Hi y’all I know I haven’t been here in forever but is anyone ready for a Shizaya merch reveal??
✨ Ta-Da ✨
I offer you a manu video of the Psyche/Delic mini CD charms I got made 🤩
I’ve been pretty quiet on socmed while working on multiple projects, and this is one of them! It’ll still be a wait for these babies to reach me, but I’m vibrating with anticipation to have them in my hands 🤲 They’re so smol & I think they came out pretty cute. The backside design is my take on the portable record player Delic carries:
These mini CDs are 1 of 3 Shizaya merch items I have in production right now. The others are not as far along yet but please do stay tuned 👀
[ID: A flag with eleven vertical stripes, all the same size. The colors are darker at the edges, and lighter moving towards the middle. The colors are, from left to right, washed-out dark blue, soft blue, soft sky blue, light washed-out sea foam green, very light yellow, white, light yellow, very light gold, dusty gold, soft dusty orange, dusty brown, and dark brown. END ID]
VanillaSkydelic: A PSIN gender related to the movie Vanilla Sky
The colors are inspired by the poster for the movie
You guys rlly don't realise how much knowledge is still not committed to the internet. I find books all the time with stuff that is impossible to find through a search engine- most people do not put their magnum opus research online for free and the more niche a skill is the less likely you are to have people who will leak those books online. (Nevermind all the books written prior to the internet that have knowledge that is not considered "relevant" enough to digitise).
Whenever people say that we r growing up with all the world's knowledge at our fingertips...it's not necessarily true. Is the amount of knowledge online potentially infinite? Yes. Is it all knowledge? No. You will be surprised at the niche things you can discover at a local archive or library.
In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.
If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.
So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.
I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?
However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.
Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)
And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.
Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.
It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.
Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?
While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:
She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.
You see where I'm going with this.
When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:
And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD
When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.
MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS
No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.
And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:
Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!
The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.
And, uh
Yeah.
I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.
But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.
Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:
But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.
There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.
After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:
"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.
[ID: A flag with nine horizontal stripes, the first and last are twice the height of the others. The colors are darker at the edges and lighter in the middle. They are, from top to bottom, black, dark purple-gray, dark faded pink-violet, faded burnt orange, soft lightish gold, faded burnt-orange, dark faded pink-violet, dark purple-gray, and black. END ID]
Octuadelic|Octualdelic: A gender related to rituals, the occult, chanting, candle circles, drama, darkness, dramatic lighting, fighting, conflict, candles getting mysteriously blown out, dark thick velvet curtains, gold jewelry, blood, blood stains, bourbon, nighttime, bright golden eyes glowing from the darkness, riches, fame, purple; pink; gold; red; orange; and/or yellow sparks, the witching hour, hexes, curses, magic, dark psychedelic aesthetics and visuals, and evil. It may also relate to the Motley Crue song Shout At the Devil and/or the Bon Jovi song Hardest Part Is The Night. Some may also experience this gender through a Sanguirum, Dystrofare, Ocularic, Occultarius, and/or Tenethesia lens/as a gender under one or more of those umbrellas, though that won’t apply to all users.
The name is a mix of oc from occult/Occultarius/Ocularic, tua(l) from ritual, and delic a suffix for genders related to psychedelic stuff as well as being used here as a nod to the word candle
The colors are inspired by my associations with the vibe of this term
This was for the twenty-ninth day of my coining event! Prompt: Shout At the Devil (Motley Crue) // The Hardest Part Is The Night (Bon Jovi)
can we tussle a bit as friends... can we do a little roughhousing a bit as friends... can you pin me down by the wrists with one hand and laugh at me for being into it... yknow... as friends...