Natsume is a Leftie
I am BACK with another important research post.
At the end of the day, I am a scholar and an academic and I must go out of my way to closely research and study in my field (Natsume). Today it is time, after gathering my evidence, to establish my thesis on Natsume being a leftie.
(I gathered evidence in the background of gathering evidence for ANOTHER post about Natsume being a cat, so this isn't exhaustive, just strongly suggestive. Except that I'm right. So.)
Alright we'll start with a caveat! Higuchi Tachibana is a human being and makes many mistakes while drawing (draws buttons on wrong side sometimes, drew Natsume wearing the elementary uniform when he was supposed to be wearing the middle school uniform, drew Ruka in the girl uniform, etc.) so there ARE times when Natsume is using his right hand to do things he should be using his left hand for OR that other characters who are usually right-handed are seen using their left hand.
Take this image, simultaneously an example of Natsume being a leftie but also depicting Ruka, who (as far as I can tell from other evidence) is right-handed, as left-handed too. There are inconsistencies! But I am basing this off of the overwhelming amount of evidence the manga provides.
And! While I did focus on Natsume's handedness for this post, I did periodically check other characters' eating and writing and alice use (if applicable, since not everyone's alice works like Natsume) and the above image of Ruka feels like an exception rather than a rule. Most people are righthanded and most of the characters seem righthanded.
Mikan is a rightie and Chapter 27 is full of her writing with her right hand. You can see her eating with her right hand in other chapters and primarily using her right hand in other scenes throughout the manga.
We see most characters here eating with their right hands with the exception of Natsume and Mikan, who have their hands down and aren't eating. Hotaru handles weaponry primarily with her right hand and eats with her right hand. She also uses wrenches and other tools with her right hand. Koko and Iinchou and Permy all seem like righties from what I can tell.
Dainty Ruka-pyon uses his right hand to eat! It's kinda hard to track with him, honestly. There's not a lot of instances of him writing or eating, so who's to say. He might very well be right-handed as evidenced by this evidence with his fork (and there's another one on the same page) or maybe he's left-handed as evidenced by the above writing picture with Natsume. He's usually holding an animal (typically Usagi), so it's hard to tell sometimes if he's using a certain hand because it's his dominant or because it's the hand that's not busy holding an animal. Maybe he's ambidextrous! Who knows!
Anyway! About Natsume...
Let's begin with what exactly handedness is. Wikipedia says it's "an individual's preferential use of one hand, known as the dominant hand, due to it being stronger, faster or more dextrous" with the other hand usually being less so. Thus, for complex actions that require precision and control will be carried out with the dominant hand. You'll defer to your dominant side most times and it tends to be subconscious. So for both absent movements and precision-requiring movements, you will probably default to your dominant hand. Our muscle memory and precision is usually significantly more developed in our dominant hand. Handedness is usually determined by observing the hand people use to write or eat with. This post will also feature heavily that Natsume predominantly uses his left hand to use his alice.
10% of the population is left-handed and most of society was built to cater to right-handed individuals. In Japan in particular, children are sometimes still forced to write with their right hand because of the way writing kanji works. Previously, throughout history, people have assumed that left-handedness was a sign of the devil. People have also historically correlated left-handedness with mental illness and have encouraged forcing leftie children to use their right hand (though this practice often resulted in children having self-esteem issues and speech impediments, which probably means the lefties have higher rates of mental illness because of how they've been treated rather than some innate issue).
Thus pages like this, where he's using his right hand to use the water fountain, are because they are designed for right-handed people, thus are not evidence that he's not left-handed, if that makes sense.
Alright here's the evidence for him being a leftie!
This is my most consistent evidence. Most people with alices don't have a manifested thing to keep in their hands like Natsume does to showcase this, really, so he's kinda unique in this way, but most of the time that I've been able to notice, he's primarily using his left hand to summon his fire. This is pretty consistent until we get to later chapters when his battles are much grander and he summons much larger flames that surround him rather than manifesting in one hand or the other.
I mean. This is pretty solid evidence that he's a leftie. Medusa here points out that he's specifically targeted Natsume's left hand because he caught on to the fact that Natsume has been using that hand to use his alice for most of the battle. He can use his right hand, as we see in other moments, and even on the next page of this scene, but I think his left hand is his dominant hand and thus the one he feels most comfortable using.
He even uses his left hand to make an alice stone! If you were crafting something with love and care, you'd probably use your dominant hand, right? (Or, rather... left.... hehe :P)
Honestly if this was a couple one-off times regarding his alice use, I wouldn't make anything of it, but it's so consistent, it must mean something.
But! I have more evidence than just alice use, although I think that's pretty significant.
We'll start with my weaker and more desperate evidence...
He tends to reach out with the left hand. I've noticed a slight tendency for him to turn on his left side (like in the above example with the water fountain as well as this scene with Ruka), or to lean on the left side, which is not necessarily proof but just padding for my study.
The center image in particular seems so telling to me. After the ground closes up, Natsume instantly collects himself and even seems embarrassed by how much emotion he showed, which signals that this moment was knee-jerk fear to help Mikan. He reaches out with his left hand because it's the familiar hand and it's an instinctive move.
This is the same reasoning as above. Natsume grabs this kid and gets him out of the way of danger and thus his left hand is stuck to the kid for an hour, so we consistently see him with his left hand out of commission. I think, because this was a knee-jerk and instinctive move, he reached out with the left hand again to save the kid from being crushed.
These are stretches, but humor me! The shape of the fingers suggests that's his left hand, and I either hold a book with two hands or with my dominant. It feels a little weird to hold it with my non-dominant. The next one is him feeding the animals with his left hand despite the animals being on his right. Subconsciously, people move to favor their dominant side to make things easier.
Alright, on to stronger stuff. According to the internet, what hand you use to write is pretty indicative of your handedness. We have the image with Ruka above, where we can see him writing with his left hand.
This scene is very important to me! Technically, Natsume does end up writing the answer on the chalkboard with fire using his right pointer finger, but that's because he'd already picked up the chalk with his left to write with and only drops it when he's moving past the area. He's a lazy boy too, so...
Using violence, LMAO. He hits with his left hand and... I don't know if y'all have ever thrown a punch or slapped someone, but... I mean, in my experience you prefer your dominant hand.
For such precision-oriented actions as these examples above, you'd likely use your left-hand. He does use his right hand in Chapter 9 playing dodgeball (but it's the one time he's shown actively throwing it, so IDK. Could be a fluke or a mistake.), but I'm inclined to ignore that. I don't really toss things with my non-dominant hand the way Natsume does with the cockroach, so that's probably the hand he's more comfortable with. The second image is him after he threw a ball at Tono's head, and, for max aim ability, one would use their dominant hand for that. The last one.... First, he's so cool. I've never been able to do that, dominant hand or no (I'm bad at sports), but it was always a bit easier on my right hand (dominant) than otherwise, so I think that's proof too.
Moving on...
People use their dominant hand to use eating utensils, as we saw above with other characters. These are multiple examples from across the manga where Natsume uses his left hand to use a fork or chopsticks. I will concede that in the last image where Natsume is eating a New Year's meal with chopsticks, many other characters are using their left hands despite me knowing they're right-handed, namely Hotaru. That being said, the other evidence here makes me think Natsume's left-handedness is intentional.
And here it is, my biggest proof:
(Ruka is a rightie here, and no animal in sight, so maybe this is his natural way of being... Then again, he could always be ambidextrous, like I said, though that is exceptionally rare. Then again, Ruka is exceptional, so <3)
Here, Higuchi Tachibana would have had to go out of her way to draw Natsume eating with a different hand than Aoi or Ruka. This evidence to me is SO LOUD. Not only does this further cement that Natsume is a leftie and not all other characters are, but also that it's not an accident or even a headcanon. This is proof that it was intentional on Higuchi Tachibana's part to draw him left-handed! I've always been obsessed with this page, so I was bound to catch this eventually. Yet another reason to love this panel lol.
I have stuff I couldn't fit in here because even with a 30 image limit I am tempted to go overboard, but this should be sufficient. Natsume is a leftie!
Did y'all know lefties tend to excel more in sports? They also tend to be better fighters (as we can see in the violence examples above) because they move from an unexpected side. The fact that the world is designed to favor right-handedness means lefties have an unforeseen advantage in sports and fighting because they move from a side righties don't anticipate as naturally.
But many tools, computer equipment, and even instruments are designed for easier right-handed use, which can be inconvenient or even dangerous for lefties. Thus, I didn't know how a sax would work regarding handedness (and also Natsume sucks at playing it anyway) which is why I didn't even really check out those chapters.
Anyway, handedness doesn't really affect many things in a meaningful way despite some propaganda or vague correlations saying otherwise and lefties face an often-overlooked series of disadvantages, which is why I think Natsume being a leftie is interesting, because his life is hard enough already. Oh well.
Anyway, I hope y'all enjoyed reading this rambling! Natsume being left-handed is something I will not let go of. I will DIE on this hill, especially because it's pretty clearly intentional.
31 notes
·
View notes
Another suggested title: My Way Home Is Through You
My Way Home Is Through You
Ahhh this is a tough one! To make it easier on myself, I'm taking it incredibly literally and making it incredibly angsty!!!
So, here's what I'm thinking: DP x DC
Danny’s having a rough time of it, racing through the ghost zone, hurt, bleeding heavily, scared out of his mind - whether it's a reveal gone wrong, the GIW are after him, or Plasmius, it's dealer's choice - so he dives into a rapidly shrinking portal in front of him, hoping against hope that the other side of if is safe.
He doesn't recognise where the portal spits him out, but that's nothing new, all that matters is that it's closed and whoever's following him hasn't made it after him - without another thought, he leans back, closes his eyes and slips into blissful, restful unconsciousness.
So now here's the real question - who finds him? I feel like I'm leaning towards this being a romantic fic, so perhaps one of the batkids - let's go with Tim! - sees all this happen and takes him back to the cave to patch him up and when Danny wakes up a lot less hurt than he expected, he is immensely grateful.
But let's get back to the title!!! Whatever weapons were being used against Danny have affected his core (maybe Plasmius hit him with the Maximus) - or maybe there's just very low ambient ectoplasm in this new dimension - but whatever the reason, it means he's not able to heal quite as quickly as normal, so he's stuck having to rely Tim for a while.
We're entering slowburn country now baby!
It takes a little while for them to trust each other, for them to become friends, but it helps that Danny can be open and honest with him. This is a new dimension that he has no stake in, so Danny has no issues telling the batfam who and what he is, where he comes from and why he was running. Tim, being the gallant genius he is, begins working on a portal to get Danny back to where he needs to be.
Everyday, Tim checks on Danny's wounds and everyday, his fingertips leave trailing goose pimples where they ghost along his skin.
Tim doesn't realise what's happening until Dick takes him aside one day and tells him how proud he is of him for putting aside his feelings to build the very machine that will separate them, and that he'll be here for him no matter what happens.
It gets a lot harder to work on the portal after that.
Danny doesn't realise what's happening until the portal is complete and suddenly it seems impossible for them to say goodbye.
Without Tim, he wouldn't be able to go home, but... without Tim, would it still be his home?
send me a fic title and I'll make up a fic
159 notes
·
View notes
im sleepy so, here’s an idea that i was thinking about.
blaze dies (in 06). thats what silver sees. but what if blaze traps iblis inside her, sealing the flames of disaster in a suitable vessel, a royal soul that can also control fire. she doesnt know it, but the chaos emeralds feel it. so, they send her to a dimension with tons of water to protect her and through the combination of chaos energy and fire, sol energy is created. sol emeralds. while iblis is trapped in a body, its other half, mephiles, tries to join it but cant as he gets trapped underwater by the sol energy, that created a replica of the master emerald using the memories of the chaos emeralds, where he gets trapped. that makes the gem’s energy corrupted. the jewled scepter that is sealed and protected as a relic from the royal family of this dimension, gets connected to it, in order to detect any sort of anomalies of that energy. the job is done and no one needs to worry, as the chaos control transfers blaze back in time to live the life she now knows (rush), having forgotten about her past.
that is until she has these weird yet vivid dreams of a past life where she fights with flames and seals them inside her. dreams of a white hedgehog reaching for her. of two hedgehogs opening a portal to travel in time right in front of her. familiar faces that shouldnt be there. and though they are dreams, the sol emeralds glow every time.
during some nights, the dreams she’s having are from a different and unfamiliar, compared to previously, perspective. where a familiar blue hedgehog gets attacked from behind and falls dead right in front of her.
blaze seeks answers and is met with trouble.
words hard rn its 2am pls forgive me if this is not a goodone
47 notes
·
View notes