H-Works Rambles

Just a tired nerd who plays way too many video games. Here you can enjoy my ramblings about media or fandoms I've been into lately. 27. He/Him. Art commissions open! More details in pinned post. PFP by @venkpng Header image by @emdeejaydraws

[h-worksrambles]

Welcome to H-Works Rambles!

So...um. Introductions are hard. Anyway, welcome to my little corner of the internet. I’ll just be here posting various thoughts and musings about any kind of media or fandom stuff I’ve been involved in. What kind of media you may ask? Most of my talks are likely to be gaming focused, maybe with a slice of anime and manga. But it’s likely to branch out to other stuff depending on my mood. I’ve also settled into the furry fandom since establishing this blog, so you may see me post stuff related to that too!

In addition, I will post my own art here. I also accept commissions and you can find my full price list here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TpCRwkJnaAtTu1WNDUsQbbaw16U9TfNPPErt_4Bi8o8/edit?usp=sharing

I’m also going to respectfully ask minors not to interact, as while my blog is SFW I tend to talk about a lot of mature media that I’m not really comfortable with younger audiences seeing.

I also have a BlueSky (18+) where you find more of my media babbles and art . For now; make yourself at home and get ready to get sick of my ramblings. Clue’s in the name after all!

[makesomenoise]

🌈

[theres-a-body-here]

Having a Minotaur Boyfriend would be so fucking funny

Like imagine crying on the couch and you hear his thunderous, big body SUV built ass footsteps approach you.

"Baby, what's wrong," he says tenderly as he rubs your shoulder.

You look up to explain how bad your day was with tears in your eyes and you fucking see this:

I made a small drabble based on this

[fxdizzyie-deactivated20260219]

I had to draw it HELP

[h-worksrambles]

Guys. Minotaur Hotel is literally right there.

[h-worksrambles]

I’m thinking about what I really liked about the end of the Utena TV series and it actually reminded me of something I also loved about Madoka Magica’s TV ending. Madoka framed itself as a deconstruction of magical girl anime, one that exposes the horror of young girls being convinced to give up their autonomy and normal lives to fight unimaginable horrors. But by the end it becomes a reconstruction. Madoka states that the purpose of magical girls is to make people happy and she becomes a concept that provides hope and comfort to struggling young girls across the world (a metaphor for the escapist power of the genre). Utena meanwhile is a series in conversion with fairy tales, and especially with their influence on Shoujo. It dissects the myth of heroic princes rescuing princesses by exposing that as a concept rooted in arbitrary assumptions of class and gender. The student council playing at nobility sets them up to be victimised by a monstrous adult, and Utena slowly realises that, to help the one person she wants to the most, she can’t do so as a prince. Her gender nonconformity is her own, but she can’t fight patriarchy while participating in it. And the one character who once used to be a prince, learned a long time ago that this was incompatible with reality, and has since sunk into his own resentment to become the biggest monster in the story.

At the same time, Utena is a story that asks WHY we tell these fairy tales if they’re so entrenched in heteronormativity and false ideals of aristocratic nobility. And its answer is that…well, when you strip away those patriarchal trappings, we like stories about people who act out of courage, compassion and selfless love. The last sight we see of Utena in the show is her lying there dying, sobbing as she begs Anthy to forgive her for not being the prince she needed. But ironically, Utena succeed at being the truest depiction of what that fairy tale hero is supposed to be. Someone driven by nothing more than selfless, boundless love. She proved herself to be truly ‘noble’ free from any kind of class and gendered trappings of that phase. Not because it was princely, but because in a setting full of kids playing at nobility and maturity but who can never really grow up; she made the most adult decision of all. It’s an easy hot take to say fairy tales are patriarchal. Look at the 2000s Buzzfeed articles about Disney princesses. Utena says that’s only true because of who controls the narrative. That we like these stories not because of the roles of prince or princess, but because of the emotions they speak to. And those don’t have to be bound to each other. A story of one girl helping another to free herself from abuse is just as timeless a fairy tale as any other. Given the increased prevelance of ‘romantasy’ in young people’s reading spaces lately, I think that’s a pretty timely message: Why we gravitate to romantic heroes, how they can be so deeply gendered, and how those stories can be liberated from those gender roles to preserve their timeless core.

[hyphose]

Juri Arisugawa - Utena, la fillette révolutionnaire

[silvermoon424]

[lazuilis]

my piece for @rgu-zine ! everyone who worked on this zine is incredible.....pls go check it out

[valarinde]

revolutionary girl utena (1997)

[reasonablyneurotic]

there's something in the back of my mind

[h-worksrambles]

Kingdom Hearts shipping is incredibly funny because yes, it is, accidentally or no, full of queer subtext and deeply loving relationships, yet at the same time, you just know that if Riku, Kairi or anyone confessed romantically to Sora, he’d say some shit like this.

[corogarucoromo]

LIVE A LIVE 30th!

[smilepebble]

DIE, CHILD, DIE_

[linnaealyn]

[plaguelily-art]

Oooh, I actually started this back in April, shortly after I finished playing the Live A Live remake, which was such a fantastic game that I loved so much. Purity of Odio has to be one of the coolest final boss designs ever, and I, for whatever reason, thought it wouldn't be too hard to illustrate...haha...

I'm super proud with how this came out though, even if it took me almost 5 months to make it. And I'm just in time for Live A Live's 31st Anniversary too!

—————————————————————————

2025, Spring-Summer Digital (Adobe Photoshop) Oersted/Odio is a character from Live A Live, and belongs to Square Enix. Artwork belongs to me.

This image (published by the artist to deviantart.com/plaguelily, plaguelily-art.tumblr.com) may not be reproduced, copied, edited, republished, reuploaded, distributed, or redistributed in any way, and I do not give permission for the creation of any sort of derivatives of my work including the use of the work in datasets used for generation of AI art or any other sort of procedurally generated image program or software. Thank you.

[ako-hidaka]

[sasielle]

Promise & Legend

Happy 30th Anniversary to FE4!!!

[katofvalentia]

[ Death of a Holy Knight, birth of a Martyr ]