I can’t say that I know a ton about Durga and Kali’s personalities in mythology or how it translates to FGO, so I can’t say much right now (until I hit my usual ‘mythology binge’, though the fact that their implementation hasn’t sparked that is telling in it’s own way), but it is sad that people seem to be neutral-to-disappointed regarding their implementation.
Borrowing this to talk about my own perspective for a minute which I should probably qualify:
So I am medium well-versed in a very specific Hinduism. I'm not a practitioner, and I don't claim to speak on behalf of those who do. I know someone I could show the depictions to, but he's not very interested in Type-Moon stuff and I have a feeling he'd be pretty disappointed. But he is the person who taught me most of what I know, and he's a Shakta Hindu.
To make a long story short, Shakta Hinduism worships Shakti (the animating force of the universe) as the preeminent force and supreme godhead, and depending on which sub-branch you are involved with, it manifests most directly in Durga, Kali and Lakshmi. You may be noticing a theme here. This goddess tradition is what I know best, and it's the one I'm going to be borrowing to use this. I know there are other perspectives, but I'm not qualified to talk about those, and the foundational Shakta text is literally referenced in Kali's lines, so here we go:
I think the most disappointing thing with Durga is how rote and mechanical she feels, which is extremely anticlimactic. In the Devi Mahatmyam (one of the foundational Shakta texts) in her confrontation with Mahishasura, she's having a great time. She's laughing at his boasts, she's shouting as she routs his forces, she reduces an asura to ashes by "hmph"-ing at him too hard. Borrowing a quote from the text itself:
"Honored likewise by the other Deva also with ornaments and weapons, she gave out a loud roar with a decrying laugh again and again. By her unending, exceedingly great, terrible roar the entire sky was filled, and there was great reverberation. All worlds shook, the seas trembled."
She tells jokes, she boasts, she laughs. She's a fighter, yes, but she's animate and involved, she's not dispassionate at all. It feels like they took the depiction of Durga as an instrument of the gods created to defeat Mahishasura and made that her personality by making her all robotic and stuff, and given that I know for a fact they must have read the Devi Mahatmyam, or at least be aware of it, it feels super weird. They could have gone a lot further with the red motif too - her skin is usually depicted as being red, and they could have gotten away with giving her a more otherworldly look. And, y'know, the whitewashing. And the bikini. The bikini's really the bit that gets my goat.
Kali...I give them partial points because they do capture some parts - the blood-drinking, the unabashed joy of carnage, the connection with Shakti and the dancing is all part of Kali...but it is a part. Again, it's missing so much - Kali as all-encompassing Time, as the voice of the downtrodden, the oppressed and the outcast. She is the primordial night whose inescapable maw swallows all life and light, but also the energy that animates you from your first breath to your last. She maintains the illusion of linear time and the material world, but also acts as a refuge for those who are tired of the Wheel and need an escape from the cycle of life and death. The fact that the design is so overtly horny isn't on its face a problem, Kali is often depicted as being alluring, but it's a very safe kind of horny that also doesn't really work on its own, especially because it's just a palette swap of Durga's weird metal bikini.
If Durga is a Warrior, a goddess who wants to make it seem as if there is a fair fight going on, then Kali is a Destroyer, stalking around and crushing things underfoot without so much of a struggle. They capture some of it okay with her Extra Attack and Noble Phantasm but the whole thing overall still feels kind of "meh," like they're still being written as Alter Egos with parts of their nature missing.
I think the big thing with Kali is that there's no element of her design that really elicits horror, which is an important part of her iconography. She dances around with a garland of skulls, she drinks blood, she has an attendant court of beings who ride jackals (the dakini, from which we get Dakiniten in Japan after the Syncretism Shuffle did its thing) howling in the night, wears a belt made of severed hands and is often depicted holding a severed head and a bloodied knife. That's the big visual element that's holding her back.
Ram from Re:Zero has to be one of my favorite portrayals of disability, I haven't gotten to Arc 6 but my friend showed me the part where it's displayed what Ram feels all the time and holy shit. Do I feel that.
Apparently a lot of people don't even realize Ram is a diaabled character, looking it up online leads to very very little about her as disabled rep. So I'll say it here. Ram is an amputee (her horn) who has Chronic Pain & Chronic Fatigue. She is disabled.
As someone who has such dehabiltating chronic pain, I have to use mobility aids almost every single day, Ram literally displays a condition like that in spades. This might be a bit of a nonsensical 3-AM type ramble but she's on my mind.
I tend to lose patience quicker than other people because of my body aching all the time and Ram, being the sassy, kinda bitchy asshole really fits this feeling as a disabled person. When you're in constant pain of course you're grouchy and it's a lot easier to let out that grouchiness in a playful way. I don't know if this was purposeful but either way it really really works. We need more mean disabled characters tbh.
Next is her being "useless." Subaru makes fun of her for not doing anything, and she takes the teasing in good fun. However, if/when Subaru takes it too far, the people who care about her are willing to stand up for her. Ram is disabled, she has little to no energy, she literally can't clean because it's exhausting and tiring and painful. I can relate to that as well, hell, I go to a special school because I am too tired and in too much pain to do normal amounts of schoolwork. So Ram being unable to do things like clean and cook, but still being valued speaks so much to disabled people who can't function alone!
Ram needing treatment every night... god. Having to take medication every single day as a disabled person is exhausting and forgetting to take it just once completely dehabilitates you. Ram needing treatment every night is literally the equivalent to magical daily medication.
Ram also using her wand as a mobility aid... that's not even a metaphor or allegory.
Yet despite all her shortcomings, her disability, she's loved and appreciated for the things she can do. She's respected and cared for and no one really looks down on her for being unable to do magic or simple tasks. (In the Movie, she even sleeps in and is affected by the cold more than anyone else. I don't know if this was on purpose, but that's also a thing people with chronic pain/fatigue deal with...) She's intelligent, loyal, clever, witty, bitchy but in a likeable way, and most of all. She's appreciated for her steamed potatoes.
Anyways this was my ted talk. Do you all realize Ram as the disabled rep she is...
What he means: in Toy Story 2 Woody is treated as the rarest of the toys from Woody’s Roundup when he’s the main character of the show. That would mean he would have had a higher production number than any of his costars, and in fact probably would have been made for the longest and earliest of the toy line. Stinky Pete, by being the fan unfavorite, must have had a smaller run, and less of his toys would have survived in the 50s as kids would have needlessly damaged or destroyed him making him the rarest of the group and Woody the most common. If anything, the plot of Toy Story 2 should have revolved around Al stealing Woody’s hat as it would have been the item most sought after by collectors as it’s easily lost and not attached to an otherwise common doll. Fundamentally, Al’s apartment should have been littered with Woody dolls in various states of damage, all missing hats and maybe a handful of decent condition Woody dolls needing a hat while Stinky Pete is the rarest and most expensive as a collectors item.
@everyone saying Woody was a limited run or some shit like….. y’all telling me the character that got onto the cover of time magazine and had all this fucking merch didn’t saturate the market with Woody dolls? In the 50s at the height of capitalism and the baby boom???
Your error is in assuming that Woody is rare because few Woody dolls were made. Not the case: Many Woody dolls were made- and because of their popularity they were sold and played-with until they were wrecked and - this being the 50s - thrown out. That plastic Woody you’ve got there will outlast most civilizations: but our Woody? With his cloth body and its aging 1950s fabric? By the 80s most of those would be a wreck: cloth-body stuffed toys have a very short shelf-life once they’re out in the world. Store a Woody in the attic for ten years and the mice get him, or the mold, or the simple weight of time loosens the bindings and makes his limbs unravel. And the voice box? With an in-tact, still functional draw strings? Do oyou know how often those things jam?
Woody is unique because he seems to have belonged to a family that takes unusually good care of their toys, going so far as to fix them. Toy from the 50s are not in any way shape or form equivalent to modern full-plastic toys or even BEanie Babies, which were sold primarily with a view to the long-term collectors market. There is absolutely nothing weird or strange in a Woody doll surviving in such good quality to 1999 being notable: his popularity and high production rate has zero impact on the toy’s long-term survivability. (Indeed, that high production rate could have even introduced a lot more manufacturing defects into shipped Woody dolls, creating an overall decline in quality.)
Just because it saturated the market is no indication of longevity. Yes, Al sure has a lot of Woody stuff - and most of that is very rare. For a good comparison point hop over to ebay and start looking for vintage, no-package Howdy Doody dolls from the 1950s - not the 70s re-releases with 70s materials but the 50s ones. Start judging the quality: the faded fabrics, the dirt, the smudges, the dinginess, and you’ll begin to see why Al freaked out so much: he didn’t just just find a Woody with a hat, he found a Woody who was clean - with no chipping on the hand-painted face, whose hand-stitched hat hadn’t lost its stitching, whose arm break could be repaired by a master who knew what they were doing. A hundred thousand Woodys might have been made in the 50s - but the number that survived to the present day, out-of-box, out of the hands of collectors, in good enough shape to be polished-up into museum-quality condition?I
Al found the treasure of a lifetime.
[Fun fact: according to the wiki, Woody’s full name is Woody Pride.]
people are making fanfics.....of the rich guys who died in the submarine titanic thing.....
Look i have no fucking emphaty for the rich idiots that thought that going to see the titanic inside of a broken can of a submarine was a good idea,making jokes about their death? valid they were stupid dumb billionaires but making NSFW fanfics with fucking R#APE,OMEGAVERSE,SCAT AND INCEST OF REAL DEAD PEOPLE IS GOING WAY TOO FUCKING FAR WTF IS THIS????? SERIOUSLY WHO WAS THE FUCKER THAT STARTED THIS MADNESS!!!
Hello everyone and welcome to my Post of appreciation to my ultimate pathetic man,ball of anxiety,Babygirl Erich von rerugen/lergen in Youjo Senki spin-off Youjo Senki restaurant.
WARNIRGS:cringe,intensive fangirling
I hope you enjoy.
this cover is sublime,i love how in this one he has his hair looking more like the one from the LN/Manga but blue like the anime
oh and of course we got our favorite boom boom girl smug Tanya
In this picture i would like to highlight his beautiful hands and his beautiful face
ah~ im in love
here we have Erich without his full uniform
Such a rare and thrilling sight! don't you agree?
we also have a new face of frustration from him this Time caused by hunger and not because of Tanya (for now at least) and of course that disheveled hair is most adorable!
ah,such a lovely and domestic panel,here we have Erich enjoying his breakfast with some good coffee.
ah~ he is adorable isn't he?
such a joy to see him enjoying his coffee so freely before freaking out about Tanya hahaha
(no but seriously,this man is gonna need some good therapy because of all the anxiety Tanya causes him on a daily basis)
Erich eating pretzels ( ꈍᴗꈍ) and having some stomach pain it seems,poor Erich.
( the angry monk is also super cute)
Wow Erich is such a hardworker! im getting into fangirl Paradise with this panel he looks lovely!
Erich and Tanya-chan bumping into each other while going to lunch, what a coincidence!
(Tanya-chan is super cute here! and Erich's inner face of despair is truly amusing)
oh my Erich sure needs to eat more, he's already in so much stress with the war and Tanya
(it's upsetting that i can only put 10 images per post so lets got to my favorite panel of this Chapter already)
WOW ERICH'S FACE IS SOOOOO CUTE ♡(> <)♡ON THIS ONE AHHHH I'LL DIE FROM CUTENESS OVERLOAD! IT'S WAY TOO MOE!
and here i end my Erich von rerugen Apreciation post, I'll probably make another some day
okay so basically this is a thought i had out of nowhere and now i want to share it with you,Tanya degurechaff and Friends as magical girls ✨ yay! glitter,cute clothes and a explosion of colors✨
ah yes the perfect don't you agree? just imagine Tanya and her friends on magical(and weirdly mortal and dangerous) Adventures!!! ah yes simply perfect!
The first piece of art on this blog that I fully complete with clean lineart, color, and shading… and it’s magical girl art. That’s so painfully on brand for me I can’t even be surprised by it.
I actually have quite a few Thoughts about magical girl Tanya (specifically in the context of a potential PMMM/Youjo Senki crossover) that are just living Rent Free in my head which I would love to just go off about. Maybe another time though bc I started this at like 3pm and its now 10. help. (7 hours. This is what happens when ur stuck inside all day bc of covid i guess.)
I’ll put it very simply for now. I love the idea of magical girl Tanya and friends. I would love to do more for this it one day.
Anyway, regarding the design I ended up drawing… So we saw in the afterword of novel 5, Shinobu Shinotsuki did an illustration of Tanya as a magical girl (And also in the afterword of 9 we got Visha), but I wanted to design one myself, as while the illustration is wonderful and hilarious it just wasn’t quite what I wanted. The end result I got was of course this.
She doesn’t have a lot of the frill that you usually see on magical girl designs, but y'know with her personality I don’t think frills really suit her anyway.
I’m quite happy with it. Maybe another time I’ll do some sketches for some of the other characters like Mary and Visha :,)
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