#tattoo outline

[sapphicslut777]

‼️ in other news ‼️

MASTER SWORD TATTOO FOR TOTK!!!! ✨🗡️✨

going back in two weeks to get shading/color done but i absolutely love it to pieces!!

[mccek]

Tatuaggi folli #46 (6)✍🏻

[lazylittledragon]

forgot to post this the other day but i gave myself a little nameless ghoul :3

[ava-of-shenanigans]

Some may call it “boring” and “mostly pointless” and “none of these whale facts are even remotely correct,” but I think that Moby Dick actually has perfect pacing for a book about a whaling voyage. When I read it, I feel as though I am Queequeg, and I am out on the open ocean where whole weeks pass between anything happening and my main source of entertainment is listening to my husband Ishmael explain all the questionable whale facts he has tattooed on his body.

[glittergroovy]

Guess - Charli xcx

[kismetmoon]

(possible eyestrain warning)

giza for @entraptz !

[ID: a digital drawing of an original stylised Flatland character named Giza on a red background.

Giza is a humanoid creature with a round head and one large red eye. She is drawn as a grey outline that shows the shape of her sweatpants and the bangles on her wrists.

She is stood with her head tilted down while looking up at the viewer with a narrowed eye. Her right hand is held bent with a cigarette between her fingers. An outline of smoke is trailing from the cigarette. Her left arm is held down by her side with a silhouette of a black butcher knife in her hand in front of her legs. “Giza” is wrote beside her in all black capitals, with the letter “a” wrote as the anarchy symbol.

End ID].

doodles and an alternative / ‘normally’ coloured version under the cut (where i forgot that she doesn’t actually have a top point, sorry !) (no eyestrain warning) :

[ID: four digital drawings of Giza done on red backgrounds.

The first image shows the same drawing of Giza as above, but coloured in in a lineless style. She has dark grey skin with light grey patches on her shoulders and a sharp point on top of her head. She is wearing baggy grey sweatpants, two thin silver bangles on her right wrist and a thick silver bangle on her left. The cigarette is orange and white with a light grey smoke cloud outline. The butcher knife blade is the same red as the background.

The second image is an uncoloured doodle of Giza. She is kicking her leg out and has both her arms up with a butcher knife in her left hand. She is smiling at the knife.

The third image is another uncoloured doodle of her standing while facing the viewer and giving them the middle finger. She has an angry expression.

The fourth image is also an uncoloured doodle of Giza sat down and reading a book on the ground. She looks intrigued by the book. There is black writing beside her that says “reading :)”.

End ID].

[crowfanity]

Just realized I never posted my Defiant Dragons/Ace Attorney pride phone case

[yuwuta]

I keep thinking of flower shop worker Yuuta who can't help but admire plant mom reader who buys way too many new babies each month. He takes care of the flowers like they're his prized possession, but he's so humble whenever someone compliments him for the quality in his department. And when you accidentally bump into him holding a pot which falls to the tile floor with a loud shatter? It's like a scene out of a movie. Because for once, Yuta isn't fretting over the scattered petals, but is instead worried if you're cut by the glass.

Just thought I'd share >:)

oh he’s so cute… you’re trying to pick up the larger pieces of the broken pot, but yuuta’s fussing about you, insisting that “it’s okay, really! you’re hurt, please let me help,” and now you’re a little dazed bc there’s a handsome stranger kneeling in front of you and holding your injured hands and pleading at you and wow have his eyes always been that big and has the flower shop always been this warm and his hands are really warm too and while you’re having a million thoughts a minute, yuuta is only having one which is “oh god does this count as holding hands…” 

[rightwriter]

This is THE video for anyone looking for a comprehensive and thorough way to outline your book! Kat goes chapter by chapter with the beats you need to hit, and also gives an example from her own story, which really helps you understand! If you watch only one video from this blog, it should be this one! Reposting this because it's SO GOOD

[tennessoui]

omg that last "let me go, anakin" would have haunted anakin for the rest of his life if obiwan *actually* died from his hanahaki 😭😭 i love that nothing's really accomplished between the two of them even after all that long n heartfelt conversation for force's sake they are both so ridiculous it's amazing

after obi-wan miraculously survives his hanahaki disease and recovers a fair amount there are soooo many things he’s not allowed to say anymore. he can’t even say “let’s go, anakin” it’s too close and that’s the thing anakin is sensitive about

[smallandalmosthonest]

buck gets proposed to and “tells” everyone at the 118 by just dramatically holding his hand near his face/gesturing slowly but wildly/patting someone’s arm pointedly until they mention it, even though everyone clocked it right away and/or already knew the proposal was incoming but they humour him anyway

[lazylittledragon]

first session on this LORGE boy!!

if i had a nickel for every time i got a tattoo of a dnd podcast with 69 episodes that made me cry, i'd have 2 nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice

[jellogram]

I don't think I'm ever going to stop being sad about David Bowie dying. It's been over eight years and it still makes me sad when I think about it. I never got over that one. Something about that man being able to die, about us not sharing the same planet as him anymore, just seems incorrect.

[stabbyfoxandrew]

hmm so originally demon neil was gonna be a longfic, but then i decided it would be a series with a bunch of smaller fics making up the story

BUT i just realized if i do that i have to come up with 5 bazillion goddamn fic titles >:( evil world

[llittletingoddess]

Short haircut, chain, tank top.. James reliving his Load era? I'm here for it

[04tenno]

sorry to bother but I saw ya talk about kirin lore and Mine etc? Specifically about kirin and the full moon? Do you have any stuff I could look at about kirin myth that I could look at? (its cool if its a Japanese source I'll force myself to learn to read it) Or just any thoughts on kirin and Mine in general I've been going ham on stupid kirin-Mine AU lately and its relevant fhdkfd

I'm glad you asked! Unfortunately I'm not positive I saved any of my sources... anywhere, but the good news is I do remember most of my findings in detail and have been itching to post about them. So! I'm taking this opportunity to analyze Mine's tattoo top-to-bottom.

And I'm also approaching this as a sort of redemption arc, because a lot of interpretations of Mine's tattoo out there are based on what I wrote on the wiki. It's not that they're incorrect per se, but there is so much more to it than what the wiki currently goes into, and I'd like to share that with you all today.

I'll start off with some official statements, and because it comes up later, establish the original version of the tattoo Horitomo designed is actually this version with green fur (pictured below):

Like the word kirin-ji, this is a design that evokes the image of a genius. To be honest, the majority of depictions give kirins the face of a dragon, but with a composition like this where it's soaring upwards, you risk ending up with a tattoo that looks too much like Kiryu's. So I looked into some older material, and while it's not too common, I went with a type of kirin that more closely resembles a deer. — Horitomo

It wants to rise above, but chooses to put itself second and use its talent and intellect to support the "king"—the kirin suits Mine, doesn't it? So, with that general concept in mind, we went through several designs done in pencil, went back and forth on various aspects, until we settled on the direction we wanted to take. And after that, the detailed version of the design was produced. — Masayoshi Yokoyama

With Yokoyama's comment, it's clear what the core meaning of his tattoo was meant to be from the beginning. Because a Like a Dragon tattoo represents more than just a summation of who the character is as the audience knows them or their role in the narrative, but who they were before joining the yakuza, why they joined the yakuza, what the motivation was behind their choice of subject, how elements of the tattoo reflect on characters who share the same elements (and vice versa), and how the meaning the tattoo evolves over time in relation to the character's fate.

So my main... misgiving, let's say... with popular interpretations of Mine's tattoo is that they focus solely on Daigo without examining how it relates to anything else. Again, partly my fault, I'll cop to that, but this is an issue with a lot of analysis of Mine as a character... and it's a little frustrating, isn't it? It is for me. But enough complaining, it's showtime:

Some notes design-wise: the decision to portray Mine's kirin as deer-like rather than dragon-like specifically to distance him from Kiryu says a lot about their characters to me. Because Mine is, in a lot of ways, "the complete opposite, or antithesis, of Kiryu." (Yokoyama) But the kirin is ultimately in the "dragon" family of mythological creatures; as such, Mine, no matter how much he tries to set himself apart from Kiryu, will always parallel Kiryu. This is exactly what I was talking about with regard to how tattoos come to change in meaning over time; it's not insanely prophetic, it's something that makes complete sense in-universe, makes sense for Mine to get at the time he got it, but it also ends up representing his relationship with Kiryu so well. The fact the kirin is in the "dragon" family of mythological creatures, in combination with the original green coloring, is also notable. Because the dragon depicted in Daigo's tattoo is the same shade of green.

There are multiple "species" of kirin, denoted by the color of their fur, which corresponds to one of the five phases (五行, gogyō), originating from the concept of wuxing in Chinese philosophy. The word "kirin," strictly speaking, refers to kirin with yellow fur and corresponds to Earth, which is associated with stability, hard work, ambition, and stubbornness. Kirin with green fur are known as shoko (聳孤, shōko) and correspond to Wood, which is associated with luxuriant growth, vitality, strength, and co-operation. Speaking of the five phases, that also ties into the concept of the Four Gods, a motif explored with the protagonists of Yakuza 4: Kiryu is the Azure Dragon, Akiyama is the Vermillion Bird, Saejima is the Black Turtle, and Tanimura is the White Tiger, representing Wood, Fire, Water, and Metal respectively. The "Fifth God," representing Earth, is widely considered to be a kirin. This doesn't really relate to anything though, just food for thought for the Protagonist Mine enjoyers (me <3)

A great deal of the meaning behind Mine's tattoo is etymological in nature. The word "qilin" itself represents a duality: "qi" refers to a female kirin, "lin" refers to a male kirin, and "qilin" refers to the species as whole. The kirin is said to embody yin and yang. And I think this aspect works perfectly with who Mine is as a character often torn between two extremes. He, like the kirin, has the capacity for both benevolence and ferocity, and like the kirin, only becomes violent in retaliation to violence or out of a sense of protectiveness. Also, in a very literal sense, Mine has both Yin cards and Yang cards in Ryu Ga Gotoku Online, which very few characters do due to their contradictory nature. As Horitomo mentions, the design has basis in the word "kirin-ji" (麒麟児, child prodigy, lit. "kirin child"). A lot of people already know this (anyone who's read this post certainly does, at any rate), but fewer are familiar with the origin of the term. In Ancient China, there was a belief that the appearance of a kirin heralds the birth (and death) of a gifted son with a promising future, beliefs held around Confucius being a famous example. Of course, this relates to Daigo in terms of the association with leaders, but it also relates to Mine himself, who views his younger self as a sort of diamond-in-the-rough, a "gem shining brilliantly by the wayside." This reinforces that the tattoo is not just a meta representation of him, but directly relates to how he views himself. Additionally, the kanji that comprise "shoko" read as "soar" (聳, shō; as in, to rise above something) and "orphan" (孤, ko) respectively.

On that note, kirin are capable of flight, which can obviously be connected to his ambition ("rising above" his origins), his theme, and his method of suicide. They hover off of the ground so as to not trample blades of grass, and are often depicted as walking on clouds (which are, of course, depicted in Mine's tattoo). Some kirin even have wings!

Circling back to the note about violence to talk about the kirin's ability in battle: kirin are ferocious combatants and known to have a very strong hind kick; Mine mainly uses his legs to fight. I believe his "red heat state," where he's at his most aggressive, also represents the fire surrounding his kirin. Kirin may use flames to attack. Kirin are also thought to be the only creatures who can defeat a dragon, and I would argue Mine is the only final boss who even manages to come close to defeating Kiryu. I actually would even argue he did win, since he had more stamina left.

Just reiterating for the sake of being thorough, but as mentioned in the ask, kirin are thought to be at their most volatile and at their most powerful during a full moon. You only see it in one shot, but the finale of Yakuza 3 does in fact take place under a full moon. Mine is, of course, shown to be both of those things in the finale.

There's also some sort of association between kirin and thunder/lightning, at least in popular media. Mine and his tattoo are depicted surrounded by lightning in one of his cards, and the "Hakuho Clan Pin" item that came out at the same time has an ability called Roaring Thunder. I'm not sure why this is the case. Perhaps it's to do with the kirin's association with the sky, since thunder and lightning are celestial phenomena.

With that, I believe I've covered everything I wanted to touch on. Thank you for reading and for the opportunity, and I hope I've "redeemed myself" adequately!