half agony, half hope

♡ 27 ♡ she/her ♡ UK ♡

[aeyriabird]

sorry to post religious ads but i got this ad

and i can't get over how the artist/graphic designer clearly went in knowing they were replicating classic holy white bird imagery and did a decent job with the editing too, except they either don't know what a dove is, don't know that the bird being specifically a dove matters, or just got real lazy and chose the first all white bird that came up in search results because that is fully a seagull in that image

[delgrosso]

GOD IS COMING FOR YOUR FRENCH FRIES

[lon3lysalsa]

The new medicine seller already got a chokehold on me he's so pretty

[hellzabeth]

Mononoke series' new Medicine Seller! Hello there Qian/Ken!

First of all: I love him already.

Second: we HAVE to talk about this outfit.

Let's go through this bit by bit, shall we? (For simplicity's sake, I'll be referring to the sellers by their Japanese sword names, Ken, Kon, and Ri, and to the trigrams by their Chinese names, Qian, Kun, and Li.)

Firstly and most strikingly: the colours. We're leaning heavily on a yellow-gold colour scheme, with highlights of orange and a minty green and contrasting purple. Historically, in China the colour of heaven was yellow/gold, and in some eras only the emperor was allowed to wear this specific rich shade. Very fitting for the sword of Qian, representing heaven.

Secondly: the kimono and how he's wearing it. Ohhhh boy. So just like Ri and Kon, Ken is wearing a woman's kimono, though it's folded up slightly shorter than normal, presumably to make moving around easier when fighting, and to allow us to see those beautiful hakama, which we will come back to in a moment.

This kimono has furisode sleeves, and possibly some of the longest furisode we've seen outside of Ooku characters. These are typically reserved for unmarried women - interesting, because Qian is a deeply masculine trigram, arguably the MOST masculine, as it is three unbroken yang lines. Fittingly, Ken is wearing the kimono with one sleeve off, a style typically associated with samurai, ronin, and other physical fighters to allow for more movement.

His obi belt is also quite slim compared to how Kon and Ri wear theirs, and most notably, it seems to not have the massive bow knot at the back that the other two do. Hard to say more on it while we don't have a full turn around, but smaller and more subtle knots are, once again, a much more masculine way of tying an obi than we're used to seeing on sellers. The feminine vibe is still there with the himo (oh, and look, that's where he's keeping his mirror), but with it positioned further down and being a plain black, it's definitely more masc.

Hakama are a split-skirt type outfit similar to trousers, and perform a similar function - they were invented for horse riding, which makes sense, as the animal associated with the Qian trigram is the horse. While both genders wear them, they're much more common for men, especially if this is again set in a pre-Showa era time. Over all, the whole outfit is much more masculine than any we've seen before on a medicine seller, which is very interesting, and carries some implications for the Shingi of Qian too, as they tend to contrast with their sellers (just look at Kon's excessively loud and colourful outfit vs his shingi's very understated pure white kimono).

(Ri and Kon also wear trousers under their kimono, but they wear momohiki, or something close to it, cut close to the ankle and drawn up to allow for movement, much more common for working class people than hakama.)

This tight sleeve that ends in a ring on the finger is called a tekkou (or rather, the long version is a nagatekkou), and was typically worn by archers to protect the arms and chest from the bowstring, as they would typically disrobe one shoulder to fire in some instances. They can extend to the forearm, or all the way up to the chest. I don't have much to say about this one, but he is the first seller we've seen with one! I love how we can see some of his kumadori makeup peeking out, and speaking of which.

Interestingly, almost all of Ken's kumadori body paint is black, unlike Ri or Kon's which is predominantly red. We can also see a lot more of it. All the medicine sellers wear kumadori markings that echo those from kabuki theatre. They serve as a visual shorthand for what kind of character is being played. Red on white is explicitly youthful and heroic, with a sense of justice - very fitting for Kon's high energy character. Black paint, by contrast, is typically applied to villains and demons, particularly around the face and mouth.

(Oh my god look at his little fang while he's fixing his earring i LOVE him)

For his face, we see something quite interesting - unlike Ri or Kon, he has barely any lip paint, but what he DOES have is a little bit of green on the bottom lip and an extremely thin purple line on the top. Around the eyes we see another little highlight of green on the eyelid, and thick black around the lower lid. Green is often a marker of the supernatural or the undead in kabuki theatre, which fits well enough here. He's still got that red stripe on the nose that marks him as heroic, but the incorporation of black into more of his makeup would give any kabuki-knowledgeable people a cause to be wary - this guy's just as likely to hinder as help you.

The sword. This is one scary looking sword if I'm completely honest. Maybe it's the bulging eyes or the way the teeth are rendered, it upsettingly resembles a bird with teeth to me. Let's consider the others for a moment.

Compare and contrast, Kun and Li. The sword of Qian has a narrow but MUCH longer hilt. The blade looks proportionally longer too, or at least the sheath is. As a result I'm not entirely sure how Ken fits it in his travelling pack - though we haven't seen what his looks like yet, so perhaps he uses something different to Ri and Kon.

In conclusion

BABY YOU'RE MY AAAAAAANGEEEEEEEEELLLLLLL

[emmamlie]

I command you to go watch and like and comment this Mirror Visitor fan trailer that just dropped today

The @ of the animators so you can follow them on instagram :

[saltnvinegar-chip]

dance with me

[odyysee]

nothing interesting

[valtsv]

there's only one of me but i do enough fuck all for two blokes

[chungledown-bimothy]

bodies should have crash logs. why the fuck did that just happen.

[rejectedfables]

"Xue Yang did all that to avenge his finger" is such a funny take, like. Did you listen to his story? Did you put yourself in the shoes of his 7yo self for ANY seconds at all?

Because lets recap: He was tricked, and used, and hungry, and beaten repeatedly, and treated as worthless and disposable, all by a man fully capable of paying him for his work. He was sent alone to deliver a taunt to a dangerous man. He was seven. He accepting the beating he received without complaint, and was further beaten for asking for the payment he'd been promised. He was whipped, and knocked in front of an ox cart.

Chang Ci'an didn't AIM the cart at his finger.

Chang Ci'an deliberately knocked a seven year old orphan child to the ground in front of an ox cart and ordered the driver to drive over the child.

And the driver did.

He manage to escape with ONLY one crushed finger (and, we can assume, many less permanent injuries). Crushing injuries are incredibly serious, and even one so small can be deadly. An orphaned child can't afford decent medical care. Adult Xue Yang has a SEVERED finger, which means that at best he managed to find a doctor who would amputate it for him, and at worst he cut it off himself. At age seven. Xue Yang is INSANELY lucky to have survived to age 8 after this incident.

This is why Xiao Xingchen's suggestion that Xue Yang should have merely cut off Chang Ci'an's finger, or hand, or arm, is so upsetting to Xue Yang. Yes, the revenge he did take was abhorrent and excessive, but Xingchen totally misses the point of the story (understandable in the moment, everything is happening SO MUCH at that point).

Xue Yang, at age seven, had done nothing wrong. He was a child, he was innocent, and he didn't deserve to be treated like his life was worthless by Chang Ci'an, or the cart driver, or the message recipient, or the restaurant owner, or every observer on the street who did nothing to help. And every person who tells him it's "just a finger" further treats the very real devaluing of and threat to his life as normal and fine.

If he, any time after age 7, had been able to exact revenge by cutting off Chang Ci'an's arm, there is nothing equivalent about that revenge. A severed arm is not a crushing injury, and is less likely to produce life-long chronic pain. Chang Ci'an would have good medical care-- a doctor, medicine, pain killers. His life would not meaningfully be in danger. Chang Ci'an had family (and money) to help him with whatever tasks being one-handed made difficult. Chang Ci'an was an adult, who's already lived a life without pain and disability, and who's prospects will not be impacted. Chang Ci'an was an ADULT and therefore better able to understand what was happening and why. And beyond all of that, Chang Ci'an would DESERVE IT.

To say that Xue Yang did everything he did to the Chang Clan in revenge over "losing his finger" is to betray an utter lack of willingness to empathize with Xue Yang. Even the 7yo version of him.

And he knows it. Which is why the suggestion is so upsetting.

[ahavaas]

@frost-flower-fractured-ice covering the basics

[rejectedfables]

oh @ahavaas you absolutely cannot leave "Orphan Mangler 3000" in the tags

You're also touching on a point I want to dig into more at some point, which is: while killing the entire Chang Clan was obviously excessive and horrific, there is a logic to it beyond just "I was hurt so I will hurt others". The clan he killed were the people who, by nature of being part of Chang Ci'an's clan, supported his power.

"Everyone in town passively or actively supported Orphan Mangler 3000" is such a hilarious and accurate assessment of Xue Yang's takeaway from this event. Every person surrounding Chang Ci'an who did not oppose him therefore supported him. Everyone who did not denounce him condoned his behavior. Everyone who did nothing was complicit.

And when Xue Yang was old enough and powerful enough to take revenge, Chang Ci'an was already dead, so Xue Yang's revenge was redirected to every complicit member of the clan who gave Chang Ci'an the power to do what he did.

Add to this the fact that Xue Yang had been working on the Tiger Tally (THE powerful artifact of demonic cultivation, known for warping people's minds towards violence and murder), and had been employed by the Jin clan to wipe out smaller clans who annoyed Jin Guangshan (normalizing this horrifying behavior to his teenage mind), and is it ANY wonder he did what he did?

[ahavaas]

like they say, the purpose of a system is what it does, chang ci'an

Culpability for the Chang clan is such a touchy fandom point because the narrative gives you a character who says "yes they were culpable" and that character is a spree killer who decided that "failing to act to stop the Orphan Mangler" was a crime that deserved the death sentence.

so you have to do a lot of "just because he identifies a problem doesn't mean I agree with his solutions to said problem" throat clearing.

but like. it is a problem! a society-wide problem! that people in these clans and sects value the safety and security offered so much that they will tolerate some pretty awful behavior from the men leading them!

[rejectedfables]

1100%. Also (post here):

Like. Of course I, with modern irl morality and sense of justice, think killing a whole clan for their dead leader's horrible actions is fucked up and wrong. But the people in his own society DON'T feel that way consistently. They, in their own time with their own world's version of justice, accept that this is a regrettable but normal way of handling the situation IF the wronged party is a member or the gentry.

Which means that Xue Yang's crime (with relation to the Chang Clan specifically), within his own setting, was valuing himself "above his station"

[supertaliart]

Post-it roleswap Wangxian suggested by @baixue-temple !

[creechurrr]

Sweethearts @sxx-love-week

Xue Yang- Black Lily

Song Lan- Plum Blossom

Xiao Xingchen- White Chrysanthemum

[bookhobbit]

The first rule of sewing is you can fix anything if you have patience, creativity, and a little bit of extra fabric! The second rule of sewing is AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

[lightbluedevil]

Day 6 for @sxx-love-week Taskmaster

So I have only ever seen one episode of Taskmaster, but my sister has yapped about it so much that I know a lot of very weird details about the show. She sent me these memes for me to redraw.

[shittyidea]

A super long audio book with just silence and an “oh, out loud?” at the end

[czech-hunter-reject]

Teeheehee, off to do my little schemes 😜

[czech-hunter-reject]

Teeheehee, on my way back home from doing my little schemes 🤪

[20thcenturywomen2016]

I’m a lover by nature except for when I’m a wretched hater cunt bitch which I also am by nature

[fangs-4-fags]

the mystery bruises you're getting aren't from anemia or something stupid like that. they're from me. i go into your house while you're asleep and softly hit you with hammers until i am satisfied