some things about me: i am Jewish, white, bisexual, an anti-zionist, USian, and a transsexual that uses he/him exclusively.
i’m a horror fan and often find dark subjects interesting to explore in fiction. this means that sometimes i talk about media with themes around stuff like violence, abuse, SA, etc on this blog. filter that out if it bothers you.
if i say something fucked up without realizing it, i want to know. feel free to send me an ask about it.
enjoy your stay 👍
general stuff:
this is a bit of a smorgasbord blog
relevant tags:
#myscrabbles - for my writing.
#storycrafting - about my current projects
#tsoh - about tsoh, one of my current fiction projects. it stands for something but don’t worry about it lol. if any of these posts interest you, i have a sideblog called @tsoh-archive you can follow for more pieces and
#// ventilation - vent posts, probably about transphobia or antisemitism etc. filter out if that bothers you.
some of my general positions for reference:
i’m a Jewish anti-zionist. i believe in the rights and liberation of Palestinians and i also will not tolerate antisemitism from goyim who may share some of my beliefs, because those things are not mutually exclusive.
as a rule most things are nuanced
i don’t believe in transandrophobia: as in, i think it’s a stupid descriptor attempting to describe real experiences (trans men experiencing transphobia) in an unfeminist way. block me if you don’t like that.
bottom line opinion of mine is that human sexuality is naturally weird and has all sorts of facets, ppls kinks are value neutral. the only real exception to that imo is raceplay, something im not even going to try to defend nor do i want to.
discourse topics that get a whopping Who Cares from me: bi vs pan discourse, micro labels being the supposed fall of queer community, most Problematic Kinks, any specific beef between users on here that you’d need an entire encyclopedia to understand
I was SO SURE this was an allegory for trans women and I was like “…dang thats kind of heavy handed and obvious; a metaphor for trans women shouldn’t be ABOUT turning into a woman”
💀💀💀 saw three very fashionable guys in what looked like dark, goth, androgynous fashion. i assumed they were fashion students, the kind who mixes issey miyake and thrift store finds and handmade pieces. that’s right, they were actually young catholic priests
thinking about obi-wan ending his speech to anakin on mustafar with “i loved you” instead of “i love you.” past tense vs present tense. you are gone even as i speak to you now. a confession of preemptive grief. i’m not talking to you because like a dead man i know you can’t hear me
That's right babyyyy another excuse for more bronze age art! Notes on what went behind this one under the cut.
So I decided to go more anatolian in region for this one, but with a deity slant again this time around, creating a look for Mito Uzumaki based off the deity Hatepuna. Hatepuna was known as the daughter of the sea, and was often considered the wife of one of two deities mainly; Telipinu, and Halki.
Telipinu is an agricultural, deity, and I'd argue also a storm deity, who was son to the big storm god in charge, Tarhunt. Telipinu has some pretty funny stories associated with him actually, including the one which explains how he met and married Hatepuna. I won't go into them too much here though; I'd recommend Harry Hoffner's Hittite Myths, second edition if you're interested those tales.
Halki is another agricultural deity, but is a funny case where they are both considered to be a man and a women depending on when and where you are in their career - however, whenever they're married to Hatepuna, they're assumed to be a man.
I thought it would be fun to come up with some designs for Hashirama and Toka as well based on those two, for the wall art behind Mito here, so that's what I ended up doing.
For clothing inspiration, I took some cues from the Yazılıkaya Hittite Rock Sanctuary. Here are some diagrams:
(Figure Image Source)
I went with an outfit for Mito based on the clothing of the women in these processions here. There's a level of interpretation here from me; I went with a flowing dress, puffed sleeves, and a tall cylindrical hat with a veil piece to it.
There's a similarly shaped hat I kind of like from a relief that's from Carchemish of the deity Kubaba actually:
(Image Source)
Anyway, while I went with a stylized version of the uzumaki swirl for some of the decoration to Mito's outfit, I also used a hittite stamp seal for further decoration on her hat piece.
As to the seals she's wearing in her hair, I thought it would be fun to go with some hittite cuneiform, so that's what I did.
I decided to go with the with the word "huwanhuessar" which seems to translate to water related words like "wave" or "flood" here.
This alliteration was broken down further into "hu-wa-an-hu-es-sar" which helped me pick out the cuneiform needed.
(Source: Hittite Historical Phonology by Sarah E. Kimball)
The cuneiform I used was from a downloadable document from this unicode cuneiform font resource I found.
I cannot say for sure if I got the characters right! But hey, at least I tried, lmaooo.
I kept her necklace looking the same as the one in the series though, since it's important - the one Tsunade inherits, and later gives to Naruto of course.
As for Hashirama and Toka, I also took design cues from the same Yazılıkaya carvings - I thought it might be interesting to take some cues from Sauska, a hurrian deity as well for Toka. If you look closely at the reliefs, Sauska is depicted twice in both the men's and women's processions, in distinctly different clothing. I thought it would be interesting to take the cues from her clothing in the masculine lineup, considering my thought process going off of just Halki alone at the start of all this.
It's not unusual to see a goddess also wearing that kind of conical headwear in general. Here's another one from a stag shaped vessel in the met museum's collection:
(Image Source)
The deity in the tall hat you see here is also meant to be a goddess.
I had no idea how to incorporate Toka's hairstyle given the headwear involved, so I went with a modified hathoric curl braid you see a lot of deities have, and added the ribbon ties she normally has to it.
Those kinds of curling hair styles were popular in the ancient near east in general - a paper on that if you're into that sort of thing.
For Hashirama, I also looked at some designs from these little deity amulets I found, particularly for his big headwear:
Sources: British Museum Amulet | Louvre Museum Amulet
The way the crowns are etched kind of look like trees or plant growth, so I thought I'd incorporate that a bit into Hashirama's own design here. Although I'm not sure how well that comes across with the side view, but I committed to it, so hey. I also included the design from another hittite seal into his clothing, although you might not be able to see it unless you zoom in, lol:
(Image Source)
I did take a few cues as well from this relief of Tarhunza and the vines in Ivriz, even though that's decidedly more neo hittite, lmao. I just liked the idea of depicting him holding a vine bearing fruit like you see there, so I went with it.
Aaaand that's everything I remember off the top of my head! Maybe I draw the Toka and Hashirama some other time in the flesh instead of in wall relief art, lmao. We'll see down the line, I guess. Hope you enjoyed this little breakdown though, had fun with it.
"Because of my body's illness, I won't last long, but, that destruction will not happen for I am not alone. While I am fulfilling Orochimaru's aspirations. I will stay in Orochimaru's heart forever."
