sorry but snow is such a well written iconic villain and donald sutherland performs him so fucking good it's almost hilarious how i start practically foaming at the mouth every time the man opens his mouth to say something deplorable in those movies, like he's so utterly and despicably wrong about almost every crucial thing from katniss and peeta's relationship to human nature as a whole and yet the second he starts talking about how hope is the only thing stronger than fear and how you have to allow a little hope but control it so its spark doesn't grow into revolution and how it's the things we love the most that destroy us you bet your ass i am on the floor screaming crying throwing up because that is my psychotic mustache-twirling villain RIGHT THERE
Another year, another outfit to die in! Happy birthday again Izuna!!!!!!
Like last year, I played with someone else's lines for these charming patterns, thank you so much Lena @elhnrt ! I had a ton of fun :D
Check the readmore for pattern references and explanations, there are some easter eggs in there :)
(x,x,x,x)
My goal for this piece, in addition to playing with patterns and textures and adding some Naruto references, was to add as many death flags as possible.
The idea of having Izuna in a fireman's coat is obviously not from me. I've always like the idea of Uchihas in fire resistant clothes, and the opportunity for a thick texture alongside a reversible double pattern is very appealing. I used the image of the second reference as a base, with skulls on one side and stylized lightning patterns on the other (visible inside the sleeves and collar). Both were common immagery of firemen coats.
The actual skull pattern is taken from the third reference. I'd seen this one before and before even learning anything abt it it was too beautiful to pass up. Those white and navy gradients are absolutely delightful and I enjoyed using my gel pens for them very much.... This particular type of imagery with skulls and bones in a field is called Nozarashi, inspired by Buddhist representation of death and transience.
The lightning pattern itself is a reference to water and lightning dragons :) Like Tobirama's iconic jutsu, it's one of the hints of what's abt to happen to our little guy. The scabbard is also decorated with dragon motifs for the same reason.
The background pattern is taken from the first reference, another fireman's coat with an illustration of Raijin, the thunder god. He is often representated with drums decorated with tomoes. It works nicely as a standard looking sharingan illustration, with a reference to Tobirama's hiraishingiris with the thunder imagery, like the thunder patterns inside the coat.
If you're interested in this I recommend the book linked in the second reference! It is entirely about skeleton motifs in japanese clothing of the early 20th century.
the way qjaiden shows love is so subtle you would barely even see it unless you watched her vods. legit. like i think she and roier are very similar in that they’re not great with being outwardly caring or good with their words so everything is so Minuscule.
like qjaiden is there for Any dodgy conversations that qroier has. she was watching any convos he had go down in case he needed her. she immediately started looking into who ruined the venue. she spots anyone who looks shifty to scope them out. she immediately jumps to his side if he asks and picks him up the second he goes down.
its all just small really quiet things that she doesnt do for others that say So much because she they just dont do compassion and care the way like cellbit does. its not words, it’s action for them.
^ 1: Ink-the-artist, I will remove my teeth / 2: Margaret Atwood / 3: C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy / 4: Mitski, I’m your man / 5: Ojibwa, I love you like a rotten dog / 6: KotOR II / 7: Stardrop, Everything that’s ever been mine is covered in teeth marks / 8: Sodikken, People Eater / 9: Mitski, I’m your man / 10: maxime., The life and death of a dog / 11: Mitski, I bet on losing dogs / 12: maxime., The life and death of a dog / 13: hun, I did not bite with Malice / 14: C. Michael Davis, Don't Pet the Dragon / 15: Mitski, I’m your man
v 1: Early versions of the myth as in aeschylus orestes / 2: Ink-the-artist, I will not remove my teeth
one of the good changes from episode one is the way the lead-up to their flight to camp is used also as a way to explore what grover's been through, how terrified he is of 'screwing up' a mission again, how much he kind of hates his job. because he befriends these kids, he's really just a kid himself, still, and then he has to lie to them and push them away for the mission as a whole, and aryan sells how much he just hates it. how convinced he is that getting only one of and not both of the people whose safety he's entrusted with to camp IS 'failure' and not 'as much success as could be expected, under the circumstances'. he's got this anxiety that stems from feeling older than and having more responsibility expected of him than the children he meets, befriends, and guides to camp, but he's not really older, not emotionally, not in terms of anything except raw years, which doesn't really mean as much as he thinks it does when, for instance, he was also seven for twice as long as a human boy. but he's surrounded by not just humans, but human hybrids who die super young, so that is the time scale he thinks on, and he DOES feel older and he does feel a responsibility! in the book he's basically out of the picture for this sequence, so i really enjoyed getting to see some stuff geared towards his past and his goals and his issues . hi sweetheart i always loved you and you're going to find a god who's spent thousands of years hiding from everyone but you, because you care about him more than anyone else ever, ever has, and when he dies you're gonna put what's left of his soul in your heart and i love you so much
i am an unapologetically Pro Abortion On Demand At Any Time No Questions Asked and i think i am open enough about this that so is anyone following me so this is preaching to the choir. and i feel weird about it in some ways anyway because, again: the question of abortion is you trust women & others who are pregnant to make choices about their bodies or their lives, or you don't. period. end of story. don't care why, don't care about context, don't care about anything except: do you want to be pregnant anymore? no? okay, you deserve an abortion. but. even so. even with all that. i do still keep seeing takes on the internet (my first mistake) that make me want to print out copies of this interview with a woman who had an abortion at 32 weeks on every wall in the fucking country. i want everyone who feels the need ever but especially at this moment in time to proclaim that they're pro-choice but only up to X amount of time to read it and understand exactly what fucking cruelty they're supporting.
and i also want to point out that this woman was a woman carrying a wanted child, living in blue state new york, who found herself, against all her expectations, flying on a plane to fucking colorado and traveling back a day and a half later, because the alternative was spending another month pregnant and having a C-section to watch her child either be stillborn or choke to death in front of her right after being born. that's what people are endorsing when they endorse late-term abortion bans, and it is your first day on planet earth if you think that there is any degree of codifying medical exemptions that is going to prevent situations like this from occurring. and if your first response to that is to think about how lucky she was to be able to actually do that instead of how horrific it is that she had to deal with that in an already traumatic moment of her life, something important inside you has been badly broken and you need to reflect on how to fix it.
"Basing all of Lloyd's trauma with his dad based on the one incident of him getting thrown through a wall is weird."
I don't think this is the exact quote, but it's been on my mind a lot since someone commented it under one of my posts. I want to make a quick disclaimer: I am not intending this to be rude, to belittle anyone's opinions, or to start any fights or discourse. I just want to elaborate on why myself and so many other people use that moment as a jumping point for Lloyd's post SoG daddy issues.
The quick version of Lloyd and Garmadon's relationship timeline is as follows: destined hero of the world must fight his evil father. Neither of them want to fight, but both must because it's foretold. Garmadon is redeemed by his son, and they build a relationship, making up for lost time. Garmadon must sacrifice himself, leaving Lloyd (at Lloyd's own hands), and was thought to be gone forever. A few years later, the blackest part of Garmadon's soul was brought back from the grave with the soul purpose of making Lloyd suffer.
Okay, that wasn't quick. But the point is, Lloyd and Garmadon don't have a traditional father/son relationship.
In Legacy of the Green Ninja, Garmadon was posessed by the Overlord. Lloyd was able to purify Garmadon's heart when defeating the Overlord, giving their relationship as father and son a new beginning. Lloyd had saved his father and he had forgiven him for the things that weren't his fault.
In Sons of Garmadon, we see Lloyd wrestling with that moment the entirety of the episode "True Potential". The fact that he was able to cleanse his father's soul was eating away at him. He wanted to believe he could do it again. He so desperately wanted his father back that it caused him to act irrationally. He manipulated his friends and hurt the people he loved because they wouldn't let him bring his father back to the light.
Then the fight at Kryptarium happens. Lloyd pleads with Garmadon to change; to see who he is deep inside. Even as he is ragdolled by his father, he begs for him to stop.
"You wouldn't hurt me; your son."
"I have no son."
- Lloyd and Garmadon; SoG (True Potential)
Lloyd had been beaten and thrown around (and was definitely bleeding and bruised at this point) and was still unwilling to give up on the fact that his father was really gone.
Then Garmadon throws him through the walls. Lloyd couldn't move, he could barely breathe, and he would have have died had the ninja not saved him.
This moment is when Lloyd's view of his father shifted. He no longer saw a man that could be saved; he saw the man who had hurt him, who had destroyed the good person his father was.
"I'll never place my trust in that of which is only a mere twisted shadow of the good man my father once was."
- Lloyd, Splinter in the Blind Man's Eye
In his own words, Lloyd describes Garmadon as a "twisted shadow". This is not the man he saved all those years ago. This is a monster. A man who had no remorse for almost taking his sons' life. A man who tried to kill him again after Harumi's death.
And while we, the audience can see the shift in Garmadon's emotions after March of the Oni, we have to realize that it would be harder for Lloyd to see that shift. Garmadon almost took his life. Of course he would be unwilling to trust him in Crystalized.
To close this out, I'll get back to the main point. It's true that not all of his daddy issues came from being thrown through the Kryptarium walls. However, this is where the definite shift in Lloyd's perception of Garmadon takes place, therefore, it is a good basis for his trauma.
So now that I've finished with volume 1, I just wanted to write down a couple thoughts I've had and neat things to point out so far
When I was watching Stampede, I took note of a few kind of textbook avoidant behaviours Vash engages in, and lo and behold, here he is in the manga displaying even more of them. I'll list out a few here.
In order, we have:
Casually asking for a time limit on the interaction (ie. "How long do I have to keep this up before I can leave?")
Attempting to lose people in a crowd
Leaving without saying anything (and as a bonus, dreading being recognized in public)
Over-indulging or over-involving oneself in social events to create a viable excuse to leave suddenly (in this case, he uses alcohol as a reason to "pass out")
Sleeping to avoid unwanted conversation
Escaping to the bathroom to get away for a bit (and also to grumble about it haha)
Playing off sincere reactions by deliberately allowing them to be misinterpreted to avoid personal questions
It's really obvious, even this early in the manga, that Vash is intentionally avoiding prolonged interaction with people, and only involving himself in situations by necessity. He doesn't like attention on himself - the only reason he intentionally draws it is to divert it away from others.
The reason for this is a bit muddy though. It does seem that Vash doesn't particularly enjoy being caught up in drama, and it is also very likely he wishes to get in and out of places as quickly as possible to avoid them getting caught up in his drama too. It may even be that he finds prolonged socializing kind of tiring; that he needs a certain amount of time to himself.
But then there's also this bit, shortly after the celebration, where he pretends to pass out.
This brings in a bit of a guilt aspect to it. It likely has to do with July, or maybe it's due to something else (at this point, we can't say), but I think it's notable that Vash cuts things off shortly before they become intimate. He can play along to make others happy and to share in their joy for a bit, but the second things get too personal or focused on him, he will quietly slip away. Now this is specifically an instance of physical intimacy, but I think it'd probably hold for emotional intimacy as well, given the continuous avoidance and misdirection he does to prevent too many questions.
I made some commentary on Stampede Vash's self-punishing behaviours - specifically, the way he denies himself food. I don't want to get too into it because I don't know if everyone reading this has seen Stampede, but food is framed as something to be shared in the show - so, denying himself food is denying himself the right to share with others, which is denying himself belonging, which is denying himself any semblance of intimacy. (It means other things too, as food-sharing is associated with Rem, but I don't want to get too into it here.)
Vash in the manga doesn't seem to have the same issues with eating, but this is a similar premise - he's denying himself intimacy out of a sense of not being deserving of it.
So, then, there are probably many interwoven reasons for Vash's avoidance - he's sick of the chaos that follows him around, he doesn't want others getting hurt, he gets tired from having to "play it up" all the time, and he seems to also feel that he doesn't deserve that closeness. I'm intrigued to see how Vash's avoidance will be tackled going forward (I'm assuming it will?), and I suspect, more than there being one right reason for it, that all these reasons are actually true to an extent.
On a completely different note, this panel here is the biggest mood. I feel it in my bones.
telling myself i can't start another tdwt rewrite but dear god do i want to write one focusing on alejandro and courtney in this weird situationship thats a lot more nuanced than just alejandro manipulating courtney and her falling for it. like theyre best friends they dont trust each other theyre the same person they dont know anything about the other one theres a mutual attraction theyre pining for other people theyre codependent they dont care about each other theyre platonic soulmates like i just want to do a deep dive into how messy that relationship couldve been building off of their friendship that exists in my head except the line between romantic and platonic is so fucking blurred they have no idea what they are to the other person