#hpf

Zenshu is about passion. It's about forgetting your passion; making it a background assumption. Natsuko is the spark for so many people's passion on her journey towards her goal until she burns out because she

A: yes, assumed she could do everything herself like she'd been doing her whole life

B: but also because she never ventured beyond the interpretation of her own passion

As someone very well versed in the grief and joy of a piece of media being The thing that drives you to live, Natsuko accidentally drilled herself into a hole. Passion may blaze, but it'll always be a fire. You have to feed it, and if you only use one type of fuel, you will run out. Her search for Ba-Bump via other people is a perfect example of what every artist contends with when they don't experience new things. How could she possible understand even a fraction of what Ba-Bump is, much less how to animate that in anime language, if she hasn't experienced- even Seen -it herself?

Feeling like you're abandoning a piece of media or losing so many opportunities that rely on it is normal for many people. It's a art of the process. If you hold on until you absolutely can't, it'll be all the more devastating each time your mind simply cannot handle any more of it. Choosing to learn to let go temporarily is necessary to mitigate exponential daily suffering. Instead of rolling that boulder slowly up the ramp, only for you to give out and be crushed, choose to roll the boulder up the steps a little each day you aren't taking a break.

ANYWAYS

got a bit sidetracked, heh. Zenshu is just... really perfect for me in this way. A reminder that loss is managable and passion is waiting.

smore happy psycho friends doodles! i love drawing smokey so much

more nsft/gore draws under the cut :)

The main theory behind Riddle having such a great fear of death is his Mother dying just moments after giving birth to him in 1926  which helped put him in the muggle orphanage which he hated so much.

 And this makes sense, but what if there was something else that influenced and exaggerated this fear? 

You see, Tom Riddle being born when he was meant that he went to school between the years of 1938 and 1945. 

Well, just look at those dates. 

What do they coincide with?

Suddenly, young Tom’s frequent requests and pleading to not be sent back to the muggle orphanage over the summer have a much deeper/darker connotation. 

Sure, Riddle didn’t like living at the orphanage because it was full of muggles and he couldn’t really do magic, or talk about magic etc. 

But in Tom Riddle’s 3rd year, approaching the summer of 1941, it wasn’t just that he was annoyed at having to go back to the orphanage - no, in the summer of 1941, Tom was scared to go back.

You see, the orphanage that Tom called home was in London. 

The London that has seen the Luftwaffe complete 71 raids, dropping over 18,000 tonnes of bombs over it in the last year since he’s been at Hogwarts, where he’s been reading all about numerous raids and attacks that the German muggle air force has completed across the country levelling the muggle towns and cities. 

Riddle requests to Dippet that he be allowed to stay at Hogwarts over the summer, as he fears being killed in one of these bombing raids, as Hogwarts, as well as any other magically enchanted villages, properties etc are completely safe from muggle bombs and weapons. 

The board of governors at Hogwarts is of course filled with conservative, right-wing pure-bloods.

Riddle’s problem is that he is not the only student who would like to stay at Hogwarts over the summer. No, in-fact, many other students put in a request to stay at Hogwarts over the summer - every single one of them muggle-borns, who, much like Riddle, are quite keen on staying at the safe-haven of Hogwarts away from the dangers of the war. 

But the board of governors simply could not sign that off. Hogwarts filled with muggle-borns over the summer holidays? No, they don’t like the sound of that one bit. 

So Riddle is forced to return to his orphanage in London in the summer of 1941. 

He’s picked up at the train-station by a man who owned and ran the orphanage. As they travel through London hhe explains to Tom that the orphanage has moved slightly, you see, the orphanage he lived at was levelled - destroyed by a bomb. 

Riddle sees the devastation that the bombing raids have caused London, which is barely recognisable amid the destruction the Luftwaffe have left behind. 

Tom’s one silver lining, albeit an evil one, is when he makes an offhand comment to the orphanage owner enquiring whether the other children, who he detested, were killed in the bomb. 

Good Lord, no, the orphanage owner says, they were all evacuated to safe areas of the countryside.

Tom is quite pleased by this, presuming that he will also be evacuated to the countryside, but the orphanage owner informs him that as he’ll only be back from school for a few months it would be too complicated to arrange, so he will be living with the orphanage owner for the few months he’s back in London. 

So Riddle spends the entire summer of 1941 going to bed every night in fear that he won’t wake up, that he will die at the hands of a muggle aeroplane bomb or subsequent fire. 

This further drives his hatred of muggles, but also exaggerates his fear of death and hatred of not being in control of his own situation and mortality.