u/A-J-Zan

I live in Poland and recently I've been finding in bookstores a series of coloring books imported from Ukraine with illustrations of girls in old school shoujo style. Because of my prev. experiences with imported coloring books, I suspected the pictures might be AI generated.

After asking around in r/isthisAI and r/translator as well as some research on my part, I've found out that it might be 50/50 case. The backgrounds seem to have some AI-typical mistakes, but (at least some of) the girls were drawn by Yumi Tsuboi and were very likely stolen.

Shame, because, despite of everything, I really like those pictures and I'm not sure if I ever will get a physical copy of the original Japanese book or a translated version of it will be on Amazon.

The only lesser evil I can think of is to buy them anyway, but in a small bookshop, so at least I will support smaller businesses, and, if I decide to post them here colored, mention they were drawn by Yumi Tsuboi.

And to be clear: I already own a lot of original coloring books with known authors.

In short: The novel I’m working on is a fantasy story based on Norse mythology, but I took many, many liberties.

One of the main characters is a valkyrie who first is introduced as a woman, but as the plot progresses, it is revealed that they are actually and literally a man stuck in a female body (the side effect of a curse placed on their father) and in the end are transformed to have male body.

Before it all gets revealed however, they are presented as someone dutiful, focused on their tasks as a valkyrie, who seems to be living mostly (if not only) for the cause or to aid their sisters. Because of all that, Loki (another character in the main cast) started to call them “the soldier”. They also feel uncomfortable in dresses and wear their valkyrie armor most of the time, even if they don’t have to.

All of this is caused partially by childhood parentification and not wanting to deal within their struggles with their gender (before the reveal they also weren’t sure if they are for real a man in a female body).

One of the ways I have thought about to show their character development is through their hair. When they are still in the female body, they would exclusively wear their long hair in tight buns or braids - to symbolise them not being truly themselves and the feeling of constriction. Any instance of their hair being loose would mean their mask slipping and after being transformed into a man, they would wear them loose or some loose styles (like for example the dead anime mom hairstyle) to symbolize how they are feeling free from their burden.

I want this to be depicted as natural (as in: they don’t do this with a spelled out purpose of expressing how they feel about themselves)but I’m also a bit worried that something like this would be better for visual media like comic books or movies. Can a subtle change like switching hairstyles work in a written story (without pictures)?