Late Period submission for @kakuhidaweek's prompt "pre-history"
Yeah I'll take any excuse to go bronze age with a submission. The notes on this one get a bit long, so I'll put all that under the cut:
When coming up for my design for Kakuzu here, I decided I wanted to go with a "came back wrong" kind of theme. So for that, I decided to take inspiration from what we have surrounding the egyptian god Osiris, or Usire as he's also known by.
Mainly, I chose that slant of inspiration because of texts where Osiris seems to be more than a little bit angry in the underworld:
Text Source: The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses (Have an Internet Archive Link)
"Anger" seems to be putting it mildly here. The concept of having this anger after being brought back from 'death' felt like a good fit for where I wanted to take Kakuzu here, so I went with that and took in some of Osiris' more vegetation aspects into Kakuzu's design.
This led to some really fun ideas for the mask critters Kakuzu has - notably created with hearts Kakuzu rips out of those unfortunate to come across him. Well we also have a group of four figures represented in the Book of Caverns, who decapitate, slaughter, and notably here, tear the hearts out of the enemies of Osiris.
Source: The Slaughterers: A Study of the Ḫꜣ.tyw as Liminal Beings in Ancient Egyptian Thought (freely accessible!)
The above source is actually part of a larger freely accessible collection of articles on such figures known as 'duatlings' for those interested. Check out their database too!
Anyway, if you'd like to see the tableau referenced:
Source: Aspects of Iconography and Transmission in the Book of Caverns (freely accessible!)
You'll notice I also used this register depicting these figures into the border decoration elements of this piece.
For the way I dressed Kakuzu, I took some inspiration for his headpiece from depictions of nobility wearing this headcone set, like you see for example in this painting from the met museum: Ipuy and Wife Receive Offerings from Their Children
Although the design of the headband itself takes more from this Relief of a Nobleman from the Brooklyn Museum collection, which is where I also got the idea for stylizing the braids in the way that I did.
Special mention on designing the headband for Standard-bearing statue of Ramose from the Museo Egizio collection.
Anyway, I thought I'd make the cone piece look more like a literal lotus, similar to how Nefertem tends to be depicted I suppose, given the lotus' symbolism with rebirth and renewal. I also put the lotus motif into his eyes as well, as a bonus feature, and in the bloodied waters surrounding them. The water itself is stylized similar to how it is in this tomb painting depicting Nebamun fowling and fishing in the marshes, courtesy of the British Museum collection.
Further references used:
Necklace Piece from the Louvre Collection
Hinged Cuff Bracelet from the Met Museum Collection
Hidan though, I noticeably did NOT go egyptian! I wanted to pick a bronze age location that felt more fitting given his backstory, and I decided somewhere in the levant would fit best. The area is sandwiched between two big regional powers of the time, the egyptians and the hittites, similar to how the Land of Steam was. Well known city-states like Ugarit here were mainly known for their economic importance, which also felt fitting for where Hidan came from. It felt like the right choice for a myriad of reasons there.
I initially considered making Anat the deity he worshipped here by him; a war goddess from Ugarit makes sense on paper. She's from the right region, and she is quite enthusiastic about her war aspect to put it mildly, if you've ever read anything where she cameos. She's also described as wearing the severed heads and hands of her enemies on her person, which is quite fun of her. I actually took inspiration from that idea with Anat for the heads on the coils attached to Hidan's spear.
I wanted it to kind of look like they were attached to the belt by the hair forming into the spear's rope coil, with the heads themselves based on glass beads meant to depict human faces you also find from the region. Most of the examples you'll see online are actually from the iron age, like this glass pendant from the met, but you do get some cases from the bronze age, like this much scrunglier example from the louvre's collection that was found in Ugarit.
One of the faces specifically though is based more on a specific piece of pottery shaped like a woman's head from Ugarit, in the same collection from the Louvre. The way the nose is chipped off almost looks like that of a skull's, and that got stuck in my mind.
Would I go for Anat though with Hidan if it's really down to the wire? I'm not sure! She was quite popular and I feel it would be more fitting given his backstory to go with a way more obscure Z lister. Still, I do like using her as a design influence on that end regardless.
For Hidan's kilt design, I went with cues from the louvre's baal stele. It's a bit faint, but I liked the wrapping and main pattern there. Although the way it was layered, I couldn't depict the fringe end you kind of also see here, but if I were to draw Hidan again like this, you probably would see the fringe in a different posing.
I thought it would be fun to give him a prominent curl to his braid, which is something you do see quite a lot in depictions of deities from this region. You see it in the Baal Stele I linked above, but some other examples:
If I took the time to hunt where I got these screenshots from I will be here forever, but I'll update this post with the information when I refind it I guess. The perks of putting all your design yapping under the cut! Anyway, have a fun little paper on the hathoric curl which is mildly related here, might as well share it.
If you made it this far, drop in the tags or replies who I should bronze age-ify next, lmaoooooooo
Хідан сто відсотків спер сорочку в свого хазбенда бо вона на нього велика навіть на канон арті. І ще з прикольнінького то тут діалог сердечками, кому цікаво можете спробувати відгадати✨
My Average Bad HidaKaku Valentine submission for @akatsukivalentine.
Red Day
In which Hidan discovers a festival of interpersonal affection and makes this the problem of literally everyone he encounters. Including Kakuzu.
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Warnings for content under cut: Violence. Explicit violence, implied violence, blood everywhere, janitor unhappy.
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Kakuzu woke from a sound sleep to a sting on his left foot. His hearts leapt, a discordant throbbing in his chest, and he lashed out before he even opened his eyes.
His bare foot made contact. There was a crash and the sound of wood splintering. Hidan swore.
Kakuzu surged out of his moth-eaten travel blanket, eyes wide and wild. The only other chakra signature in the room was Hidan's, so it was Hidan upon whom his wrathful gaze fell.
His partner was blinking amid the splinters of the only other piece of furniture in their budget room, an old, roughly made table. And in his hand was a tiny thing: a senbon, with a drop of red, red blood on its tip.
Without a doubt, that was Kakuzu's blood.
His hearts lurched in an off-rhythm, continuous beat, a clockwork sussuration of rising dread. His stomach turned.
Hidan had become fascinated with the Red Day festival in the town that used to exist two days to the south. It was because of all the hearts they'd used to decorate, Kakuzu thought, but it was hard to say. It was always hard to say what would set Hidan off, because — as much as his ungodly persistent company had grown on Kakuzu (like some kind of parasitic worm, he supposed, gnawing at his insides) — Hidan was a whack-job with bizarre religious delusions.
He'd started with the girl in the woods, pike jammed right through her heart (and his) in a sacrifice to the forces of interpersonal affection. "I loved her when she was bleeding," he had assured Kakuzu, after, passing over a bag of chocolates the poor fool had tried to gift him.
But of course that wasn't the end of it. A sensible man would have hustled Hidan out of there the moment he'd started talking nonsense. But Hidan was always talking nonsense, you see, and Kakuzu had been waiting to drop off a very expensive corpse.
It had escalated. Next was a deeply tanned, green-eyed boy with his genitals sliced off, screaming and whimpering while Hidan crooned sweet nothings to him like a lover (except, of course, as a lover, Hidan was not prone to sweet nothings at all).
By the time Kakuzu had gotten paid for his bounty, Hidan had been through five different villagers, their room at that local inn was festooned with cheap heart-shaped decorative shit, and three other girls had tried to give him chocolates or candy, which had ended badly for each one.
Naturally, it was challenging to hide five murders in one day. Especially when the murderer was utterly uncooperative. Hidan had had no interest in hiding. Why would he hide his devotions?
They'd been discovered — Hidan had been discovered, anyway, because Kakuzu was for once totally innocent of wrongdoing in this mess — and Kakuzu had been forced to slaughter the whole town to stop them sending for shinobi from the nearest hidden village.
"I love this festival," Hidan had crooned, drunk and glutted on blood and death and also, evidently, liqueur filled, heart-shaped chocolates. (He was a lightweight.) By then, he had been wearing a cheap, pink feather boa whose feathers were all cut into little hearts. It looked quite fetching on him; most things did. "Kakuzu, there's nothing that causes suffering like love does. Deep, abiding, awful, awful love."
If the pale hint of interpersonal affection he felt for Hidan — the thing that stopped him from burying his head six miles away from his body and walking away, for instance — was any indication, this was a frightfully true statement. Kakuzu had reflected savagely that he was not even in love with Hidan and he was, in fact, still suffering for him.
"That is," Hidan had declared dizzily, "the sweetest thing you've ever said to me. Ahhh. The heart, the loins, the head, the hands, the eyes — nothing escapes. Let us pray!" This last came out with the booming intensity of cannon fire.
He'd sipped the blood of the village headman last and then crammed a cheese knife with a gaudy, heart-shaped glass bauble on its end right through his own eye. The headman had died and Hidan had spun, scythe whirling, covered in heart shaped feathers and glittering from the face, single eye wide and pupil massive and reflecting all the stars in the sky above —
Anyway. The end of that story was: Kakuzu got paid (good), the whole town had to be wiped off the map lest they provoke a shinobi investigation they were trying to avoid (neutral, but laborious), and Hidan was pretty clearly having another incomprehensible episode of religious ecstasy (irritating).
Now, however, Kakuzu was suffering, but less from the vagaries of the affectionate heart and more from the regrettable truth that even unstoppable monster men made of cursed chakra spaghetti had to sleep sometime.
Kakuzu was so unfortunate as to sleep near his own partner. And so:
"Give me the senbon," he growled, deep and intimidating, striding forward.
Hidan flipped to his feet, disregarding the broken wood underneath his bare soles. Somehow, these episodes never included any useful symptoms like clumsiness. He reeled away from Kakuzu, taking advantage of his more acrobatic movement style in the cramped room at their wayside inn.
"Don't be such a stick-in-the-mud, Kakuzu," he crooned, voice still light and airy. "What do you think is gonna happen? Are you gonna die?"
"Hidan..." Kakuzu lunged.
Hidan jerked the senbon away from his grasp, backpedaling and ducking and cackling all shrill and creaky, like a broken hinge.
"Kakuzu, Kakuzu! Ne, Kakuzu, don't you have so many hearts? Aren't you secretly yearning to share one with me? Just —" He licked the senbon, panting as he dodged another swipe. "Just one?"
His eyelashes fluttered obscenely at the taste of Kakuzu's blood on his tongue.
"HIDAN," Kakuzu bellowed. His whole body went cold with the knowledge that all he needed was a circle of blood to complete the ritual, and his own blood would do perfectly well.
He had to neutralise him before he managed to create that circle.
Kakuzu's fingers flickered into the snake seal. He saw Hidan's eyes widen, showing a ring of purple iris, which turned white in the sudden flash of pale lightning. "Ration: Gian!"
"Shit!" Hidan shrieked, diving away from the attack. But False Darkness was so fast it was hard to evade, and Hidan wasn't used to bothering to evade attacks anyway.
It struck his side and sent him hurtling through the wooden wall of the inn, which exploded outwards along with him. The sound of tearing wood rent the night air. Hidan tumbled like a ragdoll in a rain of splinters and sparks, right out into the early spring rain and the nocturnal darkness outside.
Kakuzu leapt to follow him. He stomped through the wreckage of the wall, over the damp grass and mud, and to the twitching pale body sprawled on the ground. Judiciously, he leaned down and hacked off Hidan's head before he could get the bright idea to do anything inadvisable with Kakuzu's blood.
His knife was sharp. It crunched straight through Hidan's spine with only a little weight.
The head... coughed.
It didn't have the muscles to contract to cough, but by god, it coughed all the same.
Kakuzu held it by the hair and shook it roughly.
"Che-e-apsk-ate," croaked Hidan, which was true enough, but Kakuzu did not suspect he was talking about the cost of their room or the quality of their dinner.
Lights flickered on inside the inn. A silhouette streamed against the grass and broken wood: short, portly, and wearing a ridiculous night cap. And then a voice drifted out into the dark. "What seems to... o-oh... Um, shinobi-san..."
The issue with staying in inns, Kakuzu reflected, was that inns came with owners and staff.
He felt the urge to shake Hidan's stupid head some more. He did not bother to fight this temptation.
"Ow," Hidan complained, through his rattling teeth. "Stop yanking on my hair!"
"Stop trying to kill me," Kakuzu snapped.
"Is that meant to be a joke?" He spat out a glob of mucousy blood, which landed with a delicate thwack upon Kakuzu's bare foot. "In what world would that kill you? You can afford to submit one heart to Jashin-sama, Kakuzu, you have five! You're so greedy."
Kakuzu carefully unclenched his jaw. "I'm going to leave your body in the garden."
"Oh," the inn owner was saying, "oh, the wall...?"
"Ha! The wall! Ne, inn owner-san, all that property damage is this guy's fault!" Hidan's head bellowed. For someone with no access to lungs, he certainly sounded like he had an excellent set of lungs.
The owner turned to look at them, and Kakuzu saw that at last his eyes caught upon Hidan's head dangling from Kakuzu's own bloodied fingertips.
The portly civilian put his hand to his chest and stared, speechless.
Virtually the whole inn had seen them arrive. Kakuzu felt a vein pop somewhere in his forehead. He clenched his fists — Hidan whined wordlessly at the tension on his hair — and resigned himself to another massacre this week.
