Akutami has referenced an actual short gag in the series. Perhaps you may remember Itadori's unfortunate reunion scene at the sister school goodwill event:

This is a gag from Kojima Yoshio:

You have my condolences, Itadori.

Comedians and auditions

Kenjaku is dressed like a stereotypical TV producer here. This dates back to Japan's asset price bubble; during which, tying a cardigan over the shoulders was a staple look among TV producers and directors. In this scene, Takaba is auditioning like he would for a part in a variety TV show. Struggling comedians like Takaba often audition for variety shows that showcase a series of comedic skits or manzai. Pass the audition and you get a spot to perform on national TV.

Comedians and theatre

Most comedians who don't get their big breaks on TV spend a large part of their careers in small theatres. A typical comedy show consists of several groups of comedians performing their skits or manzai, and the theatre will hand out feedback forms like the above. It seems like Takaba used to go by the stage name Pinchan.

P-1? C-1?

The fictional C-1 is a reference to an actual long-running competition M-1 Grand Prix, while the fictional P-1 which Takaba mentioned earlier is a reference to another competition R-1 Grand Prix. M-1 is restricted to manzai performed by two people or more, while R-1 is open to solo comedians only. There are several important annual comedy competitions in Japan. Winning these big-name competitions is usually the ticket to fame for many comedians, but even then it may not work out for everyone.

Idol shows

It has become customary to have established Japanese comedians host Japanese girl groups TV shows, and I pretty much agree with Takaba's take on why. If you're a fan of idol groups like Morning Musume, AKB48, Nogizaka46, or Idoling!!!, then you would be familiar with Japanese comedians like Ninety-Nine, Ariyoshi Hiroiki, Bananaman, and Bakarhythm.

By the way, Takaba was watching TV while eating cup noodles after the above panel. The lines are from a well-known manzai performed by comedy duo Audrey. This particular joke with them going "hehehe" at each other is a staple in their early manzai:

In fact, take a closer look at the apartment that Takaba lives in. It's based on the actual apartment Kasuga (pink vest guy on the right) used to live in, named Mutsumi-sō. His shabby apartment and extremely thrifty lifestyle had been featured in many variety TV shows in the past. He lived there for more than 20 years, and the apartment was actually quite a tourist spot for fans of Audrey. Kasuga's Japanese Wikipedia article even has a photo of it as seen below, which is what I think Akutami referenced from. The interior is largely based on Kasuga's apartment as well:

Bonus Japanese comedy!

Akutami has taken inspiration from actual Japanese comedians in the past. In chapter 153, two of the spectators look eerily like comedy duo Sandwichman:

And how can we forget Ken, the fellow comedian who gave Takaba advice in chapter 146:

He's based on Kendo Kobayashi, and if you've seen images/clips of Akutami dressed up as Mechamaru, that was when he went on Kenkoba's show:

Wow that was long. Thanks for indulging the squealing Japanese comedy fan in me!

[f1-primers]

i saw a post by @powerful-owl about how the f1 fandom doesn't have a lot of primers for new fans, and in the interests of sharing the love (having a new thing to obsess over) i've made this little sideblog. i'll reshare any primers i see/i'm tagged in, from the technicalities of tyres to ship lore to old race recommendations, and i'm going to start a list below of ideas in case anyone fancies writing them. HERE IS THE TAG LIST so you can find posts i've shared so far!

technical/sporting stuff

intro to the history of f1

calendar explained - changes over the years, sprint vs normal weekends, double/triple headers

teams - history of each team individually or one big post, a history of team name changes

teams - what a team principal does, what a race engineer does, what other positions there are and faces people might see a lot of

the structure of a race weekend/what the sessions mean - media day, practices, quali, sprint shootout, sprint, race

how qualifying works - sessions, things to watch out for, what teams/drivers actually do during quali

how races work - start process, intro to race strategy & stints, outline of pit stops, how they end, parc ferme > podium

intro to strategy - outline of pitstops, tyre choices, over/undercut, etc

intro to tyres - different types, characteristics of each ones, deg/wear etc

how the timing towers on tv work & how to read them (for free practice, quali & race)

what all the different flags mean

safety car 101

tracks - loads of stuff here: famous tracks, all the tracks on the current calendar, the different between traditional and street tracks, features of a track to watch out for

overtaking explained

technical explainer - drs, battery harvesting, slipstreaming, stuff like that

safety features explainer - halo, hans device, etc

technical terms/slang you might hear

what the FIA is/intro

stewarding/the rules outline

techical requirements - parc ferme, what can/can't be changed over a weekend, rebuilding cars after contact or crashes

pit stops - what happens, what's changed, double stacking, good/bad times, how it affects a race

common penalties - track limits, crossing pit lane entry etc

point system - how it works for sprints/races, how it's changed etc

car design - wings, sidepods, etc

intro to f1 physics - aero, downforce etc

liveries - iconic ones, current team liveries, history of team liveries

the pitlane, paddock & pit wall explained - including order of teams in the pitlane, who everyone on a pit wall is

team radio 101 - what is said, what it means, iconic moments

how weather & temperature affects races/driving

history of f1

most famous races

most famous championships

wildest stuff that's happened in the sport (overall or by decade)

team move dramas

an intro to all the driver's championship winners

'know your history' - big moments people will see referenced

most controversial events - on track

most controversial events - off-track, f1 politics, scandals

moments that changed the sport

fandom stuff

intro to current drivers & their whole vibe

intro to past drivers & their whole vibe

most famous ships in the sport and an outline

most famous rivalries in the sport and an outline

best/funniest team radio moments

silly things that have happened

teammate relationships - the good, the bad, the unhinged

slang & inside jokes you might hear

niche stuff - the orignal post that sparked this referenced an 'alex albon's pets' primer, daniel's tattoos, george's dad, etc. a gift to fic writers! so anything, as niche as it gets, is good

nicknames for drivers, TPs etc explained

iconic fandom moments everyone should know about

[randomfoggytiger]

Seasonal Color Analysis: David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson

Going into this, I knew David didn’t have a… good fashion sense (even his sister would concur); but it’s always enlightening to see just how bad his fashion sense is. It’s charming, really. 

Meanwhile, Gillian (or her stylist) pinpointed which were her worst colors or worst looks and went crazy with the rest-- an excellent example of knowing the rules in order to break them.

I will be referencing all the information compiled in this Seasonal Color Analysis post to determine their undertone: Hue, or the coloration of their skin; Value, or the lightness and darkness of their saturation; and Chroma, or the bright and low value of their undertone.

TLDR: David is a Soft Autumn, and Gillian is a Clear Winter.

The Trickiness of This Technique

True pigmentation is often disguised or distorted under differing light sources--examples provided by the edits below--

thanks to @dd-is-my-guiltypleasure, post here--

and thanks to @gillyscloset, post here--

but, though I don't have DD or GA in person, I do have a wide sampling of all types of lighting (natural, direct, artificial.) With my bases pretty much covered, I venture forth into the unknown and take whoever along with me~.

HUE

Step One to determining one's seasonal palette: analyzing the levels of warmth or coolness in an undertone.

David and Gillian have one aspect (of two) in common: a red undertone. And, while it would be true and incredibly easy to say his red leans more apricot or cinnamon-- a Warm Hue indicator-- and hers leans more pink or blush-- a Cool Hue indicator-- that might not be the best vehicle to broadly determine undertone.

So, here we go on the long route.

-David-

First, we must calculate the balance of yellow (warm) and blue (cool) in his undertone.

The top left shirt is cool and vibrant, the top right shirt is cool and muted, the bottom left shirt is warm and vibrant, and the bottom right outfit is warm and muted.

The first thing I notice about David's skin is how red it is, even without a tan (top right photo.) The second thing I notice is how red it is in the top left photo, meaning the color is clashing with, not blending into, his undertone. The third thing I notice is how "overpowered" David is by the pink shirt (it wears him instead of him wearing it.) The fourth thing I notice is that the vibrancy of the bottom left warm outfit overpowers him, too, especially compared to its counterpart on the right. The fifth thing I notice is that this principle holds firm with the top right shirt, as well.

This leads me to a few conclusions: David's undertone is red, which becomes more uneven with bright, cool colors. Moreover, vibrancy in general does not suit him, drowning him out in its potency.

Overall, David has a Warm Hue with muted undertones. His worst colors would be Cool Hues with bright undertones.

-Gillian-

Let us calculate the yellow and blue value in her undertones.

The top left bathing suit is warm and vibrant, the top left suit is warm and muted, the bottom left outfit is cool and vibrant, and the bottom right dress is cool and muted.

Again, the first thing I notice about Gillian's skin is how red it is, even if the only picture sporting a tan is the top left. The second thing I notice is how pale and washed out it is in the top right, the muted warmth of the suit visibly dragging her down. The third thing I notice is that principle applies to the bottom right dress compared to the bottom left outfit. The fourth thing I notice is how alive Gillian looks in both the top left and bottom left photos-- the vibrancy of the yellow and blue compliment the vibrancy of her skin perfectly. The fifth thing I noticed is how the cool, vibrant blue melts beautifully with her skin while the warm, vibrant yellow brings out more uneven redness.

This leads me to these conclusions: Gillian's undertone is red, which becomes quickly desaturated with muted, warm colors. Moreover, its vibrancy is elevated by both warm and cool colors; but the Warm Hues bring out more uneven pigmentation compared to both the vibrant and muted Cool Hues.

These conclusions also apply to The X-Files's (bad) wig she disliked: the undertone was warm compared to the cooler undertones of her 90s dye.

Overall, Gillian has a Cool Hue with vibrant undertones. Her worst colors would be Warm Hues with muted undertones.

VALUE

To quote my previous post (because I'm lazy):

Higher Values usually have lighter or more "translucent" hair, allowing light to pass through it, as well as finer or sparser brows. Golden, grey, strawberry, or silver hair would all suit Higher Values, whereas they would overwhelm the Lower ones. High Value tones look great in lighter colors such as cool pure white, warm ivory white, and other lighter colors. Deep colors near the face tend to drag down and dominant the "presence" of the outfit, making it appear as if the clothes were wearing the person rather than the other way around.

Lower Values usually have darker or more "opaque" hair when in direct lighting, as well as darker or bushier brows. Medium or low value hair colors such as auburn, brown, or black would suit and enhance Lower Values, whereas they would dull or drag down the Higher ones. Low Value tones look great in darker colors such as navy blue, pure black and deep brown. Light colors near the face gives them an exaggerated pale, tired appearance.

Medium Value tones are an exception to the rule. Medium values look too overwhelmed in both very High Value (light) and very Low Value (dark) outfits; and look great in "medium" colors such as grays, lighter browns, and camel colors.

(Sidenote: If a person falls into the Medium Value range, they have exponentially lightened-- heh-- their workload by cutting out unnecessary guess work. David's Seasonal Subtype section will show off this handy dandy little trick later~.)

-David-

Now, we compare and contrast David in different values, Cool Hues to the left and Warm Hues to the right.

Light Value

Light Value doesn't blend with David, washing out his skin tone (in spite of the presence of darker stubble in the second picture.)

Medium Value

Medium Value makes David seem most at home, blending seamlessly in with his mid-tone hair (and even emphasizing his brows and lighter stubble in the first picture, despite the glaring sun directly overhead.)

Dark Value

Dark Value is the most uncomplimentary to David, making him appear dragged down, overly tired, and older than his years (even with the enhanced darkened and cool filter on the first picture.)

David, we see, is a Medium Value.

-Gillian-

Now, we compare and contrast Gillian in different values, Cool Hues to the left and Warm Hues to the right.

Light Value

Gillian is incredibly suited to the Light Value, her vibrant skin coming alive under the dewy, fresh, "natural" makeup style and lighter colored hair and outfits.

Medium Value

Gillian isn't really suited to Medium Value, appearing separate and more muted by its lack of vibrancy.

Dark Value

And Gillian really isn't suited to Dark Values, appearing "overdone", fatigued, and older than her years.

Gillian, we see, is a Light Value.

The Difference in Black and White (and Gray)

And now, we compare and contrast David's and Gillian's Values against each other.

Black

Flash photography rarely makes anyone look pretty, but here it at least amplifies Gillian's "translucent" Light Value and David's middle-of-the-road, Medium Value. The lines and shadows of both their faces are unfairly pronounced; and, in short, they both look like wax figures.

Yet GA has an unexpected exception: because of the vibrancy of her tone (to be further discussed in the Chroma section~), she is able to pull off black if, and only if, she sticks to Light Value hair and makeup. DD stays doomed-- doubly so, because he gravitates to black for his day-to-day wear.

Gray

Gillian rarely wears gray or middle-of-the-road browns-- astute of her or her stylist, as it is the hardest of the three Values for her vibrancy to pull off with any degree of success-- appearing waxy and sickly compared to David-- at home in his own skin-- on the left.

White

David is, again, not looking his best-- not as tired or shadowy as the black shirt, but more pale and washed out compared to the gray-- and, again, his shirt seems to be wearing him. Gillian, on the other hand, shines in this (almost) white shirt, her Light Value complimented by her blonde hair and very light background.

Chroma 

Chroma measures the brightness and clearness or softness of a Hue.

Again, I shall quote my other post:

High Chromas have a brighter, clearer appearance-- with very little brown or gray pigmentation in their skin tone-- and a "dewy" or bright skin texture. Their darker brows usually have a deeper coloration; and their irises are usually "richer" and clearer with defined "edges" next to the whites of the eyes. Supposedly, this gives Higher Chromas an "alert and eye-catching expression. "

Low Chromas have a desaturated or muted appearance-- with a prominent gray or "ashy" pigmentation-- and a "matte" or softer skin texture. Their finer brows usually have a "sparser" appearance; and their irises have a softer, blurred "edge" next to the whites of the eyes. Supposedly, this gives Lower Chromas a "softer gaze" and more "delicate charm."

-David-

Now, we must assess the chroma level of David's skin, Cool Hues on the left and Warm Hues on the right.

High Chroma

He does not blend cohesively with High Chroma, becoming lost in the vivacity and punch of the pink and black (left) and yellow (right.)

Low Chroma

But he does blend cohesively with Low Chroma, equaling the chroma's scale and becoming whole with his overall look.

Gillian 

Now, we must assess the chroma level of Gillian's skin, Cool Hues on the left and Warm Hues on the right.

High Chroma

She blends cohesively with High Chroma, her lit-from-within glow coming alive in the white and black (left) and pink (right.)

Low Chroma 

But she does not blend cohesively with Low Chroma, either contrasting against it quite starkly (muddying her distinct features, left) or warring with it and ultimately appearing more "mousy" (right.)

Makeup: Values and Chromas

How does one balance or play with their Values and Chroma using hair, makeup, accessories, or other articles of fashion?

Gillian Anderson has High Value: meaning she will look amazing in lighter makeup-- which creates a natural, refreshing, and airy appearance-- preferably in purplish pink, pink, coral, light berry, peach, and nude shades. Because of the natural prominence in her face, darker makeup would muddy the clarity and create disharmony by having "too much" on her face. Of course, she can wear whatever she wants; but knowing this information clarifies why she and her stylists likely keep her makeup minimal.

Gillian also has High Chroma: meaning, she will look amazing in captivating, bold, and energetic looks meant to draw the eyes toward her, preferably in hot pinks, rosy reds, warm reds, and rich reds. Glossy, dewy, pearlescent, shiny, or very reflective finishes draw attention to the vivacity of her appearance; and anything too matte or satin detracts from that energy significantly. Hence, there was a balancing act for her character Dana Scully: even amidst the rage of the matte 90s, GA still had a glossy lip or a sheen to her cheeks in conjunction with her more matte or skin-like foundations.

Combining both, GA can pull off High Chroma makeup if done in more reflective, dewy finishes-- deep red or hot pink lip gloss, for instance. The balancing act she strikes between both aspects will give her an individual, unique "style" all her own.

(Sidenote: Although David Duchovny does not wear makeup, one of his characters did. If you search up Denise Bryson, you'll see the makeup artists gave David a Medium Value makeup look: the lipstick gave a Dark Value punch, and the Light Value cheeks and eyelids provided perfect counterbalance to the overall look.)

SEASONAL COLOR ANALYSIS: Putting It All Together

The Seasonal Color system takes all three qualities of undertone-- Hue, Value, and Chroma-- to determine what Seasonal subtype a person is. One will be most dominant, taking the primary position; the second will obviously be secondary; and the least impactful aspect of the three will take up tertiary position (and, therefore, can be set to the side when determining one's subtype.)

Again, I recommend trottin' on over to this post to learn more about primary, secondary, and tertiary qualities; however, if that's not your speed, keep reading.

Testing the Options

We're going to do something a little different.

Usually this post starts out with David each section. However, Gillian's Season subtype is a bit trickier to figure out than his.

-Gillian-

First up: Gillian.

We've discovered she's a Cool Hue, High Value, and High Chroma'd individual... but which of the three is primary, and so on?

There are only six seasons with Cool Hue; and of those six, only half combine with either High Value or High Chroma: Light Summer (High Value primary, Cool Hue secondary); Cool Winter (Cool Hue primary, High Chroma secondary); and Clear Winter (High Chroma primary, Cool Hue secondary.)

Since I'm far from an expert, it's time to fire up the editing app and start (badly) swatching comparison colors!

Light Summer

Summer and Winter, both Cool seasons, are differentiated by their saturation: Summer takes Winter's palettes and mixes it with gray, appearing more muted or "desaturated" compared to its twin.

So: does a "grayed down" palette suit Gillian?

...Not really, no. It's not bad, and she can probably borrow a few of these colors; but they seem to drag down her High Value (like the Medium Value grays colors did.)

And because neither Cool nor Clear Winter look good with "murky" or muted colors, that's another point in Winter's favor.

Cool or Clear Winter

As you can see, GA is dolled up in Cool Winter colors on the left and Clear Winter colors on the right.

What's the difference between the two?

Cool Winter is primarily Cool Hue and secondarily High Chroma-- meaning, it is filled with exclusively cool colors.

Clear Winter is primarily High Chroma and secondarily Cool Hue-- meaning, it is filled with primarily high chroma colors with leniency towards warmer colors.

If Gillian is Cool Winter, she will always look out of place in warmer hues; if she is Clear Winter, warmer colors aren't as damaging as hues with Low Chroma.

At a glance, I prefer Clear Winter (on the right.) Put to the test:

Notice how GA still looks pretty good with the warm, High Chroma red on the left but becomes grayer and more "shadowy" with the cool, Low Chroma blue on the right?

That proves Gillian is primarily High Chroma and secondarily Cool Hue-- able to pull off cool or warm colors as long as the primary feature (Chroma) is kept intact.

Thus, Gillian Anderson is (I think) Clear Winter.

-David-

And last but not least: David.

He's a Warm Hue, Low Value, Low Chroma kinda guy... but, again, which of the three is primary, secondary, and tertiary?

There are only six seasons with Warm Hue, and only three that combine with his Low Value and Low Chroma. And all three roads lead to one destination: Autumn-- Soft Autumn, True/Warm Autumn, and Deep Autumn.

Soft Autumn is primarily Low Chroma and secondarily Warm Hue.

True/Warm Autumn is primarily Warm Hue and secondarily Low Chroma.

Deep Autumn is primarily Low Value and secondarily Warm Hue.

But guess what? A surprise jumps out from the woodwork: because David has Medium Value, it cancels out Deep Autumn as a consideration (very handy in these situations.)

So, only two choices left:

Soft or Warm Autumn?

Can David pull off Warm and Cool Hues as long as they have Low Chroma (Soft Autumn), or can he pull off Low and High Chromas as long as they have Warm Hues (True/Warm Autumn)?

It's time to bring in some "worsts" and see which looks the least jarring.

Observe the disparateness of chromas on his skin: the Cool, Bright Chroma pink shirt (left) is the first thing you notice from a distance, rivalling and overpowering David's skin tone. Compare his pink to Gillian's in the above section and you'll notice the striking difference: that she is equal to the intensity of bright pink, but he is erased by it. Meanwhile, the Cool, Low Chroma blue shirt (right) is not as "separate" nor as glaringly obvious-- in fact, because it borders on Medium Value, DD can almost pull it off better than some others.

This means that David is primarily Low Chroma and secondarily Warm Hue-- able to pull off warm or cool colors as long as his primary feature (Chroma) is kept intact.

Thus David Duchovny is (I think) a Soft Autumn.

(Sidenote: This is two-folds hilarious because 1. DD never picks "his colors", which proves his sister right; and 2. DD's infamous pumpkin shirt has been axed from his "Best Dressed" list. Ahhhh, don't ever change, Mr. Duchovny.)

CONCLUSION

David and Gillian can play around with their colors and values as long as their chromas remain the same (the pic included, for example.) Also, Gillian scoped out her worst colors ("gray" or "murky" tones) and avoids them fairly well while David only ever picks the worst colors for himself and wears them with pride. And would we, the people, have it any other way?

What does this mean in the long run?

Well, I got to sharpen my color analysis skills; hopefully you enjoyed the journey with me; and we have some answers to the infinite number of unanswerable questions in this universe. That's good progress, I'd say.

Thank you for reading~

Enjoy!

[5and3nevermind]

Visual ties between SGMB and yoonmin

Sometimes people look so hard for ship-related visual clues that it ventures too far into the realm of speculation, in my opinion.

However, I saw some visual clues in the SGMB music video that I simply couldn’t ignore. I won’t try to persuade you with any theories. I’ll just put some screenshots here for you to consider. As I’ve said before, it’s ok for us to notice small details. This doesn’t mean we’re citing it as “evidence.” We’re just making observations. Others are free to conclude whatever they want!

• From SGMB:

So much yellow:

…and we know that Yoongi and Jimin agreed that yellow is the color that best captures their dynamic. We also know this has been a common trope among yoonminers for years, and possibly it’s a theory that the guys themselves are familiar with? (It seems reasonable to think they might be.)

A blue butterfly:

Which seems like it could be reminiscent of the one in the Never Mind Comeback Trailer:

Could it merely be a coincidence that there is imagery that connects Jimin’s new music video to the comeback trailer of the song he has tattooed forever on his body?

Ok, this one might be a bit of a stretch, but blue mushrooms? More than one? Blue? Seriously?

I’ll admit, I had to google this one, but yes, both mushrooms and mold (including blue mold or penicillium) are types of fungus. So, they aren’t identical, but they’re…cousins? 😂 Again, what an incredible coincidence that Jimin would sing a song (Serendipity) which referred to penicillium (blue mold), and the other members would refer to Yoongi as blue mold more than once and Jimin’s music video would include blue mushrooms!

Plus…Yoongi loves the color blue:

He has talked about it, he’s referenced the color blue in his lyrics. This is well-established. And then there’s this.

Anyway, those are just the things I’ve noticed so far. (And we haven’t even gotten to the song’s lyrics yet!) This is a hurried and somewhat haphazard post, but I’m excited and wanted to share some quick thoughts. I may edit this and/or change my mind once I’m well-rested. 😉

The song is so wonderful and Jimin is gorgeous!