#that it doesn’t MATTER how its defined what shape it takes

[void-tiger]

…pleasepleaseplease believe me that I want only what you can freely give, that I can wait instead if you need me to until you feel like you can give unrestrained.

I just want to be allowed to stay.

[divinationsanctuary19]

What do you need to know right now? PICK A CARD🌺

Are you ready? 1...2...3...

Choose what resonates the most!

🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿

1. The world

Life goes on, you are not missing out. Life has its ups and downs, and sometimes it feels like you're missing out on things others are experiencing. But the truth is, you're exactly where you need to be right now. Every moment, every decision shapes your unique path. Life goes on, and it’s not a race. What’s meant for you will come, and the experiences you have along the way are just as valuable as any others. Trust your journey, and remember that you are not behind. You're right on time for your own life.

2. Wheel of fortune

Life changes can be challenging, but they also open doors to growth and new opportunities. Even when things feel uncertain, remember that change is a natural part of life’s journey. It pushes you out of your comfort zone and helps you discover new strengths. Embrace the changes, knowing that each step is taking you closer to where you're meant to be. Trust that you have the resilience and ability to adapt and thrive. Every change is a chance for a fresh start.

3. The tower

I know things are really tough right now, and it feels overwhelming, but remember this: you are stronger than you think. You’ve faced challenges before, and you’ve come through them, and you will get through this too. It’s okay to take things one step at a time and to lean on others when you need to. This moment doesn’t define you—it’s just one chapter in a much bigger story. Keep going, even if it’s slow. Brighter days are ahead, and you’ve got everything it takes to make it through.

4. The magician

You have everything within you to achieve your goals. It may not always feel easy, but every step you take, no matter how small, is progress toward what you want. Your dedication, talents, and resilience are powerful tools that will help you overcome any obstacles. Remember, the journey toward your goals is just as important as reaching them, and you are capable of growing and adapting along the way. Stay focused, believe in yourself, and trust that you have what it takes to turn your dreams into reality.

🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿

If you need a private reading, I offer paid readings, for info check this out!

[galaxy-ficsa]

LET’S GO WORLDBUILDING!!

The Magic System

The lore I’ve crafted & certain are heavily inspired by Undertale & some of it’s AUs. Familiarity with the subject matter is recommended, but not required. ANYWAYS Enjoy the read!! :)

What Are Souls?

A Soul is composed of an individual's essence housed in a physical shell! If someone (or something) is sentient, it has one!

Souls take the rough shape of a heart, pointing upright or downward, depends on the species.

When a Soul shatters, its essence, the magic inside, is released into the surrounding atmosphere. Just as there is moisture in the air, same applies to magic.

Soul Magic & Attributes

Those in-tune with their own Souls can tap into magic! The more someone relies on Soul magic, they stand less of a chance of surviving without their Soul.

HOWEVER, stronger Soul magic makes a Soul last longer after it’s host dies. Pros & Cons!

Outer magic ISN’T from a Soul (ex: enchanted artifacts/clothing) & will always harm the body. Effects are unpredictable, can damage a limb, senses, or even an organ.

Soul magic doesn’t have this side-effect, but takes significant time to master.

Soul attributes reflect what a host expresses with their Soul magic. All Souls start grey before gaining color. DOES NOT define a person with one word!!

Standard Undertale Soul colors apply as Soul attributes, only expanded to include more shades & hues.

No two people express the same Soul attribute the same way, & a Soul can have (at most) two Soul attributes at a time.

Hate is a Soul enhancer, further increasing Soul magic power as their host becomes spiteful & psychotic. Hate’s appearance depends on how the host perceives it. Hate hosts have their sclera, blood, & bruises turn black.

Sensitivity opposes Hate (NOT a counter.) Inherited after a traumatic incident, their host is more emotionally-susceptible & responds to triggers. Can represent anxiety, PTSD, other mental health problems.

Sensitivity can become Hate if the host self-deprecates. Both are NOT Soul attributes, merely add-ons.

As long as there’s reasoning for a Soul-wielder to wield the magic they do, go nuts! However, Soul magic doesn’t come easy, not without a cost…

So I Have a Soul, Now What?

Soul magic can be harvested & made physical with the right tools or spells. Similar to a machine that collects moisture from the air & renew it into water. This is how enchanted artifacts & clothing are made.

If Soul essence is meshed into a new body, it will gain their memories. Soul “copies” may not carry over every aspect, such as their personality, especially if their previous life wasn’t a happy one.

Soul spells are dangerous practices that can grant a variety of effects “efficiently” (ex: sudden Soul attribute inversion, swapping Soul magic, reviving the dead with your owl Soul.)

Soul surgeries recreate Soul spells with “safer technology” - but good luck affording them!

[skyrimfuckery]

Working on my Squire’s Plate redo is partly an exercise of looking back and seeing how I’ve progressed. I finished the gauntlets today, and I’d like to take the opportunity to compare the textures for the inside of the glove for all the gloves I’ve textured so far. The reason I chose this area is because it’s easy to ignore during gameplay and barely gets shown during screenshots, yet it has the potential for the most personality as it’s literally the palm of the hand. Furthermore, this has been an area that I have always needed to texture, no matter the design of the glove. It allows for a good 1:1 comparison between things.

Starting off with the Blackened Steel Vambrace, I must say the leather texture has nice folds and creases showing off personality. It is very rough around the edges, and could use more detail in the color maps and more nuanced creases in the finger areas. The seam work is done quite messily, too. At the time I was set out on creating a good leather material both up close and at a distance, and not so much on creating a leather glove. I can tell you right now that my current work, which I will show last, still does not meet my imagination’s standards.

Moving up, the leather on the Evermorin Gauntlet is downright disappointing. I put in very little effort in the palm texture and only added the bare minimum: the cushioning but at the base of all fingers is accentuated, that’s all. There aren’t even any creases worth mentioning in the fingers. That’s not to say this gauntlet sucks, because if you flip it over you’ll find something I’m proud of to this day. This texture work perfectly illustrates my earlier point of the palm being easily missed, meaning shoddy texture work goes unnoticed.

My first venture into Substance Painter was with the Lorisian Glove. You’ll see that t he seams are way cleaner and not as squiggly as the previous two gloves. I went in the right direction by adding yellowish highlights to the top of the creases to simulate natural wear. Too bad it’s not enough and the palm is not exactly convincing. The thumb, however, looks fucking nice though. Note the lack of detail around the fingers, once again.

Then we have the Dragonstar Gauntlet. The leather was supposed to be a rough suede esque thing, which means it starts to look crusty really fast. The creases, however, are done pretty nicely. There is defined geometry, with major and minor details. Note the shaping around the base of the fingers, which is cleaner than the previous work. Apart from some deformed stitching, I’d say this is a pretty okay texture. This work builds upon my previous stuff because it uses both larger and smaller creases. None are hand-drawn, all are the result of a rotated overlay and clever masking. All in all, it doesn’t come across as convincing leather.

The Dark Witch Gauntlet technically isn’t leather. But a palm’s a palm. The fingers are very detailed and got a splendid 3d-look to them. The palm, however, is relatively barren. That’s because fabric doesn’t leave crease marks with use like leather does, but I could have added a few here and there because the thing is being used, and it would make it look less like shrink wrapped latex. The few creases that are there are subtle because they are supposed to convey the pulling of fabric close to the seams. Overall, I paid a lot of attention to actually painting the shape of a hand in this one, which you can see around the thumb webbing and the base of the fingers.

Closing up, we have the palm of the Squire’s Plate. The redo. This is the first gauntlet I textured using a high poly bake. I sculpted all the finger details in blender and transferred them to the lowpoly. The thumb has creases running perpendicular to its axis. The details that I’ve added to other gloves are here, with a few more. What this workflow allowed me to do, though, is to add worn areas based on the sculpt data. So you’ll see that the top of the creases are lighter and their bottoms are darker. One thing to note is that I underestimated the normal strength resulting the baking process, because areas like the base of the fingers are not as defined as I’d like.

The workflow that I used for my most recent project, the Squire’s Plate redo, has allowed me to produce the most lively glove out of them all. Yet I must say that the dragonstar glove has the most intricate details, with creases everywhere running in directions that make sense. The Lorisian glove was made with a good mindset, I just lacked skill and experience. My first glove, the Blackened Steel Vambrace, remains a great work for the time. For a while it was head and shoulders above my other leather work.

This post was for showing you my journey thus far, and for me to learn from my older successes and mistakes. I’ll definitely go back to the Squire’s gauntlet for a little bit to add some more juicy creases because I still have the project files so it’s literally no big deal.

Included are also some pics of the Gauntlet as it looks like right now!

[puppycheesecake]

Let’s make a Sim!

I thought it’d be fun to do a quick step-by-step rundown of how I make Sims. Long post, so I’ll put everything under the cut:

Step 1. Start with a base.

I keep a set of blank base Sims in my gallery to start with, so I don’t have to waste time removing clothes/accessories/hair/etc. These one’s were originally premades (the ones that pop up when you first open CAS), but it really doesn’t matter what they look like because we’ll be changing everything about them in a second.

Step 2. Randomize!

First let’s untick everything but the “face” and “skin tone” boxes for the randomization options. (The whole point of starting off with a base Sim was so we wouldn’t have to bother removing stuff.)

And...randomize!

I use Zerbu’s More CAS Presets mod to add a bunch of additional presets, so randomizing will generally give me something different every time. (I also have a ton of custom presets, but linking them individually would take 100 years, so we’ll skip that.)

Perfect! We’ll use this as a base to work with.

I actually like her underlying structure, so instead of choosing new face presets we’ll just work with what we already have.

Step 3. Adjust, adjust, adjust.

Let’s start making some adjustments. We’ll pull the ears out so they don’t lay so flat against her head, and lengthen her face a bit. I find that Sims tend to have kind of round face shapes with small jaws/chins, and I prefer them to be a little longer and more defined, so that’s usually the first thing I do. (Obviously you’ll tailor your Sims to your personal tastes, though.)

We’ll make some small adjustments to her jaw, cheeks, nose, lips, and chin. I prefer bigger noses on Sims, so I usually drag them down/out a bit. I also like sharper and more “severe” bone structure vs. soft and round, so I like to add extra definition.

Next we’ll add CC eyebrows (@ikari-sims‘s Jenna brows) and adjust the brow line a bit... (I’m a big fan of distinctive brows, so I tend to make them thicker/wider.)

Change the eye color (I’m using @missrubybird‘s Aqua Trigger eyes here), make a few more small facial tweaks...

Aaand there we are! I’m happy with her facial structure, so now we’ll move on to...

Step 4. Body.

I prefer custom body presets to the ones that come with the game, so we’ll use one of @obscurus-sims‘s female body presets and adjust it a bit (widen the shoulders and neck, make arms a bit thicker).

Step 5. Add body blush.

The first detail I add is always tattoo body blush. It’s a small difference, but that little bit of color is a must for me. I’m using a mix of @simandy‘s Torrada Blush and @obscurus-sims‘s Body Blush. (I think I use these two on every Sim I make.)

Step 6. Skin detail time!

Skin details do most of the heavy lifting. We’ll start with a skinblend (@obscurus-sims‘s N15 Overlay):

Then we’ll add some of @okruee‘s Misc. Face Details and one of @sammi-xox‘s Eye Masks.

Then @mmsims‘s Eyelashes V7 + @mintvalentine‘s Lash Filler, @nesurii‘s Little Details, @pyxiidis‘s Miscellany Pt.2 Nosemask, and @miikocc‘s Face-kit No.1.

Fabulous. Officially done with details!

Step 7. Hair.

Next up is adding hair + a hairline. I’m really loving @daylifesims‘s Gretchen hair right now, and we’ll pair it with @pixelore‘s Organic hairline.

Step 8. Makeup.

Optional, of course. I’m using @pralinesims‘s Lioness Eyeliner, @grimcookies‘s August Eyeshadow, @thepeachyfaerie‘s Eraser Lipstick, and @crypticsim​‘s Cloud Blush.

Step 9. Clothes & accessories.

Now let’s dress her up! We’ll go with @its-adrienpastel​‘s Saviour Dress, @solistair​‘s Calf Boots, @aharris00britney​‘s Beret, @kumikya​‘s Pearl Necklace, and @caio-cc​‘s Naomi Earrings.

And there she is! I think she turned out super cute.

Before and after:

** Here’s a list of all the custom sliders used (warning: it’s a lot):

Chin/profile

Shoulders

Chin

Eyebrow 01 / Eyebrow 02

Eyebrow N1

Pouty Lips

Lips N3 & N4

Nose N2

Eyelids N1

Eye Slider 07

Cheek Slider 12

Nose Width

Mouth Scale

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

Would you mind sharing what you found unsatisfying about iwtv's take on memory?

I mean I’m a huge AMC Interview With The Vampire hater, I think it’s poorly paced, poorly written (the misogyny…), has zero real thematic coherence, and actively works to dupe its audience into respecting it with like a string of soapy surface level entertaining stuff happening and dressing it all up to sound much smarter than it is. I will be seated for season three

But my plethora of issues with the show notwithstanding, focusing on the memory thing, I feel it is employed most often to strip Louis of agency and sideline him in his own narrative. On top of that, I feel like it just doesn’t really go anywhere.

IWTV is about collecting the closest to objective record of events as possible. As the series progresses, it becomes clear that this is the way Louis is trying to take some agency back for himself against Armand. This could be really poignant and interesting, but in practice it turns more into a narrative game of team Lestat vs team Armand with Louis himself as collateral�� which is strongly exacerbated by how Daniel (and other characters) mock him for being in abusive relationships.

A standout example of this is from season one, when it comes to Louis’ involvement in Lestat’s death, and how his misremembering is treated like a gotcha.

In the book, Louis chooses not to involve himself, which is why Claudia is forced to carry it out herself. Once Louis does learn, he has the choice to save Lestat or side with Claudia. So when he grudgingly sides with Claudia, the entire plot is shaped by it. At a surface level, Louis reads like a rather passive character, but he has a lot of narrative agency. Nothing would turn out the way it does without his choices, even if that choice is frequently one of inaction, or simply an internal, emotional one.

In the show he’s nominally very involved in Lestat’s death, but we keep being told he doesn’t have the stomach for it. That he’s too weak to go through with it and not idk drown in Lestat or whatever— which again, is something the narrative framing belittles. Then it’s revealed that Claudia hid the real plan from him and poisoned Lestat separately. She was the only architect of his death all along because she knew Louis could not be trusted.

Then the misremembering comes in: Louis supposedly delivers the final killing blow— but suddenly it is uncovered that he was actually letting the poison drain out of Lestat’s body. And that he actually refused to burn the corpse to give him a chance to recover. This information isn’t actually centered on Louis and his feelings though, Daniel has to be there to call bullshit on Louis’ (implicitly Armand’s) version of events. And then season two even goes so far to confirm that Lestat couldn’t have died by fire anyway, because he has the blood of Akasha. Saving him from the incinerator didn’t even change anything!

So Louis was only superficially more enmeshed in the events shaping the plot, to then be separated from it entirely. Meanwhile there’s very little narrative interest in what it actually means to him, to have believed and felt a certain way about a very pivotal moment in his history, and to have had that entirely upended. Louis’ experiences and interiority, what he is going through beyond searching for a narratively defined as impossible objective truth, don’t actually matter to the narrative.

Another example is how the show frames Louis’ recollection of the physical violence in his relationship with Lestat. In season one we get to see this really OTT physical abuse (side note: I do get the sense that the show can’t really grasp abuse that isn’t so in-your-face. There’s a supposed dichotomy next to Armand’s memory wiping and manipulation but even that is taken to such an unnuanced extreme.)

It’s really gruesome, and the show seems to really enjoy showing Louis as physically fucked up as possible every chance it gets. Then season two has Louis unearth forgotten memories about how the fight actually began because Louis attacked first. How he was the aggressor all along and Lestat never even wanted to fight.

First of all, I just loathe that framing, that actually Louis just imagined being abused— even if it’s because Armand put those memories in his mind. But also the take away is that… Lestat’s not that bad actually? I guess? Especially paired with the reveal that he actually saved Louis (but … chose to let Claudia die… but we don’t care about this I guess…)

Louis remembering things incorrectly is mostly just a vehicle for a plot twist, and also often a means to just undermine him. That’s not a cogent theme! That’s not memory being a monster.

Like where is the exploration of there being nothing left of Claudia but what Louis, and her killers, remembers of her? Nowhere because the show hates her and all women. Where is any sort of conclusion about what Daniel may or may not remember after S2 Ep5? There was room for really interesting shifts in dynamic and perspective after that… where is it? They basically return to the status quo the very next episode.

What does “memory is a monster” even fucking mean in this show? Is it that it is consuming? That these characters cannot escape their pasts that have defined them? Is it that they can never be certain of their memories, even though that is really the only lens through which they can contextualize the world/their relationships/their lives beyond it?

They don’t go anywhere with any of their choices! It drives me insane! Instead they just keep repeating a single goddamn line because it sounds smart and people go nuts for it because idk vampire yaoi. It pisses me off!

[thelastunicornflipouts]

EDIT: thanks for the likes, comments, and reblogs! I am planning on doing an analysis on each of Schmendrick’s spinoff novelettes, since every single one of them adds layers to his character. I have a huge soft spot for movie-Schmendrick - he is the cutest patatino ever - but unfortunately he lacks most of the depth book-Schmendrick has.

“The Green-Eyed Boy” analysis. Was Schmendrick a neglected child?

Though it’s – maybe - not one of Peter Beagle’s masterpieces, I still think “The Green-Eyed Boy” does a perfect job in its shortness (it’s not even 20 pages long) in portraying Schmendrick’s character and in explaining his behaviour not only in the short novel itself, but also in the other works that feature Schmendrick, being them the ones that predate it (like “The Last Unicorn”) or subsequent ones.

“The Green-Eyed Boy” is a short story about Schmendrick’s apprenticeship with Nikos, the narrating voice of the novelette, and it opens the short tales’ collection “The Overneath,” which includes another Schmendrick’ story, “Schmendrick Alone.” Even though the latter it’s another interesting portray of the magician, “The Green-Eyed Boy” seems to be much more poignant when it comes to explain where Schmendrick comes from and why he acts the way he does.

GREEN EYES

Despite most people would remember Schmendrick’s movie-version, where he has light teal eyes - most possibly due to the overall blue palette of the movie, which would have made the colour green too much of a distraction, but at the same time his clear eyes make a nice contrast with the overall dark tone of the movie – he is described in the book version as having bright, almond-shaped green eyes. It is those green eyes that are his most defining characteristic (rather than his large nose, which it is still mentioned in the novelette but it’s not as notable as in the movie), hence the title itself. But, even though they immediately catch Nikos’ attention and are what ultimately make him decide to take Schmendrick as an apprentice, they seem to be more as a stigma than else, as Nikos mentions: “I don’t know where he got them” … “but no one in his family ever had eyes like those.” Immediately, Schmendrick is presented as separate from his family. His most striking feature is what cuts him off from them, doesn’t matter where the eyes come from. He is different, visibly different, and he is treated as such.

SCHMENDRICK’S PARENTS

What follows next it’s Nikos meeting with Schmendrick. Or, more precisely, Nikos interacting with the boy’s father while the latter gets abandoned at his place. Schmendrick’s father is immediately presented as a rough man, obsessed with his work to the point that he could only measure his kids’ worth with how much they could help with the cooperage. He never directly addresses Schmendrik – except for when he leaves, where he simply gives him a slap on the head and tells him to work hard – and he is always dismissive, when not downright emotionally abusive, calling Schmendrick – who, let’s not forget, is twelve years old in the novel – “useless”, commenting how he cannot help with any of the family's trade, his uncles' included. He does not allow Schmendrick to talk on his own, not even when the boy has to tell his name, and argues with Nikos when he does not accept any fee, in fear that the wizard would send the boy back home.

There’s plenty of information – if indirect – about Schmendrick’s mother as well. She is never seen, only mentioned. In “The Last Unicorn” it is played for laughs, when a very drunk Schmendrick interrupts the head of a cursed village to comment how his mother never liked him. Here it seems clear that his mother has put a lot of expectations on him since his birth, giving him a high-sounding name (“… which was the name of an ancient hero, best remembered for slaying a many-headed sea monster, but dying himself in the battle.”), a name his father immediately objects on, commenting on how it was his wife insisting on giving the baby boy such name. Yet, she is nowhere to be seen, even though Schmendrick’s father comments that she “sends love.” She will never visit Schmendrick, as if he is something she wishes to forget, a boy she put many expectations on which he then failed to comply. I would not be surprised if she is the one who has begun to call the child Schmendrick, a name the boy is so used to that he would not answer any other, as he himself admits, bitterly aware of the meaning and implications of such nickname.

NEGLECT

Schmendrick, as already said, seems bitterly and acutely aware of his nickname, to the point that he can give Nikos a way too much accurate definition of it (“The boy who is sent to do a man’s job” … “The person utterly out of his depth, far beyond his pitiful capacities.”). Nikos himself is shaken both by the name itself and Schmendrick’s self-contempt. There is another one key element, though. This is the first time Schmendrick speaks. And he speaks clearly, with a pretty articulate vocabulary for a boy his age. Until now he has kept quiet, staring in front of himself, apparently even unable to tell his own name without his father’s intervention. It might sound counterintuitive until you realize that Schmendrick is simply doing what most neglected and emotionally abused children do to keep safe: he is trying to avoid to attract attention on himself. Until his father speaks, Schmendrick keeps quiet, staring at nothing, and acts anxious when he is addressed with a question, even if said question is as simple as “What are you called, boy?” He knows far too well – and Nikos notices too – that if he attracts attention, he will get insulted or dismissed as a fool, so he prefers to stay silent. More painfully, he keeps quiet until his father leaves. Only then he speaks freely, in front of a stranger – a potentially scary stranger, being Nikos a wizard.

Immediately after, Nikos comments that all he has done for Schmendrick for the first days was feeding him, musing that maybe his parents had not given him enough food. Schmendrick, still in Nikos’ words, seems to be overly focused on food for a while, something that it’s hinted even later in the story as one thing that might stop Schmendrick from leaving after he has caused a mess with magic (“Go, put your things away and see what’s left of yesterday’s potato stew.”). Given that Schmendrick’s dad seems to be pretty obsessed over work and that Schmendrick’s two (or three, since “Schmendrick Alone” mentions three brothers, but it might be just a mistake since the story is a few years following “The Green-Eyed Boy”) older brothers are said to be trained to take over the cooperage, it is perfectly plausible that Schmendrick, being seen as the most “useless” and expendable child, is given less food, to the point that, at twelve, Nikos is even convinced that the boy has been starved and it is canon that also adult Schmendrick has a very thin frame. Might it be a consequence from childhood, when he was so used to be hungry that he is not bothered by feeling it? In “The Woman Who Married The Man In The Moon” – which is by far the darkest among Schmendrick’s short stories – he is about to refuse Sairey’s invite to dinner, before he accepts and comments: “Many thanks. I sometimes forget that I am hungry.” This might be a clue that Schmendrick is used to hunger pains, both because of his vagrant lifestyle and his childhood.

SCHMENDRICK’S APPRENTICESHIP

Aside from mourning on Schmendrick’s difficulties and mistakes, Nikos is extremely adamant that his student was a hardworking, smart, and mindful one. Schmendrick studies an awful lot and practices incessantly, giving the reader a much different portrait of him from the one anticipated by his father. The boy is far from stupid, and he seems to be – even though Nikos never says it directly, only hinting it through sentences that inform the reader that he had let Schmendrick the run of his private library, or that Schmendrick was an extremely attentive student who not only understood but also could elaborate the lessons – the best student the old wizard has ever had, aside from the natural power Nikos had sensed. Schmendrick is capable and clever, as other stories hint (it is said that he is quite good with riddles and charades, can cipher, knows multiple languages and is wise beyond his years), still it is his motivation to do all this that seems to be his worst hinderance. Schmendrick does see the underlying theme of magic, he knows that nothing is forever, and everything yearns to be something else. So it is his desire. He has been seen as a worthless fool for all his life, and now he wants to be seen as something different, more powerful, and more respectable, such as a wizard just like Nikos (a sentiment that it’s much better portrayed in “Schmendrick Alone,” where a 19yo Schmendrick constantly thinks about what Nikos would - or wouldn’t - do or say, in the circumstances he finds himself into, to the point he even conciously mimicks some of his tutor's mannerisms). Schmendrick is doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, wanting to prove others and himself who he really is and what he is capable of. His most annoying, and notable, characteristic in “The Last Unicorn” is his attention-seeking demeanour and his tendency to brag to whomever interacts with him long enough to let him do so. He alternates moments of incredible wisdom with comical lack of style which are only apparently at odds. Schmendrick is a very smart and capable individual who yearns for praise and attention, a child who has always been measured for what he is not able to do instead of his real capacities. This, however, in a twisted self-fulfilling prophecy, is exactly what makes difficult for him to perform magic, despite all his genuine effort. He sees magical talent as instrumental for him to be recognized – to be seen, and this is what it’s causing him so much trouble and failure.

SARDANA

In the last pages of the novelette, the reader is introduced to the only (acquired) family member who comes to visit Schmendrick, to “see if he was happy and treated well,” an apparently throwaway sentence that it’s instead very telling about Schmendrick’s parents and brothers’ consideration of him, since they have apparently forgotten about him or do not care how he is doing. Sardana is one of Schmendrick’s brothers (the middle son, from what it’s told in the story, which lets us know that Schmendrick has at least two adult brothers while he is still a child) wife and she is very vocal about her worries about Schmendrick. She too has felt an outcast in the cooper’s household - since, as she says, hers was a combined marriage for business reasons - and Schmendrick was the only one who was good to her. Not much else is said about their bond, but it is safe to say that young Schmendrick has seen himself mirrored in poor Sardana. Later, it becomes apparent that Schmendrick, who should be 13 or 14 years old around this time, has a strong infatuation for Sardana. This is extremely telling. Schmendrick, who has never received love or, simply, care and affection, is unable to tell the difference between romantic love and platonic love. He mistakes Sardana’s concern with love, a very common reaction among people who had been emotionally neglected and abused, who might think that the person caring about them is in love or become extremely clingy to those who show affection to them. Very telling is Schmendrick’s reactions. He pesters Nikos for guidance on what to do for Sardana. Schmendrick has been considered a helpless fool until now and puts his personal value in what he can do, not who he is. He cannot think that Sardana might appreciate him for him – which she does – but only for what he might be able to do for her, which will lead him to perform a very dangerous spell that might cost him his sanity.

ESCAPISM

Another thing that can be inferred from “The Green-Eyed Boy” is very covert in the story itself, but it gets clearer in every other Schmendrick’s spin-off short story. In “The Last Unicorn” Schmendrick is the character who appears to be the most genre-savvy about stories and fairytales, while in other novelettes, especially in “The Woman Who Married The Man In The Moon,” it’s obvious that he possesses a wealth of tales he tells others or himself. Most importantly, in the same novelette, he tells these stories right in the moment in which other characters need comfort and soothing, being them lost and confused children or a grieving widow. This might be a sign that Schmendrick is well into the habit of escapism, which might have begun from a young age. Being a lonely child, neglected by his family and – safe to assume from a comment from Nikos – bullied by the rest of the townsfolk, it is very likely that child Schmendrick might have begun to read and invent stories he then told to himself to keep himself company. As previously said, Schmendrick appears to have the tendency to space often in “The Green-Eyed Boy”. While his family considers this a sign that he might be just a simpleton or tossed in the head, it might also mean that he is dissociating from the situation – in “The Green-Eyed Boy” Schmendrick is shown to do that right when his father is insulting him. His might be a coping mechanism to feel less alone and to protect himself when others attack him.

[prncssie]

im sorry but ahh Kyojuro !!!!! he literally has my heart ! he's the sweetest most precious babyy !! can you give us some hc's for modern era Kyojuro x reader who has bpd ? >< it is kinda umm difficult and tricky to write about something like this so its understandable if you ignore this >< but ah thank you for reading this ! and have a good day! <3

hi baby! ik ik i said i was gonna be mia for a few and i still ammm. i have hella hw and exams coming up but this peaked my interest a little bit. i’m gonna approach this w caution bc i do not have bpd but i know someone who does so im gonna do my best based off what ik from her. just know that you’re always safe here. everyone is, no matter what — the bpd i’m referring to is borderline personality disorder so i’m hoping you didn’t mean the other bpd 😭

kyojuro is always and has always been a super, super patient guy. it’s just a part of him that he cannot get rid of at all. you know i think of his as the perfect partner, my little golden boy.

i think that with a partner who has bpd, this is only heightened. he has to be extra patient because you both see the world (and your relationship) differently and he knows you can’t help it. there’s probably extra emphasis on open communication, no matter what. he doesn’t care what the problem is or what the conversation would lead to, communication just has to happen and it has to be thorough. you tell him how you feel and why, he takes it into consideration and responds accordingly. you’re worried he no longer cares? okay, what is making you feel this way? you think mayb this is overwhelming and you’re pulling away? he’s going to talk to you about it.

there’s also very clearly defined boundaries. it’s part of the communication aspect but it’s a whole separate thing entirely. they’re developed in the beginning in your relationship and have grown the longer you’re together and the more experiences you have. he endures your splits, knowing that you probably don’t mean it as harshly as you do but he lets you know he doesn’t appreciate the yelling. he always waits until you’re receptive to his words and holds in tongue until you’re generally calmer. this does nawt include him telling you to calm down. he’d never utter those two words a day in his life. i think he’s more likely to take his separate space away and remove himself from the situation because he has his own feelings too. he can get frustrated as well.

also therapy!!! big emphasis on therapy, but for both of you. you both go and see separate therapists. it’s necessary for both of you, regardless of what personal diagnosis either of you might have. there’s no stigma between you two. you have bpd, that’s just who you are. so what? it doesn’t define you in any way shape or form and means nothing until you, personally, decides it does. so you both go and work through your issues separately and uphold the whole privacy thing. there’s no at home conversations unless that person wants to share their own information.

i mean, the relationship is pretty normal. you still joke, you still kiss and cuddle and have intimacy the way everyone else does. he’ll still wake up in the early mornings and make breakfast, awakening you to the smell of bacon cooking in the frying pan. he’ll still shower you in gifts and constantly reassure his love and adoration. he’ll still treat you as though you’ve crafted his world by hand. i see him as being this soothing place of comfort. he doesn’t judge you and instead, validates your emotions. you’re allowed to feel however you feel. he just hopes you hear him out too.

oh oh oh! and he takes things very very slow. he knows you can get kinda . . . wrapped up??? in the feeling of love. not necessarily obsessive but he’s aware that you want to dwell in that emotion for as long as you can. he doesn’t want you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t have or even rush before reallyyyyy processing what’s happening to he takes it very slow. it’s agreed upon by both parties and he upholds that. if he says he’s going to do something, he’s going to do it. so yeah, that generally mean limiting coupley things you do before the time that you’re officially a couple. no sex or very little sex until you’re together together. until you’ve gotten each other locked DOWN.

idk, i hope this is what you wanted??? you’re right it is a very delicate topic and i’m doing my very best to tread lightly so pleaseeeee let me know if anything i said was incorrect or stigmatizing or contributing to negativity in any way. i’m always open to learn!

[oldestenemy]

“Initiate!” Velma Von Venkman’s voice is always a bright note in this place—at least compared to Ione and Fitzhume, who the wizard hears more often. “I know you’re preparing for Mirage—but since you’re waiting on Quismah to locate the spiral door—can I have a word?”

That’s the other thing they like about Velma.

She asks for their time.

She doesn’t demand it like Ione or Baba Yaga—or like Ambrose used to.

“Of course,” She was right anyways—they couldn’t do much until Quismah sent word that she had found where in the sprawling deserts the spiral door for Mirage had been lost. “what do you need?”

Velma smiles, and maybe they imagine it but there might be a hint of sadness in it. “Look at you, always ready to throw yourself at a task—but it wasn’t really something I needed, it’s more—come with me, I don’t think this is really Panopticon chatter.”

So they follow her into the Hall of Shadow.

“Alright, so I know I didn’t ask in the beginning—I usually try not to pry into people’s pasts—most of the scholars are very private people—okay maybe not most—doesn’t matter, would you mind taking your hood down for me?” Maybe it’s the way she talks, maybe it’s the fact that she doesn’t appear to be more than a decade older than they are at most, but out of the people they’ve met here—Velma is the one who puts them on guard the least.

It doesn’t stop them from jolting a little at the question.

Because it means she’s recognized the scarring. In some form or another.

They suppose there was never going to be any hiding it from a scholar of Shadow. The wizard lowers their hood, and the thin veil of darkness that conceals all but their eyes vanishes with it. Sometimes they wonder if getting used to it was a mistake. They feel almost exposed without the cover.

They do not have a lot of time to dwell on the feeling—thankfully—because Velma is fiddling with the high collar of her shirt, eventually undoing enough of it to reveal scarring in a similar coloration—though not welled so deep—in the shape of a jester’s collar. Or an echo of one. Not quite so well defined, jagged on the edges but still clearly there. “I thought I recognized those—I just haven’t been able to quite pin down how you ended up with them,” She says, “I came back with this after the first time I brought the Trickster into existence, and when I spoke to Sofia Darkside—you know her don’t you?—she theorized it was because I was the first person to pull that type of Shadow creature under magical control. But the tears—”

“—it’s overuse.” The wizard answers before her ramble goes any further. There’s no point in keeping it secret, unlike everyone else here Velma is unafraid of Shadow. She is dedicated to poking and prodding and learning its secrets. “The first time was after I killed Morganthe—I absorbed so much of the power pouring from her that it was trying to escape my body any way it could. It came out like the night sky made liquid, like—” why bother describing it.

The wizard takes a breath.

Reaches inward for the coil of emotions they keep a tight handle on. Rage, grief, guilt, pride, desperation and fear. Loosens the locks. Just enough that their eyes burn. Cold and dark and starry.

They run two fingers under an eye, holding their hand out to Velma. “I can call it up, I couldn’t on Khrysalis, but later��I was trapped, I was angry and desperate—it’s pure Shadow magic, I can use it to bend reality around me like you would with any of its spells. I’ve made battle placements, door sigils, altered spell cards—” Embedded Shadow creatures into duel circles, burnt themself into a husk…

Velma pulls open to a blank page of her spellbook, and holds it out to them, “Would you mind?”

They run the ink-dark fingertips down the page, tracing the sigil for Shadow because it seems appropriate. When Velma sets the book down on her desk and comes back she’s peering at their eyes in curiosity—not even bothering to hide the way she is buzzing with it.

“It comes with a price.”

“All Shadow does,” Velma replies, still inspecting the drying starlight.

“This is different,” the wizard insists “you can use it and use it and use it without backlash until you either engage and finish a duel, or use a proper spell that induces backlash itself.” They tell her in more detail than they’ve told anyone—even Cyrus—about Nidavellir and Darkmoor and the ways this usage of magic ended when pushed too far.

To her credit, Velma listens with wide eyed interest. Only stopping them here and there to clarify how something felt, or how it looked. When they’re done, she rests back against the edge of her desk, the thin arm of her monocle tucked between her teeth like it’s helping her think. Eventually, she does ask the question they’ve been expecting. “And these are your only scars from Shadow?”

Nobody knows about the one hooked under their sternum.

Jagged and puckered, knotted tissue poorly healed.

The wizard nods. And lies. “They’re the only ones. I think they get deeper whenever I try to dip into that well.” That part is true, they think whenever they let the tears come fully, run down their face again like all the times before—it paints an ever deeper well into the soft plane of their face. Another reason for trying not to take things too far anymore, though certainly not the primary one.

The idea of what happened in Nidavellir being repeatable haunts them.

They do not want to chance a creature like what they became released on a wider scale.

They’ve got too much to lose.

[elistodragonwings]

Yes, stories can normalize things, for better or worse. Knowing something is fake doesn’t mean our subconscious won’t learn and internalize what we’re seeing. After all, horror films wouldn’t have the ability to scare us if our minds on some level didn’t respond to fiction as though it were real. It’s hard to imagine we don’t also unintentionally take in biases and other negative values.

But that process does not exist in a vacuum. People don’t mindlessly and passively have values normalized like by some magic force. Context matters – how something is presented, not just if it exists, combined with a person’s experience and knowledge determines what does and doesn’t get normalized.

Banning everything that might be bad won’t stop things from getting normalized because society can’t control what any individual person gets from a story in the first place. What society can and should do is teach people how to engage critically with stories and with their own perception.

We call out stories that are sexist or racist or ultra-violent or overly-explicit, we call out patterns of bias across a genre, we call out commonly negative depictions, not to ban them but to bring them to people’s attention. To get people to think about what it means that we’re telling stories like this, to discourage people from passively consuming media, to encourage creators to think differently about what they’re making. Because yes, media can normalize things, but it also is a reflection of the already-normalized values and blind spots of the culture creating it; trying separate this chicken-and-egg situation is impossible.

Even if everyone could agree on what stories are or aren’t harmful, no stories can be perfect because creators are not perfect. If you do manage to sanitize everything to the most uncontroversial state, you’re left with nothing that challenges people to grow.

More than that, you can’t both ban something AND teach people to think critically about that thing they’re not supposed to see. Harmful things will always exist, but if people don’t know how to recognize or engage with them, they’re more likely to have it become normalized for them because they won’t know any better.

If you want to ban “bad” content rather than teach people how to analyze, then where’s the data? Where are the studies that say this top-down blanket approach is the best strategy? Where’s the research that shows that people who write violence are more likely to commit violence? Where’s the experts in social change and harm reduction that define what kinds of stories even are harmful? Or are you just looking for a shortcut, a simple authoritarian fix to a complicated social problem of why people do bad things? Because I promise you, no one is a pedophile or a rapist simply because they read about it in some books.

Stories can and are used to teach values. To TEACH values. To try to ban books and information in order to try to passively shape social values is completely backwards from how progress works. When a story truly no longer fits with contemporary values, it doesn’t need to be banned. It decreases in popularity on its own.

An example from my own life:

I loved the Dragonriders of Pern series in high school. Some were in my school library, some were in my regular library’s adult section, and some I bought. These books were written from 1969-early 2000s, and so unsurprisingly, some of the relationships depicted are, let’s say problematic. Some I recognized as not ok and some I did not. And yet none of those problematic depictions got normalized for me. What DID get normalized? The possibility of a society where gay men not only existed but had a respected place in society. Sure, looking back now, their depiction is…not great. But they were there and it was normal and fine. And that was important because nothing else did that for me until many years later.

Why did that stick and nothing else? Because I came to the series with progressive values, an open mind for different ways of thinking about people, a desire for stories that showed me something different, and an awareness that science fiction often is written as social commentary and imagining what could be. Someone who came to the books with different perspectives would have gotten something entirely different from it. Some might even find this too painful and harmful to read. Those are all legitimate reactions.

Should the series be banned for showing lack of consent? Gay stereotypes? The fact that gay men exist? That abortion in this world is simple and not a big deal? Because some people will find these books personally harmful or upsetting?

Or do we let the books exist, available, as we teach people to think about their values and how to analyze both stories and the world around them? As we let individuals decide for themselves what helps them and what hurts them?

[oncie]

why clive is THE ‘tumblr sexyman’ of the professor layton fandom; a short thesis written at 5am.

“descole fits sexyman tropes more than clive does” no he doesn’t. look at my url. this is coming from someone with a long long background of once-ler fandom and sexyman studies (and terrorising the pl fandom with clive/once-ler ship art LOL). SO. im educated in this matter is what im saying. the once-ler, AKA the ORIGINAL tumblr sexyman, SHAPED an entire generation and put the term tumblr sexyman in the internet vernacular which also made this whole competition exist in the first place so you better show some RESPECT to that man’s name.

clive’s polarising personalities: outwardly charming and friendly (future luke), inwardly malicious and spiteful (clive). his story arc: his selfishness and delusion leading to irredeemable destruction followed by his commitment to atonement even if it meant his lifelong imprisonment. he’s even got a weird kind of father figure in his story who tries to save him from himself. and then how the fandom that sprouted up around him was a microcosmic version of the once-ler response: some skinny white villain in a suit who was barely even the main character of their own media, their SINGLE piece of media (not counting precious versions of the same story here re:the lorax), suddenly taking an internet collective by storm to a surprising degree and giving impetus to a fandom-wide legacy of fame and infamy for said character. you see this in the fandom response to clive even today in 2022. look in his tag; you will either get people passionately devoted to him or people who passionately hate him for the chaos he wrought upon a community and also the general annoyance of seeing his face everywhere unjustified for the amount of media he actually was present in. THAT’S the once-ler response.

descole, on the other hand, has been a largely well received character after his four media appearances. you either get people passionately devoted to him or people lukewarm on him. people don’t complain of fatigue and annoyance at seeing descole’s face everywhere, because his appearances in the entire prequel series justifies his popularity. yes, descole fits some of the aforementioned tropes mentioned: namely the polarised personality, the suit, the villainy, tragic backstory. but the term tumblr sexyman is not solely rooted in tropes; it is equal part trope and equal part fandom meta. the term itself was coined by not the fans, but the critics; those in response to the once-ler fandom  who had grown fatigued by tumblr’s affinity towards the same flavour of charismatic villain in a suit. when you think of the phrase “i want that twink obliterated” and the people who genuinely mean it, which is the professor layton character that springs to mind first? it’s probably not descole.

a slight digression, but it’d also be wrong to write about the once-ler response without a mention of the absolute avalanche of once-ler OCs and askblogs that unexpectedly flooded out of that ONE kids’ movie. an entire fandom UNIVERSE was made from literal scraps (seriously have you seen the lorax 2012 the once-ler is barely fucking IN IT). these scraps AKA missing information about a character led fans to compensate by filling in the gaps which is what ended up birthing the infamous oncest ship - in its essence, a response to the largely unexplained and sudden jump from ‘nice once-ler’ to ‘bad once-ler’. this was what created a literal ‘once-ler fandom’ as opposed to ‘lorax fandom’. ANYWAY. this is a digression because neither clive nor descole had a ‘clive/descole fandom’ of their own (sadly) and selfcest was not a defining feature of their respective eras (thankfully). but that’s not why i raise this point. i do because THIS was the phenomenon that truly allowed the term ‘tumblr sexyman’ to come to fruition. it was a marker of not only just fatigue, but cringe. 

CRINGE is an important and defining factor to what TRULY makes a tumblr sexyman, and those in the tags this past week dunking on clive for being embarrassing and wearing kneesocks and being ‘the sexyman of the past’ (AKA a teen girl’s crush) is only proving it. that thirst that brought about the once-ler fandom from literal scraps was created by the most important demographic in internet history: neurodivergent teenagers circa 2007-2014. THIS was the one demographic with the POWER to make the most unexpected characters and media popular with their sheer passion and creativity, and yet the characters and media loved by this era specifically became the first subjects of cringe culture. cringe culture itself is a topic for another day; why it matters here is that there is an unmistakable element of cringe today surrounding clive as a character most of all. there are far too many examples of this to count but see this post for one example. this one post is really important because OP really gets it; the insane fandom response to one unlikely character, the main era of his popularity (cited 2013), and a question of cringe from a 2022 fandom perspective - why DID he inspire such lust and loathing when he looks like that? it’s because the neurodivergent teenagers wished it so, and thus it came to be. 

to most people, thanks to current tumblr’s over-categorisation of the term in an attempt to “cringe” at its past in a self-aware manner, “tumblr sexyman” has been watered down to mean “any character conventionally attractive and popular enough who sometimes skews towards the morally grey.” seriously, look at that sexypedia wiki, there are hundreds of these characters now. ANYONE qualifies if they had a sad backstory and had a reasonable fandom following. but this is only a cheap imitation of what the term really means. a majority of these characters haven’t actually earned what truly makes a “tumblr sexyman”, which ultimately boils down to the factors of tropes, unlikely fandom response, and their following notoriety based in cringe culture. in only a short time, we are forgetting the history. we’re forgetting where this phenomenon came from, WHO it came from, and how this essentially defined an entire era of the internet.

anyway im going to bed so what i’m saying is that voting clive represents and respects what the term “tumblr sexyman” really, actually means at its core and origin, because in the end, the character has earned it. descole on the other hand may very well be the ‘sexyman of the modern age’ - a cheap, watered down imitation only replicated by those who have forgotten their internet history.

[alyrasturnz]

i js read your ed hcs nd yr lil message made me tear up a lil bit

i've been struggling w eating for so long and nobody knows. i dont know how to tell anyone and its killing me. i just desperately need help

eating is such a challenge for me and always brings me to tears. i always find myself starving myself or making myself throw up a lil after one simple bite of food cause it makes me feel like i deserve it

i js dk what to do nd i feel so alone. the feeling of not eating is so numbing so i sometimes burn myself js to feel a lil bit.. i know its not healthy but lmao fuck it, what is healthy atp if i havent eaten a proper meal in months?

:((( baeeee

i'm here for you, and i care about you deeply. i can't even begin to imagine how hard this must be for you, but please know that you're not alone. your struggles are real and valid, and it's okay to feel the way you do. you don't deserve to go through this pain, and you definitely don't deserve to hurt yourself.

you deserve to eat and nourish your body. the numbers on the weighing scale don't define who you are as a person, and they never will. your worth isn't tied to your weight or what you eat. one bite of your favorite meal won't hurt you, but starving yourself and self-harming will. your body needs food to function, to give you the strength to face each day.

think of the river, flowing gently over stones. it doesn’t rush or force its way, but over time, it shapes the stones with its persistence. similarly, nourishing yourself, even in small ways, can gradually bring about healing and strength. each bite is a step towards caring for yourself, a gentle shaping of your well-being.

you are so much more than any number or any fleeting feeling of guilt. you are a beautiful, strong, and valuable person, and you deserve to treat yourself with kindness and care. your essence, your spirit, and your heart are what truly define you.

i'm here to support you, to remind you that you are loved and that you matter. you don't have to fight this battle alone. please, take it one step at a time, and remember that you are deserving of love, care, and nourishment. you are worth it, and you deserve to feel better. let each meal be a small act of love towards yourself, a testament to your strength and your worth

[secondhandsorrows]

Is Your Story High or Low Concept?

All stories are developed from an idea. In one way or another, they’re shaped from anything you draw inspiration from, from snippets of interesting conversation you’ve heard while sitting in a café, or a particular piece of art that captures your attention, or a character you’ve come up with that you just adore so much you just want a story with them in it. You may have a few general concepts in mind, but perhaps it’s not a story quite yet. In fact, you may not even have a premise. 

So how do you know whether your story idea is low concept or high concept?

First, let’s go over the two different types more in-depth…

Low-Concepts:

Low concepts are simple at first glance and tend to be broad and vague. They are mainly character-driven, usually centered around self-discovery, coming-of-age, or a relationship. They tell us of what the story is at its core — what it’s generally about and what to expect from it. It can be anything, from a widow learning to love again, or a girl beginning her first day of school, a detective solving a mystery. Because of its generic-ness, they can be easily identifiable and familiar to an audience. 

However, this doesn’t give us the exact story — just the basic essence of one in the simplest of terms. There’s no conflict or antagonist, yet, nor a definable goal. Rather, there’s no plot. In fact, this kind of concept isn’t easily explainable, as it could take on so many directions in many different ways. 

This doesn’t mean they can’t be interesting or that you shouldn’t write one. The main qualm with a low-concept is that they’re generally harder to pitch to agents or readers. 

Here’s a few examples that are low-concept.

- Jane Eyre

- Pride and Prejudice (in fact, most romance novels are low-concept)

- Lady Bird

Low concepts are usually fine on their own — you don’t need a grand hook or plot-heavy events to make make the story you want to tell. But what if you want to make it more compelling? What if you have a concept with a unique twist, goal, or setting? This is where high-concepts come in... 

High-Concepts:

On the other end, high concepts convey fresh, intriguing, or original ideas in just a few words or sentences. They can even put twists on original ideas, offering something completely revamped or unexpected (such as Titanic, taking a Romeo-and-Juliet love story onboard the famous ship). 

High-concepts deliver a prime situation, conflict, and a character arc, all luring its audience in with a hook. There’s a differentiating factor that acts as an attention-grabber that makes it high-concept, allowing the audience to have an idea in their heads of what the genre is and how the story might go, while also leaving room for bigger questions to string them along and leave them wanting more. 

Here’s some examples considered high-concept. 

- Lord of the Rings 

- The Maze Runner

- Mortal Engines

The main takeaway here is that the former is more focused on plot and a unique hook, and the latter has less of an emphasis on external events and more on character and emotion.

High-concepts can even be built off of low-concepts... or even work together in tandem. No matter which one you choose, both sides need at least some balance between internal and external — character and plot, I mean. Significant external events need to happen in a character-driven low-concept, and engaging characters with emotional changes and arcs are needed to experience the story through in a high-concept. (Whew, that’s kinda tough to explain. I’ve included a helpful link on this topic below, for clarity sake.)

Which one is right for you? 

At the end of the day, what matters most is the kind of story you want to write. Are you more interested in stories with high-stakes, a realized villain/antagonist, and immersive settings, driven by a sequence of events? Or, are you more interested in cozy reads focused more on character and growth; something less action-packed or plot-heavy?

Don't let one kind of concept turn you off from the other. Both are valid ways of creating the foundation or heart of your story. Try looking at the stories you love, and try to identify which ones might be considered high concept or low concept. What is it about them that draws you in?

Happy writing!

[missingn000]

tpg character mini-analysis: hajime kashimo + honor

i wanted to talk a bit about one of kashimo's defining traits that no other tpg character has: honor. after gojo meets them, he trudges away thinking kashimo has no moral structure, but this isn't...quite true. this quality shapes how hajime views the world as they evaluate others' actions based on a certain standard of conduct.

take a look at this line of theirs:

“What [the sorcerers] did back then in order to execute [Sukuna]…I can’t think of anything else so honorless. It doesn’t matter how many sorcerers he took down. There are some things you just don’t do.”

sukuna's yet-unrevealed backstory is incredibly devastating and tragic. in most people, it would evoke intense feelings of sympathy, sorrow, and anger on sukuna's behalf. others would say the people who did That to sukuna were heartless.

but instead kashimo says it was honorless. to them, this is the equivalent of the visceral reaction other people would've had. it's about perspective and priorities.

more below cut!

hajime continues to say:

They shake their head. “If the stories of what the sorcerers did to him back then are true...as far as I’m concerned, they deserved it.”

they deserved it. they DESERVED it? even mahito says he's surprised hajime would take sukuna's side. i'll say this conclusively about sukuna's backstory: the myth that after his failed execution, he wiped out an entire prefecture upon becoming a curse is true.

but hajime still thinks that punishment was deserved. what the sorcerers did to execute sukuna was so far beyond their rigid standard of conduct that such a fate was an appropriate punishment to them.

further, something that significantly annoys them about mahito is that he kills people who can't fight back. tpg 37 got long as hell, so i cut a few things, including this short snippet:

It’s not the violence that repulses them; that’d be illogical for someone whose body count is in the triple-digits. But there’s no honor in it, just slaughtering people who can’t even put up a fight. Kashimo’s fought more than their fair share of unsatisfying, ultimately one-sided battles, but that’s what they were: battles. Reciprocated killing intention. Of course weaklings deserve to die, but that’s a retroactive punishment.

they're repulsed at the idea of killing someone who's done nothing at all for no reason. killing the storehouse guards had a purpose: those people were in the way of their goals and actively fought back to try to stop them. but mahito frequently kills innocent people just for fun, which is completely honorless to them.

four hundred years ago, when sorcery was all about duels and death matches, honor existed in the place of laws or a legal structure. since death was a permitted end to a fight, there had to be something to keep sorcerers from just going around slaughtering people. honor is a form of social currency that earns respect and dignity within a community. conducting actions that fall outside its definition result in being hated and shunned.

however, despite mahito's misgivings, mahito is still rapidly becoming someone important to them -- the first person ever to be important to them. this does not fit in their current moral structure. take a look at what kashimo says when gojo is surprised they'd lay down their life to protect mahito:

Hajime flinches. “I made a promise,” they try. The glow beneath their eyes flickers, a store sign that can’t decide if it’s open or closed. “Breaking it would be honorless. I’d rather die than not be able to live with myself.”

Honor? No one has done anything strictly for honor in hundreds of years. “Is that really what you’re worried about?”

“Of course it is,” Hajime replies, after a delay too long to be entirely convincing. “I have no interest in forming bonds with others, least of all him.”

they're still pretty in denial regarding caring about mahito, so they're trying to convince themself it's about honor, because they can tie that to their existing values. since caring about someone is new, it's far more grounding to sort it into a value structure they already possess rather than face the horrifying ordeal of creating a new one that goes against their current worldview.

in that quote, they say they'd rather die than not be able to live with themself. honor is so important to them that the idea of acting without it is worse than death; they couldn't sleep at night. extreme, right? but i actually got this idea from canon.

take a look at this panel from hakari vs kashimo:

this. why did no one talk about this?? kashimo is someone who exists for fighting strong opponents. they let kenjaku brutally mutilate their body into a cursed object to incarnate four centuries into the future with the sole purpose of fighting sukuna. if hakari killed them here, that goal would not happen.

and yet.

they ask him to kill them. or rather, they think hakari should kill them. it was a fair fight. a fair loss of which they accept the outcome. therefore, they believe it is hakari's right to kill them. that's so, so interesting to me, and it really stands out against the backdrop of their otherwise shallow personality, so i just couldn't resist expanding on it.

their character will continue to develop throughout the story, so stay tuned. thanks for reading!

[allimocha]

Apologies if this has been asked before, but how do draw your bodies?

No worries, this is actually the first time someone has asked me something like this! I’m not great at explaining things so I’ll try my best to get it across!

Everyone draws human bodies in different ways, but for me it takes 3 steps!

1. Thumbnail. (Usually thumbnails are much smaller than this) Basically what your doing is conceptualizing what your about to draw in a simple sketch, it doesn’t need to be too much, just make sure when thumb-nailing poses you get the basic anatomy down. I usually use squares or rectangles for the torso, the head, and the hips. This along with connecting them all with lines for the neck, arms and legs should give you an armature that should basically be your pose. If your not good at anatomy, before anything, I recommend sketching your thumbnail on a human reference! References are one of the most important things for artists! If I can’t think up a pose, I’ll usually look up either @adorkastock (a great person who does pose references), or model poses. After that you can stylize the proportions to your liking in the next stage! I recommend doing multiple thumbnails til’ you find the right pose.

2. Rough Sketch. Now that thats over with, its time for the rough sketch! Basically after choosing your thumbnail, you size it up, and start sketching more prominent features. Maybe define the legs, shape the head, start sketching the hands and all that good stuff. You can also stylize your proportions if you used a human reference, like size up the head, lengthen the legs, all that jazz. In this stage you’ll be basically making a skeleton from your thumbnail so you can get ready for the final stage! In this stage you can also sketch the clothes, the eyes and the hair as well.

3. Lineart. Usually I only do one sketch layer, that being the rough sketch. Others may be more comfortable sketching on another layer so they can make more features prominent, which is also fine, and encouraged if your a new artist! After your sketching is done, this is basically the stage where you finally draw your lineart. Define your features, finish drawing your limbs, etc etc. One big thing in this stage is too… Flip your canvas! Flipping your canvas can help you see your artwork with fresh eyes and so you can fix any wonky anatomy or anything that just felt off when it was unflipped. Flip it right, left, upside down, it doesn’t matter, it’ll still have the same effect. And after you finished and flipped it back. Voila! The body is done!

At least thats how I do it. Hope this was helpful!

[maskspurpose]

anon asked: comparing what wataru said to eichi in some of the final chapters of ep:link (“that’s the story i tell everyone who i think won’t understand me otherwise” or something), in sanctuary where he chose to revert back to his 5 year old self specifically while with tomoya, and in t&m where he shut down theatre club a day after perhaps out of embarrassment, do you think wataru was actually lying in his phantom thieves monologue? and also, what do you think wataru’s childhood could’ve been like? i saw someone ask this to another wataruP and they said something along the lines of “i believe the point of that was not to make you curious about wataru’s actual childhood but to make you realize his past doesn’t matter because it doesn’t define him right now,” but tbh i’m still curious about it and wonder what other wataruP think loool… like after knowing he must’ve been pretty popular on tv for eichi to see him, and for him to probably not actually be from japan due to 1. not recalling the “wataru hibiki” name and 2. reading perfect english, both things as a 5 year old, you truly can’t help but wonder what was going on with him as a kid…

i’m putting my tumblr version of this response under a cut for reasons that will become obvious

i think its really interesting because i don't fundamentally disagree with like... the potential of the statement that wataru's past doesn't really matter because like... wataru doesn't think it matters? idk i find it an interesting aspect to think and talk about because i feel like we get a lot of hints throughout various stories, sanctuary of course being a big one. it feels like the question of like what exactly is in wataru's past is like... idk it's one the stories themselves ask frequently enough for it to be worth thinking about? imo if it was meant to not make you curious then stories like sanctuary kinda call that into question because theyre OBVIOUSLY designed to make you wonder about it. because wataru kind of talks about his childhood in a very candid way in that one 

but i also think that a big reason why wataru wants people to think this is because he doesn't really want people to know (which is obvious from the way he misdirects people on it, like you've said he says so himself in ep:link and ofc hokuto has a line in there as well about how wataru has like told a couple diff stories)

HONESTLY i think a lot of the story he told IS true? i think the like fairytale spin he gives it may not be, but the general shape of it feels correct if you think about how wataru acts both now and in sanctuary (stuff i'm thinking about: the bit where he asks his parents in his internal monologue if they mind if he stays like this in t&m, the way he talks about them in altered prologue with eichi and the way his behavior in sanctuary is consistent with the stuff he says in phantom thieves) and some of his insistence that it ISN'T is him actively trying to dissuade tomoya and hokuto from thinking that it is.

(transparency & masks)

(altered prologue, tl link)

i like to point out that it's not actually confirmed that he's adopted but i think there's no reason why that part wouldn't be true. schroedinger's adoption. i think the part of his story that is ABSOLUTELY true is that he feels indebted to his parents in some way and that that is what drove him to become an entertainer at a young age... idk which shape that took, if it's something he was actively pressured into by them (i could see that) or if it's closer to him being getting street-cast for something & that ballooning into an entertainment career his parents didn't SUBJECT to, i think either way it's... it feels strained.

i think the line from t&m addressing his parents implies that they have at least SOME thoughts about the shape his career takes and my personal read on it is that at least for a while at least one of them took a more managerial role of what he did when he was younger, smth that is now probably handled by ES. i think wataru being one of the first people to move into the ES dorms (literally while still in school) is also.... i think he wanted to get the fuck out 

i think another part of it is that even as a 5 yr old in sanctuary he's still like very much in people-pleasing-mode around tomoya and doing his best to give the "right" reaction and is only later once his memories returned able to admit that yes he was in fact very scared because he got hurt and unwilling to admit that. idk if you're five years old and hiding your reactions like that something's fucked. 

i agree that he's probably not raised in japan & potentially grew up in an english-speaking country, both because of the stuff in sanctuary and because he mentions acting in shows overseas as a child in summer vacation and imo hibiki wataru is a stage name of sorts and definitely a chosen name. it's why his response to eichi calling his name strange is to remark that he likes it :) and why even though he seems to imply he's already in entertainment during sanctuary he doesn't recognize the name.

(summer vacation)

um i wrote some other stuff up a while back on curiouscat which i still have as a screenshot and i think i stand by most of this re: headcanons abt watarus childhood. i think it not being particularly happy is kind of a given considering everything about him.

(the curiouscat screenshot)

[Smile or comment on the answer here]