exam week has hit me like a bag of bricks so I didn’t get to draw these digitally. Nonetheless, here are the rest of my designs for the ninja for my college au!
Nya is an engineering major with a minor in women’s history. She works at either Borg with Pixal, or she’s running a mechanic shop.
Kai has a teaching degree and I am debating if he should have a minor or not. He works at a school for special children (where Arin, Sora, and Wyldfyre go).
Cole, I decided, has an art major and works two jobs: a gym trainer and a pottery person (thought it would be fitting).
Zane is a cooking major with a data science minor and he is working hard to open his own restaurant.
Jay is a computer programming major with an art minor (throw back to crystallized) and works at an arcade or a 9-5 job because it would be really funny.
Ayyy what's up everybody now that i've got an obKNOXious watermark (mwahaha) we've got our first Wobbly Hearts character refs! The siblings! They're heavily based off their movie designs but there are some bits and pieces from the early OG show designs. Props to you if you can spot those details!
[do not steal/repost/save my art to other sites (including pintrest)or put it into A/I thanks]
Kai & Nya | Lloyd & Zane | Cole & Jay | Skylor & ?????
I’m still chipping away at essays for volume 5 and might write stuff for 6 but I need to stop and talk about this panel.
Warning for discussion of alcoholism and self-harm.
[ID: Crop of two panels from Trigun Maximum Volume 6 chapter 5. The first panel we see Vash looking down at the alcohol he spilled on his coat and prosthetic arm. The speech bubbles say “Ha... he he...” The second, much larger panel is a close up of his face. Most of his face is in shadow, except for the bridge of his nose and one eye, which is closed and crinkled like he’s smiling. He’s holding his damp hand to his mouth, accompanied by a word bubble that says “slurp”. End ID.]
Something about this is genuinely so disturbing. He’s been caught day drinking during a shootout, laughs weakly, then drinks the spilled alcohol on his hand. The way his eye is drawn makes me think he’s supposed to be smiling, but the rest of his face is in stark shadow and I just.
If I’m remembering right up until this point Vash has been seen drinking but as a joke or as part of a larger celebration (see the celebration for the message from Earth. He had the goofy tie around his head and everything). This is the first time we see Vash as alcoholic, seeing it as the unhealthy and inadequate coping mechanism it is.
He looks strange for the rest of the fight too, looking both exhausted but also frightening and uncanny, like:
[ID: Crop of a two page spread from Trigun Maximum Volume 6 chapter 5. Vash is holding his gun but is standing in a strange pose, his torso bent over, neck bent further, with an unsettling and blank expression on his face. End ID.]
God. He looks so. I’m not even sure how to describe it. He’s still doing his usual Vash routine, refusing to kill, but he seems detached or absent from his own head.
Maybe it’s because I have a family history of alcoholism and I’m desperately afraid of developing a dependency myself (with my mental health history it feels likely) but seeing Vash like this is so upsetting. Combined with shooting at the target in the first chapter until he bled (which read as self-harm to me) we’re seeing Vash become more overtly self-destructive.
And from what I remember of future chapters it’s only going to get worse.
Update: Well this post blew up. Everyone’s additions are so good! Glad we all agree that alcoholism is scary and dangerous and that Vash is slowly destroying himself in the worst way. Glad to share TrigunBookClub with a bunch of smart, very sad people <3
Yaknow, all that talk of “Why don’t any of you understand what I’m trying to accomplish/that it’s for the greater good” from Chisaki gains a whole bunch more layers with the confirmation that he was in one of AFO’s facilities as a kid.
Because since he was potentially experimented on (and considering he was the direct source of an apparent quirk copy, the chances of that are extremely high), that can spin the context/thought process greatly from apathetic stubbornness. He repeatedly claims that quirks are diseases and humanity needs to be rid of them, and it’s said he gained this mindset from a pretty much baseless study he read when he was younger.
Now here’s the thing; I always thought that was stupid. Or, uncharacteristic is a better word. I always thought “Really? Chisaki wholeheartedly believes some unsupported, one-off article and that’s why he hates quirks? The guy who meticulously thinks out and plans everything based on stone-cold facts and logic?” But then I realized. Humans in general, but especially kids, are going to look for anything to latch onto to outsource their frustrations about the traumas they’re going through that they don’t yet understand. Chisaki didn’t necessarily buy into that theory because he genuinely believed it, but because that while everyone else was treating quirks like the best thing a person could have, he knew that his own quirk was causing him pain via the experimentation (and potentially whatever landed him in the orphanage in the first place), and he wanted a way to outlet that distress, and to finally fault quirks, to tell everyone they’re not amazing or good. And that’s why he ‘believed’ that article. It gave him an out, an “I told you so!” moment, validation.
But what’s also interesting is how that all didn’t stop him from experimenting on Eri. And truth be told, I think Chisaki genuinely doesn’t understand that he’s traumatized. He doesn’t realize what he went through had actual, lasting effects on him. Instead he thinks, “If I could endure it, why can’t she?” And moreover, that whole “it’s for the greater good” thing is probably, whether consciously or subconsciously (most likely the latter), stemming from a thought that kids will no longer be experimented on for their quirks if quirks don’t exist anymore. He’s thinking, con or subcon (probably latter), “One last kid in the cycle before it’s broken”, since we know he thinks of Eri as a symbol for ridding the world of quirks and “returning it to normal”.
Also the whole thing that how Chisaki manipulates Eri (and kinda just his opponents in general) is potentially him repeating words that were said to him/him projecting, which coincides with his mindset that kindness is something that makes you indebted to someone else, going off the idea he possibly thinks of himself as a burden or a curse (hm), because what value does he have if he can’t be used to achieve someone else’s goals for them? To the point he simultaneously resents his own quirk and fears losing it because he thinks he’s worthless/weak without it.
Ahhh, anyway, this was like. My longest yap session yet. Sorry 💀���� but the facts are I’ll keep going. I’m just choosing to shut my mouth so that this doesn’t get any longer. 💀