Hello, quick question: Is the #Rottmnt Possesed AU going to be a comic series here on Tumblr, or is it just a concept?
Hello!
For now it's just a concept, but I really want to turn it into something more! I already have some ideas for a few short comics and drawings for this AU that I am planning on doing soon. But I am not a writer, so please don't expect some big grand story with great plot twists and innovative ideas.
(of course making a comic series of my own is a dream but we'll see)
I will try my best!
Hey what happened to all your audios?
My SoundCloud got deleted due to violating their policy (the more mature audios weren't allowed) - I'll be either finding another place I can post them that allows that type of audio (if anyone has any suggestions, I'm open to hear them!) or I'll make a separate blog on here for them. (But I'll have to come up with a tagging system so Tumblr won't flag them either)
For the ITs Leader trio, who pulls off Dress and who pulls of Tuxedos Best?
Also, favorite winter down/past time?
oh wow ! i am assuming this is in reference to my au art …? i am going to be honest, i am unsure what you mean by leader trio, as narukami is the only one ever considered a leader. so excuse me if i misunderstood ^^” but in context with my au post
narukami 100% is the best dress wearer and absolutely pulls off any fit he tries. my idea of narukami is that once he met mitsuru, the gloves were off in his gender presentation game. he saw her and was like “…wow! i can be like that! i too can be a girlboss!” then proceeded to do exactly that. i think narukami would favor those thigh-knee cut slim fit dresses, like in the spy movies- or those floor length slim fits with a little tail. something showy and bright, give him an excuse to bring makeup and jewelry too. i like to think that once he grew comfortable with his identity, he tried to one up mitsuru in anything he pulled off when they were working on something together. friendly girlboss competition.
between naoto and yosuke, they fit two specifcially different types of suit to me. i am not a fan of being tapped to the narrow box of tuxedo, so i hope you don’t mind me expanding a bit.
naoto is likely “the best” with pulling off a suit, but that is inly due to his nature. when you are the great detective prince, you have to carry a sort of air that comes with learning how to be fashionably acceptable. while he could certainly pull off a tuxedo, without a doubt, i actually think naoto would be a little more… uniquie, about it. tailored suit and simple tweaks to the existing style to give it more of a princely sense of theme, is what i personally see. i will have to draw it at somepoint, i am not the best as explaining things, my apologies. my main point of inspirational reference for naoto and the suits he would wear is older, royal like dress shirts and vests/blazers, coat tails and embroidered patterns- some much similar to that of the jouin uniforms of smtv.
yosuke would be the perfect picture of just a guy in a suit and i love that for him so fucking much. i feel like it solidly depends on the type of event on whether he really dresses it up or not. sometimes he can be in a rather quickly put together, budget buy tux. looks like a guy going to prom for the first time. probably needs help tying his tie. when he does put in the effort, however, yosuke can pull off a really well-put tux with no problem. between narukami fashion osmosis and having to learn how to be taken seriously in the field of law, he caught on pretty quickly on how to care for a suit and dress to a t. you just gotta convince him whether or not the occasion is worth it or not- because otherwise? this mans sense of fashion is a fucking disaster i love him so bad but he dresses like a middle aged dad in hawai’ian shirts and khakis. he wears those fucking tshirts with the tuxedo printed on the front. probably wears fucking socks with sandals and freaks out over those water shoes with the toes.
outside of those three, if you would have asked me about the entire investigation team-
both answers would be rise. rise can pull off any shape of dress just as good as she can suit, and i think she opts for those very dress-like suits with frills and tails. rise, narukami and naoto working on pulling off some of the most elaborate, unique fashion takes meanwhile yosuke is standing in the enterance way wearing a shirt that says “man i love fishing” in a pair of shorts that have ten pockets and big ass sneakers too big for his damn feet. i like them so bad. i do think rise and yosuke go in brand name shopping sprees together, she helps him find the cool shit. rise is naoto’s biggest supporter in fashion choice and likely has a hand in getting him a lot of custom work done. as a note to the au, i like to think rise is qprs with the trio. they all hold hands sometimes.
as for your last question!
vacation. oh my god this team needs a fucking break. they are overworked to shit please just give them sometime to hang out and breathe.
in those moments of peace, i think they each are still figuring out their pursuits and hobbies. the only one i am really sure of is that i think naoto is writing in his off time. i feel he has a big attachment to literature, or at least knowledge, and wants to have his own book of sorts. not too sure the type of book, ill get back to you on that, but it feels right to me that he’d be writing in his off time (even though it is still technically work and needs to be convinced to take a break).
sorry this is a world wall i am a little autisitic about them
Hello there, I would love to hear all your thoughts on 'The Last of the Wine'!
Hey, thanks for the ask! I really loved Last of the Wine! Alexias was a lovely character, and it was really interesting to watch his development and the development of his relationship with Lysis! He was so sweet in the beginning and then he became harder as the book went on; his father said that he once thought Alexias was 'too soft' to be a soldier, and I think he was right to feel that way at a certain point! His entire character progression was a trip to get through!
I absolutely loved the writing, which was beautiful as always, and there are some parts of the story I don't think I'm going to forget about anytime soon; the story of Phaedo (I cried), the moment Alexias exposes his brother and asks him 'bear no ill-will to me' (I cried), quotes like 'at Gurgos's once I lay awake considering how to kill him. But already it was too late,' 'I saw death reach out for you; and I had no philosophy,' 'if there be any god who concerns himself with the lives of men, the god himself must suffer with me,' etc. etc. It was just so good but very disturbing in some points...sometimes, you never stop to wonder why people do the things they do and only see that what has been done is evil. In a way, this is good; evil things ought to be derided as such no matter the circumstances, but in another way it is unfair and unhelpful. This is how I feel about a lot of the last third of the book: I understand why and how certain things happened, I just wish that they hadn't happened.
Something that made me laugh though and which I will think about forever are the few scenes where it's apparent Mary Renault is writing with a modern audience in mind, like the absolutely hilarious scene where Alexias is afraid of asking Xenophon if he only likes girls because he doesn't want to offend him 😭 or the scene where Alexias, assuring his dying father of vengeance, says: "Am I so base of soul as to forgive my enemies?" They're really cool scenes because they kind of play with the expectations of a modern audience and subvert common sentiments and understandings in modern culture and society; the opposite situation in the Xenophon scene would seem likelier to a modern person (especially at the time Mary Renault was writing) with Xenophon worrying about offending Alexias by asking him if he likes boys. And it's really a head-trip to read that question asked by Alexias because it's a direct contradiction to the common and widely known sentiment of forgiveness and loving your enemies within Christianity...this becomes 10x funnier 10 pages later when Alexias accidentally stumbles onto the whole point of Christianity 'God with us' 😭😭😭 I love the whole sequence of these scenes because they seem written specifically to challenge the reader; to get it through your mind that this was a foreign place and time, and these people are foreign to us; they have an understanding different from our own...but maybe not completely different at the same time.
Anyway, I don't know if this makes sense, my thoughts are kind of all over the place with this one but the tldr version of it is: I loved it! The writing was beautiful! It made me sad!
How is 'The Last of the Wine' going?
It's really good so far but for some reason it's taking me forever to get through, I don't know why! There are a lot of things I love about it: I love Alexias, I love the story of how he was named and of his uncle, I love how Socrates was introduced, I love Lysis, I love the introduction of Phaedo (even though that whole portion made me cry)...the whole thing really picked up after Alexias' father finally went off to war but I'm still way behind in the book given the amount of time I've had to get through it. Did you have a similar problem or is it just me?
The TE Lawrence quote ‘Sacrifice uplifts the redeemer and casts down the bought’ – you mentioned that it might be a clue to how Alec/Ralph’s relationship ended. I wondered what your thoughts are on this? I can never work out if it is that Alec wants to ‘look after Ralph’ or doesn’t want Ralph to ‘look after him’. I mean, a bit of both I’m sure, but I still wonder what it looks like? And also, how was it reading that cliffhanger ending for the first time?
So, my whole idea comes from the fact that Alec and Ralph seem somewhat similar in personality to me. I got the impression that both wanted to take some responsibility; Ralph in literally everything, and Alec in a relationship...about the T.E. Lawrence quote: full disclaimer, I haven’t read the book it's from. I'm probably way off base, but just on its own, the quote to me came across as: complex men understand that sacrifice uplifts the one who partakes in it, and casts down the one for whom it is done. The first redeems the second, but the second will always be beneath the first; he is ‘bought’ (i.e. indebted) and also ‘cast down.’ When it’s mentioned by Alec, I assumed he was referring both to himself and Ralph as being those ‘complex men’ who also 'sacrifice.’ There was also a direct mention of Sandy prior to it being brought up, so I linked the whole thing both to Alec’s relationship (and impression) of Ralph (who he says is ‘complex’ but remains innocent about it), along with his relationship to Sandy (who I assume is the one ‘bought’).
So, the way I read it was: Alec identifies himself as a ‘complex man' who understands the implication of being the one to sacrifice for another person; he identifies Ralph as such a complex man too, but seems annoyed that Ralph doesn't understand that the people for whom he sacrifices are inevitably 'cast down' and 'bought.' He maintains an innocence about things in general and this bothers Alec. Later on, Alec obviously says that Ralph never let him do anything in their relationship, so I made a leap and connected this comment to the quote and came away with a vague idea that in their relationship Ralph probably would’ve been the one who 'sacrificed’ and Alec would’ve been the one who was ‘cast down,’ i.e. Alec was expected to depend on Ralph, who took all responsibility while Alec was never allowed to fulfil any similar role; Ralph never let himself depend on Alec, or let him help in any way. This would’ve been an inherently unequal relationship and I don't think Alec would've liked it (because again, I see him as similar to Ralph in the sense he wants responsibility; he himself also says most of their arguments resulted from Ralph's inability to just let him help or do anything).
Re the cliffhanger: the first time I read it, it did a number on me…I didn’t much understand it, because I was rushing to get through and see what happened with Ralph. When I finally got to the end, and read ‘I should’ve had to come back,’ I was honestly...flabbergasted, I think is the correct word? I didn’t realise that Laurie was lying, so it seemed the sweetest thing in the world. I remember the whole day after I finished the book, I kept thinking about those words and wondering what happened! The last paragraph seemed to indicate a happy ending (I read it like three times over lol), but I hated how abrupt it all was. It wasn't until some time had passed that I actually started to liked the abruptness. Also, it really made me want to read the Phaedrus!
i agree the dave thing is so funny, especially when laurie gets distracted from Andrew’s story about his awful depressing childhood to be jealous about dave’s entire existence, and then has to spend a few mins convincing andrew he’s still interested in his story and it’s not boring 😭 that bit kills me, i don’t know why some people say Mary isn’t a funny writer! but my personal interpretation, mostly based on the end conversation with dave, is that he must give off ~vibes~, just based on when dave says “i think you’ve misunderstood things between andrew and I” and then couple that with him being in love with bertie. and we do know that laurie can pick up on vibes, because he’s actually pretty good at picking up on andrew.
I think Laurie is generally hilarious, at times intentionally, at others not! There are lots of scenes I remember laughing at as I want along 😭
I do think you're right about vibes and about them being important, and of course Laurie is good at picking them up, kind of because he has to be. Honestly, I think most characters in this book have to be vibe-masters 😭 that's what I feel like many of the conversations with meeting new characters is like: simply vibe-checks 😭 That being said, I did really like the explanation regarding some weird-misplaced idea of influence that Laurie puts on Andrew, because in the scene that makes me laugh and another before it, Andrew actually does establish that Dave influences him, the only problem is that Laurie assumes there must be something romantic behind it. Those are the vibes he was getting, and you're right, he could've just picked up on Dave and connected dots, but I think there's more to it than that. The next few scenes after this one (the hilarious Reg-seduction scene and also tea with Adrian) kind of offer some more interesting insight; in both scenes, the idea of influence is referred to and explored, with Andrew being the center of it in the former. It seems even Reg has an idea that Andrew ought to be 'positively influenced'
I don't know 😭 I have this theory developing in my head, but I don't know if it's wrong because I haven't finished the rest of the book. And this book specifically is so cool because every time you think you understand a part of it, something else happens and you have to go back and recontextualize everything 😭 regardless, thank you for sharing your interpretation with me! It really makes me think about everything I've already read, and try to see what I could've missed and need to think more about.
hey, who would you say is your least favorite character from the marauders era?
Severus Snape.
Hello Hodumi-san, I'm a big fan of your work! What are your favorite subjects to draw and your favorite artists? Thank you if you decide to answer!
Hello, thank you for your kind words. I love to draw plants, mostly small plants or wild flowers. I don't have specific artists but i love Childe Hassam and Bato Dugarzjapov's artworks. 😆