#you look like you've touched 78 years' worth of yurei [asano kosei // kosei asano]

[murasakikagekitsune]

Original Cursed Technique: 影激減/Kage no Geki (trans. Shadow Puppet Theatre)

Asano-sama has an ability that's odd, for lack of a better word, given His nature as a River Kitsune. He can wield the light and shadows around Him in order to create puppets to do things for Him. They are controlled by gestures that mimic the action He wants to perform. You could argue that this is just run-of-the-mill telekinesis, and you'd be right, to a point, but drawing power from the light and shadows in the environment (or rather, the energy within them) is the key difference.

To me, it seems like He's always been to do this - create temporary vessels for the dead - and it feels separate to the fact He is a River Kitsune because most of Their powers are hydrokinetic. I know that zenko may have powers over everything, but Asano-sama seems like the kind of Being to tie His sense of self to His local geography, so He won't use powers that take Him too far from His place or sense of origin - that would be a river. Specifically, Asano-sama comes from the Otagawa, or the Ota River - that feeds into why He uses Kage no Geki more now, rather than His childhood; He has to, because of His catastrophic vision loss in 1945. This also is the reason Kage no Geki we (meaning Asano-sama and myself) think of it a Cursed Technique instead of a superpower or Quirk; there are negative emotions hidden in the shadows and in the fragments of people's souls. This, if you consider the Shinto view of animism, also applies to objects - He can befriend the object if it's more than 100 years old or pass on the soul of a puppet to an object so it becomes their vessel.

While, in truth, Kage no Geki was always a personal Cursed Technique, it was only recently classified as such because of it its rise in usage - the nuclear fallout of Hiroshima gave Him plenty of shadows to befriend.

[murasakikagekitsune]

I thought I might add my thoughts here - one of my godpartners is very chubby (we don't use the word "fat" due to his wartime trauma, and "chubby" rhymes with "hubby"; even though we're not married, given he's a kamisama of the domestic kind, "hubby" is a replacement for "boyfriend") and he loves being reminded of his shape! Unlike most people, he associates his figure with a plentiful harvest, and being thin terrifies him - to him, deliberate weight loss (i.e diet culture, EDs) means you're sick and you're not enjoying life. Same goes for illness-related weight loss - he'd want to get better so he could eat again. To me, he's basically the personification of the "love is stored in the kitchen" and "food as a love language" tags - mention an open-air produce market and you'll have him smiling like a kid on Christmas Day. I even have a food-related pet name for him!

But he does have some body image issues - for one, he knows his shape isn't considered desirable. That makes him upset; not because he thinks his chubbiness makes him "hard to look at" (his way of saying "I'm ugly") but because other people think it makes them "hard to look at" - he just wishes that overweight people, in particular, could be allowed to enjoy food without any raised eyebrows. His personal body image issue rests on his keloid\thermonuclear burn scars from 6th August, 1945 that surround both eyes - they're a sign that he survived what he shouldn't have, that he survived when others didn't - a sign of his failure to protect his people, and he hates that. Also, when he lets people see them, they are often find him too "hard to look at" and thus avoid him like the plague. (Even I was afraid when I first saw them, but I was afraid for him because he's a hibakusha, and I know that he recognises the difference.) I'm sure he has slightly uneven teeth and liver spot dimples, but he doesn't smile at me enough for me to be certain, and he has a complexion several shades darker than most of the Japanese population thanks in part to a life spent outside.

So, does Asano-sama fit Hollywood's westernised and eurocentric beauty standards? No, not even remotely.

Does he fit his own country's beauty standards? Nope.

Does he want to fit into either of them? He couldn't care less.

Despite all of that, do I find him attractive?

YES!!!

When you imagine or draw the gods important to you, are they always attractive? Are any of the gods worthy your worship fat? Do they have a funny nose? Do they have wrinkles, stretchmarks or uneven teeth? Do your gods all looks like they could get work in hollywood, and why? Do you believe hotness is linked to being worthy of being loved and listened to? Do you think about why gods worshiped for a thousand years would accidentally look just like the current ideals of beauty?