“Its Going To Be Ok, I Promise”

Satoru Gojo - The Limited Man

In Jujutsu Kaisen, Satoru Gojo is the character who is presented both to the story and to its readers as perfect; the very pinnacle of humanity and the most powerful being in all of existence. Gojo portrays a common ideal that each and every one of us has, of a human who is untouchable, a human who has complete control of the universe where nothing is outside their grasp. With his esteemed heritage, he is the Limitless man. Nothing can contain him.

Yet, the more you pay attention to the character of Satoru Gojo, the more you’ll realise how limited he really is. The entire premise of Gojo’s character within Jujutsu Kaisen is a façade. Within the story’s narrative he is constantly heralded as the absolute strongest by those around him and proclaims as much himself, going as far as to declare to his opponent: “Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the honoured one.” while in the midst of battle. This is Gojo’s most iconic line and for good reason, because it not only defines his personality but it also exhibits the greatest contradiction to his character.

Despite being deemed the strongest by so many, it isn’t even clear that this is actually the case. Yes, his power far exceeds almost everyone in the story, to the point that the main antagonist Kenjaku had completely abandoned the idea of killing him. Kenjaku, who had centuries of knowledge, experience and resources around his belt; who alone was capable of destroying a nation by himself, and even had multiple allies, each with capabilities rivalling his own. Despite ALL of these factors, Kenjaku concluded that it would still be impossible to kill Satoru Gojo. This plot point couldn’t emphasise more just how ridiculously powerful Gojo is when compared to almost everyone else in the series.

However, as I was hinting at earlier, there is one other character who sits atop the same pedestal of power as Gojo, and this character is also given a very intentional parallel to Gojo within the story’s narration. While Gojo states himself to be the “honoured one”, the narration specifically refers to Sukuna in the exact same way, in this case from a third person perspective. This is an interesting parallel as these are the only two characters to be associated with this title, while also being the only two characters who have been portrayed to be leagues stronger than even the other top tiers within the series. There’s also a foiling between Gojo and Sukuna here, as Gojo is arrogant enough to state himself that he alone is the “honoured one”, meanwhile Sukuna has the narration state this for him and does not feel the need to speak of these sentiments himself. At the beginning of the story, Gojo declared that if he and Sukuna were to fight each other at their strongest, he would win. However, over the course of the series it’s been made clear that when Gojo and Sukuna fight for real, the outcome of their fight could go either way. Both of them strive to be the strongest character in Jujutsu Kaisen, so from the context of the story it should be inevitable that these two will eventually fight each other, possibly to the death. So, Sukuna serves as one factor in the narrative which contradicts the notion of Gojo being the very best, what about his other limitations?

Well, another glaring contradiction is of course his cursed technique, which is aptly called the “Limitless”. Unsurprisingly, the name and abilities of this technique are a ruse to trick everyone into believing that Gojo’s cursed technique is unquestionably unbeatable and cannot be rivalled by any other power in the series. If you pay attention to the story however, you’ll already know this not to be true. Despite possessing the Limitless, Gojo once lost to and almost died fighting against Toji Fushiguro. While yes, this was a much younger Gojo who had far less experience and skill at the time; and yes, Toji had prepared various tactics beforehand which were specifically designed to counter Gojo; this doesn’t detract from the fact that the Limitless can be beaten. To top it all off, Toji was merely a human who only possessed heightened physical abilities in exchange for having absolutely zero cursed energy. After losing to Toji, in his desperation, Gojo had awakened various new abilities which until that point were inaccessible to him. This event led to Gojo officially becoming recognised as the strongest, where he could now beat Toji with relative ease.

Over a decade later, Gojo had refined all of his skills even further, placing himself far above his other fellow special grade sorcerers. However, despite being called the “Limitless”, it appears that Gojo has now completely mastered his powers and has achieved the peak of his abilities. The concept behind the Limitless is in reference to the infinite space there is in the universe, yet this power ironically has defined limitations which prevent it from evolving further. Even more ironically, Gojo’s closest friend Suguru Geto happens to possess a cursed technique which, within Jujutsu Kaisen’s power system, could be considered more boundless than the Limitless itself, “Cursed Spirit Manipulation”. In its most basic function, cursed spirit manipulation is the total control of cursed spirits, and essentially allows the user to absorb and stockpile an unlimited amount of cursed energy. In theory, this technique is more worthy to be given the title “Limitless”, yet this is heedlessly overlooked because of the characters associated with their respective techniques. This dynamic between Gojo and Geto’s abilities are kept subtle to the readers as Gojo just happened to master his cursed technique while Geto remained stagnant due to his personal shortcomings, which resulted in him deviating from his healthy rivalry with Gojo and ultimately led to him becoming an enemy of Jujutsu society.

Another point could also be made here that, regardless of being the strongest at this point, Gojo was incapable of stopping his closest friend from straying down a dark path, which is perhaps Gojo’s greatest failing in the series. This failure also comes back to bite him much later on as Kenjaku’s ace in the hole to finally checkmate Gojo involved surprising him with the now possessed body of Geto, which distracted Gojo long enough for him to be successfully sealed by the prison realm. Once again, the vast amount of power that Gojo had attained turned out to be completely useless in preventing his own sealing, which has now placed him in an inactive role for over half of Jujutsu Kaisen’s duration. Earlier in the story, Gojo once said: “Ironic, isn’t it? Given everything, but unable to do anything.” when referring to the function of his own domain. This was another intentional use of foreshadowing to describe the dilemma that Gojo was inevitably going to face himself. Satoru Gojo is no limitless man, for no one man is without his limits.

If you’re taking requests I’d love for you to hear me out

Ussop hitting Zoro with a slingshot pellet from afar to make him think sanji hit him and starting fights between them

FANTASTIC IDEA ANON.

messy drama kid

my first tumblr post !!

I will be sharing my future one piece fanart’s here :)

my favorite character sure is law! (but i liked zoro’s design so i did a little clothes swap)

[my original @ is SERPENTIRE everywhere but here since it’s already taken here]

video james

Building a Better Ashe

About a year ago I took a pass at redesigning Ashe the Frost Archer from League of Legends with the help of Ainsworth "Apple_Cork" Lin (https://www.instagram.com/apple_cork/ || https://linktr.ee/apple_cork) who I commissioned for the artwork.

We took Ashe through a number of ideations and various approaches to her character design, which you'll find below the Read More cutoff.

If you want to watch the video version of our design process (it's pretty good!) you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fi5fuv1nLs

Goals:

The goal was to create a version of Ashe that puts less priority of simply making her "appealing" or look pretty, and more on doing storytelling for the kind of role she plays in the story of the Freljord.

Ashe as she exists now is basically a riff on the Drow Ranger from Dota, complete with WarCraft 3 style Hot Elven Ranger getup. She's a queen of the frozen north, but she runs around in a miniskirt, thigh-highs and a paper-thin cloak because

this design was originally put together to be running around sunny Elven forests on Azeroth, and got interpolated through Dota into League of Legends without ever really reconsidering the concept

it was designed for League of Legends at a time when worldbuilding and character storytelling simply were not priorities in their character design - characters were broad recognizable fantasy archetypes being thrown together Smash Bros style for a fighting tournament

Late 2000s high fantasy character design in gaming had a default preference for Sexy Cleavage Babes for female character design that permeated the entire design space, especially at Blizzard, whose influence formed the basis for League of Legends

Over a decade later, Ashe has been fleshed out as much more of a real character, with a place and role in the world and cosmology of the Freljord far beyond her original archetype. Now she is specifically constructed as a counterpart to Lissandra's imperious, manipulative, sovereign mysticism and to Sejuani's martial brutality. The Avarosa are the only faction in the Freljord (and one of the very few in Runeterra) who argue explicitly for a softer life with less violence and struggle as the ideal. Ashe wants to reform and abolish the blood-soaked warrior culture of the Freljord and replace it with communal mutual aid and sharing, with tribes pooling their collective resources rather than relying on constant raiding and warfare. She's also a notable champion of the Hearthbound, the "normal" people of the Freljord who are not blessed with Iceborn blood or noble lineages.

The Avarosa have successfully recruited a huge swath of tribes to their cause, and through collaboration and a focus on agriculture and mutual protection have become the breadbasket of the Freljord, able to extend their political reach simply by offering new tribes access to reliable sources of food.

The power and rhetoric of the Avarosa thus rests on

A rejection of martial warrior culture in favor of a culture of nurturing and mutual care

Embrace of vulnerability and "weakness"

The promise of plenty, of full food stores and protection from failed harvests and the bitter winter cold

So, the design goals are:

Contrast Ashe visually with both Lissandra and especially with Sejuani, who is her most direct opposite.

Tell the story not only of Ashe herself, but of the faction she represents, and represent its values in her design.

Make her unique and recognizable against the lineup of other League of Legends characters in a way that currently she simply isn't.

Early ideation:

Here we start by identifying silhouettes and the basic ideas of costuming that we want to run with. Since League of Legends women also generally have a bad case of Chronic Sameface Syndrome, we also explore a bunch of different face shapes and ideas for distinguishing Ashe physically outside of costuming and body shape.

Refinement:

We pick out a smaller number of variations to play with, and Apple_Cork explores various options for the costuming.

At this point we've settled on two main ideas: a "Warrior" Ashe, who is characterized by the hard life she's had to lead. Her struggles and suffering, especially the loss of her mother and the betrayal of Sejuani, are the emotional impetus that leads to her reaching the ideals of the Avarosans as an antidote to and rebellion against the Freljord's bloody history. We decide to use the A2 and A3 variation as a base for this, with addition of details like scarring and a somewhat bulkier musculature. This runs the risk of making her physically quite similar to Sejuani, which is a trade-off that might be worth it since the two of them are repeatedly positioned as sisters (even if not by blood) in their stories, and are very alike in their experiences and traumas, even if they've reached opposite conclusions from it.

The other idea is "Warmother Ashe." The Freljord is organized around matrilineal tribal leadership, with a significant emphasis on the social role of motherhood, with the leader of the tribe conceptualized as its primary mother figure. Most Warmothers we've known are hard-bitten, violent and domineering matriarchs, emphasizing the war bit of the name, and since Ashe represents a decisive break with that tradition, we want to create a design that puts emphasis on the mother part of the idea.

So an Ashe who is visually soft, associated with typical traits of nurturing motherhood and who visibly rejects struggle, deprivation and violence as part of her identity. The C1 and C2 variations form the basis for this character.

Both designs are intended to provide a strong visual contrast to the stark black-and-blue statuesque angularity of Lissandra, as well as the armored, hard-shelled, segmented look of Sejuani

A note on body politics and character design

It is generally Problematic™ to equate any one body type with any one set of personality traits, whether positively or negatively. A lot of common character design associations and shorthand is based on body stereotypes, and on a systemic scale, they can reinforce existing social bigotries.

The most common example: character design often employ the idea that good people tend to be beautiful and evil people tend to be ugly, and that a person's inner moral character can be read in their physical traits.

This is a trope with an extremely bad history, especially when it intersects with the politics of beauty, with eugenics and with racial caricature. Whiteness and the constructed features of whiteness are often used as the basis of beauty ideals, while traits and features associated with non-whiteness are considered ugly or undesirable, and thus in visual storytelling these traits can become markers of moral degeneracy or evil. Disney villains do this all the time, to various degrees of Problematicness.

I bring this up here because we decided to use a fat body-type on one of our Ashe designs specifically to code the design to be associated with softness, kindness, motherly nurturing and so on. These are positive traits, and it is meant to establish her as a contrast with Sejuani who is hard-edged, muscled and brutal. But also, yeah, fat bodies being associated with those traits is a reductive stereotype, just the same as associating highly trained, skinny and fit bodies with emotional coldness, lack of kindness and violence is reductive.

Character design is a tightrope walk between using available associations and stereotypes to create coding and shorthand so the audience can easily read the design on the one hand, and trying to redefine and re-associate traits in creative ways to create better storytelling on the other hand. League of Legends is a game that relies very, very heavily on existing and known archetypes, and we redesigned Ashe on those terms as well. It is fair to criticize our redesign for those trade-offs, within reason, and within the context of the problems of the design it is intended to improve upon. League of Legends as a franchise is generally unwilling to allow fat bodies to exist in ANY positive context, and especially not in women, whose visual priority 9 times out of 10 is to be conventionally beautiful and skinny above all else.

Final designs:

Warrior Ashe This design hews closer to her original design, employing the skirt, waist-wrap and thigh-high boots, albeit updated to look more appropriate for the fashion culture and environment of the Freljord.

The emphasis here is on Ashe as a war-leader and fighter, and we've added facial scars and her design generally features more hard and sharp lines and metallic accents to give her a more hard-bitten and warlike look. This is an Ashe who has led a heard and difficult life, marked by fighting and struggle.

Warmother Ashe This design pulls away hard from the original design, with only really the hood and cloak and white hair as identifying feature of the old version. She wears a lot of fabrics and furs, and is generally designed around stoutness and visual softness, and does not share the hardness or angular facial features of Warrior Ashe. Her clothes are finely embroidered with her tribe's iconography and she has pendants and trinkets associated with the various tribes that have been integrated into the Avarosa, or perhaps gifted to her by allies or friends.

She still has leather chest armor, albeit covered up by her cloak, and a shoulder pauldron, but it's ringed by fine feathers making it more of a showpiece. Same with the archery bracer, which is ostentatious and the bright brass makes it contrast with the rest of the design, which is meant to give the vibe of "this is a thing she puts on when necessary" but not a natural, integrated part of her fashion. Compare and contrast with the bracers on Warrior Ashe above.

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I drew based on Ao3 fanfic Vergil and Nero(child) its called Father May Cry chapter 10. This is my first i actually enjoying non-shipping fanfic. Just a wholesome father n son moment. 

I haven’t played but this is the game right

You’re pretty sure your boyfriend was replaced by an eldritch being that can barely emulate being human. Weirdly, you enjoy a better relationship with them than your actual boyfriend.