Small tiny pet peeve I’d like to just point out real quick about how people write knitting, so I don’t crochet but I’m guessing with crochet you can accidentally drop stitches and not notice? with knitting it’s a bit different, if you drop a stitch, you can see it drop and it starts separating your work, there’s no real way (unless you’re doing a type of stitching I’m not aware of which could be possible) for a character to be like “I think I accidentally dropped a few stitches” while knitting, they would know

Okay now where's the Seb teddy bear so I can make them kiss each other!?

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"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly." - Langston Hughes

“I love you to the moon and back.”

Prologue, Part 1

Hiiii you should talk about why you love pakunoda a lot, I absolutely did not glom onto her when I was watching through hxh 2011, but I am so excited to be sold on her. Sorry if this is the wrong blog to ask on!

I'm so glad you asked :) I also didn't really click with Pakunoda after watching the 2011 anime. I thought she was neat but that was it. But the 1999 anime (and ova) gave her a bit more time in the spotlight and developed her character A LOT more and once I watched that I was obsessed.

(Honestly I think the 1999 anime is better than the 2011 anime in general but that's a topic for another time)

Any time I go into the Pakunoda tag I get so mad because a lot of people tend to make her one personality trait Being A Woman. And I suppose it's my own damn fault for becoming obsessed w a female character in a shonen anime, especially one that only shows up for one arc (and a flashback in the manga).

Okay I'm gonna start with actual canon evidence (meaning like. literally any scene that has her in the 1999 and 2011 animes and the manga) of her personality/character before I delve into my insane theories/headcanons. Also spoilers for the manga obviously I'll try to keep the most spoilery bits to their own section

So Pakunoda doesn't get a lot of screen time and before the hostage exchange situation, she's pretty passive. She doesn't speak much and in the beginning of the York new arc, she's chilling with chrollo at the hideout. She doesn't get an active part in the story until the blackout happens and she decides to ignore chrollos orders to save him. Before this, the phantom troupe were like. Not generic villains, but they haven't had a chance to truly show their motivations. As far as the audience could tell, they were villains through and through and didn't have any sympathetic qualities. During the hostage exchange plot, we see a sympathetic side to Pakunoda and the rest of the phantom troupe and the troupe becomes more nuanced as characters. Not only do we see the spiders loyalty to chrollo, we see it's not as simple as "aw the villains wanna save their friends too just like the heroes" though that is part of it. It's made clear that some of the troupe considers following chrollos orders true loyalty, while Paku, shizuku, machi, nobunaga, and kortopi think saving chrollo is more important. Pakunoda even admits this would be seen as a "betrayal" because she's ignoring chrollos orders and compromising the safety/integrity of the troupe by valuing his life above all else. She says "consider me betraying the spider for your sake" when she decides to follow Kurapika's demands and go through with the hostage exchange. her loyalty differs from most of the other spiders because she's loyal to chrollo ABOVE her loyalty to the spiders. While I'm sure most of not all the spiders consider him a friend, they value his leadership and his orders above that. 

Also everyone talks about how chrollo and kurapika are parallels and like they're not wrong but kurapika and Pakunoda are just as similar if not more so and melody even points it out (internally) during the negotiation!

Melody says "[Pakunoda] who you despise with everything you have is driven by the same motive as you. She wishes to save her friend, her boss." 

Kurapika doesn't realize this because he's still clinging to the mindset that the troupe is a group of bloodthirsty heartless monsters, when in reality they are complex people with the same motivation as him, especially Pakunoda. The only reason kurapika is able to get Gon and killua back safely is because Pakunoda is just as desperate to get chrollo back safely. 

(Manga spoilers here kinda)

In the phantom troupe backstory, we see that Pakunoda was closer to chrollo than any other member of the phantom troupe. she refers to him as her "little squire/little brother" (depending on which translation you read) and says she likes how kind he is

gonna throw one of my headcanon/theories in here but like. i feel like pakunoda still thinks of chrollo as that sweet kid who everyone had to look out for. i think part of her yearns to just be happy and carefree with her friends again. I didnt mention the ova's extended scene with the cat before now because i feel like thats the scene everyone points to when they say they like pakunoda. but i think it's even deeper than "pakunoda is nice to cats" because in the ova, the cat represents her and the troupe. while she takes the cat back to its colony, she flashes back to her time in meteor city when the troupe was first formed. not only that, but the cat has purple eyes like paku does (in the 1999 anime) and the black cat is positioned on top of the slide like how chrollo is positioned on top of the junk pile. i think thats when pakunoda made her decision to go back to the troupe and share what happened during the exchange, though she knew it would cost her her life.

Tldr; Pakunoda is (almost) singlehandedly carrying the phantom troupe's reputation as well written and nuanced characters and people tend to forget that

ALSO. Very important information.

she has dimples

Whittled a spindle from a birch stick I found at a park earlier. First time getting to work with birch--it's really nice although I think this piece was a little old and had dried slightly too much for whittling, as it chipped a lot. But it spins in the palm well and I'm pretty happy with how it looks. Obviously the spalting is really nice although largely that's not something I have a hand in, other than trying to preserve it rather than cut it away. Every random stick I pick up to whittle has its own thing going on that I have to figure out how to work with if I can to make into a spindle. This one was hard, that's why I'm happy with it even though it's quite a strange and crooked spindle.

The reason I'm holding it in these angles is because it can't rest at these angles, it would roll or fall. This is often the case with my spindles because they are whittled, not lathed. Lathed spindles are uniform on all sides, whereas whittled spindles can be totally different shapes from each angle. So, the cross section of this one is an oval instead of a circle. It also twists at the midsection. I'm fairly certain I got the tip and point aligned, which is what's absolutely key. It will never spin balanced if they aren't aligned, the rest of it is of varying importance as far as I can tell xD. I've been spinning a little on it--it only tolerates very fine yarn (not something I have noticed with my other spindles) but spins incredibly fast and isn't particularly wobbly. I'll try to remember to update whether it becomes unstable with a significant cop on it--if so, that would make this more of a decorative piece. That's okay though, random sticks are free and I enjoy whittling, so occasionally making a spindle that I think is beautiful but not very functional isn't a problem.

The holes in it are from fire ants. Or at least, fire ants were living in them. I'm glad I didn't leave this in the car very long, they don't seem to have started leaving the stick before I disturbed them with my knife and then started knocking them out. I feel kind of bad for relocating them like that. I usually knock stuff out before I leave with it, I guess these ones were very deep, or I forgot.

Anyway, I hardly ever name my spindles but this one is the Crooked Steeple of The Fire Ants

Steeple for short.

Here is what it looked like initially, and much earlier in the day:

there was a scene in the manga where hakuno was being strangled HELP!! /j but even then hakuno was asking the attacker (julius) "why are you making that face?" because hakuno could tell that he was suffering deep down 🥹🥹😭😭😭 and we get a julius monologue: "i didn't want to accept that i still had these feelings within me. let alone have this guy see through them. i hate it..."

IT SAYS A LOT ABT HAKUNO METHINKS!!! and these lines too.... i love hakuno's heart sm istg 😭❤️ + how well written the hakuno-julius development is..!!!! hakuno being nice doesn't magically fix everything and there's a lot that happens ue ue uee 😭

i'm trying to keep this hakuno-relevant but PLS IM IN SHAMBLES BC the manga adaptation rlly told us that "if there was one salvation he could've gotten, it would've been having someone who could understand his agony."

and then cue hakuno kishinami-

it isn’t that etoiles lost it’s abt HOW he lost, like they really could have just thrown code after code after him for two hours straight and used up all his gapples and potions and he STILL would have lost and it would have been more satisfying; it would have been a long, arduous and well-fought battle that etoiles would have adored every moment of despite the grim ending. but the way he lost was fighting a code whose health bar didn’t even move and who then proceeded to borderline metagame in order to win the fight quickly, taking away two of qetoiles most prized possessions resulting in a hollow victory. narratively i get etoiles needed to lose at some point but it should not have been like that

furry self shippers rise up

Select bits from Sir John's funeral that I just love...

So we have Crozier reading out the part about Jacob dreamed about a ladder, set upon the earth, "and the top of it reaching to the heavens"...

...as we see Collins and Stanley, the two characters whose mental health is a defining part of their character arcs.

Then, "Behold the Lord stood above it and he said, 'I am with thee ...'" as the focus shifts to Goodsir.

"'... and will keep thee in all places, wherever thou goest'".

Goodsir, who later questions "is God here?"

The following line and shot are "'for I will not leave thee'" as we see Jopson and Blanky.

The two men Crozier left. Blanky knew Crozier was, just earlier that day, planning to leave them. Jopson likely knew, as it's remarked later that he knows everything, and perhaps he's the one who tidied away the unsealed letter and wax.

Then the Terror lieutenants, with MacDonald too. "And in Jacob's dream he saw the invisible world, companion to the known one we perceive."

The men who were privy to Crozier's alcoholism, and were part of maintaining that separation between officers and men... but also Hickey and Irving 'perceived' Hickey's true nature.

So, of course, when we have: "So complete it would seem to leave no room for its invisible brother world" as we see Hickey...

that otherness, that not belonging, keeping out of sight, experiencing thing in such a different way but no one notices or even thinks it's there...

And then going back to a shot of the men gathered at Sir John's funeral. "The departed..."

"...who though cleaved from the frame that carried them yet live." They are all departed. Dead. Crozier is the only one who doesn't die, but he certainly doesn't 'stay' in the world he's expected to.

The contrast of the words of virtue and strength, from scripture and used to describe Sir John and saying he's "destined to reign with Christ forever", being heard as we see Hickey in Gibson's cabin.

The white glove over the hand that will offer up Hickey's tongue, his left hand reverently touching the spot, the fact that, all that time later, Hickey has come to believe that he can be a new god and reign...

Finally, for this post, we have "and see His truth amongst us" as Hickey reads Crozier's resignation letter, discovering the truth of Crozier's actions.

And not one of them is god, or has the truth. They are all in this terrible place where the sun has set, in this strange world they don't understand, in this "invisible world of spirits".

There's so much in this scene, so many links, that I just lose my mind every time.

Why. Why does no one get Pavitr’s character correct?? Like the movie established that he’s not only booksmart (which pretty much all Spideys are) but that he’s also observant and, what would the word be, emotionally intelligent? With the way that he picked up on Miles’ feelings immediately and apparently has a history of picking up on stuff like that?

Pavitr is an intelligent and confident character, and his flaws are most likely that being a relatively newer Spiderperson, he’s probably inexperienced, and maybe a bit too confident because things tend to end well for him (naturally smart, naturally good looking, etc), he definitely jinxes stuff

And yet I’ve seen so much stuff portray him as,,, it’s very specific but I can’t quite put my finger on it,,, it’s like some people treat him like,, a golden retriever? If that makes sense??

we're going to have GROWN UP DINNER. I am making a SALAD. there will be CHAMPAGNE. it will be FANCY. we will be smoking WEED.

no time to explain, quick, please accept this 30 min Valmont sketch page

.

Him~♡

fuck it. beyblade fandragons (most of these are bsb but i threw in One mfb one and a couple burst ones)