10 Non-Lethal Injuries To Add Pain To Your Writing

tired: mermaids are all women

wired: much like elves, merfolk are mistaken by sailors for being all women because they have long hair and are very pretty

Kurama The Retired Monster: A Look at Kurama's Canon Characterization and Impact

Kurama is one of the most popular characters in the decades old Yu Yu Hakusho fandom. Published in 1992 and dubbed into English in 2002, Yu Yu Hakusho is one of the most influential battle shounen anime. References are everywhere for this wonderful story about a delinquent that surprised the heavens and saved a little boy at the cost of his own life.

The series is my favorite of the old Toonami anime with its rebuke to the strict norms of Japanese society and its message about the grey tones of life.

It's in every character in one way or another, but Kurama tackles a trope I'm personally fascinated by: the retired criminal that is dragged back into his old life by circumstance.

This doesn't seem to be a common read of the character, though all the tropes are there. Youko Kurama was a vicious criminal who, after he was taken out of commission, essentially retired due to the love of a woman. While it was not planned, Shiori showing him love and a life outside of what he knew is what canonically happened and shaped his life. He chose, after she cut up her arms to save him from broken glass, to be the son she deserved rather than leaving as he planned.

When Shiori gets sick, Kurama is contacted by Hiei to join him on a heist in Spirit World for the Three Treasures. Given Kurama's nature as the exposition fairy, he is clearly aware of what those treasures are: The Orb of Bast, the Forlorn Hope, and the Shadow Sword. So, Kurama uses his experience as a thief and gains the Forlorn Hope for himself. As we know, the Forlorn Hope has a rule: It will grant your deepest wish in exchange for your life. Kurama considers this cost fair, since he clearly still feels guilty about stealing the son Minamino Shiori was supposed to have. In the dub, he comments about how some parents are devoured by their young, hinting at blaming himself for the condition Shiori is in. It is only because Yusuke intervened that Kurama is still alive, pulled out of his suicidal guilt spiral by Yusuke offering part of his own life to the mirror after seeing his own mother mourn him.

Kurama chooses to help Yusuke defeat Hiei, cementing him as one of the good guys and beginning his friendship with and repayment of Yusuke.

The Four Saint Beasts arc can be explained as part of Hiei and Kurama's parole. I won't linger on it, but I truly believe this is part of Kurama trying to be good, serving his sentence for what is likely the least of his crimes. In his fight with Genbu, Hiei talks about how he brought Kurama on because he'd rather have him as his ally than his enemy. This is one of the first instances of what Kurama's prior life looked like to others. He is a ruthless and intelligent fighter, and he is known for it. Before Two Shots, this implies Kurama had a reputation prior to his human life, one that lasted long enough that Hiei would have heard about it. (Based on later information, Hiei is less than a hundred years old and Kurama may have left Makai a thousand years ago, making Kurama's reputation incredibly significant.)

This reputation continues to assert itself in the Dark Tournament. The audience of the tournament continue to jeer at Kurama and Hiei for being demons fighting alongside humans, implying that they are well-known enough for this to be an issue. (In the manga, we get a page that shows that demons are total gossips and I love it.) We also have Kurama's fight with Ura Urashima, where Urashima comments that he believes this Kurama, our Kurama, might have taken on the name of the scary bastard that they still tell stories about. He is mistaken.

However, it is also in the Dark Tournament where we get his fight with Touya, where he asks Touya to be better than he was. This is where we see, wholeheartedly, that Kurama regrets who he once was. He regrets being the monster that Hiei and Yomi idolize. The nature of the series is that he needs to tap into that ruthlessness to survive, which is why he connects with Suzuki before the fight with Team Toguro. It is his desire to survive Karasu that returns him to that self.

Another scene that is incredibly important is the battle with Amanuma, the Gamemaster. As we know, for Amanuma to be defeated, he must be killed, as per the rules of his territory and the video game he uses. Amanuma is also eleven years old, manipulated into joining Sensui's crusade to destroy the human world for its evils and hypocrisies. Amanuma is a child, unaware of what Sensui's plans truly mean and as much as Kurama tries to say Amanuma chose this with the full understanding of an adult, it is clear he does not really believe it. Kurama is clearly upset by his choice, but he still makes it. There is no way out, no magic solution at the time. After Amanuma dies, Hiei implies that Kurama has killed children before, in his past life, but Kurama's grief is obvious. He reacts ruthlessly to Elder Toguro. His hands are bleeding from how much he hates the fact he made that choice and how much that decision is linked to the past he's clearly trying to leave behind.

The Three Kings arc is when this really begins to show up, though due to its truncated nature, it seems to go unnoticed. Yomi is essentially the end result of what happens when someone adopts Kurama's old views. Yomi is introduced to us as untrustworthy and brutal. Kurama's patience and ruthlessness became a guide to him as he became a king in the notoriously vicious Makai, after a botched assassination attempt left him blind. To be called to serve Yomi, Kurama has to face what he once was and how it impacted someone. Yomi didn't just look up to him, but he was also Kurama's victim: Kurama is the one who paid the assassin to kill him. Kurama also has to balance facing that with his desire to keep his mother and the Human World safe. Kurama's choice to betray Yomi and go along with Yusuke's cockamamie scheme can be read as a rejection of that past self as well as reinforcing that Kurama does not want to live that old life ever again. He chooses the human world, the world where he's not a vicious bandit and has loved ones.

The anime expands this by setting Kurama up against Shigure, the demon surgeon who gave Hiei his Jagan. This fight originally felt incredibly random: Shigure and Kurama don't have anything to do with each other. However, the fight with Shigure clicked once I realized that Shigure offers to restore Kurama back into who he once was. The entire fight is Kurama choosing to fight as who he is now, not rely on that past self he hates so much. At the end, Kurama even tells Yomi he doesn't throw anything away, but what he says in his little monologue is that he'll never be that version of himself again.

Kurama spends the whole series having to depend on the reputation and ruthlessness he cultivated as a bandit. He does it in life-or-death situations, not just randomly or for shits and giggles. He doesn't seem to enjoy his reputation, especially after living as Shiori's son. He looks more contemptuous of it, his face blank when he has to tap into it. He hates that he has to be that guy, that he was that guy. With the series over, it seems like he'll choose to stay human, to stay in the Human World for as long as he can.

Kurama's canon characterization draws him more in-line with the story's theme of growing up and healing due to the power of human connection. He is mostly retired from being a brutal monster and shows regret and guilt over the past, but by the end has mostly accepted who he once was, warts and all.

Horses are really fragile animals. Is it still a death sentence for a centaur if one of their equine limbs gets hurt? Or can they help it somehow?

Oh god, now I'm thinking of amputees and how those would work

Horses are SUPER fragile, or maybe more like delicately balanced.. but particularly their crazy spindle-legs which centaurs get to deal with! But a big part of why hurt legs are a death sentence for horses has less to do with "It kills them" and more to do with quality of life, which a centaur can get around! A horse with a broken leg doesn't understand it can't put ANY weight on that leg for an extended period and will attempt to go about their daily life and act normally, which basically guarantees re-injuring the bad leg and a high chance of injuring the other 3 legs as they try to cope with the change in balance and weight distribution. It all leads to a really poor quality of life with almost no chance of truly healing properly. The story of all they did trying to save Barbaro the racehorse is a long sad story that illustrates a lot of the issues even with modern veterinary medicine with trying to deal with a broken leg in horses.

Thankfully with centaurs, They understand the need for healing, are able to manage their own quality of life and have the gear to support themselves in the time it takes for the injury to heal!

Also perfectly good for long term use in the case of aging, amputation, or general disability! Which is common with the front legs and lower backs of centaurs given the unusual stresses caused by their body-plans. They were created with thicker and more robust front legs to cope with the permanent added weight of the torso instead of a horse head, but injury and disability in that area is still very common!

Injuries to the hind are less common and usually less severe, and given the hind legs bear less direct weight than the front they can usually get away with wraps and limping until it gets back to weight-bearing. Something like a rear amputation or ruptured tendon would probably require a custom harness/brace attached to a wheel like these and/or basically a peg leg!

WE ARE SO BACK

As much as I like the angst potential of f!Leo disliking his younger self, I feel like having raised trained Casey for years, Peepaw would be unable to fully hate him because he knows he’s just a kid. Leo in general is just the type of guy to have a soft spot for children I reckon :)

And come on, when Peepaw catches him throwing jokes constantly, he’d know what’s really going on in little Leo’s head.

i would be soooooo powerful if i wasn't so deeply afraid of people and places and also things

Just some Emma’s y’know…

Many young wizards have taken to transmuting swans into humans and marrying them. One day, you are lucky enough to find a swan in the wild, and without hesitating, you turn it into a beautiful lady. Unfortunately, that ‘swan’, was a goose. You have just given a goose a human form.

“Don’t worry, I’ve taken blood…”

Eileen stop lying to make us feel better. We know based on your NPC fight that you don’t have blood vials.

Daughter of fantasy villains decides to rebel against her parents by actually going through with her arranged marriage to a local golden retriever of a prince instead of running off with some local villain-to-be or conquering said golden retriever’s kingdom and ruling it solo like her parents expect her to. Plus, sue her, she’s into the clean-cut earnest look.

At the same time, local prince charming discovers that he’s actually very into the gothic fiance his parents have landed him with in order to try and establish peace with the local evil lair down the lane, he would never have guessed a spiderweb pattern could look so fetching on a ball gown…?

Meanwhile, two pairs of parents in a tizzy because they both expected their offspring to whole-heartedly reject this union and give them an excuse to conquer their goody-two-shoes/evil neighbours, they’re not supposed to actually like each other-!