KonohaHanArt

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Thank you to the person who requested idia to see how I would do his hair. Hope you enjoy😭

I broke down my process on insta too. I halfway regretted my life decision but look what we have here. Feel free to go check it out. Process on Insta

wip 1

𝒀𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈

Did you know that at a crucial moment in the Civil War, in 1863, when Lincoln was feeling very surrounded by the Confederates and the support England was giving them, and they saw the undertaking becoming increasingly difficult, a special warship from the Russian Empire appeared in the ports of New York and Philadelphia, completely stopping the passage of supplies and provisions, as well as English soldiers to the Confederate ranks, and thus significantly tipping the balance in favor of Lincoln and the end of slavery, as well as keeping all the Confederate states within the nation?

Russia was a key player in the Civil War for the US, and they were received very warmly during the year and a half that the warships were in American ports, until it was ensured that both the Polish uprisings supported by France and the Civil War supported by England were resolved and the danger of political chaos was averted.

Anyway, just a historical fact. And, of course, from that moment on, in my HC, the two were deeply enamored with each other and had a very close friendship between their two nations.

It took me a thousand years to post again, but I loved how it turned out, aaaaaaaaaaah.

I hope you do too. ♥️

Reading the (translated and abridged) Mahabharata has made me think a little bit more a character that is mentioned a couple times by Arjuna: Krishna.

When I watched Arjuna's second interlude (since I unfortunately don't have a copy of my own), Krishna is mentioned as a sort of... representation of Arjuna's dark side, the negative emotions he tried to repress no given form. But it was just that, a metaphor and a representation, a name given to the negative yet natural feelings that he experienced, which were amplified by his position as a Hero, specifically him being almost the 'chief' hero out of all five Pandava brothers. Digression: It's actually something that he has in common with Abigail Williams, the extreme pressures of their respective societies (mythic war India and puritan New England) making them view their natural emotions (Arjuna's jealousy and Abby's childlike mischief) as something dark and unwanted, and their repression of those feelings left them both open to malevolent outside influences.

So when this line happened in Lostbelt 4 (an otherwise extremely good chapter), I was a little put off by it. It felt like something of a cop-out, or a misntepretation on either my part or the writers, having Krishna/dark Arjuna be an actual entity contributing to the Lostbelt, instead of Krishna just being the sort of metaphor for Arjuna's dark internal feelings. On my first read of Lostbelt 4, at least.

But now having read (most) of the Mahabharata, my perspective on what 'Krishna' is in Fate has changed somewhat, in the Epic, Krishna is very much his own character and entity, rather than just something inside Arjuna. I'll admit to maybe not having the best grasp on the theology of it all, but Krishna is a manifestation and avatar of the god Vishnu, who is basically the omni-god (oversimplifcation) of the Hindu pantheon. And most importantly in the epic, more so than any death-becoming world-destroying powers, Krishna is dharma. The quickest way I can describe dharma is that it is like one's fate (concept not franchise) and conduct, it is what one must and will do, according to both one's class status (like the Ksatriya warrior class that most of the epic characters are) and ones own self. Despite being in the same class, two people can end up having very different dharma, like Bhima and Duryodhana, for example.

What ties in with the Fate series is that... Krishna is still a dark 'side'. I'm not saying this to slander him or portray him as a villain, he is dharma, what he says goes, and if an act is adharmic (going against dharma) to either the performer of the act or to others, it can be made dharmic simply by Krishna's will.

And that is a large part of what he does in the Mahabharata, as he is forbidden from fighting directly in the Kurukshetra war, instead acting as Arjuna's charioteer and the chief advisor of the Pandavas. It is he who instructs Arjuna to shoot Karna in the back while Karna's wheel is stuck (due to treachery), even though such an act would be cowardly, against the rules of war, and adharma, it is permitted because it is Krishna's will. Earlier and similarly, when a noble hero on the Kaurava side is about to slay one of Arjuna's disciples, the distant Arjuna, at Krishna's urging, interrupts their duel by shooting the arms off of the Kaurava general, saving his friends life but earning him the rebuke of said general, who correctly assesses that it was Krishna who drove Arjuna to commit such an adharmic act that he wouldn't otherwise commit.

It's not just Arjuna that Krishna manipulates, during Bhima and Duryodhana's final duel, Krishna instructs Bhima to strike his foe below the belt (literally), a move that incapacitated Duryodhana and was as illegal in a mace duel as it is in boxing, but was nonetheless permitted because Krishna.

And while Krishna permits acts that violate dhama when it benefits his friends and chosen side, he will not tolerate it from others, such as when Ashwatthaman, confronted after the night-raid where he killed hundreds of Pandava soldiers in their beds, throws his weapon at Arjuna's pregnant wife. Which is very uncool and very much adharmic (then as now), and Krishna punishes him by cursing him with eternal injuries (in FGO, it is the rage curse that Ash has) and immortality, condemning him to walk the world cursed forever. Maybe that's a fitting punishment, maybe it isn't, that's subjective, but it does kinda show how Krishna's double standard operates, he's willing to punish breaches of dharma done by others, while at the same time encouraging the Pandavas to violate dharma.

This does not go unnoticed by other characters in the epic, and Krishna is not completely infallible; many of the Pandavas express doubts or discomforts over their breaches of dharma, and only wise Yudhistra, himself a lord of dharma, can match Krishna in moral rhetoric. Krishna himself also blames several breaches of dharma, encouraged by him or not, on the fact that the world is, at this point, in the Kali Yuga, an age of pain and strife, where breaches of dharma are to be expected.

Duryodhana, himself a wicked man (not an insult, both he and the narrative know it), remonstrates Krishna as he lays dying, pointing out the various dirty tricks Krishna told the Pandavas to use, and then basically giving that Skyrim quote "My ancestors are smiling at me, [Pandava]. Can you say the same?" Because dharma is a multifaceted concept, a man as wicked as Duryodhana will still go to heaven and meet with his warriors and kinsmen there, for even with all the evil stuff he did, he still acted according his dharma as a Ksatriya, and his own personal dharma (being the villain of this story), while the Pandavas now have to live with the guilt and pain over what they have done. (The multifaceted nature of dharma is also why FGO Ash can have contradictory sounding skills of 'Violation of Chivalry' and 'Revered Soldier'.)

To bring it all back to Arjuna's interludes and Lostbelt 4, the mention of Krishna in LB4 makes a lot more sense to me and coheres more, know that I'm more well informed on Krishna as a proper 'character' than I was before. And Krishna as a character does, in fact, not clash (in my opinion) with 'Krishna' as Arjuna's dark side and the evil voice inside his head, because the 'real' Krishna was evil voice in his ear during the War. The point of Arjuna's 2nd interlude is that, even if such an adharmic act was permitted and encouraged by Krishna, Arjuna still bears guilt over killing Karna in that way. And coming to terms with that, recognizing that both the feelings that drove him to strike in that way, and subsequently feelings of guilt over it, are part of what makes him and us human, that he is allowed to be human and fallible yet still follow the path of the Ksatriya and a Servant to the best of his ability...