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sandflow · 4 years ago

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Sugimoto and Ogata’s rivalmance. PART III

Hello yet again.

Since more Golden Kamuy chapters have been piling up, and with them more Sugimoto and Ogata angst, I’m going to pinpoint what other new scenes popped up ever since chapter 200 happened.

Here’s Part I: http://daewonhoff.tumblr.com/post/182743868378/sugimoto-and-ogatas-rivalmance

And Part II: https://sandflow.tumblr.com/post/185315377728/sugimoto-and-ogatas-rivalmance-part-ii

Chapter 200: Sugimoto monologues the line “get well and come back to me, so I can kill you.” to Ogata.

I’ll come back to this scene because the volume version came out some time ago and Noda changed a small detail in the last page.

This is the magazine version of the page:

Notice that Sugimoto’s eyes look blank (which happen when a character is in danger, fights someone or is threatening someone).

This is the volume version of the page:

Notice that Sugimoto’s eyes don’t look blank anymore and are now full of life with a little spark added to them.

Because of this change, Sugimoto doesn’t seem as threatening as he is in the initial version of the chapter. You could say that his line now sounds as a “Get well soon you shit” rather than a threat.

Chapter 201: Sugimoto’s group tries to travel through Karafuto. They get ambushed by a sniper. Everyone thinks it’s Ogata.

Sugimoto is going straight to the sniper to kill him.

A very devoted man trying to chase after his supposed nemesis.

Chapter 202: Sugimoto is thinking about how he will kill Ogata.

And Sugimoto being shocked it wasn’t Ogata.

So, after terrorizing Vasily by chasing him around the building, he finally catches him.

Notice his blank stare in the last panel. He’s ready to kill.

And then he notices the Ogata drawing that was coming out of Vasily’s pocket.

He suddently stops attacking and his eyes seem to have a glimmer of light in them now.

Chapter 203: Sugimoto thinks Vasily is in cahoots with Ogata so he starts to interrogate him.

Sugimoto tries to ask him questions but there is a clear language barrier going on. He tries to explain that Ogata is the biggest baddie of them all.

So he starts drawing Ogata and how he escaped the hospital.

And as the image shows, we have a centaur Ogata with his dick out.

Sugimoto felt like he wanted to explain how he saved Ogata and also added that he did to save Asirpa from becoming a killer, followed by some suspension lines. What are the dots for Noda? HM? Did Sugimoto have any other reason so as to save Ogata?

And this is how the Ogata fanclub was born.

From these chapters it’s clear that Sugimoto considers Ogata a threat, and that also thinks of him as a bad person, yet he spared Vasily’s life (who shot Shiraishi in the leg) and indulged in drawing his version of the story.

After this fanclub encounter, the Sugimoto gang is now advancing further to Hokkaido.

Shiraishi questions why Vasily is following them. It’s then concluded that he is after Ogata. Sugimoto then says this line:

Which is interesting because, we are now hearing Sugimoto’s point of view about what Vasily thinks. How does Sugimoto know what he thinks? Is he projecting? Does Sugimoto think that maybe Ogata is after him until he kills him?

Hell if I know.

Moving on.

Asirpa then wonders if Ogata will come back to them, but is unsure why he would considering that he doesn’t give a damn about the gold.

And Sugimoto says he’s doing it for the yolo.

Sugimoto’s expression looks as if he really doesn’t know what Ogata is after.

tbh Sugimoto the whole fandom wonders what he wants so you’re not alone

And even if he doesn’t know what he’s after, he still has the imminent urge of thinking that Ogata is their enemy.

Chapter 222: Ogata came back in the plot and is now in Hijikata’s group again. He tells them what happened in Karafuto.

Of course, he’s lying to his teeth by not telling them he was the one who shot Wilk and Sugimoto.

But in the page where he says that Sugimoto was the one who killed Kiroranke because he teamed up with Tsurumi’s men, Noda changed the dialogue in the volume version. The line was translated by someone from one of the GK discord servers I’m part of.

This is the magazine version:

And this is the volume version.

He says that the one who killed Kiroranke were Tsurumi’s men and not Sugimoto.

Did Noda change the line because Ogata is intending for the Hijikata group to ally with Sugimoto’s group? It’s possible.

Did he change it so that it looks like Ogata feels no grudge towards Sugimoto, and tries to not picture him as the bad person in the whole ordeal? Also possible.

Chapter 228: Sugimoto gets lost in the forest and finds a bird that keeps him company.

He asks the bird if it would’ve been better if they left their spot ever since they ran out of food. The bird chirps and he starts scolding/threatening the bird saying “YOU LOVED THAT FOOD TOO” while making Ogata-styled eyes.

This chapter was was stupidly random and pointless, but what I can point out here (which might sound far-fetched) is that maybe this was a foreshadow to what Sugimoto feels about Ogata betraying their group.

But Sugimoto seems super nuts in this chapter so I can’t bet on that at all.

Chapter 236: Sugimoto is touched by Boutarou’s harem story and he now has his own flashback with his father.

His dad is dying of tuberculosis and apparently there’s this saying about black cats that cure tuberculosis.

So we have this black cat that comes out of nowhere to comfort Sugimoto for a few seconds and then leaves.

Who was the character who was always being portrayed as a cat?

(Noda liked Muro Saisei’s cat so he said why not)

In a way it’s funny if Sugimoto actually views Ogata as a black cat that gives luck considering what good deeds Ogata did to him.

Chapter 246: Sugimoto’s group meets up with HIjikata’s and they start battling eachother. Sugimoto gets immobilized by Ushiyama. And Kadokura says Ogata is nearby.

Sugimoto is shocked for a bit and wants to be sure that Ogata really is there.

I-is my supposed arch nemesis here?? R-really???

He then takes out a picture of Ogata from his pocket so that he can explain to Vasily that Ogata is nearby.

To which all I can ask is: Sugimoto why do you keep a picture of Ogata in your pocket constantly?

The logical explanation is that he can ask townsfolk about Ogata’s whereabouts. But...do we ever see Sugimoto asking anyone about Ogata’s whereabouts and thus using that picture? No.

Something similar happened with Tanigaki’s almost nude pictures too. He had at least 2 different pictures with Tanigaki in different sexy poses.

Moving on from this rather curious and shippy scene.

He then accuses Hijikata that it was his fault as to why he got separated from Asirpa, and thus Ogata being able to shoot him.

Really Sugimoto? Are you going to blame Hijikata that Ogata shot you?

do not defend you arch-nemesis like this

Chapter 247: Sugimoto’s group together with Hijikata’s are now united and as such they go and start drinking. But before that, Sugimoto needs to be sure that Ogata won’t come near them.

It’s curious that while reading these chapters, it looks like Sugimoto is constantly trying to protect Asirpa from Ogata, even though Ogata isn’t aiming for the gold, and was also unable to shoot Asirpa on the ice floe. Why is Sugimoto using Asirpa as an excuse to keep Ogata away from them so much?

And what I also noticed is that he uses Vasily to confront Ogata. Sure, Ogata is way too far away for Sugimoto to reach, so using another sniper against him might solve that problem. But hasn’t he noticed that Ogata had enough time to shoot them since they were way out in the open just now? With Vasily struggling to equip himself with a rifle and climbing somewhere up to look out for Ogata?

Seems to me like Sugimoto is trying to avoid confronting Ogata because that would mean killing him, and since he doesn’t know what Ogata’s true motives are, he might hesitate in doing so.

Chapter 250: Sugimoto being really careful so as to not move around open areas for Ogata to snipe them.

Asirpa then tells him that Ogata is still interested in the gold. And thus has no reason to kill her.

This page is the pinnacle of what Sugimoto thinks of Ogata.

He thinks of him as a lone wolf who wishes to screw up everyone’s chances in getting the gold, thus dissappointing everyone.

Which is funny to me because that is literally what Ueji does in chapter 257.

And with the whole “he is alone thing”, it’s interesting to note that Sugimoto is sort of in the same situation as Ogata. He was, in a way, a loner up until he met Asirpa. He has nowhere to go after the whole gold hunt.

Yes, he’ll go back to Umeko but she has remarried already with someone who is rich and so her eye problem will probably be solved by him. Besides, Sugimoto doesn’t seem like the type to marry a woman who has been married to his best friend.

It’s more likely that if Sugimoto gets his share of the gold and finishes his job with getting Umeko to fix her eyes, he will go back to being a loner in the woods.

And he can’t go back to his home village either, since the last time he went there, Umeko could’ve easily smelled the stench of slaughtered soldiers that was coming from Sugimoto’s direction. He feels like he doesn’t belong in that village.

Ogata doesn’t seem to have a home for himself either. Other than his grandparents.(who we don’t know if they still live).

And now it is time for me to go to sleep for the next 30-40 chapters.

#golden kamuy #ogata hyakunosuke #sugimoto saichi #ogata #sugimoto #sugio #Osugi

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raevenlywrites · 4 years ago

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The Ties That Bind 1 of ???

They say the first of my kind was a woman named Alasdair, a human raised by hawks. She learned the language of the birds, and was gifted with their form. It is a pretty myth, I admit, but few actually believe it. No record remains of her life. No record except for the feathers in every avian’s hair, even when otherwise we appear human, and the wings I can grow when I choose--and of course the beautiful golden hawk’s form that is as natural to me as the legs and arms I wear normally. This myth is one of the stories we hear as children, but it says nothing of reality or the hard lessons we are taught later. Almost before a child learns to fly, she learns to hate. She learns of war. She learns of the race that calls itself the serpiente. She learns that they are untrustworthy, that they are liars and loyal to no one. She learns to fear the garnet eyes of their royal family even though she will probably never see them. Of course, I have. I have seen them look to me in fear and pain, a young prince’s final moments. I have seen them look at me in consideration, a new ruler sizing up the woman who would be his enemy. And I have seen them beneath me, cushioned on a pillow of down, soft as my own hair. They taught me how to hate those eyes. No one taught me how to read them.

Danica Shardae, Tuuli Thea

The Mistari Disa spoke to the entire hall as she concluded, “The best advice I can offer is this: Tie the two royal families. Make the two sides into one. If you are willing to trust each other, and willing to put aside your anger and your hatred, then Zane Cobriana, take Danica Shardae as your mate. Danica Shardae, have Zane Cobriana as your alistair.”

The Disa’s words rang in my head as I dressed for bed, numb and mechanical. The serpiente prince had cried out as vehemently as the rest, as I had sat in shocked silence. The rest had reacted; I had observed. I watched garnet eyes flash with temper, right alongside normally sedate avian gold. But I also watched Zane’s face crumple as the Disa kicked us out, his desperate hand reaching as if he could see the fleeting peace slipping through his fingers even as he struggled to grasp it.

Take Zane Cobriana as your alistair.

I still couldn’t process the idea. “Alistair” was a word that meant so many things to me, none of which matched the fiery cobra. My first alistair, Vasili, had been taken from me too young to truly remember him. And after that, alistair was a word most often followed by the ragged grief of a newly made widow.

It was not a word I could fathom associating with Zane Cobriana.

I realized my hands had been working the same button over and over. I shook myself, trying to return to reality, to keep moving through this latest shock. My composure was shot to hell, and I jumped when a knock sounded at my door.

“Shardae?”

The familiar voice of long-time personal guard--oh, hell, my best friend, sounded through the door. Rei had been the most outspoken at the Disa’s suggestion, and he hardly sounded calmer now, though at least he was hiding it better. Shaky, and craving the comfort of his familiar presence in this unfamiliar place, I bid him enter.

He paused in the doorway, and I watched his face as a thousand thoughts chased their way behind his eyes. Already I felt better, just seeing him as shaken as I. Rei had been my friend since childhood, and was the only person I ever truly relaxed around. I had seen him in his grief for his father, lost when he was but a boy of twelve. He had seen me cry over countless deaths, until I had grown up enough to no longer let the tears show. We knew the shape of each other’s grief; and we knew how important it was to have somewhere safe to let it out, to be weak. He was weak with me now, and I sank into that uncertainty gratefully.

“Dani,” he breathed, only after the door was closed firmly behind him. “I’m sorry I lost my temper in the hall today. It’s my fault we were banned from further discussion.”

I straightened my shoulders, gathering my strength as he fell apart. We did this in turns, my Rei and me, being rock and crash wave alike.

“I don’t believe you were the only one shouting,” I said lightly, fighting back the shiver that threatened at the memory of those flashing garnet eyes. Zane had been exquisite in his anger, a fine, shimmering thing. It had been beautiful, and terrifying, like a lightning strike. I wrapped my arms around myself, unable to stop my reaction.

Rei mistook the gesture for fear, and I suppose that was in there too, and placed his hands over mine. It was utterly too forward, unspeakably inappropriate, and far from the first time. Rei and I had always been each other’s exceptions, our refuge for strength and comfort. I leaned into him, resting my forehead against his chest. His arms encircled me, fitting around me perfectly through years of habit. I had grown since that first night we’d curled up together, frightened and alone and crying ourselves to sleep, and so had he. But we’d grown together, and his arms still fit around mine as I held myself and tried to keep from falling apart.

This. This was what an alistair should be. This feeling of warmth, of solidness, of safety.

Rei would be my alistair, and I would grow to love him in that way, in time. And even if I never did, friendship was still well worth protecting.

Alistair.

Protector.

Fighter.

My thoughts flashed on Zane Cobriana again, reaching out for the fleeting dream of piece. He was willing to fight for that dream. And I was cowering in the arms of a man I was too afraid to love, for fear of losing him.

Losing him to the war we were here to stop.

I must have tensed, because Rei pulled back, searching my face.

“Dani... You know I care for you, and I’ll always protect you. The thought of the snake coming anywhere near you...”

His hands flexed on mine, grip growing uncomfortably tight. I pulled away and he let me go, falling back into that careful soldier’s ready. The moment had passed. Time to put our weakness away.

“We’ll find a way, Shardae. I should go, let you sleep. Things will look brighter in the morning.”

I wished I had the courage to ask him to stay, to tell him that a night in his arms would bring me more comfort than the tossing and turning I knew was sure to come. I always slept better in Rei’s arms. But we hadn’t done that in years. And until I was ready to declare formally what the entire court already knew, he would keep his careful distance, expect in rare moments like this.

I closed my eyes, and I wished I could remember how to cry. - I began to undress again, but a flicker of movement caught my eye--

And suddenly I was face to face with garnet.

Zane Cobriana stood in my room, stepping elegantly from shadows and moonlight.

His hand was on my mouth before I could draw breath, the other cradling the back of my head.

“Please, I’m terribly sorry, but we need to talk, and so I need you not to scream.”

I stared at him wide-eyed, eyes lingering on impossible details--the stray strands of hair that fell across his face, the thick, sweeping curve of his stunningly dark lashes--as the world paused between one heartbeat and the next. I was utterly frozen, drowning deep in radiant red, the hypnotic gaze of the Cobriana garnet.

My people told stories of this gaze, the near-demonic power to enchant and posses. I forgot to breathe, drinking down those eyes, edges tight with pain. Pain... Zane Cobriana looked pained. It was barely there, just a tightness around the eyes, but his eyes were all I could see. We were not but a breath apart, and all I could do was gaze into those eyes, and nod.

Zane nodded to, head moving with mine as if uncertain of the motion’s meaning. Finally, he gave one certain shake, mind made up. He sprang away from me, leaping to the far side of the room as he released me, falling into a warrior’s ready. I just stared, mind refusing to process. Zane Cobriana had snuck into my room, and he was crouched and on guard against me.

“What.... what do you want?”

My mouth was cotton dry as I struggled to speak, tongue darting out to wet paper lips. They tingled with the memory of Zane’s fingers, soft and cool, so delicate, but so firm...

“To talk.”

He hedged his words, carefully controlled and guarded, just like his posture. But when I didn’t scream, or really react in any way, he relaxed, pulling himself up into a liquid, wary posture. Those elegant hands disappeared into pockets, but the underlying tension in his shoulder belied the casual gesture. He was a coiled spring, and no amount of leaning carelessly against the wall would disguise that.

I shook myself mentally, trying to come to grips with this fevered dream. No, no dream. In my dreams, I was often painfully aware I was dreaming, and able to pull together my careful avian reserve. Here, in this moonlit room, I was wide awake, and utterly lost.

“Won’t... won’t you sit down?”

Internally, I shrieked at myself. The mortal enemy of me and my kind had broken into my room for goddess knows what purpose, and I was observing social niceties. Won’t you sit down? What was the matter with me?

Zane smirked, a sardonic twist of his sculpted lips. My mind kept focusing on the most inane details--the perfect press of his cupid’s bow, the strong line of his jaw--as he folded himself elegantly onto a cushion. His long legs glittered in the moonlight and for a moment I thought he must have been in armoured form. But no, merely snakeskin pants. My gut filled with ice. The prince of the serpiente in snakeskin pants. Yikes.

“Why thank you, Danica. May I call you Danica?”

Mutely I nodded, sinking down onto my own sleeping pallet. I watched myself in bemused horror, like an out of body nightmare, as I sat and calmly waited for the prince of the serpiente to say his piece. Then again, compared to his dramatic entrance to my bedroom, this behavior was rather sedate. Formal even. The manners between us seemed almost absurd.

“Then you must call me Zane,” he insisted. I realized this casual chatter was his own nervousness, as my mute manners were mine. Neither of us really knew how to handle one another, and that somehow gave me courage. If he was shaken too, that somehow put us on more even foot.

“Alright... Zane. What did you come to talk about?”

He chuckled, the sound rolling through the dark like velvet. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself, and madly, half expected Rei to wrap his hands around mind. Had only been moments ago that Rei had been in my room? If Zane had come any sooner--

“We were thrown out of the Mistari hall quite abruptly. And in all likelihood the same will happen tomorrow unless we have a chance to properly discuss their suggestion beforehand,” he said lightly, cutting through my thoughts. They scattered like early morning fog, as thin and ephemeral and impossible to hold onto. If he thought we were going to make any more progress here than we had in the hall, he was sorely mistaken. I couldn’t think my way out of an egg like this. If I’d been able to, I probably would have screamed for my guards by now. Really, it was only the utter bizarreness of the situation that had kept me from doing so already. We never trained for what I should do in the event of a security breach. In the Keep, it was unthinkable. And in the fields, I was quite literally surrounded at all times.

Zane had found my security’s one weak spot.

My blood ran cold.

“Are you here to kill me?”

Zane gave me a tired look and sighed.

“I just said I was here to discuss peace with you, Danica.” He shook his head. “What is even the point. How can they possibly expect us to entertain marriage when you’re too frightened to even talk to me?”

“I’m not--“

I snapped without thinking, pride pricked. He’d broken into my room, assaulted me--of course I was startled, I was also exhausted. At his chagrined look, I realized I’d actually spoken those thoughts aloud.

“Of course. It’s late. I apologize for any offense.”

I laughed. “Offense? Offense? Offensive was the way you acted so utterly repulsed at the mere thought of marrying me. This? I don’t believe there are words to cover what this is.”

Zane snorted. “I suppose that’s fair. If it was only a matter of your lovely body, well.” His eyes flicked up and down my frame, and I felt my cheeks turn scarlet. “And I’ve seen you have no trouble with mine, either.”

At that my face caught fire, enough that surely the room should have been ablaze with light. I clenched my fists in my lap and locked my gaze to the floor, counting slowly to ten. Shouting at him would bring my guards crashing in here for sure. And he had a point; we did need to talk. If we broke into a shouting match tomorrow, the Disa would simply kick us out again.

“Comments like that are also why we could never work,” I said hotly. “An avian alistair defends his pair bond’s virtue, not mocks it.”

“And is your pretty guard captain to be your pair bond, then?”

At that my eyes flew to his in complete shock. “Wha--“

“Oh don’t play coy, pretty Danica. I saw the way he held you. That is not a man unfamiliar with your body.”

I could only stare at him in open mouthed horror. Zane went on as if he didn’t notice.

“It’s not a deal breaker for me. I’m sure you don’t expect me to come to you as pure as the driven snow either. Keep him, for all I care. We both have heirs to produce, after all.”

Heirs?

Again, I must have spoken aloud, because Zane seemed to stop midthought, changing his words at the last moment.

“You’re the only Shardae left,” he said softly. “I at least have my sister and... her child.”

His gaze felt, soft and uncertain.

“Her announcement is what finally convinced me. I’ve already lost one sister with child to a soldier’s knife. I cannot bear to lose another. Irene was so frightened when she told me--“

His voice cut off with emotion. The strangled sound reminded me too much of Gregory.

I rose, not certain what I intended, but it was lost to Zane’s reaction anyways. The serpiente was off the wall and crouched almost before I’d finished standing, and his speed took my breath away. I cried out in spite of myself-- and the guards came pouring in.

Zane’s form flashed to lightning black, the shift to his cobra form nigh instantaneous. I threw myself forward, blocking Rei’s movement into the room, shielding him from Zane’s attack. It was utterly stupid, and pure instinct. I threw myself between the man that would be my protector, and the man who would pay lip service to the job in the name of peace. But Zane did not attack, rather doing on the evasive than the offensive. His liquid form shot between the soliders’ legs, gone and lost in the shadows before anyone could truly tell what had happened.

Rei stared into my eyes, lost in utter bewilderment. Neither of us knew what to make of my throwing myself before him, breaking every rule of our working relationship. I hadn’t acted as his queen. I’d acted as his dearest friend.

Rei reacted as my guard, pushing me aside and scouring the room with his eyes. Checking to make sure the room was secure before checking to be certain I was unhurt. The guards scattered around the room and hall, people spilling out at the noise and ruckus. Zane appeared behind a wall of guards, Mistari standing firm between the avians and serpiente. The tigers ushered us all back into our rooms, effectively placing us all under arrest.

Locking me into the room with Rei.

The Ties That Bind Tag list: @thehellinsideyourhead @therecouldbecolorsandlove

Raev’s Gen Tag List (should I tag you guys in this? It IS a thing I wrote. I’m gonna say yes unless you guys are like “no of course not we’re sick of hearing about your stupid fic for a twenty year old book XD)

List is currently: @lordkingsmith @writinglyra @drbibliophile @mperialscribe @adie-dee @lexiklecksi @writinginslowmotion

#hawksong fanfic #the ties that bind #the kiesha'ra #raev does fic #hawksong #danica shardae #zane cobriana #kiesha'ra fanfic

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chibivesicle · 5 years ago

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Golden Kamuy chapters 218 & 219. Everything is wrong in regards to panning for gold.

Chapter 218 starts off with the man that Sugimoto saved from the bear. Which really as soon as he mentioned the scrape on his forehead was a recent injury (and no obvious signs of being chewed on by a freakkin’ bear) I’m going to go with the fact that there is no bear. Or that this man IS the bear. Why? Based on what he thinks about Sugimoto. That Sugimoto is so nice!

You know who thinks Sugimoto is nice? Criminals! Henmei and the con artist Suzukawa. Anyone who thinks Sugimoto is nice is almost always a dangerous person. His brother apparently catches up to him and we learn his name is Heita (who really has to be a dangerous person).

Shiraishi then asks if he’s a gold prospector due to his fancy boots and Sugimoto then smiles awkwardly as he admits his poor experience searching for gold himself. The older brother Taka is immediately suspicious as he looks at Sugimoto and Shiraishi, while Heita is just more interested in their plans.

I’m sorry Heita but your facial expression this panel really is making me nervous and Sugimoto is terrible at reading creepy and dangerous people in situations like these where he either saves or protects them.

Heita declares that there is still plenty of gold dust to be found while an younger brother? and his older brother are suspicious, since they do have 2 rifles, bayonets, the fact that Vasily also carries a pistol and Asirpa has arrows and knives. The putative father points out that robbers wouldn’t save them.

The next page reveals a very attractive woman who has come out to inquire about their unique looking group. She looks like she could be a seductive woman and she remarks on Vasily as a foreigner and Shiraishi winks at her to define them as comrades while Sugimoto annoyed decides to define them as a rabble in english.

I would take this to mean that Shiraishi’s using a more positive spin on their group while Sugimoto is distancing himself from Vasily. The longer they travel with Vasily, I can’t help but think Sugimoto will see him more and more like Ogata. Silent and observing them. Taka then angrily tells Noriko to head back to their tent and she seems annoyed by his order.

There are a few pages of gold prospecting 101 from Heita to Sugimoto and Shiraishi. They try to do things while Asirpa just stays behind on shore giving minimal support by heating water so they can try to work in the freezing cold water. Heita and his family are using a more effective way to look for gold and it seems that perhaps due to their friendship with Asirpa, Sugimoto and Shiraishi may not ever have a shot at finding gold since as an Ainu, she believes this is one of the mistakes people made polluting the river. I think it is a bit of a karmic reminder that they know enough information now, to realize they shouldn’t be doing this and if they do it - it won’t work out for them b/c they are friends with Asirpa and Shiraishi has even had the Kiro’s tour of Karafuto to explain the rights of the native peoples of the east/north.

And Shiraishi even knows this as he declares it just isn’t going to work for them.

Again, Shiraishi is the voice of reason. Just follow through on things Shiraishi, you are getting there!

Just as Sugimoto is about to give up as well, Heita tells them about gold that is mixed with platinum, and his family seems uncomfortable with him telling them so many points that they must have been keeping secret from others.

The next few pages are more description of the rising interest in platinum metals from miners and the value is increasing. It can be used in fountain pens which were become more popular in Japan and now they didn’t need to import it from elsewhere to make the pens. Therefore, Heita says there will be a second “gold” rush in Hokkaido.

Even though he’s factually correct, I would not trust to work with this man! He looks like a smaller version of Usami with those eyes.

Shiraishi and Sugimoto are awestruck and in shock as they look on with sparkle in their eyes as they then firmly hold each others hands and Asirpa looks on from behind them. They don’t even look at each other when they do this, they just instinctively hold hands.

After this Heita notices the bear again. The rest of his family can’t see it and no one else can see it either. Just looking at his facial expression and the creepy font for his statement about the bear getting closer (a likely hallucination) he’s creepy and suspicious as all hell. Furthermore, he says that the bear is the wen kamuy. And Asirpa upon hearing that notices the carved bear case on his belt.

Thanks Noda, I now know who the wen kamuy is - it is Heita.

Sugimoto and Asirpa go to check out where it was spotted. Yet they don’t find any signs of a bear. Asirpa clearly states that there is no sign of a bear yet Sugimoto does not believe it. He fully believes Heita, just like he believed Henmei and Suzukawa (as an Ainu elder).

Then Sugimoto tries to kind of apologize to her by disagreeing with her read on the NO bear status by referring to the white bear a sign that the Mountain gods are angry. Really Sugimoto? This is a half-assed attempt to connect with Asirpa’s own belief system. Yet she just pauses before she states that she wonders . . . The chapter ends with the older father being chewed on by the “bear”.

219 then starts off with Vasily sketching a wren. For a character who I think is a snow leopard, he does seem to have a cat like tendency to patiently stare at a bird. Asirpa seems to becoming more comfortable with him. I feel like this is Ogata 2.0, she has a reason to talk to him about a bird. This also shows that Asirpa is still a non-judgemental person and she really does seem to try to approach others in a neutral fashion despite the fact that Vasily shot Shiraishi in the leg. This is really Ogata 2.0 since she approached Ogata even though he had fought with Sugimoto with a clear intent to cause harm.

To add to the fact to my now official “I am the Wen Kamuy” Heita hypothesis, she remarks that the wren, Cakcak Kamuy should call indicating there the the bear is. The lack of its call means there is no bear near by. The last panel shows a super creepy looking Heita and he’s gotta be the Wen Kamuy. He explains more prospecting tools and terms to Sugimoto and Shiraishi and then he appears to be almost magical as he tells them where they should look for platinum. Sugimoto and Shiraishi are obsessed with him and ready to do whatever he says. He gets them when he agrees to split the money between them equally and they would rather do this than kill the Wen Kamuy. Asirpa then strongly interjects that gold panning polluted the rivers and everyone lost their focus on hunting.

She tries really hard to convince them otherwise, and they completely ignore her (and her uncle’s words that Sugimoto was already told once before) and they beg Heita to help them, Master Heita even as they bow. Asirpa then inquires about his Ainu tobacco case with the bear on it. Heita says he worked with some Ainu and they got along well so they gave it to him as a gift. She replies that it explains why he knew the term Wen Kamuy (and this must also imply that most Japanese in Hokkaido are not familiar with the term).

Sugimoto then tells Heita that they know about the Wen Kamuy and that it has attacked people along the river and then Shiraishi tries to re-assure him that it will be okay b/c Asirpa is their bear hunting specialist to help him relax and help them find the gold.

Asirpa tries to get information from him about the bear’s behaviour and he with the creepiest expression ever - white eyes, Usami shaped says that it has been going on for years and years - implying that this cannot be a single bear that has become a Wen Kamuy.

I assume that he also mumbled this a little since Asirpa turns around in shock as she says “What?” while Shiraishi is encouraging Sugimoto to do his best with him together. As Asirpa looks back at Heita, his head is awkwardly turned to the side, his eyes a shut as he smiles in a scary fashion and his mouth is completely black. A few pages before when Heita was speaking you could see his teeth and his mouth was a light grey. But now, it is totally black which CANNOT be a good sign. He’s no longer human with that facial expression.

The action then shifts to Vasily drawing by himself. Noriko asks him to come with her to draw her in their hut. To give context to her as a character, here are a few tweets form Sei Kobiyama describing the context of her type of character.

The story arc is a combination of Showa pulp fiction and horror stories explaining the creepy factor. Noriko is also a draw like a typical dangerous and seductive woman looking to do something bad, I’m guessing likely towards a male target.

That immediately comes out as she strips down to pose in the nude for Vasily. Based on his furious sketching he seems to have found it very inspiring. However, she catches something out of the corner of her eye and she freaks out!

Some sort of object that she was trying to get rid of is back and at that moment Taka comes to interrupt them and does some major shaming of her behavior. She seems tired of waiting for Taka and he tries to explain to her to wait a little while longer, it is clear that she’s lonely as they try to find the gold. The next page then reveals Heita up in a tree watching them kiss as he licks his own lips and then climbs down the tree face first and leaps off like a flying squirrel. Noda really wants to make it clear that Heita is not okay. I get it. Thanks. Sugimoto and Shiraishi are trying to pan for gold when they realize that Heita is missing and they panic that something bad may happen to him. They tell Asirpa to keep an eye on him as the bear expert. She replies to them if there really even is a bear around.

But either way, she does take their suggestion to go look around. Meanwhile, Taka tells Vasily that Noriko is playing a trick on him by taking his binoculars and placing them over on a mushroom growing off of a tree.

Vasily being the sniper that he is, immediately goes to retrieve his precious binoculars. It is clear that Taka is leading him into a trap, an amappo specifically set up by some local Ainu.

Thankfully, Asirpa manages to save him and points out the signs for others to observe the presence of a trap.

After she speaks Taka appears in the background watching them as it is clear that he sent Vasily there on purpose. Vasily nods, so hopefully this is showing that he can understand a tiny amount of Japanese. She then has a full monologue to Vasily about how she’s been trying to find evidence for the bear that Heita has seen. She went as far as looking beyond the described range, found all of the local bears that are all in hibernation so she knows that he’s outright lying. Since Shiraishi and Sugimoto won’t listen to her - she tells Vasily who can’t even talk back towards her currently.

The big question is now, why is he lying? Besides the obvious fact that he is a killer based on the Sugimoto is nice rule.

Sugimoto and Shiraishi notice a bear off in the distance and go to find Asirpa. They caught a glimpse of its butt. Bear bum spotted. The final page then shows a bear claw around the Father and youngest son, buried in the snow and a final scene of Heita screaming in total shock/fury/I don’t even know what else.

I would guess the bear claw is actually Heita’s foot via “Heita vision”. The editor’s tag line of “I came, I saw, I devoured” instead of conquered makes me think Heita is the bear and a cannibal. So where does all of this action in 218 and 219 leave us? First off this is a creepy horror story arc. People driven by greed to pan for gold in the rivers, out for themselves, not trusting others and wanting to keep others from robbing/killing/stealing from them. Heita is clearly a killer - a Wen Kamuy human. Shiraishi almost gets the idea that panning for gold is a bad idea, but he gives into Heita’s sales pitch. Sugimoto and Shiraishi keep ignoring Asirpa and her observations. I’m obviously biased, but Asirpa is getting a bit of the Ogata treatment/repeat of how Sugimoto ignored her during the Silent Kotan arc. He should know by now that her observational skills are vastly superior to his. I’m hoping Vasily will be a stand in for Ogata and he will help out in their battle against Heita and even Taka and his binoculars may be important to that. Sugimoto and Shiraishi are going to freak out when the horror reveal happens. It would be interesting if Asirpa is forced to fight against Heita. What if she has to kill him out of necessity? That would be a cool plot point where Asirpa takes down the human Wen Kamuy. This would be a philosophically interesting point.

The other major theme is how Japanese people are exploiting the Ainu land and this is a bad idea. I’m sure Heita did not get that Ainu tobacco case through friendly means. Or, the Ainu gave it to him to warn other Ainu that this man is the Wen Kamuy. That would be a totally awesome plot point as well! Just based on the fact that Sugimoto is still not quite getting Asirpa’s background shows that this will likely reveal something deeper between them in regards to Wen Kamuy, different cultures and how to really respect each other. Overall, these types of arcs in Golden Kamuy aren’t my favorite, but they are frequently tied to colonialism and the abuse of the natives as this has overlap with; the bear monster arc with the American, boss and princess; the Silent Kotan arc; how Japanese fisherman were over fishing and Henmei was hiding among them and the central theme of wanting the gold.

#golden kamuy #golden kamuy meta #sugimoto saichi #Shiraishi Yoshitake #asirpa #vasily #gold panning #wen kamuy #bears

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midnightstarsky · 8 years ago

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VS Cartel AU Chapter 2 Part 1

This is my cross-over fiction of vatanim sensin and the narcos history/tv show. This is the first part of chapter 2. I hope you guys enjoy this!

Note: I don’t own any of the VS characters or narcos characters. These are characters based loosely on history so I any similarities are due to that.

All of these parts can be found under vs cartel au tag on my blog, where you can also find gifs and previews for the story and narcos show. And you can find a mash up trailer.

Hope you enjoy!

This one takes off where chapter 1 ends, hileon arrive in Greece and get into a bit of trouble; Vasili makes his first appearance.

content warning: This is a cartel fic, so there will be mentions of violence and drugs from this point on from the story. So canon typical violence for a show like narcos is to be expected.

Chapter 2 Part 1

Magical Realism

Athens 2017

The beautiful green landscape against the deep blue sea, it was beautiful. With the mountains rising high above the waves, it was awe-inspiring and majestic. It truly looked like a land where the myths of Zeus and Poseidon could come to life. Where Demeter brought the harvest, and Aphrodite was born from the water. A land where Morpheus was thought to bring dreams, dreams that could inspire people to the greatest heights. It could create dreams of being an Olympian, to be the finest athlete in the land. These lands could inspire people to become the greatest thinkers or writers in the world, to push the boundaries of reality and thought.

And these lands could inspire people like Vasili to become billionaire entrepreneurs, just not from the taxi company he apparently ran successfully. He only had three taxis, each apparently bringing in around 10 billion dollars a year. No, Vasili’s fortune came from his successful cocaine producing and trafficking business.

“Leon, wake up,” Hilal shook him gently.

He blinked his eyes open and yawned, “What is it? Are we there?”

She nodded her head, “We’re close, look how beautiful it is.”

Leon leaned closer to her to glance out the window and gazed down at the mountain ranges coming into view.

These beautiful mountains hid about fifty labs, each lab set up as a small town with over 200 people working and guarding the areas. These labs were where Vasili was producing about 10,000 kilos of cocaine a week, and with each kilo of cocaine selling for anywhere in the range of 50,000 dollars to 150,000 dollars, considering foreign exchange risk, traveling costs, and the fact that the farther the cocaine got the more Vasili made; Vasili was making about 80 million dollars a day.

Yeah, you heard that right.

CevVas Cartel was bigger than most fortune 500 companies.

Leon glanced as his wife looked out the window, her eyes watching the beautiful landscape coming closer in her view. He smiled as he admired how her eyes matched the blue of the sea, how her loose messy hair from the flight made her look like a beautiful nymph ready to run across the forests below. Better yet, she looked like a fierce Amazon ready to go on a hunt, her hair messy from the wind and her blue eyes shining in eagerness.

He chuckled, Hilal would probably roll her eyes if he said that out loud.

She turned towards him and smiled shyly, “What? Do I have drool on my face?”

It still surprised him how shy she could be about her appearances, he didn’t know how many times he had to tell her she was beautiful before she finally got it into her head. Her stubbornness really could be frustrating at times, most times.

He shook his head as she grabbed her purse and brought out her small mirror.

“I look like a mess, Leon,” she muttered disapprovingly, “You should have at least told me my hair looks like a bird’s nest.”

“I think you looked wild and beautiful like a forest nymph or better yet an Amazon,” he said cheekily.

She shoved him before combing her hair so it at least didn’t look like she had spent the last ten hours sleeping upright, “Stop it, you’re not being cute. It’s too early and it’s been too long of a trip for me to be charmed by your version of flirting, which consists mostly of just telling me long Greek myths that take forever to tell me about the beautiful and strong women that remind you of me.”

He pouted but she just rolled her eyes at him.

“Why can’t I use my heritage and my love of literature to tell my wife I love her?” he protested.

“You can, it’s just you love to really draw out your stories and I need coffee to be patient enough for another hour-long comparison of how I remind you of Hippolyta,” Hilal snapped back but her eyes twinkled with amusement.

“It’s Smyrna and most women would love their husbands to spend so much time waxing poetic in their favor,” Leon pointed out.

“Not when their wives feel gross and anything but beautiful and need caffeine to function,” she returned.

“You look beautiful to me,” he said as he leaned forward to kiss her, “Like the beautiful Artemis, a fierce huntress and the goddess of the moon.”

Hilal pushed him lightly away, “Yes, because my name means crescent moon, as you never forget to remind me through your extensive moon inspired poetry. It’s getting old, Leon. And cheesy.”

“You know you love it,” he returned as he leaned in again for a kiss, but she placed her palm on his chest and pushed him back once again.

“Hilal,” he whined.

“We’ve landed,” she said sternly.

Sure enough, they were on the runway slowly making their way towards their terminal. Finally, they stopped and the passengers could stand and get their things.

Hilal gathered her things as Leon grabbed their two carry-ons before they made their way out of the plane.

“Welcome to Athens, we hope you enjoy your stay,” the stewardess smiled as they passed her.

“I will as soon as our fathers are dead,” Hilal muttered under her breath.

“Hilal,” Leon hissed as he glanced around, “What if someone heard you?”

She scoffed, “Nobody heard me, and nobody knows who we’re talking about or who we are. I’m sure it’s fine.”

Here’s the problem with that, when you’re the most powerful men in the country, it’s not that hard to buy off airport security to alert them if any suspicious Americans enter the country. I didn’t learn it until a little later, but from that moment on I was on the radar of my father. He knew the moment I had entered the country, and later I would learn that he knew exactly why I was there.

Hilal and Leon approached the immigration desk where a young man looked him up and down.

“Passports,” he ordered.

When they handed their passports to him, he glanced briefly at Hilal’s before eying Leon. Hilal glanced up at Leon but he just shrugged.

“You have a Greek last name,” he noted.

“My parents were Greek,” Leon said easily, “My mother moved us to the States when we were young.”

“You have a familiar last name,” he noted, “In fact, some would say you have a very old and famous name.”

“I don’t know anything about that, it was my father’s name and he died when I was young,” Leon lied easily.

“Hmm,” the other man replied as he read over their immigration papers.

In the year since we’d learned about the CevVas cartel, we had also come to learn that our mother had changed our last names when we were young. No doubt she had chosen something unique or chic, mother always had a flare for the dramatic. I wouldn’t realize why the immigration officer had been so surprised at my last name, of what that name meant in Greece. Apparently, Agent Fatma hadn’t considered that information pertinent to the mission.

As it turns out, she was very wrong on that score.

Leon relaxed a bit and leaned into Hilal, “We’ll have some coffee in no time.”

Hilal whispered softly, “I’m not so sure about that.”

He glanced back at the immigration officer to see him reading over his papers for the second time.

“It says here you are going to work as a janitor in the embassy. That’s interesting, I could swear that there was another janitor for the embassy coming through here,” he noted with a dry smile, “Your embassy must be quite clean then.”

Leon gave him a proud look, “You can bet on it, we keep a tight ship.”

“Right,” the man answered.

He was now looking over Hilal’s paperwork, but he didn’t ask any questions. He glanced up at her briefly as he studied her passport and her work visa so she could work at the local hospital in Athens. As Leon had made a request for his wife to join them, the DEA had arranged with the Greek government to find her employment so that she could be productive in Greece and not go mad from boredom. Hilal may have put her foot down to follow Leon to Greece, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be idle while he completed his mission.

“I’m sorry, but you seem to be missing one of your forms,” he finally said.

Hilal’s eyes widened, “That’s impossible, they’re all there.” “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but you’re missing some information. We need to make sure you have the qualifications to work this job,” he explained.

Hilal was glaring at him, “That’s ridi…”

Leon cut her off, “What do we need to do?”

“My boss can help you, let me take you to his office and get him,” the other man explained as he picked up their papers and passports and lead them away.

They were lead to a small office with a line of cushioned seats and a tv, the immigration officer leaving them to find his boss.

Hilal flopped down and frowned as Leon took a seat across from her, “This is bullshit, Leon. My papers are fine. I rechecked them and even had our immigration lawyer check them, your DEA supervisors even reassured me that there wouldn’t be an issue…”

“Hilal, I’m sure they’re just being cautious,” he reassured her.

She crossed her arms and huffed, and while Leon would normally find it adorable, he could see how tired and strained she was. It hadn’t been a small thing to ask her to move their lives across the world even if Hilal was just as adamant that he should accept the assignment to take down the CevVas Cartel. Leon still felt guilty asking this of her, so he was endeavoring to humor her more often.

He was trying, really.

Leon reached into his bag and grabbed a book, “Here, reading always passes the time.”

She sighed but grabbed the book, “Thanks.”

He smiled softly before he leaned back and closed his eyes, “Wake me up when someone shows up.”

Leon fell asleep to the sound of Hilal turning pages and her soft breathing.

“Leon,” Hilal hissed as she shook him, “Wake up, you’ve been asleep for an hour, they’re still not here!”

He blinked his eyes open and managed drowsily, “What?”

His wife was furious, “It’s been an hour and no one has entered that door, Leon.”

She stood up suddenly, “I should give them a piece of my mind…” Leon caught her by the arm, “Hilal, don’t cause a fight with the immigration officer, we don’t need to cause a fuss here. Just be patient.”

She jerked her arm away but either she saw his point or she was too tired to argue, because she dropped down on her seat and scowled at him.

Leon sighed and rubbed his eyes, “Hilal, I’m sorry.”

She ignored him to glare at the floor instead.

He frowned before glancing around and seeing the tv.

“How about some tv to improve your Greek?” he teased.

Hilal huffed, “You know my Greek is fine, better than yours probably.”

He leaned forward, “I doubt that, love. Your Turkish is better than mine, I’ll give you that, but that’s because your mother spoke it to you and had a tutor teach you on weekends.”

“Your Turkish is nonexistent,” she retorted.

“But my Greek is still better than yours,” he insisted.

She snorted, “Hardly.”

She leaned forward, “Don’t forget, that I took six semesters of Greek, four of those semesters we shared the same class and I seem to recall scoring higher than you in each of those years.”

“It’s so adorable that you remember beating me in that class, did you take those classes just to catch my attention?” Leon said slyly.

“You’re impossible,” Hilal responded quickly as she glanced at the tv to avoid his smug gaze.

She stood up and turned it on, “Let’s see if there’s anything of interest on.”

The tv showed a huge crowd receiving cash as a female reporter came into view.

“He’s an entrepreneur, a self-made man who has come from modest origins in this very town of Thessaloniki to become a billionaire. And now he gives back to the people, becoming a modern-day Robin Hood.”

A grinning man walked into view as the crowds broke into cheers.

“I’m proud to stand by this incredible man, the Robin Hood of Thessaloniki, Vasili,” she practically sang as she smiled adoringly at the man beside her.

The crowds went mad, holding up signs with his image and name, chanting his name over and over as the man of the hour raised his hand and waved.

“My God,” Hilal managed.

“They don’t even know he’s a drug dealer,” Leon voiced for her.

His wife turned to him, eyes wide, “Robin Hood of Thessaloniki? Really?”

He whistled, “Look, Hilal.”

Hilal glanced back to see Vasili and the female reporter passing out thick wads of cash to members of the crowd. Other men standing near Vasili were doing the same.

Vasili was essentially handing out hundreds of dollars to each person there, no wonder the crowds were chanting his name. He was buying the loyalty of everyone in that crowd.

“How can people just stand there and accept his money like that, money from poison, money that people were killed for,” Hilal said disgusted.

Leon had read enough of similar situations to offer insight, “It’s one of the poorest areas in Greece, and where poverty and corruption go hand in hand, it becomes easy to buy people off. People need to survive, Hilal, at a certain point they don’t care what they have to do to ensure that survival.”

His wife’s gaze hardened but she wasn’t given a chance to respond when the door opened.

Leon and his wife immediately stood up as Leon turned the tv off.

The immigration officer entered behind another man, clearly the boss they had been expecting for the last hour.

“Forgive me, there were some issues I had to handle,” the man said shortly.

Leon grabbed Hilal’s paperwork, “Look, my wife and I have checked and rechecked these immigration forms for her before we even got on the plane, can you please just take care of this for us. I’m sure everything is there.”

The man interrupted him, “I need your passport.”

Leon eyed him as Hilal handed him their passports, “Here.”

The man simply flipped through the two passports before handing back Hilal hers, “Just his.”

“I don’t understand,” Hilal was confused as she glanced at Leon.

But the other man cut her off as he went over to the copier, “I just need his, ma’am.”

Hilal frowned and hissed at Leon, “Something is strange about this.”

Leon took her by the elbow and shook his head, warning her to keep quiet. She pursed her lips and watched as the man scanned Leon’s passport.

He finished and took the paper, setting it aside. He then handed Leon his passport and gave him a sly smile, “Welcome to Athens.”

What a welcome.

#vatanim sensin #hileon #hilal x leon #vatanim sensin fanfiction #vs cartel au #hileon fic

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nofomoartworld · 7 years ago

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Hyperallergic: The German Art Collector Who Introduced the “Blue Four” Artists to the US

LOS ANGELES — Paul Klee’s work “Refuge,” featured in the exhibition Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, shows the arms and head of a disembodied figure who appears to be swimming or perhaps climbing out of the ground. The colors are dull and gray, and the fine crosshatched markings add a layer of instability to the cracked and uneven surface. Created in 1930, the work seems to presage a feeling of dread that would overcome a community of artists sandwiched by World War I and World War II, forced to create lives and produce art away from their homes.

Maven of Modernism hones in on German-born Emilie Esther Scheyer, a beloved art dealer who moved to Los Angeles from New York in 1930. When she first left Germany for New York in 1924, Scheyer dedicated her life to circulating the artwork of the interwar European avant-garde in the United States. Though she had an eye for work by the likes of El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters, and Edward Weston, Scheyer primarily promoted the “Blue Four” artists, who became known for their foray into modernist abstraction: the aforementioned Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Alexei Jawlensky, and Wassily Kandinsky. Scheyer first became obsessed with art through her acquaintance with the Russian-born Jawlensky, whom she met as a young woman in 1916. He eventually connected Scheyer to the wider circle of European modernists, and christened her with the nickname “Galka,” the Russian word for the jackdaw bird.

Emil Nolde, “Head in Profile” (1919), watercolor and India ink on tan wove paper, 14-1/2 x 11-1/8 in. (Norton Simon Museum, the Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection © Nolde Stiftung Seebüll, Germany)

Scheyer loosely grouped the four artists under the “Blue Four” name to refer to the “Der Blaue Reiter” (Blue Rider) artist group that Kandinsky, Jawlensky, and Klee had taken part of in Munich. Kandinsky, whose association with theosophy strongly shaped his theories of art and color, believed that blue had powerful mystical qualities. The name Scheyer chose and its visual identity — four parallel stripes in blue — were also easily translatable in numerous languages and cultures, conveying the universality of abstraction in artistic production. Scheyer’s influence peppered California from north to south, from the Bay Area to Carmel-by-the-Sea to Los Angeles, and even extended to Mexico, where she met and befriended Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. The Norton Simon show recounts the exhibition history of the traveling Blue Four exhibition, which would launch in Los Angeles in 1926 and travel to Oakland and Mexico City in 1931, among other places.

Scheyer was friends with the power players of collecting in the US during the 1920s and ’30s. She hosted informal salon-type gatherings at her sleek Richard Neutra-designed home in Los Angeles, and connected artists and patrons through her vast network. She introduced the work of the Blue Four to collectors Walter and Louise Arensberg, who had relocated to Hollywood permanently in 1921 and also played a heavy role in spreading the influence of the European avant-garde in Los Angeles and nationwide. (Marcel Duchamp, a close friend of the couple, oftentimes guided their decisions in patronage.) Many Americans held skepticism towards the artwork coming out of Western Europe, evidenced by the critical uproar around the 1913 Armory Show. As critic Christopher Knight notes, the Sun, a conservative periodical, published accompanying doggerel: “Awful lack of technique / Awful lot of paint / Makes a Cubist picture / Look like what it ain’t.” Regardless, the collections amassed by this group now inform the modern art wings of many art institutions in the US.

Vasily Kandinsky, “Heavy Circles” (1927), oil on canvas, 22-1/2 x 20-1/2 in. (Norton Simon Museum, the Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection © Norton Simon Museum)

Scheyer gifted her collection to the Pasadena Art Institute, which is now the Norton Simon Museum, in the 1950s. The exhibition comprises two larger galleries and a smaller gallery: the visitors enter a space dedicated to the presentation of work by Blue Four artists, and are then guided through a gallery of work by other artists whose careers Scheyer helped cultivate, such as Peter Krasnow, Imogen Cunningham, László Moholy-Nagy, and Alexander Archipenko. There is extensive correspondence exchanged between Scheyer and numerous parties, including artists and arts institutions. A letter Jawlensky sent to Scheyer in 1928 features a colorful sketch and complaints of cold weather, while Jawlensky lightheartedly asks the dealer for more clients. Feininger writes to Scheyer that the “ship is going down, down, down,” as the Bauhaus closes in Weimar. The smaller gallery has a group of charming portraits of Scheyer completed by her artist friends, as well as artwork by their small children — drawings for the refrigerator by Felix Klee and Brett Weston — and announcements for Scheyer’s lectures, which showcases Scheyer’s dedication to arts education at all levels.

The Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California at the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA (photo by Nicholas Gingold/Capture Imaging)

These artists and intellectuals would also contribute to the pedagogical foundations of various academic institutions in the States, including the developments in arts education at the Museum of Modern Art spearheaded by Victor D’Amico. Scheyer herself taught youth at the Anna Head School in Berkeley and the Broadoaks School in Pasadena. Feininger accepted a teaching post at Mills College in Oakland in 1936. Many associated with the Bauhaus lent their talents to experimental programs such as the Black Mountain College in North Carolina. A contingent of the Frankfurt School made their home at the New School for Social Research in New York. Intrepid figures of the German avant-garde theater and film, such as Bertolt Brecht and Fritz Lang, would make their way to Hollywood — exiled by the Pacific Ocean with some reluctance and bitterness.

As the historical record shows, despite the efforts of those like Scheyer who attempted to cultivate and provide spaces for these émigrés to thrive in the States while their homes and culture were being ransacked in Europe, the United States and its citizens were not necessarily welcoming these artists with open arms. Roosevelt and his ilk limited quotas to curb the flow of immigration, and many protested the arrival of these desperate, weary refugees by aligning themselves with a homegrown movement supportive of white nationalists and Nazis. Maven of Modernism reveals Scheyer’ss influence in shaping the public perception of European modern art, as well as a glimpse of a not-too-distant past chillingly similar to our own.

Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California continues at the Norton-Simon Museum in Pasadena through September 25.

The post The German Art Collector Who Introduced the “Blue Four” Artists to the US appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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goldenkamuyhunting · 5 years ago

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Ramblings and crazy theory time about GK chap 219 “Master Heita”

And so the plot thickens and with it the movie references.

Mind you I’ve been wondering if Noda had been influenced by Titanic back in chap 217, when we saw Ogata on the boat but, as he didn’t spread out his arms, I told myself I was imagining things. Now though, the reference is a little more obvious.

Anyway we start the story with Taka asking Saburou (the boy) where ‘Oyaji’ (親父) went. ‘Oyaji’ can mean “father” but also just “Old man” so it’s hard to say if this is a confirmation of them being a family or not.

If they are, considering none of the possible sons resemble the others and that Noda usually depicts people who’s related with some elements in common, the idea is likely that the old man had them with 3 different women… and I’m not really sure why Noda would go for such a plot.

Anyway they speculate the old man went to secretly buy alcohol again, confirming Sugimoto’s idea that gold panners tend to spend a lot of money in it.

Little they know the guy is lying dead in the snow… unless one of them killed him, of course.

Meanwhile Vasily, instead than helping searching gold, is devoting his attention in drawing an adourable wren and being VERY GOOD at it, I might add.

Although I believe Vasily is actually one of the most cold blooded characters in the story, it’s hard for me not to melt in front of his drawing ability. It seems someone provided him with paper so he doesn’t have to sacrifice more wanted men posters.

Asirpa comes closer to him commenting how the wren is, for the Ainu, a Cakcak Kamuy and how normally, if a bear were to be near the bird would be making ‘cakcak’ sounds and guiding them toward the bear, so the fact the bird is actually calm is suspicious.

Now… I wonder if Vasily understands her as he turned toward her but what she says would clearly not be simple to follow for a not Japanese speaker so… I don’t know.

Anyway as Asirpa says so we see a picture of Heita, his eyes lacking light, smiling and holding a catcher in his hand and… some sort of stick… not too sure what it is… with a creepy expression, his eyes open white and woods behind him.

While it might seem this is part of the following scene, which has Heita explaining about a cat board, actually it’s clear there’s a time skip between the two.

Heita does his cat board explanation near the river, while holding the cat board while the previous scene clearly took place in the woods. Anyway Heita remarks how choosing the right spot is important and brags about himself being able to tell them the right spot without even needing to test it like instead an average gold panner would need to do and again impresses Sugimoto and Shiraishi with the idea of an easy gain.

Carlo Collodi in “Le avventure di Pinocchio. Storia di un burattino” said “Never trust people who promise to make you rich in a day. They are generally crazy swindlers.”

I think this is going to apply here as well and Heita might turn into the ‘Golden Kamuy’ version of the fox and the cat with the wren in the role of the white blackbird which tries to warn Pinocchio of their lies (basically, by not singing, the wren tells Asirpa there’s no bear).

Of course it’s unlikely Heita will manage to hung Sugimoto and Shiraishi in ‘the Field of Miracles outside the city of Catchfools’… though I think they might need to be saved by Asirpa in ‘young fairy with turquoise hair’ mode. LOL, it helps that the anime gave her hair a blue shade.

On the other side, although Heita seems to be the most suspicious of the bunch, we can’t be sure he’s the culprit. He likely suffers of hallucinations about bears but we’ll see he’s not the only one who’s suspicious.

Anyway while Heita comments they’ll split money evenly among them Sugimoto and Shiraishi are already thinking at how much more they can gain by panning gold than by hunting bears.

Asirpa points out something relevant, that it’s because everyone started panning for gold and stopped hunting bears that the rivers got polluted. In a way she’s back on being herself, seeing that this easy profit would cause more harm than good to her own birthplace.

She knew this already as her uncle, Makkanakkuru, strongly believed this and also told Sugimoto (back in chap 13) how he believed the gold was cursed because gained through the pollution of water...

...but now Asirpa is seeing why gold panning is done firsthand.

She knows they’re short of money, she can see how good more money would be so her words aren’t anymore just the casual words of a bystander who’s not in need and can easily judge the others of wrongdoing. Now her words have much more weight because she needs money but she still doesn’t approve of this method.

It changes nothing for Sugimoto and Shiraishi who’re clearly attracted by the prospect of an easy gain and begs ‘Heita Shishō’ (平太師匠 “Master Heita/Teacher Heita”) to work with them to Asirpa’s clear disappointment.

Shiraishi and Sugimoto, being Wajin, with Sugimoto clearly not even being from Hokkaido and Shiraishi possibly not being from Hokkaido as well but clearly not being an Ainu or dependant from rivers being clear to live, aren’t really bothered by the idea of damaging the ecosystem. Ecology wasn’t something people used to care back then, and Sugimoto and Shiraishi feels their own lack of funds is a more important problem than damaging Hokkaido rivers.

In short Asirpa is facing first hand one of the many problems she would have in protecting Ainu and their world, the total lack of care for it by Wajin, who live in a different way and need different things.

The pollution of rivers is a problem for her people but she fails in making Shiraishi and Sugimoto also enough aware of it they could give up on easy gain out of respect for Hokkaido’s rivers.

Sadly, she can’t really change anything if she can’t even make the people close to you listen to her and realize the Ainu’s needs.

I’m curious to see if Noda will have Asirpa dig into this problem further, into how she can make others aware of how some things are detrimental for her people and push them to avoid doing them or it’ll just be something that… can’t be fixed, not Ainu people will never care for Ainu problems and she’ll just have to deal with it.

Asirpa then points out how Heita’s tobacco case is Ainu in origins. Heita confirms it, saying he panned for gold with some Ainu and they really got along well so they gave it to him. We never saw Heita smoking though, but Asirpa thinks that’s why Heita knew the word ‘wen kamuy’.

I wonder if the Ainu Heita was working with were the 5 people eaten by the Wen Kamuy… or if they were more than 5 and one of them survived and was the one reporting the rumour of Heita gaining a lot and of the wen kamuy.

Come to think, if Heita in one day gained easily 50 yen and this was some time ago, why he didn’t keep on doing it?

He says in one day of work they should easily collect over ten monme of platinum. If 1 monme is paid 3 yens this means they should gain more than 30 yens in a day of work.

This would mean that in a week they could collect more than 210 yen, when Sugimoto needed 200 to cure Umeko.

Such gain is unbelievable.

Even if they split the gain, the one guy buying platinum from Heita and Co would have spread the rumour of people collecting such a huge amount of money in a week by panning in the river… not mentioning Noriko will later complain about how they’ve been up on the mountains for ‘so long’ a hint they aren’t clearly that rich.

Personally I’m starting to think Heita attracts gold panners with the rumour he gained a lot and then murders them and steals their belongings, like the expensive foreign boots and the tobacco case though it’s hard to say for sure.

Sugimoto and Shiraishi claims they heard about the Wen Kamuy as well but they have a bear-hunting specialist with them (=Asirpa) so Heita should only focus on panning (and make them rich).

Now… while it’s true Asirpa is amazing at bear hunting, they shouldn’t push everything to her. It’s not nice.

But well, Asirpa shows to be a professional by further investigating on the bear. She asks Heita explanation on something he said the past chapter, how the bear is getting closer and closer. She wants to know exactly when the bear started getting closer.

With his normally dark eyes now with the irises completely white and the pupil being only a small dot, Heita claims the bear has been coming closer BY YEARS, which I take hints Heita has been hallucinating by years which would fit if he were another tattooed convict. Asirpa is shocked while Sugimoto and Shiraishi doesn’t even hear it and Heita…

Heita makes such a creepy and mad expression it would make a horror movie proud.

Back when I first saw this chapter in Japanese it made me think of ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’, as I linked Heita and his group to the Sawyer family. Now I’m not so sure they’re a family and all involved but sure as hell Heita remains creepy.

Meanwhile Vasily is still drawing, clearly not interested in the slightest in panning for gold.

Basically there are only two things that can hold Vasily’s interest, hunting Ogata and drawing.

Noriko approaches him asking him to draw a picture of her with her words and gestures and leading it to her hut as she claims outside is cold. As Vasily gets in she undresses demanding him to make a pretty picture of her but despite her nakedness, her sexy pose and her ‘do you like my body’ question, all Vasily cares about is to draw her. In short, like Jack, he was ‘very professional’.

However, as Vasily draws, something on her left catches Norikos’ eyes and she panics commenting it’s back even though she threw it away. We don’t know what is back, at a first glance it seems a piece of cloth with an elaborate embroilment but it might be just something placed there to hid something from our sight.

It’s worth to point out how Noriko’s body, differently from O-gin or Sofia’s, isn’t really exposed. The camera never allows us to see as much as her nipples. Either this is respectful (so far only Inkarmat’s body wasn’t shown out of respect for her being an Ainu woman) or her body hid some sort of secret.

At the same time Taka enters in the hut from her right, demanding to know what she’s doing then have her dress up and drags her away after giving Vasily a dark look which promises harsh retribution.

Noriko whines she did it only because she was bored, that she doesn’t care about Vasily but wanted a picture of her beautiful body because she’s been waiting for sooo long in the mountains as Taka panned for gold and she fears she’ll grow old, promising she won’t do it again.

Taka says he understands and she only has to wait a little until they’ll save a bunch of Haku so they can go to Tokyo and start a business. They then kisses while Heita is peeking at them from a tree, clinging to hit the way we saw bear cubs doing and making allusive movements with his tongue before jumping down the tree. His eyes are again lacking light but I think the idea is he’s lusting after Noriko.

Meanwhile Sugimoto and Shiraishi are working and wondering where ‘Heita Shishō’ has gone since it’s dangerous to walk around with a man-eating bear lurking in the neighborhood. So our brave men decide NOT TO STOP PANNING but SEND ASIRPA TO CHECK FOR HEITA, as if he die all their panning will be for nothing.

True, Asirpa is the bear expert but really, she could use some help against a dangerous bear… but well, Asirpa, with a deadpan expression points out how she doubts there’s really a bear.

In a way this reminds me of the fake Ainu ask, only this is a fake bear arc. Even back then Asirpa has realized something is wrong… this time though she didn’t left the group to check and there’s no Ogata to catch the hint that something is wrong so she’s mostly on her own and while the group is acknowledging her as the experienced bear hunter they just aren’t listening her when she says there’s no bear.

Back to Vasily… he’s drawing again.

Either Vasily has a huge supply of money he’s keeping secret from others, he sells his drawing or he doesn’t care in the slightest how he’ll eat the next day. Or maybe he’ll count on his ability to hunt to provide himself food.

He’s clearly not interesting in panning.

Taka calls him ‘Nīchan’ (兄ちゃん), which as said in the past chapter, can mean “older brother” but also just “buddy”… for sure the intended meaning in this case as it’s clear Vasily and Taka aren’t related and then, by signs, let him understand his binoculars have disappeared from the spot Vasily left them. He then points to the direction where the binoculars are now, claiming Noriko was probably playing a prank on him.

Vasily, who evidently is bad at understanding body language because the look Taka tossed him previously was clearly threatening, goes to try to retrieve them apparently without suspecting anything and stumbles in an Amappo trap.

However, luckily for him, the Amappo misses him only thanks to how awesomely Asirpa kicked him away in the nick of time.

Now Vasily, like Ogata, owns his life to Asirpa, drawing another parallel between the two. We’ll see how Vasily will handle this.

While Asirpa explains that was a deer trap. An Amappo being there seems to strengthen the ties with Ainu… although Heita and Taka clearly doesn’t look like Ainu or Asirpa would have noticed it… although it’s also true Heita’s ears are kept hidden by his hat.

Now… it’s pretty likely that Taka tried to drag Vasily in that trap out of jealousy for what had happened with Noriko. Is he just someone jealous and vengeful who only tried to take out Vasily or the truth about him is that he’s the murderer behind this story?

From Noriko’s reaction to saying whatever she saw I’ll say someone else is aiming at her, and from the way Heita peeked at them I would blame Heita. Can it be Heita is the one who persuaded Taka into getting rid of Vasily? Hard to say.

We see a glimpse of Taka, interesting enough we can see his eyes but not his mouth, which is in the dark, hiding his expression from us as his eyebrows are flat as usual.

Asirpa tells Vasily that where an Amappo is there is also a tree with either some barks shaved off or some sort of symbol. Again this calls into question how much Vasily can understand Japanese. We’ll see.

Vasily turns to where Taka was but Taka has disappeared.

Meanwhile Asirpa claims she searched through a bigger area but she claims she couldn’t see any trace of a bear who failed to go into hibernation as all the bears in this area are in their dens so she wonders about why Heita lied about seeing a bear.

Back to Shiraishi and Sugimoto they see the back of what looks like a bear partially hidden by a tree.

They call Asirpa, claiming they saw a brown bear too. As they’re saying they’ve to protect Heita from it we see that Saburou, the boy, is now buried along with the old man, a bear pawn near them.

We also see Heita looking as if he’s screaming, mouth and eyes open wide.

Honestly, if he were to place his hands on his cheeks he could look like a copy of the preparatory sketch of ‘Skrik’ (“Scream”) by Edvard Munch.

Now… unless there’s really something toxic near the river that’s causing Sugimoto and Shiraishi too to have hallucinations it’s clear that something that looks like a bear was spotted, since Sugimoto and Shiraishi have no reasons to lie.

Is it a bear? Or is it someone wearing a bear pelt? Can it be that the bear pelt was the ‘something’ Noriko saw back in her hut and that she believed she tossed away?

Anyway, with Saburou’s death the story leaves us with three possible culprits (unless there’s a fourth person hidden somewhere): Heita, Taka and Noriko.

They’re all strange, although for different reasons.

Heita clearly wins the creepy prize. As said before his stories about how he made 50 yens in a day clearly seem a bait to attract people and his behavior is all but normal starting from how he says the bear was getting closer by years. I still can’t quite understand the early scene in chap 217, where it looked like he was killed and eaten by the bear. Can it be someone took his identity up to the scratch to his forehead? Somehow it seems unlikely, what seems more possible is that too was a hallucination or a dream or something but well, maybe there’s a criminal who’s that good at stealing identities, or Heita just had a twin brother.

Hard to say but I still think it’s unlikely Heita die and someone stole his identity.

If he really was attacked, it wasn’t by a bear since Asirpa can’t find traces of a bear or, alternatively, the attack happened long ago and by coincidence Heita has the same scratch now.

Oh, and as said in the past chapter, in this chapter too his eyes alternate having a light in them and being without it.

Taka, who notably never had light in his eyes, has clearly set up Vasily to be killed so Taka is some sort of murderous person… unless he had no idea there was an amappo and was only told ‘something unpleasant’ would happen to Vasily. In this case hiding his expression when it turned out the ‘something unpleasant’ would be him being killed, would make sense.

He doesn’t seem to have connections to bears but he seems to care for Heita. Either he too sees him as a ‘Shishō’ or this can hint to them being closer than the others. It would be interesting though if this was all a cover and he arranged for Heita to walk on that snow cornice which he knew would give away causing Heita to fall… possibly because Heita very clearly lusts for Noriko as well.

The problem would be Taka would have no reasons to kill the old man or Saburou as I don’t think they both lusted after Noriko. Sure, Taka wants money but if they were finding as much gold or platinum as Heita claims they would have gotten rich already, no need to murder them so they wouldn’t have to share.

Noriko… I don’t know what to do of her. Her behavior is clearly weird, she’s not ashamed to expose her body to Vasily and claims she only did out of boredom and wish for the beauty of her body to be preserved. She then sees something odd in her hut and freaks out.

My speculation is that the ‘something odd’ is a bear pelt and that the two bear spotting cases are actually Noriko wearing it in an attempt to toss it away.

While it can be Noriko is our new O-gin, somehow she doesn’t seem like that.

I mean… the old man and Saburou really seem to have been attacked by a beast. Something ripped away part of the old man’s face and Saburou, in addition to the cuts on his head, seems to be missing his right arm. You need some strength to do such a feat and Noriko doesn’t seem like that. True, her clothes might hid a muscular body but somehow I doubt it.

Can it be there’s a 4th person hiding in the woods, someone we hadn’t seen yet?

Hard to say.

We’ll see.

Anyway I hope the culprit is a convict has it has been long time from the last time we saw one.

And now I wonder if this arc will end with the next chapter, which will likely end volume 22 or if it’ll continue into the following. The fake Ainu arc had the battle with the fake Ainu end in Vol 9 but there was a continuation to what happened to the group and to Suzukawa in Vol 10 so it’s possible in the next chapter we’ll maybe find out who’s the culprit and maybe deal with it but the story will have its full closure in chap 221, in short in the following volume. We’ll see.

Last but not least, many apologies if this ramblings are poor in quality but, as I’ve said in my previous ramblings, I’m not at the top of my conditions and due to a huge load of work they were done in a rather rushed manner so sorry about it.

On another sidenote I wonder if the moral of all this is that there is no way to easily gain a lot of money in a short amount of time. It didn’t work with the bear and, I bet, it won’t work now and, I’m sure, it won’t work with the Ainu gold. It’s possible Noda is setting up this series of experiences in which ‘it will be all for nothing’ to teach Sugimoto, Shiraishi and Asirpa to avoid chasing the idea they can get a lot with little work and short time.

We’ll see.

#Golden Kamuy #Sugimoto Saichi #Asirpa #Vasily Pavlichenko #Shiraishi Yoshitake #Golden Kamuy Ramblings and Theories #Matsuda Heita #Matsuda Taka #Matsuda Jirou #Matsuda Noriko

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