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drifting-pieces-blog-blog · 6 months

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This is dark but do you think Comics!MK have any surviving extended family or is he truly the last of his family?

I like to think he has cousins but their parents didn't flee to America like Elias did so he hardly sees them

MCU Marc doesn't talk to family for very different reasons obviously

I got an ask!

Now this is a truly difficult question to answer for a lot of reasons, but I will do my best!

Comics Moon Knight has a LOT of re-writes. Moench only included Randall in Marc's known family. He was killed off before Moon Knight even had his own official comic (See the Incredible Hulk appearance, which I will review someday in the hopefully not too distant future). We don't get a lot of references to Randall in Moench's run after that. Like at all. In fact, there is so little discussed about Marc's family in Moench's OG run that I'm pretty sure that people forgot about his brother all together unless Marvel decided they needed to do something and then we got a quick "Oh yeah and then this happened" moment.

Zelenetz gave us Elias Spector and more of a family backstory. We got the story of how their mother died when he was very young, which is going to be retconned later on in Lemire's run when we see his father dying much earlier in Marc's life and his mother still being alive. We get no mention of Randall in this. There are a lot of people at the Shiva/Funeral, but since Elias was a prominent figure in their community (Rabbi), it's hard saying who is family and who is community.

As far as I am currently aware (I haven't dived through ALL the comics in a VERY long time and my re-read is slow and steady), no other family has ever shown up or is mentioned.

HISTORY LESSON!!! (TW Holocaust)

Elias Spector, as noted by Zelenetz, is from Czechoslovakia. Those of you that got a bit more of a history lesson than what they bothered to toss at you in high school, may recognize that this country has been through A LOT. So much so that it has been split, reunited, renamed, taken over, given independence, divided, and renamed and split over and over and over again.

It is safe to assume that his family lived there for a few generations. It's hard to say when they arrived there, but Jewish history is…strife with certain parts of Europe inviting Jewish people in then going "Just kidding" and kicking them out (or killing them) immediately afterwards.

And with the history of Czechoslovakia's REPEATED wars and revolutions and divides…. Who knows the history of the Spectors of if they all settled there or if they had been divided over time.

But what we DO know…

According to a census. In 1921, the Jewish population was 354,342. In 1946 it was 55,000. This was not because they decided to move.

The numbers continued to drop. By 1990, it was 7,800.

The German occupation started in 1930 and was not a pretty picture from the start. In 1939, the Jewish population realized this was not going to go well and desperately started to get out, but 78,000 had already been killed. Many were sent to surrounding camps where Typhus epidemics along with brutal conditions started to wipe them out even before 'the final solution' was put into action. Getting dark here: of the 15,000 CHILDREN that were sent to Auschwitz, only 93 came back.

In 1948, Communist Russia took over. Russia does not have a good history with their Jewish population.

In fact, the 40 year period of this occupation is called "Communist Holocaust". Jewish people were forbidden from practicing their religion and Jewish leaders were forced to leave, convert, or die. Children were prohibited from learning their own culture or religious practices.

So do I think that Moon Knight has any cousins surviving in Europe that didn't flee to America like Elias did?

It is with a very heavy heart that I have to given an honest answer: No.

Is it possible that maybe some of the family left with Elias and came to America or went to England? Maybe. Possibly some made it to Denmark or one of the few places that tried to help get a few out. But if they stayed in any of the countries that were occupied, I don't think they made it. And this may have given another reason behind Marc's anger at his father's unwillingness to do anything about the anti-antisemitism that he witnessed.

Perhaps Marc saw the children with extended family and wondered why he didn't have any. Or why they had no pictures or why his mother and father wouldn't talk about those that were left behind.

If he DID happen to have ANY family that survived, Marc probably has no idea where they are or how to find them or who they are. After the Holocaust, the surviving Jewish population was so scattered and left without homes to return to. The countries that they had fled did not welcome them back. Many didn't want to go back. It has only really been recently with the modernization of the internet that efforts have been made for survivors to reach out and try to find out what happened to their families.

With their father and mother gone, I wonder how much about his family Marc actually knew. The REAL question is: Would Marc, Jake, or Steven make an effort to try to reach out? Would they want to find survivors? Would they feel guilty? Would they be able to even talk with the surviving family? Would they want to?

I don't think Marc would. I think this is one more burden on his shoulders and he doesn't want to be a dark shadow on the surviving family tree. I think Steven would be curious and attempt to dig up records to find out what happened to his father's town or people, but I don't think he'd reach out. Jake doesn't travel. Jake's home and people are New York. I think his soft heart would feel the loss too much to want to know. But I do think that if he found any family living in New York, he'd wander by to say hello.

That being said: What about their daughter? Is she being raised Jewish? Marlene certainly is not Jewish. Or at least she was never given that designation in any of the comics that I can recall or in Moench's run. Even if she is not being raised Jewish, perhaps she would be the one to reach out. A generation reaching out to another to find answers and connection. And maybe through her, it would bring the Moon Knight system back to their own connections.

I can see Jake curiously looking at pictures of grandparents and aunts and uncles and saying "Look I have my Great Uncle's mustache!" only to be reminded that his mustache is very much a fake mustache and him quipping back that he has the same taste at least. I can also see Steven being delighted to trace his roots back and saying "The Spectors are survivors." I think even Marc might be able to sit down with his daughter and recall stories he had heard growing up about the town his family comes from and the people there.

And that does bring me a bit of optimism and hope. That they can share good things about a past that they used to look at and find only pain in. That maybe it would finally let them talk about it when it was something they couldn't talk about growing up. A way for him to say "I have generational trauma, but at least I can start to let it heal through my daughter."

SO.... That's a really long answer to your question, and maybe not the one you were looking for... But it's honest and probably more than Marvel will ever give us (I fear what Marvel might do to the history if they tried).

Thanks for asking!

#moon knight #Moon Knight comics #Got asked #Ask away #Seriously people my inbox is always open #Always happy to talk about Moon Knight #I left out a LOT of history here but I didn't want to write a novel

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acesstark · 10 months

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rwrb and grief (book + movie)

As someone who lost a mom at the ripe old age of 16 years old, Henry’s grief being completely erased from the movie kind of killed me. Like I’m infinitely disappointed about it, especially considering it was such a huge part of his character.

In the book, one of Henry’s most prominent traits is the feelings left in the aftermath of his father dying when he was a teenager. His grief is chronic, and it pretty much will stick with him for the rest of his life. Bea explains it to Alex in the “I love him on purpose” scene (which is something else that got completely cut out of the movie).

There’s a much longer stretch of time between Arthur dying and Henry and Alex first meeting in the book, I think it’s 14 months (book) and 4 months (movie). I’m sure they changed it to make Henry’s behavior toward Alex seem more justifiable, as if because it was only four months post losing his father, the wound would still be fresh and therefore his grief being ugly is acceptable or whatever.

But what I really appreciated in the book is how, even though it had been over a year, Henry was still going through the motions of losing his dad and it wasn’t very pretty or nice (ex: in the book he says “can you get rid of him” in reference to Alex, which is notably different and more rude than “I need to get out of here” which he said in the movie), even after all that time when most people would expect you to be over it by then.

In the “I love him on purpose” scene, Bea explains the ways in which Arthur dying has permanently affected Henry, and that the grief is always going to be apart of him, and that there is no way to love Henry without making the active decision to love every part of him, grief and ugly parts and depression included. And Alex loves him on purpose, perpetual grief and all. Which, for whatever reason, was cut out of the movie.

Lastly, both their birth order and Arthur’s death greatly impacted the way Philip, Bea, and Henry grew into their personalities.

After their dad died, Philip, the Heir, the oldest, grew cold and distant and fell into his roll as one-day King as opposed to older brother and was shaped by the crown in a way that made it so that he didn’t protect and support his siblings the way he should have.

Bea, both the middle child and older sister, spiraled after their dad died. In the wake of their father she developed a dr*g habit and a rebellious streak, but her fierce protectiveness of Henry, being her younger brother, only grew throughout it all, and even though there was no one there to protect her, she made sure she was there for Henry.

Henry, the baby, the spare, whose grief was a driving factor for his character. Losing his father, one of the only people who truly understood him, as a teen, on top of inheriting a country he does not want and growing up believing he can never be allowed to love who he loves, he spends years in the aftermath of his fathers death with it affecting every part of his soul, and while it may get easier to cope, that feeling will never leave him.

Their families dynamic is one of my favorite parts of the book, both because I can relate (it almost directly mirrors mine + my siblings own grief) and because it’s so well written. But in the movie, that entire dynamic was killed. Philip is shown as cruel for no reason, Bea is the stereotypically bubbly youngest sister who is the perfect princess, and Henry’s grief is essentially eradicated.

Watching the movie, all that’s mentioned of Henry’s grief is the throwaway line in the storage closet about how he was a dick to Alex because his dad died a few months ago, and it never comes up again. It was really disappointing.

#rip powder princess bea you were so hot and strong and beautiful and amazing I will avenge you #like even Philip was humanized in the book he was just an ass for no reason in the movie #anyway as a motherless person I was disappointed with this aspect of the film #but I was disappointed with the majority of it so ig that doesn’t matter #firstprince #red white and royal blue #alex x henry #henry fox mountchristen windsor #rwrb movie #rwrb book

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cuervolyx · 4 months

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25. for Haoyu please. \(^^ )

25. What is the fail rate and success rate in their mission? Are they the type who let agents die for high mission success rate or prioritize agents’s life and choose to retreat when things got out of hand?

(Note: I tend to respond as the characters themselves, but I'll try to make sure to add much needed context. So, please forgive me if my style of response is confusing. If you need additional clarification then do not hestitate to ask. If you want to know why I respond as the characters themselves, I am way too used to the ask blog days that was very prominent in the fandom I was/am still in).

"Haoyu" thought of the question for a moment, but didn't seem to know what to say. As he put his hand on his chin, he suddenly realized his answer.

"I never really thought about that. I never saw the need to actually. If I fail then I just get right back up and if I succeed then I am happy. Hmm, maybe I should ask about it to Eunkyu or Siwoo." "Haoyu" then pursed his lips as he mentioned the hedgehog. He knew how Siwoo would respond, but "Haoyu" has already learned to ignore the sarcasm from them. "Maybe, I will just ask Eunkyu or the Chief. Siwoo would definitely find a way to scold me. Though, because of the many jobs that are within the military police force, it would be hard to know what is considered a mission or not. It's not like I am in the intelligence department of the force."

"Haoyu" sighed. "Then again, I don't want to keep track of those sort of things. I'm too scared to see if I am failing to be a good member of the force. I don't want to know if I have the most failed missions because I am scared others will use me as a scapegoat. It has happened once and I don't want it to happen again." "Haoyu" lowered his gaze as he began to remember his time as an infantry soldier in another base. It was one of the worst moments in his life. As a foreginer in the army, he had no one he could rely on. The customs were similar yet different from his home country so he often made a fool out of himself. "Yet, I am in a similar position. Though, Eunkyu is also regarded as a foregin member, but he at least knows how things are around here because of his parents and he knows the language quite well. Ugh! I don't want to think about any of this! I hate that base! I hate them!" "Haoyu" groaned as he decided that for once, he wanted to get back to his job.

Looking at the second part of the question, "Haoyu" knew the answer already.

"You never leave a comrade behind! It is a lesson that was nailed into me the day I joined this nation's army! The day you join a battalion, is the day that everyone around you becomes your brothers and sisters!" "Haoyu" truimphantly shouted. He still remembers how the trainers always told this to all the newbies. Though he grimaced as he thought of one particular soldier. "Even if it's her. I will still make sure to bring everyone back safely. Who cares if my success rate would be better if I allowed them to die. Protecting my comrades is just as important as dealing with missions. Only a coward would leave behind someone."

"Haoyu" nodded proudly with his answer. He hoped that he made his trainers proud with his response. He still looks up to them even if they allowed the other soldiers to treat him like shit. "Haoyu" knew that nothing would change his mind on this, even if his friends sometimes worried about him. He was a typical military cat.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lynn here! I want to say that I am so sorry these responses are slow. I am having a bit of an art block and no matter how many times I draw, I get disappointed on how it turned out. It will take me a bit to respond to all questions as I want to my best on all of them and then I also have an upcoming exam. I will have to hold off on other responses until then. Thank you for the ask! I look forward to answer the rest.

#ask #SaH Haoyu #you chose a tough question haha #hopefully my style of response isn’t odd #gotta thank my time in a fandom in 2014 for that #anyways thank you for the ask!#I’ll do my best to respond to the other ones as soon as possible

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thekuraning · 8 months

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oh boy oh jeez oh man i hope you guys are ready for kura's tiger and bunny thought of the evening bc i ran across two-year-old comments on the Blue Rose page of the T&B fan wiki and i have OPINIONS

its actually a really benign old comment chain about USD versus Stern Dollars, but everyone pretty much says "yeah but it's still in the USA" and BUDDY BOY NO IT AIN'T. NO. IT. AIN'T.

I'VE GOT SOMETHIN' TO SAY ABOUT STERN BILD AND I'LL FIGHT ANYONE (but like in a silly way)

"But Kura, the creators literally said it's in New York and—" yes they did, this part is very much true and the aerial shot we see of Stern Bild is always around Tribeca/Manhatten area with a really nice shot of the Hudson, but that's not the point (though it does make it much easier to chart the various districts, more on that coming soon)

Something we know about Tiger & Bunny is that it is set in an alternate universe New York, and never once is the United States mentioned by name. In fact, there isn't much about world nations mentioned in general in T&B—the one time I can think of off the top of my head where "country" is even mentioned is in Dragon Kid's flashback of her parents sending her off to Stern Bild, where they tearfully say she is going to become "the pride of [their] country," so I guess we at least know the concept of countries exists. But is Stern Bild in a country? Is Stern Bild a country?

Actually, all evidence points toward Stern Bild being a city-state. It meets all three qualifications of being such: it's an independent, sovereign city that is "the center of political, economic, and cultural life" over its surrounding territories. We see these qualifications met across all three seasons, first and foremost starting with something you've heard characters talk about pretty dang often but probably never thought too much about: the Stern Dollar.

The Stern Dollar (SBD from here on out) has to get its name from somewhere, and the most likely candidate is Stern Bild itself, which means that Stern Bild mints its own currency. Often shortened to "dollars" by the characters, it's used even in neighboring towns like Kotetsu's hometown (i.e., Muramasa charging him "two dollars" for a whiskey in season 1.)

We also know Stern Bild has a very localized culture based on the events of The Rising and a few character scenes in S2. In The Rising, the backdrop to the story is the time leading up to and the day of the Stern Bild holiday of Justice Day, which celebrates the time our lord and savior Jesus Christ appearedunto man in crab form and was unfortunately eaten, resulting in the Goddess bringing her wrath down on the ancient people of Stern Bild. (hello mutuals who haven't seen Tiger & Bunny and are reading this anyways, THIS IS CANON I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP THIS FUCKING HAPPENED, CRAB JESUS) This is a holiday that is, again, celebrated outside of Stern Bild, as Kotetsu's family celebrates Justice Day despite hailing from his hometown. By extension, it's likely the same goddess is worshipped in the territories surrounding Stern Bild.

We also know based on S2 that other cities have their own hero programs, all of them ran wildly differently. However, again, we look to Kotetsu's home town—no mention of other heroes. Just Hero TV heroes. Both the religious and secular mainsteam culture are exported from Stern Bild to its outlying territories.

And finally, political life: the politics of Stern Bild are interesting af because we know basically that we have the mayor and the mayor's cabinet, which includes prominent industry figures and judges from the Justice Bureau. We typically only see them making decisions about the governance of Stern Bild, and it's true that politics exist at all levels in a nation, but the reason why it seems to me that Stern Bild is a center of political life is (SEASON 2 SPOILERS LOOK AWAY LOOK AWAY NOOOWWWW)

Well, mostly it's because of the concentration camps, which seem to exist decidedly outside of Stern Bild's city limits. Stern Bild proper is always shown to be a bustling megalopolis. It's very dense and doesn't have a lot of extra wide-open spaces laying around. However, the mayor of Stern Bild was able to have these NEXT concentration camps set up on short notice in seemingly the middle of nowhere.... Which would very likely be an outlying territory, again, like Kotetsu's very rural hometown. This one's a little bit tricky because we can't be absolutely certain, but for all intents and purposes it seems to me that Stern Bild has some political relevance to its surrounding territories.

So, is it TECHNICALLY POSSIBLE that Stern Bild is in the United States? Yeah, sure, it could be I guess. But it's much more likely that it's an independent city-state, especially since it mints its own currency.

anyways that's my tiger & bunny thought of the night, dont mind me, i just wanted an excuse to rant about this bc the stern dollar's been on my mind for a few days

#tiger & bunny #tiger and bunny #stern bild #sternbild #kuras tiger and bunny posting again #FIGHT ME NERDS #YOU KNOW IM RIIIIIIGHT #alternatively we dont have to fight peace and love on planet earth i will support u and whatever u think about stern bilds nation status #go to bed kura #spoilers #maybe?

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cowboylikedean · 2 years

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so here’s the thing... if you asked me to rank Taylor’s albums, Lover would end up the middle of the pack. and my reasoning has always been it’s too long, it’s highs are really high but there’s so much filler they get lost. I stand by that, but I also completely don’t. That said, recently I’ve realized, it’s also the album I turn to the most...

Lover is complex and I’ve said in conversation with a friend ( @septembersghost ) that what makes it so compelling is that it is the most contextual of Taylor’s discography. It requires all 6 of its predecessors to be fully understood. It’s got lyrical reference to RED, clear sonic references to Fearless (Paper Rings) and debut (Soon You’ll Get Better). And you could make a case for thematic references to all 6 albums. Without understanding the whimsy and enchantment of Speak Now, can you understand the real intention behind “I like shiny things, but I’d marry you with paper rings”?

I said this to Jaime @cages-boxes-hunters-foxes in a conversation on her blog the other day, but it is also a glimpse and predictor of the Indie sound and vibe she would lean into on folkmore. We have bringing back fictional stories (which she hadn’t done openly since YBWM), exploring different productions and sounds, bringing back a country vibe (which would be very prominent on evermore), and centering plain and uncomplicated lyrical storytelling while letting the complexities of the production and sonic quality bring it to life in a way that she had never previously mastered.... which I would say is quite Indie in style...

But all that aside, the actual reason Lover is the album I turn to most is because its the album that has the songs I feel most understood by in my darkest moments (The Archer, Afterglow) and the songs I feel most understood by in my happiest moments (ME!, Daylight, Lover). The reason I said I still stand by my previous conceptions of Lover as too long and full of filler is related to that conversation with Jess I mentioned above. Lover is so contextualized with Taylor’s past work that every song will correlate to sounds or themes (or both) from at least one previous album. If a song from Lover feels like filler to you, chances are it correlates to albums or songs that aren’t your vibe. ITHK for me feels like it says nothing.... In exactly the same way AYHTDWS does. London Boy is one a lot of people feel is filler, but to me it’s VITAL! It also really correlates to the whole motif of London/NY that she’s been driving home since RED which has come to mean a fuck ton to me and might mean less to others.

So Lover is full of filler... but what you will hear as filler depends on your experience with the rest of her discography. The anti-ME! people will likely not jive with the other lighter more fun playful pop songs like Stay Stay Stay or Shake it Off or little Speak Now (and yes, I count her in this because she is a part of this story!!!). To me, ME! is one of the most incredible softest and beautiful songs Taylor’s ever released. I am still not a big fan of INTHAF, even though I like it more now than I used to. I hate the fact that we get the wedding at the end... anyway, KOMH is also not my favorite song (though I like it more than I used to).

Lover is however, incredibly complex.... and back to the fact that it’s the album I feel most understood by in both my dark and my light..... It’s the most holistic of Taylor’s albums. Lover isn’t just one thing, it’s all the things. Taylor said it was a love letter to love itself, and you can hear that in all of its complexities. Lover is every emotion rolled into one. It’s every emotion at the same time!

Those of you who love to hate it are either too immature to appreciate its depth and variety or too pretentious to appreciate its depth and variety or both. I feel sad for you and I hope you grow up... because damn Lover is beautiful.

#lover album #lover #taylor analysis #LOVER??? I LOVE HER

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sh3llysh00 · 2 years

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Idk if your still into countryhumans but I'm having chimerica brainrot with YOUR characters rn so if you have literally ANYTHING to share with those two please do

Also I hope your day is going well

OMGOMGHIH HIHII YES I AM STILL VERY MUCH IN THE FANDOM I CANNOT ESCAPE IT!! <3<3

Lots has been happening in my life for the past couple of months, so I have not been able to post much of anything. I haven't drawn much art either, I've been bust with work :(

That all being said, YES! I'M SO HAPPY MY CHIMERICA MAKES YOU HAPPY!! <3<3<3 Here's some angst and fluff

- Ame has Bipolar disorder (type 1) and Borderline personality disorder. It gets worse and worse the more the political parties divide between eachother. (The reason I have this hc is that the two-party system effects American politics, history, and culture across every single state, which is why it's such a prominent traits for my hc of her.) Countryhumans typically don't take medication, it doesn't effect their bodies at all, so little can help. They're too busy to take consistent therapy, but they do see a therapist once a month.

- But they do have coping mechanisms!! Well, said mechanism mainly just her hubby, China :) He helps them a lot, just by being there. He can't be there all the time of course, but he does what he can to help her, and he trusts her friends and family to be there when he can't.

- They both have their mental health problems, and struggle with them daily. It's a subconscious part of their immortal lives. They do the best they can with it and eachother, finding new ways to help.

- They watch Disney movies together, and they do it while snuggling up under a blanket, on the couch, holding eachother and falling asleep with the TV still on low volume.

- Picnic dates during the summer, SO MANY PICNIC DATES!

- Ame visits China every Chinese new year for two weeks and has a little understanding of it cuz she of course have people who celebrate it in their Country, but she does what she can to help do and set up traditions in the big cities <3

- Ame loves warm blankets and sweaters, so China always gets them as gifts with whatever excuse he can find <3<3<3

- China really likes reptiles and bugs, he just thinks they're neat, so Ame will get toys, food, new pets, new cages, etc. for him :)

- If they're not already visiting eachother or sitting next to eachother at meetings, they're calling/facetiming, texting, etc. It gets very annoying to their friends very quickly, lmao.

- Ame will make suicidal jokes sometimes and China will just say "no."

- They both hate their governments and bond over it <3

- The trade war is just them hate fucking. I do not take criticism.

That's all I can think of for now, I'm sorry. I had an 8 hour shift today and I'm very tired </3 I probably already mentioned a few of these before, but that just means they're EXTRA CANON IN MY CHVERSE!!

#countryhumans #chimerica #countryhumans chimerica #shelly answers #shelly's headcanons

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diaryofawallfly · 1 year

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[ After a while, another letter arrives. The stamp is off-kilter and the seal flap appears to have been hastily closed. The handwriting is the same as the last. ]

Mr. Renfield,

If my letter was a pleasant surprise to you, I can say the same for yours. I can hardly believe I was able to reach you. I had my concerns about both the post that far into the countryside and the matter of time.

Your answer was everything I had hoped for and more. That sufficiently answered the question of which way the keep faces and, to be perfectly honest, a harboured curiosity of mine about the view. The sunrise and sunset sound spectacular (and I'm very glad you wrote about the latter, too). The way you described it all as if it's touched by myth- the scenery sounds absolutely beautiful, and the castle must look proud in its place nestled against the mountain. Even in disrepair, it sounds starkly impressive. I would not expect a full history of the castle from you, as I figure it has far too much for one person. I wasn't able to find much online. Perhaps the village might know more, though I suppose you must have already tried that.

As for how I found you, I'm afraid it's not exactly a good answer. A relative of mine was involved with the acquisition of a law firm, and there were a whole lot of old files- boxes and boxes of them- to be dealt with. I've been helping out on weekends, organising those to keep and disposing of ones no longer needed, except I may have wound up reading some of the material before it was to be shredded. (I swear I didn't do anything illegal, I think.) Your name was on some paperwork, and then there was a lost memo about leaving for a trip, and then all mention stopped. I do like mysteries and couldn't help being curious- and please forgive me, I mean no disrespect in likening your lived history to fiction.

If you don't mind me writing to you still, I do have loads more questions. You write like you enjoy reading, do you read a lot? Do you still work as a solicitor? What is the local food like? I'll leave it there for now; I appreciate your consideration and kindness very much.

Regards,

R. Hart

R. Hart,

I am once again delighted to receive your letter and your pleasantries. I’m surprised to hear you learned of me from my previous employer. It has been so long and my stay with them so short that I didn’t ever think so much about me would be left behind.

To think back on it, it’s a world away, a lifetime ago. I cannot imagine how the people and the places have changed. Every now and then I do dream of it, the place that was once home, but it feels as if it was never more than that.

I am no longer a lawyer or a solicitor, no. I have not formally practised in some time and I cannot say I’m too familiar with the laws of this country either. I spend my days now as the caretaker of this estate. Though that must sound contradictory as my previous letter stated it’s disrepair. The south facing stonework has been revealing its age for some time. It has been difficult to find a mason who is both skilled enough to replicate the original details and is willing to travel out to me.

The garden, however– I apologise as these are not the details you asked for but I do hope that you will humour me– is my favourite aspect of the grounds. In the courtyard, I have a selection of native flowers. Most prominently are the peonies, their greenery and blossoms are large and drooping. I also have a few rose bushes. They’re fastidious and keep me busy. Outside the gate, I’ve planted a dog rose on either side. Their prickled vines have done a lovely job hiding most of the fallen stucco. Their summer blooms bring me some cheer.

Here I can tell you about the local cuisine. The dog roses produce a fruit, rosehips. Each year I harvest them to bring to a woman in the village. With them, she will create the most delicious jam and sweet wine. I must ask her for her recipes. I do not know why I haven’t yet. Perhaps I am hoping to ignore how she is aging and how I am not willing to cope with the day when she will not be. She has always been as kind as she can to me. It will be difficult for me to get by without her. She taught me most of what I know about living here when my trip abroad became permanent. She also makes a fine polenta that could warm the heart of a merciless executioner. Most other dishes in the area are made with ground meat of various game animals and winter vegetables, all baked, cooked, or pickled with the most flavourful spices.

For your last question, asking if I read often: I do indeed. The keep has a large library of hundreds eclectic books from all over the world all with different subject matter. I can’t tell you how many I’ve read. I was fortunate to find some of them in English when I arrived. I hadn’t known a single word from the native tongue when I first came here. Thankfully some traders knew German which I learned in university and other travels. Now after many years of residing here I can proudly say I am rather mediocre in my Romanian.

Thank you again for writing to me. I appreciate your time and thoughts spent. I am open to answer any more questions you may have. May I ask a few to you in return? Do you work for a law office or university? Your writing is studious which makes me curious about your background. Where are you from? Have there been any interesting events? I’ve been divorced from the country for so long, I can’t remember the last time I heard any news.

I am fondly awaiting your reply.

𝓡. 𝓜. 𝓡𝓮𝓷𝓯𝓲𝓮𝓵𝓭

#ask #Anonymous #master's call [ ic ]#The Mysterious R. Hart #APOLOGIZES FOR THE DELAY #Many thoughts were needed for this reply #i hope i've kept his strangeness in his words #but if not!!! i am practicing and that is what matters :)#🖤🖤🖤🖤#v: Turning of the Century

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dreamspeaks22 · 1 year

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Again, dream post, not real.

TW: none this time I think. Lmk if I'm wrong, please.

-Dad's house; Fuck him, but yeah I still frequently have dreams about him and his house. These dreams are..weird. and often hard to describe. They're weirdly realistic and almost feel like some sort of drug trip at the same time. It's very obviously his house, everytime. Even if I'm just standing outside, I know who's house it is, always.

The dreams involving dad don't often involve him. Surprising, I know. It's more his house that's important? I guess? If he does appear It's usually towards the end of the dream, and usually just to be a buzzkill.

It's really hard to describe these dreams overall, honestly. Like I said, they feel so strange. I have so many other worlds that are so clear and realistic and his house/dreams are so weirdly vague but prominent.

Most of the dreams I can remember are myself and others (can't remember who, pretty sure they change dream by dream) I think they're friends? They feel like friends anyways. We walk around and hang out, enjoy my dad's art and oddities from other countries. He really does have a nice house and lots of interesting things from his travels.

I'm really drawing a blank here. I don't know why. Felt like I understood these particular dreams before I started this and now.. I'm fuckin lost.

I guess to cover the other portion I mentioned; my dad appearing at the end to fuck things over. He usually 'comes home' and is furious to see me there. I remember one dream a friend and I were trying to catch a stray kitten in his driveway and he called the cops. So think along those lines I guess.

I will say there's been several times I endured these dreams and they were actually okay. My dad may be a dick but I did like his house. The top floor is usually warm and comfortable. I have nothing negative to say about it, other than a lingering fear of pissing dad off.

Sometimes I'm outside the house. It's pretty foggy where those dreams are concerned. There's the one with the kittens in the driveway, but most of the others aren't nearly as obvious. I remember being around his driveway, I think trying to get in or waiting on him to answer the door.

We don't have a good relationship, so it's not surprising that I'd be left waiting. It's happened in reality when I've gone to him for help, and trust me I've tried forming a real relationship with him. He just seems unwilling.

Like most places, there's a basement level to my dad's 'dream house.' And it's terrifying. My dad was always one to scare the fuck out of child me at any given chance, so I blame him for this.

His basement stairs are old, and creaky. The basement itself is nice enough, but cold and has an unfinished prison feel to it. Fr there's a shower, toilet, big ass sink down there. Plus a pool table and a couple old slot machines, and last I knew a big ass bean bag chair and a flat-screen. But I'm telling you it always had the most unsettling feel to it. You can toss some comfort items into a dungeon but that doesn't make it any less of a dungeon.

Anyways, the dream basement. It was always so much bigger and had that same feeling but amplified. Of course there was something lurking under the stairs, and who knows what in the dark corners. It never really appeared dirty or amiss in any way, and somehow that made it worse.

I can't recall anything specific happening in that basement, dream or not. Still, I dream of it every once in awhile and it's unmistakable. I know that's very anticlimactic after saying the dream basement was terrifying, but, sorry. I can't remember enough right now. I'm sure I'll update and change that in the future. Give it time, unfortunately my bad dreams seem to cycle lol. So this one will be back eventually. I'll try to write down what I remember.

#weird dreams #dream journal #dreams #dreambasedinreality #watching and dreaming #dreamnotfound #dream analysis #writing but not like in a fun way #crazydreams

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tailsrevane · 1 year

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[tv review] ds9 3x23 "family business" (1995)

first & foremost this is our first visit to ferenginar and i really appreciated having this area of the star trek universe filled in a bit. like, it’s pretty much always a momentous occasion when a mainstay species’ homeworld gets shown for the first time.

the plight of ferengi women is something that’s been alluded to since all the way back in tng, and has come up more than once in ds9, most notably in “rules of acquisition” (the episode with pel). but this is the show’s first real attempt to dig into the issue on a larger scale, and i remembered being pretty pleased with it the first few times i saw it, but now that i’m revisiting it… honestly, i have some pretty mixed feelings about it?

what a lot of it boils down to is that very specifically tying ishka’s (and, by implied extension, all ferengi women) fight for liberation to… profit. and like… profit is bad, actually? profit is tied to another economic concept called “surplus value,” which is the crux of the central contradiction of capitalism. without getting too far into the weeds here, the general idea is that the more you exploit people the better it is for you.

so, like, the “more women ceos!”/“girlboss”/“lean in” trends in capitalist-approved, predominantly white brands of “feminism” is essentially saying “let’s not question the essential evils of capitalism, we just want to play too!”

on the other hand, not to be controversial or anything but it’s maybe not great that ferengi women apparently aren’t allowed to go outside or wear clothes? so like. even girlboss white feminism has an iota or two of moral highground here.

and, like, hell… we’re pretty fucking lucky that this episode depicts a ferengi woman fighting for her own liberation rather than, like, the federation swooping in & trying to bully the ferengi into being less misogynistic? because in its more naive moments, star trek oftentimes draws deliberate parallels between the federation and the u.s. (which, hahahaha, NO?), and wow does the u.s. ever love trying to pretend its latest imperialist venture is tied to human rights violations and/or oppression in whatever country it’s bombing into submission this week.

… oh, right, i said i was trying to stay out of the weeds, didn’t i? whoops.

fine, you’re right, at this point i should still be counting my blessings that the shockingly upfront antisemitism that gene roddenberry originally brought to the table for the ferengi has largely been left behind.

on the level of character & relationship drama, this feels like the right time to point out that the show finally figured out how to write rom at some point, and he feels like a fully-fledged character in ways that he never really did in season 1, and showed flashes of in season 2. i think the turning point was when he shut quark down when quark tried to veto nog joining starfleet, and it’s continued here.

yes, rom is still a wonderful himbo who deserves our protection, but he’s starting to be a three-dimensional himbo as his characterization really solidifies, and that’s great! having all three members of the station’s most prominent ferengi family be fully-fledged characters is definitely one for the win column.

on the other hand, the resolution of quark & his mother’s conflict honestly doesn’t feel super earned? like, the idea that rom getting the two of them in a room together was enough to resolve the issue doesn’t make a lot of sense when they were in the same room together multiple times? idk man. i do appreciate rom showing emotional intelligence here, but it just doesn’t really add up or feel motivated by anything else that’s happened in the episode to this point. it’s just kinda like “wellp. it’s almost time for the episode to be over now.”

… i’m really digging into this one a lot, but at the end of the day no matter how much i dig into this stuff i think things like what i mentioned at the top of this review (the worldbuilding around the introduction of ferenginar) matter a whole lot more to me than whether the politics of the episode were good or whether the character conflicts resolve in ways that are entirely satisfying? like, those things matter and are interesting to talk about, but at the end of the day yeah i did enjoy this episode in the sense that it was engaging and had a lot going on and expanded the world quite a bit.

to end on a definitive high note, back on deep space nine, we get some always-welcome sisko family fun times. specifically, cassidy yates–the freighter captain who jake mentioned wanting to introduce his father to in the previous episode–makes her first appearance! unless i’m misremembering i don’t think it’s ever made entirely clear just how jake made friends with cassidy in the first place? but him trying to set them up is super cute. i really appreciate how often this show does right by benjamin & jake.

b-rank

#star trek #star trek deep space nine #star trek ds9 #deep space nine #ds9 #tv review #reviews #tv

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fozmeadows · 3 years

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race & culture in fandom

For the past decade, English language fanwriting culture post the days of LiveJournal and Strikethrough has been hugely shaped by a handful of megafandoms that exploded across AO3 and tumblr – I’m talking Supernatural, Teen Wolf, Dr Who, the MCU, Harry Potter, Star Wars, BBC Sherlock – which have all been overwhelmingly white. I don’t mean in terms of the fans themselves, although whiteness also figures prominently in said fandoms: I mean that the source materials themselves feature very few POC, and the ones who are there tended to be done dirty by the creators.

Periodically, this has led POC in fandom to point out, extremely reasonably, that even where non-white characters do get central roles in various media properties, they’re often overlooked by fandom at large, such that the popular focus stays primarily on the white characters. Sometimes this happened (it was argued) because the POC characters were secondary to begin with and as such attracted less fan devotion (although this has never stopped fandoms from picking a random white gremlin from the background cast and elevating them to the status of Fave); at other times, however, there has been a clear trend of sidelining POC leads in favour of white alternatives (as per Finn, Poe and Rose Tico being edged out in Star Wars shipping by Hux, Kylo and Rey). I mention this, not to demonize individuals whose preferred ships happen to involve white characters, but to point out the collective impact these trends can have on POC in fandom spaces: it’s not bad to ship what you ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no utility in analysing what’s popular and why through a racial lens.

All this being so, it feels increasingly salient that fanwriting culture as exists right now developed under the influence and in the shadow of these white-dominated fandoms – specifically, the taboo against criticizing or critiquing fics for any reason. Certainly, there’s a hell of a lot of value to Don’t Like, Don’t Read as a general policy, especially when it comes to the darker, kinkier side of ficwriting, and whether the context is professional or recreational, offering someone direct, unsolicited feedback on their writing style is a dick move. But on the flipside, the anti-criticism culture in fanwriting has consistently worked against fans of colour who speak out about racist tropes, fan ignorance and hurtful portrayals of living cultures. Voicing anything negative about works created for free is seen as violating a core rule of ficwriting culture – but as that culture has been foundationally shaped by white fandoms, white characters and, overwhelmingly, white ideas about what’s allowed and what isn’t, we ought to consider that all critical contexts are not created equal.

Right now, the rise of C-drama (and K-drama, and J-drama) fandoms is seeing a surge of white creators – myself included – writing fics for fandoms in which no white people exist, and where the cultural context which informs the canon is different to western norms. Which isn’t to say that no popular fandoms focused on POC have existed before now – K-pop RPF and anime fandoms, for example, have been big for a while. But with the success of The Untamed, more western fans are investing in stories whose plots, references, characterization and settings are so fundamentally rooted in real Chinese history and living Chinese culture that it’s not really possible to write around it. And yet, inevitably, too many in fandom are trying to do just that, treating respect for Chinese culture or an attempt to understand it as optional extras – because surely, fandom shouldn’t feel like work. If you’re writing something for free, on your own time, for your own pleasure, why should anyone else get to demand that you research the subject matter first?

Because it matters, is the short answer. Because race and culture are not made-up things like lightsabers and werewolves that you can alter, mock or misunderstand without the risk of hurting or marginalizing actual real people – and because, quite frankly, we already know that fandom is capable of drawing lines in the sand where it chooses. When Brony culture first reared its head (hah), the online fandom for My Little Pony – which, like the other fandoms we’re discussing here, is overwhelmingly female – was initially welcoming. It felt like progress, that so many straight men could identify with such a feminine show; a potential sign that maybe, we were finally leaving the era of mainstream hypermasculine fandom bullshit behind, at least in this one arena. And then, in pretty much the blink of an eye, things got overwhelmingly bad. Artists drawing hardcorn porn didn’t tag their works as adult, leading to those images flooding the public search results for a children’s show. Women were edged out of their own spaces. Bronies got aggressive, posting harsh, ugly criticism of artists whose gijinka interpretations of the Mane Six as humans were deemed insufficiently fuckable.

The resulting fandom conflict was deeply unpleasant, but in the end, the verdict was laid down loud and clear: if you cannot comport yourself like a decent fucking person – if your base mode of engagement within a fandom is to coopt it from the original audience and declare it newly cool only because you’re into it now; if you do not, at the very least, attempt to understand and respect the original context so as to engage appropriately (in this case, by acknowledging that the media you’re consuming was foundational to many women who were there before you and is still consumed by minors, and tagging your goddamn porn) – then the rest of fandom will treat you like a social biohazard, and rightly so.

Here’s the thing, fellow white people: when it comes to C-drama fandoms and other non-white, non-western properties? We are the Bronies.

Not, I hasten to add, in terms of toxic fuckery – though if we don’t get our collective shit together, I’m not taking that darkest timeline off the table. What I mean is that, by virtue of the whiteminding which, both consciously and unconsciously, has shaped current fan culture, particularly in terms of ficwriting conventions, we’re collectively acting as though we’re the primary audience for narratives that weren’t actually made with us in mind, being hostile dicks to Chinese and Chinese diaspora fans when they take the time to point out what we’re getting wrong. We’re bristling because we’ve conceived of ficwriting as a place wherein No Criticism Occurs without questioning how this culture, while valuable in some respects, also serves to uphold, excuse and perpetuate microaggresions and other forms of racism, lashing out or falling back on passive aggression when POC, quite understandably, talk about how they’re sick and tired of our bullshit.

An analogy: one of the most helpful and important tags on AO3 is the one for homophobia, not just because it allows readers to brace for or opt out of reading content they might find distressing, but because it lets the reader know that the writer knows what homophobia is, and is employing it deliberately. When this concept is tagged, I – like many others – often feel more able to read about it than I do when it crops up in untagged works of commercial fiction, film or TV, because I don’t have to worry that the author thinks what they’re depicting is okay. I can say definitively, “yes, the author knows this is messed up, but has elected to tell a messed up story, a fact that will be obvious to anyone who reads this,” instead of worrying that someone will see a fucked up story blind and think “oh, I guess that’s fine.” The contextual framing matters, is the point – which is why it’s so jarring and unpleasant on those rare occasions when I do stumble on a fic whose author has legitimately mistaken homophobic microaggressions for cute banter. This is why, in a ficwriting culture that otherwise aggressively dislikes criticism, the request to tag for a certain thing – while still sometimes fraught – is generally permitted: it helps everyone to have a good time and to curate their fan experience appropriately.

But when white and/or western fans fail to educate ourselves about race, culture and the history of other countries and proceed to deploy that ignorance in our writing, we’re not tagging for racism as a thing we’ve explored deliberately; we’re just being ignorant at best and hateful at worst, which means fans of colour don’t know to avoid or brace for the content of those works until they get hit in the face with microaggresions and/or outright racism. Instead, the burden is placed on them to navigate a minefield not of their creation: which fans can be trusted to write respectfully? Who, if they make an error, will listen and apologise if the error is explained? Who, if lived experience, personal translations or cultural insights are shared, can be counted on to acknowledge those contributions rather than taking sole credit? Too often, fans of colour are being made to feel like guests in their own house, while white fans act like a tone-policing HOA.

Point being: fandom and ficwriting cultures as they currently exist badly need to confront the implicit acceptance of racism and cultural bias that underlies a lot of community rules about engagement and criticism, and that needs to start with white and western fans. We don’t want to be the new Bronies, guys. We need to do better.

#race #racism #c-drama #fandom #fan wank #fandom wank #microaggresions #culture #the untamed #bronies #whiteness #ficwriting #fanwriting #cultural bias #discourse

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moonlit-sunflower-books · 3 years

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writing south indian characters

[@/moonlit_sunflower_books on ig]

The primary Indian story that is told through modern literature and media is a very North-Indian focused narrative, and while there's nothing wrong with that, there's a massive lack of south Indian representation. Often we're sort of ostracised from other Indians as well, so i thought i'd make a post outlining how to write South Indian characters talking about the differences between our cultures :)

If you have anything to add or things to point out, please go ahead! This is all based on my own personal experience and knowledge.

how do you define "south indian"

"South Indian" is used as a very broad term and is also highly relative. Generally, it encompasses people from the states of Kerala, Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana. The problem with grouping all these characters under one massive umbrella is that our cultures are all vastly different, the same way that someone from Assam and Punjab would have entirely different. I'm going to elaborate on this further as we go!

food

South Indian food, contrary to popular belief, does not consist of idli and dosa.

Some examples of more food are bisi bele bath, pongal and vathakuzhambu (i promise it's not that hard to pronounce), sambhar shadam (a type of rice and curry), rasam, coconut-based kormas, tamarind rice, chakkarai pongal (which is sweet), vadai (yes we pronounce it differently from North Indians), mysore pak, lime rice, our famous filter coffee (or "kaapi"), and so much more.

South Indian food is more rice-heavy than grain-heavy, and we don't really have a roti equivalent. There's also a lot of non-vegetarian food, but since I'm vegetarian, I don't know a whole lot about it :)

There's also obvious language differences: for example, in a Tamilian household, we would call curd rice "thayir shadam", which means the same thing. Which brings me to my next point...

languages

There is a reason that there's a debate as to whether or not Hindi should be the national language. Spoiler alert: it should not.

South India is home to so many languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malyalam. Very often someone from North India will make the assumption that Indian people speak Hindi, whereas this is completely untrue - South Indians should not be expected to speak Hindi any more than North Indians should be expected to speak Tamil.

If you're writing about a South Indian character, make sure that they speak their native language and NOT Hindi at home! And if it's a South Indian character who lives in a different part of the country, like I do, they'll likely know the language of the part of the country they live in as well as their native language. (But this also depends - if a Telugu person has grown up in Delhi, they're likely to speak Hindi better than Telugu.)

Even characters that live abroad will have some connection to their language. As someone who spent many years outside India, I learnt quite a bit of random vocabulary in the form of food and short phrases like "look here", "what do you want", "what happened", and things like that.

fashion

The South Indian version of a lehenga is called a pavada or pavadai, and it's often what younger girls wear at any formal or festive event. Older women will often wear saris. Traditionally, Brahmins used to wear 9 yard saris that were tied differently, but in an attempt to eradicate the caste system, this largely isn't worn anymore.

Men wear veshtis, which is a type of cloth tied around the waist. Traditionally, this would have been worn without a shirt, but today it's not uncommon to see people walking around with a veshti and formal shirt.

Keep in mind, though, India has become really westernised, so many people will also jeans and shirts and things like that. Fusing ethnic and western wear, like jeans with kurta tops, is not uncommon.

It also varies a lot from region to region - in Chennai you're much more likely to see someone walking around casually in a sari than you are in Bangalore, simply because of the culture that surrounds the two cities.

physically

South Indians stereotypically have much thicker, curlier hair and darker skin than North Indians. (But this obviously varies from person to person.)

names

Within South Indian names, it's fairly easy to tell where someone is from - and this is true of any micro-region, state, or culture within India.

Some examples of Tamil names could include "Srinivasan", "Iyer", or "Pillai". (Iyer and Iyengar are actually two sub-sects of Tamilian Brahmins who worship Shiva and Vishnu respectively, but I won't get into that.) Telugu surnames could include "Komati" or "Nayak".

But traditionally, South Indians never had surnames. There would be 2-3 initials that stood for one's village name and father's name, followed by your name. So, for example, C. V. Raman was his full name! Some people still use this system, but because it becomes difficult during documentation etc, most people have switched to the westernised version of the system.

general culture

Two of my personal favourite parts of South Indian culture are Carnatic Music and Bharatnatyam, both of which I have learnt. Carnatic music is a form of classical music where one sings varnams and shlokas and padams in different raagas and taalams. Bharatnatyam is a classical dance form from Tamilnadu with two main styles - Thanjavur and Kalakshetra.

Of course, there are millions of little aspects to South Indian culture, but I couldn't possibly fit them all here :)

being south indian

Being South Indian in other parts of India means that you're subject to a whole lot of racism.

I've had people say "how can you call yourself a real indian" and, like I said earlier, use words like "dosa" and "pongal" instead of my name. There's also language-based discrimination like I mentioned, because many people assume Hindi should be spoken across the country.

The caste system is also very prominent, and there are multiple movements to eradicate it across South India.

#writing tip #writing tips #writing life #writing meme #south indian #desi tag #desi stuff #desi tumblr #writing advice #writing help #writers on tumblr #south indian culture #desi culture #indian #indians #indian fashion #indian bridal wear

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biaswreckme · 3 years

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how to care for your hybrid | jjk

Pairing: hybrid!Jungkook/Reader

Member: Jungkook

Length: 5253 words

Genre: smut, fluff, angst, 5+1

Rating: 18+

Triggers/Warnings: smut, hybrid smut, oral (f receiving), fingering (f receiving), insinuation of past abuse (but nothing explicit or even saying what happened), mention of abandonment

Project: @btscreatorscorner March workshop with the theme push the limits

Summary: how to care for your hybrid, or 5 times you cared for bunny hybrid!Jungkook and one time he took care of you

A/N: So this was supposed to be a drabble and it turned out to be a 5k fic. Alright. This was written for this month’s workshop for BTS Creators’ Corner network, and the theme was to push the limits. I had never written a hybrid fic before, so I interpret the theme as coming out of my writing comfort zone (even though it’s still smut...) Thankssss to my lobely lobely betas, @heejinnien for beta-reading the sfw parts of this fic, and to @taegularities for beta-reading the nsfw bit :3 I love you girls ♥

You can find the sequel here.

1. Provide them with a comfortable home

You still remembered the day you had brought Jungkook home from the shelter. You had gone with a friend, just as a companion, not intending nor really wanting to adopt a hybrid. Sure, you’d feel lonely sometimes, living by yourself and in a foreign country, but the thought of adopting a hybrid had never crossed your mind. Adopting a plant? Sure. Adopting a cat? Maybe. Adopting a hybrid? Never. Until you saw him, that is.

The shelter was legit, your friend had said, having done her research. But the place still made you uncomfortable; the creatures, those people, inside the divisions - you refuse to think of them as cages - waiting for someone to help. You had to bite your lip to keep from crying upon seeing them, knowing it was a rescue shelter, and then your eyes crossed with his.

There was some magnetic energy in the air that had pulled you closer to his unit until you could read the informational pamphlet: he was named Jungkook, a rescue bunny hybrid. Your gaze had immediately shifted to the man again; he was only a couple of years younger than you, but there had been something about his gaze that almost hypnotized you. He had such wide, expressive, and round eyes glistening with moisture and paired with his ears drooping low on the back of his head, you could not resist it.

There would be a home inspection and you would need to get some provisions to fulfill all the exigencies, but you rushed to get everything together. They had provided you with a list of items to make the bunny hybrid comfortable and ease the transition, and you did not hesitate, deciding to worry about the credit card bills later.

And so you took him home. He had clung to you entering the apartment, slowly exploring the space and showing where he would be sleeping. At the shelter, they had told you the hybrid would need an appropriate bed, but you hadn’t felt comfortable just getting a bunny bed at the store, so you got him a real and human bed, wanting him to feel at ease enough to not need to shift into a full bunny to sleep - they had also told you he tended to do that, sleeping as a bunny because he did not feel comfortable in his hybrid human-like body.

You had gotten the basics necessary for the approval of the adoption, and then you took him to the store, letting him choose his own things. It would be a while until that wide-eyed, surprised look would leave his expression, even when you were alone at the apartment and just hanging out on the couch on a Sunday night. That first night, giving him the blankets and tucking him in, you promised to take care of him, and you could barely hear his voice in reply, so small and shy, even though he was much taller - and more muscly - than you. It did not feel right that he had to make himself so quiet and small if that was even possible, so you swore to yourself that you would do everything to help him come out of his shell.

And soon you would find yourself in the company of a very loud and boisterous bunny, no shame about singing, his love for gaming until late hours, and working out. And you could not avoid falling in love with him.

2. Make sure they are getting appropriate food

It was a Friday night, you got home tired after a long day at work, and you smiled to yourself, biting your own lip upon the sight that greeted you upon entering the apartment. A shirtless Jungkook, towel haphazardly thrown over his shoulders, his torso glistening with sweat from working out in your living room. He lifted his head upon hearing you enter, a big smile lighting up his face and his long ears pointed up. He got up and made a movement to hug you.

“Hi, noona!”

“Oh no, you don’t,” you barely ducked out of the day. “Jungkook, you’re sweaty…”

He was faster than you, predicting where you were going to dodge his new attempt at enveloping you with his arms, something he had been picking up whenever you joined him in a boxing workout. His arms quickly went around your body, pressing you against him, your forearms up in the failed endeavor of avoiding getting his sweat all over you. He hugged you tight, his chin resting on your shoulder and you felt one of his ears on your head as his entire body seemed to tremble, and as you looked down you saw his tail wiggle from side to side rapidly.

“You’re finally home,” he sighed, swaying you softly from side to side.

“Is everything okay, bun? I’m sorry I’m late, they had me stay…”

“I’m so hungry,” you could almost see the pout, knowing the small lisp that came out whenever he pursed his lips and whined.

You looked around the living room, seeing the empty protein shaker bottle on the coffee table, narrowing your eyes.

“Didn’t you have your shake? You were working out.”

“Well, I did…” he started.

“We went grocery shopping and there are still some veggies and fruit cut up from our weekend meal prep, bun,” you felt him hiding his face even more on your shoulder, squeezing your body. “What’s going on? Am I forgetting something?” There was a slightly teasing tone in your voice, knowing what he wanted.

“You promised…” his voice was a mumble, muffled by the way his pouty lips were pressing on your body, but before you could ask him to repeat, “You promised pizza night, noona.”

“I know, bun, I haven’t forgotten it,” you stepped away from him, looking into his eyes and seeing his demeanor change completely.

“Oh?”

“I made the order when I was stuck at a red light. I got your favorite,” you were about to continue, but was interrupted by his sweaty hug again, this time accompanied by a chuckle.

“Ok, we have just enough time to shower before it arrives, so let’s run and get ready.”

You were right and there was just enough time to quickly wash the day - and Jungkook’s sweat - away. You set up the coffee table while he went to get the pizza, knowing it would be hot and he would almost drop it entering the apartment as usual. You sat side by side on the floor in front of the small table, turning the television on to the show you have been binging, your backs propped up against the sofa.

Jungkook was usually very strict with his diet, being mindful of the food he ingested to maintain his physique and try to lower his body fat percentage - which was crazy to you, his muscles were already prominent and he seemed to get only bigger… how were you supposed to leave the house to work when you had your bun looking like that, especially early mornings, his hooded half-open eyes almost smiling at you wishing you a good day at work. Your fridge was always full of fresh and cut-up vegetables, fruit, and greens, catering to his diet (and you had to admit you have been eating much better since he entered your life). Sometimes you thought it was all his difficulties from before, his time spent in the shelter, that he had such a love for a cheesy hot pizza every once in a while during the weekend.

And how could you say no to him when he purposefully lowered his ears, pouted, and widened his big round eyes even more to convince you?

3. Explore new things together

“Come on baby, you said you wanted to try this. It’s just us now.”

“Y… yes, noona. It’s just so… big.” Jungkook’s eyes were wide open, looking at the size of the pool in the club. For as much of a muscle bunny he was, the sheer magnitude of the pool seemed to scare him.

He first brought up the idea when you were watching tv a few days ago, some random program late at night showing people on a beach, and Jungkook had seemed to be fixated on the screen. He wanted to visit the sea, for he had never been there before. You agreed to it, but you had to admit that you were scared too, so you compromised: you would start your water adventures at a pool, so he could test things out, see if he truly enjoyed being in the water and swimming.

A few calls later there you were, standing by the water. You picked a time when they said people weren’t usually in - it even involved getting a day off work so you could go this early, but you would do everything for Jungkook. You looked at him, observant, watching his reactions carefully. His ears were down the back of his head, his hands clenched together in front of his shirtless torso, his front teeth worrying into his bottom lip. You took one of his hands into yours and started taking him in the direction of the small ladder to enter the pool. For a moment you wanted to jump in, but you didn’t want to make him even more nervous.

“It’s okay, bun, we’re going into the shallower part so most of your body will be above the water, ok?”

He nodded, but still seemed hesitant to get in, waiting for you to do it first. You stepped down the small ladder, showing him that almost half of your body was above the water, that he would be safe and didn’t need to worry about this part. The water was on the warmer side; you thought going for the hot pool was the best idea to help him feel comfortable at first. He stepped in feet by feet, slowly, his nose scrunched, but the moment he felt the warmth on his feet it was like magic: his ears shot up and his eyes widened in surprise, his mouth coming into a small circle.

You smiled encouragingly and stepped back, giving him some space, seeing him put one of his feet to the bottom and then the other, grounding himself. He was taller than you and he noticed the difference in the level of the water surrounding you. You lowered your body, telling him you were doing it first so as not to frighten him and submerged yourself to get your hair wet. When you emerged, you saw his eyes were wide again, but his ears were not down as before. There was a glint of curiosity in his expression and you nodded in encouragement for him to try it out.

“It’s just like when you wet your hair in the tube, bun. Here, hold on to my hands and remember to hold your breath.”

He did so, holding them tightly in his fists as he bent his knees and lowered his body. You chuckled slightly when you saw that half of his ears were still out of the water, so you quickly untangled one of your hands from his and lightly pressed on them so they were submerged too. He got up and shook his head, water droplets flying everywhere. He started laughing when he saw you put your hands in your eyes, and you couldn’t help but laugh along with him.

“Good?”

“Yes, noona, it’s good.”

“Are you ready to go a bit deeper?” His long ears perked up at your question, but his face seemed apprehensive. “Not much, we’re not swimming today, just going a bit more so you can maybe try floating.” His head moved up and down, agreeing to the idea, and you couldn’t help but think it was so cute the way his ears moved too.

You grabbed both his hands again so you were looking at each other as you slowly started to step back further into the deeper part of the pool. You didn’t rush, letting him adjust to the increasing level of the water, and only moved when he seemed comfortable. Jungkook always loved to have baths, so you figured he would love going to the pool too, especially a hot one. His smile got wider with each step, feeling more confident and safe with you. When the water hit your shoulders, you stopped and let his hands go.

“Bun, let’s try floating, ok? We’re starting small today, so you can just come closer and put your arms around my shoulders.” You said as you turned your back to him, and almost immediately you felt his arms around you. “Good! Now try letting your feet rise from the floor, let your body float a little.”

He tentatively lifted his feet, clinging to you harder as his body moved with the slow slushing of the water.

“I’ve got you, Kook,” you said as you pressed your hands to his. “I’m not letting go. Trust me, bun. Kick your feet back and put your weight on me.”

You felt him kick the water behind you, his strong arms flexing as he let his weight fall onto you. You knew the moment he started to float and enjoyed it; he pressed his face against your neck and started giggling, and when you looked at him, his nose was scrunched with happiness. His long ears were slightly facing backward, his eyes half-closed, and his little tail wiggling. You walked around the same area of the pool while he kicked his feet behind him, laughing freely as he enjoyed himself. As soon as you taught him to swim you would be taking a small holiday on the beach; you wanted to see this joy in him forever.

This moment was worth everything.

4. Make sure they are getting enough attention

“Morning, noona.”

You heard his voice, so gentle and still thick from sleep, waking up to the sound and the small kisses, his lips softly pressing against the back of your neck, his nose smelling your hair, his warm chest pressed against your back. You made an attempt to move your body but he tightened his arms around you.

“No moving yet, noona.”

“Morning, bun. What are you doing?”

“Just making sure you’re not going to leave my arms today,” he started, and you noticed his voice was heavy with emotion.

“Bun?”

He stayed quiet, hiding his face on your shoulder blades, and you did not say anything else until you felt it, until you felt them. There were small droplets of tears falling on your skin, and you turned around quickly to look at him fighting his embrace. Your hands immediately went to his face, wiping his cheeks, seeing him close his eyes and just quietly crying. Whenever he got like this, he would usually be quieter, needing to talk in his own time, so you did not ask him anything else, giving him space to let his feelings out. All you did was press your forehead against his and wipe his tears with your thumbs, and when you saw he would not stop so soon, you hugged him, letting your shirt dampen without caring about it. The moment you cradled his head against your chest, sobs started to wreck his body, making him shake and you could feel tears gathering in your own eyes. You had no idea how long you were like that, slowly caressing his hair, minding his long ears, but all that mattered was Jungkook. Slowly you felt his body starting to shake less, his hard sobs turning into small hiccups as he almost clawed at your back, needing to be closer to you.

“You’re… you’re not leaving me, right, noona?” His voice was quiet, but his question was too loud in the silence of the bedroom on a Saturday morning.

“Jungkook… no, love, I’m not leaving you,” your heart started to crackle with this question, and you pressed him against you even more. “Why, why do you think that, bun?”

He sniffled, pressing his nose against you and inhaling deeply, then said, his tone still small, “I’m feeling lonely… this past week…”

“Oh, Kook…” it seemed impossible, but you held him even closer to you, “I’ve been just too busy and exhausted from work, I know I got here yesterday and you were already in bed… I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”

He sniffled again and you felt a new wave of fresh tears wetting your clothes.

“I thought…” he started, but his voice faltered. “I thought I made you mad. I thought you were angry at me… and that…” there was a small sob that shook his entire body, “I was scared, noona, I was scared you were going to take me back.”

You could not stop your own tears from falling on top of his head; you had no idea he had felt that way. You had tried texting him during the day whenever you could have a moment for yourself at work throughout this insane week, but again and again, they demanded more hours from you and you did not have the chance to say no. Jungkook was still finding his freedom and footing in the world, and it had worried you that you had to leave him to spend more time by himself than usual. But you never expected this reaction, and you made up your mind. They could ask someone else at work, why did it always have to be you?

“No, Kook… Listen, bun,” your voice trembled, so you paused to be more stable when talking to him. “I’m so sorry you were alone this week, this is not going to happen again, I promise. And the day you came home with me I made a promise, remember? I’m never taking you back unless you want to go.”

He shook his head quickly, signaling his opposition to the idea.

“I don’t want you to go either, bun. I love you, and I’m sorry again.”

He finally looked at you, murmuring I love you too, a small smile gracing his lips. Your chest was starting to feel lighter, starting to relax after being so worried at his crying. You had never seen him like this, and you never wanted to see it again.

“What do you need from me, bun?” you said and kissed his forehead, letting your lips linger for a brief second.

“Can we just… stay in bed today? I want to stay like this in your arms, I missed you too much, noona.”

“Whatever you want, love, I’m yours.”

“I never want to leave this bed,” he whined, burrowing closer to you, and you noticed that even though his face was swollen from the tears and his voice was hoarse, his ears were more relaxed than they were before; they were tense in a way that was new to you.

“What about food? And I’m sorry, you’re not using this bed as a toilet, ok?” you tried to lighten the mood and it worked, the sound of his delightful chuckle filling the room, and you laughed along. But you understood and agreed. You never wanted to leave this bed. And at least for the day, you would only leave when necessary, needing to feel him in your embrace and carefully observe as he truly started to believe in you, leaving his worries in the past.

5. Love them unconditionally

The first time it happened was purely accidental. You were cuddling on the sofa, watching television, your hand caressing his hair when you felt his entire body tremble with such force that you stopped and looked at him, your hands away from him.

“Jungkook, bun, what… did I hurt you?”

You were worried; his arms were crossed in front of his body and his hands clasped together tightly on his lap. His doe-like eyes were more expressive than ever, open wide, his long ears were down, and he seemed to still be shivering. What had you done? You noticed there was a pink hue starting to tint his cheeks and neck and when you kept staring at him, you saw that he tried to make himself smaller. You felt tears start to gather in the corners of your eyes, fearful that you had done something to remind him of his life before, as he usually referred to the time that preceded the shelter.

“I’m sorry, Jungkook. I’m so sorry, just tell me what I did so I don’t do it again.”

“You didn’t…” he started, his voice slightly higher-pitched than usual. He cleared his throat and continued, his eyes wandering around the living room, “you… I…”

You nodded, trying to encourage him to speak, needing to know what went wrong.

“Noona… my ears… my bunny ears, they’re, hm, too sensitive,” he said, blushing harder, and he shuddered.

Oh.

Oh. Your gaze shifted downwards, and you could see his hands were trying to conceal his erection. You licked your lips unconsciously, and his eyes seemed to get even bigger.

“Bad sensitive or good sensitive?”

He looked down at your question, clenching his hands and pressing them on his crotch, but said “Good sensitive, I think?”

You scooted a little closer to him on the couch but still did not touch him. “Talk to me, bun,” you said softly, feeling that the subject was delicate, but you wanted to know whether or not to bring it up again, whether or not you could touch him like that.

“Noona… no one ever touched them like this before, like you,” he seemed hesitant, but continued nonetheless, “you don’t hurt me. You like it, you like me, right?”

You did not think twice before enveloping him into a hug, pressing him tight against you, overwhelmed with emotions at his question.

“I love you, Jungkook. Every part of you.” You had a feeling that this was what he needed to hear. It was not often that you saw him being insecure anymore, and it tugged on your heart uncomfortably. “You don’t ever have to feel bad with me, ok? I love you,” you repeated, emphasizing, trying to comfort him.

“I love you too, Y/n,” his voice continued soft, but he looked a tiny percentage more confident. “I think… at some point… maybe…” he looked at you, and you nodded again for him to continue. “I think I might want you to touch them when we’re, you know,” he wiggled his eyebrows up and down, chuckling, and there he was, getting back to you.

You laughed with him. It was unusual seeing him this shy in talking about sex, as he was definitely not shy at all performing it or even talking about it most of the time, but you understood this was a different issue.

“Only if it will make you feel good, bun, you know I don’t want to hurt you or make you uncomfortable,” you took his hand and held it, caressing the back of it with your thumb, and he nodded.

The next time it happened was not accidental at all, and it caught you by surprise.

You were already in bed, whispering sweet nothings as sleep didn’t reach you. The kiss started innocent enough, his lips pressing softly against yours while his hands stopped at your lower back, pulling you towards his body. His tongue caressed your lower lip and you opened your mouth, deepening the kiss as you pressed your body closer to his. His leg nudged its way between yours, and shortly after he rolled over you, his underwear not able to conceal his erection and you felt it directly where you needed it as he grabbed your leg and wrapped it around his waist.

His kisses moved down to your neck, nipping and sucking, his hips subtly moving, stimulating you. You grabbed his hair as he descended, lifting your tank top, softly sucking on your nipples as his hands started to lower your panties. He wasted no time, licking your slit from bottom to top, pausing to circle your clit before putting his lips around it and sucking rhythmically as one of his fingers teased your opening, slowly moving in and out. It wasn’t long until you felt your orgasm building that your hands grabbed his hair, pulling him up and towards you.

“I want you in me,” you whispered against his lips, tasting yourself, you needed to feel him.

He nodded and quickly removed his underwear, throwing it haphazardly behind him. He moved back between your legs, lowering his body on top of yours as you crossed your legs on his waist, helping the angle. His cock started to press into you and you felt the delicious stretch, inch by inch. His thickness filled you perfectly; you could almost feel the veiny lines that adorned the underside of his cock pressed on your walls, and whenever his hips made those small sharp trusts, the upwards curve of his erection put some pressure just right where your sweet spot was.

It was sweet and slow, your mouths connected in a seemingly never-ending kiss, his hips moving without rush, the pleasure building unhurriedly and constantly, his weight on top of you heightening the feelings. You started canting your hips with his, your languid movements following his rhythm, and his hand reached to yours, intertwined your fingers. He broke the kiss, looking into your eyes as he directed your hand to his hair. You immediately entangled your fingers on his dark strands, tugging on it and he moaned, closing his eyes for a moment before opening them again and stopping the movements of his hips. Before you could ask what happened, he pushed your fingers from his hair, shaking his head softly and smiling. Still staring, he lowered his head and made your fingertips graze against one of his long ears, almost a ghost-like touch. You opened your mouth in surprise and let out a loud moan at the same time, as your first touch on that sensitive part of his made him snap his hips hard once against yours.

A shiver perpassed his body, probably due to the intensity of the touch, but he looked at you and nodded, and so you did not hesitate. Your other hand went to his head too, so you could gently caress his bunny ears; he trembled again but started moving his hips, this time with more urgency and small whines came out of his mouth in between kisses on your neck. One of his hands sneaked between your bodies, his thumb circling your clit, pressing on it, needing you to get closer, the intensity of his orgasm starting to overwhelm him. You were already close, so close to it, but you wanted him to reach his peak with you.

“Can I…” you pause to moan, feeling the edge approaching, “can I touch your tail too?”

He seemed so lost in the moment that you had to repeat the question, the need clear in your voice, and upon hearing it again, he did not hesitate in moaning out an affirmation, curious to see what it would feel like. You waited until you were at the brink of the precipice, your right hand going down his body, his back. And just as a sharp snap of hips hit you just right, snapping the coil of your orgasm, your fingers reached the fluffy tail. Feeling your touch, Jungkook let out a loud shout and stopped his hips, his cock deep inside you as you felt him pulse and his entire body trembled. He fell on top of you as aftershocks still ran through his figure, little high-pitched moans leaving his lips. You were not sure how long you were like that, legs entangled, your fingers caressing his back soothingly as your own body calmed down from the intense orgasm.

“Jungkook?”

“I’m…” he moaned out, “good. We’re doing this again as soon as I have control over my body, okay?”

You chuckled and he moaned for you to stop, the tiniest of movements overwhelming his senses. The next time you giggled at a comment he made, he turned you over, pushing your upper body into the bed and hoisting your hips up, and you certainly did not laugh anymore that night.

+1: Expect to be surprised by them

You heard the commotion outside on the street and you ran out of the apartment to the front door of the small building to see what it was about, and you opened it just in time to see Jungkook stepping out of the cause of the noise.

“Bun, what’s all this?”

“Oh hi noona! Surprise!”

It was indeed a surprise. This morning you had woken up and could not find Jungkook anywhere so you assumed he had gone for a run, but apparently not. There he was standing and waving at you in front of a camper van, a huge smile on his face, his long ears perked up. You could see your neighbors, Taehyung and his cat hybrid Jimin next to him, a sheepish expression on Taehyung’s face and a smile as big as Jungkook’s on Jimin’s lips.

“We’re going camping, noona!” Jungkook said as he approached you, enveloping you into his arms. “You’ve been so tired from work and now that you have a break, I thought we could go camping and have some fun…”

“Right now?” You asked, a little overwhelmed, but starting to get excited about the idea.

“Yes! Taehyung-hyung called up this place and rented the van, we got groceries, and Jimin even helped me pick a new coat for you, noona, I know you needed one.”

You felt your eyes tear up. You were so used to taking care of Jungkook and putting him in the first place that it was strange having someone take care of you like this. But this was Jungkook, you should have expected that. The day you brought him home from the shelter, he had said he would take care of you just as much as you would take care of him. You kissed him softly, pressing him against your body, and you whispered a thank you low in his ear.

“I love you, noona. Now let’s get your things ready, we have to get going, or else Tae-hyung said he is going to play all his old records in this player he brought the entire trip,” he stated wide-eyed and clearly hinting that he definitely did not want that.

You chuckled, knowing how picky Jungkook was with everything - his food, his clothes, his music. You took his hand and pulled him into the house, waving to the other boys at the front, signaling you would be out in a minute. You quickly packed a bag with Jungkook’s help and you waited as he got his camera and equipment bag, not forgetting the aux cord, set on not letting the other boys have control over the music.

What you would find only later on that evening is that for the first night, Taehyung and Jimin would set their tent a little far from the camp, giving you two some space for the date Jungkook had planned. A bottle of your favorite wine, Jungkook cooking a simple dinner by the fire camp, the bun’s eyes shining brightly as he scrunched his nose, and his small tail wagging slowly to the rhythm of a Frank Sinatra record under the moonlight.

Hope you enjoyed it and if you want to read more, how about finding out about the first time bun!Jungkook went to the beach?

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shihalyfie · 3 years

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Menoa’s background as a “genius kid” and how it influenced her mentality

I’ve covered Kizuna quite a lot on this blog, and since Menoa is the movie’s feature character, it’s only natural that I’d touched on her character and mentality several times in the process, but I’d never done a single organized analysis post on her. So let’s fix that!

I wanted to do this analysis particularly because a lot of the take-home regarding the movie’s theme and ultimate message depends heavily on understanding why Menoa’s conclusions of “adulthood is bad” and “partners disappear when you become an adult” are very specific to her own cynical mentality, and not the message the movie itself is trying to send. Admittedly, the movie probably wasn't doing itself any favors by delivering these implications in such a subtle fashion that it's easy to take Menoa's statements at face value because they’re quoted in the advertising and press material, and there’s no point in the movie where they outright deny her assertions in particularly explicit words (plus, the official translation is misleading on top of that), but when you look at Menoa’s background, the reason she’s written this way, the surrounding circumstantial evidence, and the way the movie frames it all in general, you can get a fuller picture of Menoa’s position and the background of what the movie is actually trying to say.

(Bonus: The end of the post also includes some information from a certain video game that seems ostensibly completely unrelated but actually has some interesting ways of enhancing this analysis.)

Some precedent from 02

Being someone who regularly deals with 02, a series that also has a frustrating tendency to have its meaning completely change depending on very specific important lines and easy-to-miss nuances, I have to say that of all the ways Kizuna resembles the original series, this was not a way I would have preferred...but in any case, Kizuna actually has a much deeper connection to 02 besides simply being a chronological sequel. I don’t think this necessarily makes 02 or its production background required reading for understanding Kizuna, as most of the relevant information is still presented in various ways in the movie proper, but since a lot of it is through some really subtle signals in both the dialogue and the visuals, it helps to have the backing of the prior series to solidify it further, especially since Kizuna is, after all, meant as a sequel to it.

I already wrote a lot about Kizuna and 02′s theme relationship in an earlier post, but I’m going to extract the important part that’s relevant to Menoa here:

I remember being shocked by an article in a newspaper about a 9-year-old boy who skipped grades into Columbia University in America, and that was how I came up with the initial idea for 02. “What would the life of an overly intelligent boy be like…?” What would be happiness be, what would his despair be, and would he be able to make friends? I steered it in those kinds of directions.

Adventure and 02′s original producer Seki Hiromi gave this statement in the 2019 DigiFes pamphlet (the same one where a lot of Kizuna prerelease information was being given out), and this is a story she’s told multiple times over the years, repeatedly, every time she’s asked about 02′s development (my earlier meta cited no less than five times she’d told this story between 2003 and 2019). This incident seems to have left such a strong impression on her that she kept clearly remembering this story all the way up to the time of development for Kizuna -- a movie she was prominently involved as a supervisor for.

The closest thing to an explicit parallel to this story within 02 itself is in 02 episode 9, when it’s mentioned that Ken would be interested in skipping grades like this if it weren’t for the fact that Japan doesn’t allow for skipping grades the way they do in the US. (Presumably why there are so many narratives out there that send characters off to another country when they want to have a grade skipper in their cast.) Ultimately, Ken, an eleven-year-old boy from Tamachi, was spared from this partially because of his position in Japan and partially because all of the characters involved came to the quick realization that none of this was working out -- but the sentiment behind condemning practices like this remains as one of the core themes behind 02.

Quite simply, 02 made a very clear point that “unreasonable expectations placed on children by adults will tear them apart,” and more broadly “life in itself is worth valuing, and it’s fine to enjoy life in itself instead of constantly pushing yourself to have a purpose or to fulfill others’ arbitrary standards.” Ken is the most obvious and prominent example, but there are many parts of the story that are encapsulated in this -- including Oikawa thinking he was being turned away from his dreams to go to the Digital World from being a "tainted adult", to BlackWarGreymon running around in circles trying to have a "purpose" in his life when in actuality everyone would have been fine with him even doing the most mundane of things, to all of the Dark Seed kids who gave up on their own personal dreams that adults presumably told them were too shameful in lieu of following in Ken's footsteps and trying to mold themselves into model students. And in the end, the happiest one out of all of them is Daisuke, the one who understands that it’s fine to do something as simple and low-reaching as running a ramen shop for his career, as long as it’s what makes himself happiest.

"Expectations and pressure” were already being correlated to the inability to “have the proper life of a child” even back in 02. During the many times Seki repeated the real-life story of the boy who skipped grades into university, she mentioned that her concerns were in regards to whether he’d be able to make friends without people his age, and whether he’d end up alienated from others around him. Because it’s true -- when you’re put on a pedestal as a “genius”, as a “gifted child” who apparently has advanced abilities, you end up treated with all of the expectation that you’re now as smart as an adult and should be treated as someone much older than your actual age. And they don’t mince words about its relationship to childhood and adulthood, either; Spring 2003 outright refers to the plight of Osamu (that Ken eventually inherited for a fashion) as “forced to grow up fast”, and in 02 episode 48, Oikawa refers to himself as a “tainted adult” who can’t enter the Digital World in 02 episode 48 because he felt that Hida Chikara cutting him off from the Digimon as a child meant that he’d lost his opportunity forever. (As we find out not long after, his inability to enter the Digital World did not have anything to do with his being an adult.)

Being subject to the expectations of adults, and being yanked away from the life a child ought to have -- being able to pursue what it is you want for yourself instead of tailoring yourself to what adults want of you -- ends up damaging your own inner self. We see the impact of this in many ways in 02 -- distorted personalities, frustration and anger, loss of empathy, and cynicism. Beyond just that, there’s also self-hatred and perfectionism, and holding oneself to unreasonable standards, like how the Kaiser and Oikawa actually harbor severe insecurity over not being “perfect” enough. But the finale is in response to all of that:

The exact phrase is “belief in the power to dream” -- or, in other words, to truly believe in your ability to get and do what you want instead of smashing out everything that’s not societally acceptable. That’s what’s considered the ideal that a child should be allowed to have (or, really, even an adult like Oikawa). Moreover, such a thing is given a direct correlation to the concept of a Digimon partner -- the Dark Seed children only get to see their partners once they’ve accepted what it is they really want to do and have the proper determination to pursue it, and Oikawa himself only meets Pipimon when he, too, realizes what it was he was missing and why his cynicism had been holding him back.

If Menoa had witnessed 02′s finale, it’s hard to believe she’d have the same mentality she had in Kizuna, because of how much of said finale directly answers most, if not all, of the major questions posed by the movie. She would have seen Oikawa, an adult, reuniting with his partner Pipimon, which should go against her idea that partners inevitably disappear in correlation with adulthood, and she’d see a whole ton of children actively learning that throwing aside your dreams for the sake of said adulthood is an unhealthy way to live, and that you can still live the rest of your life with determination. But we know for a fact that Menoa was most likely not present to witness this, because if you look at the timeline she gives for when Morphomon disappeared -- when she was fourteen years old and received permission to enter university, meaning early or mid-2002 -- she lost her partner right before all of the Chosen Children around the world joined in to assist and witness the events of 02′s finale in late December 2002. How interesting it is that her personal timeline seems to be so carefully tailored to prevent her from witnessing the known canonical incident that would pose the greatest threat to her ideology...

Moving on to Kizuna itself

When you think about it, if you really just wanted an antagonist who simply wanted to prevent partners from disappearing, you wouldn’t have to have a character with such a specific backstory of grade-skipping and being hailed as a genius -- it’s only natural that a lot of people would hate the idea of separating from their partners, and might do something as drastic in desperation. But Menoa’s motives seem to go far beyond just concern about the partner issue, because her justification about why partnership dissolution must necessarily go with adulthood is based on a very cynical view of adulthood to begin with.

Do all of you know why it’s children who are chosen to be partners with Digimon?… It’s because children are full of possibilities… The future is rife with limitless choices. You grow as a person by making those choices. “Growth” and “possibilities” together produce vast energy. As I’m sure you guys are already aware, the evolutions of your Digimon partners are triggered by your growth… When that power is gone… Your partnership with your Digimon ends.

(From this translation’s version of the speech.)

Recalling that Gennai never actually confirmed the whole concept of partnerships dissolving because of adulthood, only implying that it at least had to do with “possibilities”, this means that Menoa’s really the only one here who makes this specific correlation of “adulthood” and “making choices” to “losing possibilities” (Gennai, for one, seemed to be pretty open to the idea that an adult like Taichi should still be able to have them). Menoa concluded that adulthood deteriorates partner relationships because she thinks adulthood inherently damages people’s possibilities. This is why the “reveal” of her backstory during the climax of the movie is so important, because we see the exact sequence of events and train of thought that led to her coming to that conclusion -- a conclusion based on her own personal experiences, not necessarily actual truth.

Through flashback dialogue, we learn a lot about Menoa’s backstory in only a very short space of time -- her being hailed as a “genius” as a child indeed subjected her to the exact kind of unreasonable expectations that tore at everyone in 02. Finding herself ostracized by others, she decided that the solution would be to “hurry up” and become an adult, hoping that people would take her seriously and allow her to fit in better.

But as you can see in both her dialogue and the visuals, this race to become an adult is just her forcing herself into another box. Menoa undoes her braids, which were confirmed to be a direct reference to Anne of Green Gables (it’s very famous in Japan). But while Anne was a character with a very healthy relationship with her childhood and adulthood, Menoa undoes those braids in her attempt to become more “mature” and aim to fit in adult society. And in the process, she physically becomes more and more distant from Morphomon, saying that she’s going to become self-reliant and not need to depend on anyone.

And then, she cuts off the most important thing.

Waiting in front of the swing at her family’s home, where they’d always played together when Menoa was a child, was her beloved friend. Lately, she’d been studying so much that they hadn’t been talking to each other at all, so she wanted Morphomon to lavish her with praise. She wanted her to say, “Menoa, you’re amazing!” But Morphomon turned around and looked at her with a very lonely-looking face.

This is one of my favorite passages from the Shueisha Mirai novel, because while some of this was already implied visually and textually in the movie itself, this really just spells out what the problem was in direct words. Alongside all of those “things she’d had as a child”, she’d emotionally abandoned Morphomon, too. And when she did approach Morphomon again, she only went for the same thing she’d abandoned all of those other things for: struggling to get approval and validation from others. When she proclaims she’s going to be using her research to help the world, the phrase she uses is the idiom yaku ni tatsu, which carries a nuance of “being useful” -- she’s still only thinking in terms of how to force herself into a box to be accepted by society and adults’ expectations of her, and not necessarily doing it because it’s true to her own passion and dreams. She’s basically doing the opposite of what 02′s finale said would allow you to meet your partner -- so, naturally, it makes sense that this was the time she lost her own, and that Taichi, Yamato, and Sora would lose their partners after similarly emotionally abandoning theirs for the sake of pressure to become adults, rather than following something they really wanted.

So after losing Morphomon, Menoa goes ahead and attends Liberica. And, well, funny thing about Liberica...

...it’s a dead ringer for a certain university in New York called Columbia University. You know, the university that just so happens to be the same one that inducted that 9-year-old child whom Seki saw the story of and freaked out enough to create the entirety of 02 about, in order to make the point that forcing children into adult expectations too early will really screw them up?

Let’s put it this way: Menoa is the one here who’s convinced herself that she lost Morphomon when she became “an adult”, but she’s the one who made that assessment because of her idea that being admitted into university constitutes being an adult, even if she was only fourteen years old. No matter how “mature” a fourteen-year-old may seem, even if they’re an apparent genius, a fourteen-year-old is not an adult and should not be expected to carry the expectations that would normally be imposed on one. In the end, her logical conclusion of “losing a partner comes with adulthood” can only be said to be based on her extremely warped perception of life and adulthood as a whole, rather than how adulthood is actually supposed to work.

We don’t know a lot about Menoa’s life at Liberica as per her own testimony, but considering the university she went into and Seki’s relevant concerns, it’s easy to surmise a few things. Entering university at the young age of fourteen means that it’s very unlikely she’d have any friends she’d really connect with; indeed, by the time of Kizuna, her assertions carry a fairly obvious implication that she hadn’t made any friends or gotten any emotional support from others about this, a very dangerous position to have in light of 02 (and, by proxy, even Adventure)’s consistent stance that proper emotional support and friends are some of the most important things to have. For all she’d been working to be accepted by others and praised, it’s unlikely she got any more than the shallow adoration Ken got by the public in the early episodes of 02, rather than what she really needed. I’d be surprised if any of her significantly older “peers” in university would even feel comfortable connecting with her or treating her as anything other than a kid due to her status as a much younger person with, despite everything, a much bigger difference in mentality.

And when you look at her actions during the movie, especially as it approaches its climax, she ends up projecting all of her problems on others due to her presumed lack of connection -- her justification being “only I know what this feels like” (that is to say, assuming “I know better than all of you” and not actually getting others’ thoughts on the situation) -- and going as far as forcing her way on others. At the beginning, her claim that she was only responding to others’ wishes of wanting to stay in the past had some degree of water, but the part where things really get out of hand is when she starts forcibly capturing literal children, ones who aren’t very likely to even be old enough to have a concept of nostalgia yet, or maybe even adults who absolutely don’t seem to feel the same way as her at all (like, say, the 02 quartet). This is why I don’t particularly think all of this tinfoil hatting about 02′s production background or 02 itself is necessarily required reading to establish that Menoa’s theory of partnership dissolution and adulthood shouldn’t be considered entirely reliable to begin with, because I’m not sure we really should be trusting the word of someone with projection issues and a really distorted view of reality.

Moreover, here’s another important question: did Menoa ever bother to do any proper introspection when she made it to Liberica? She acts like she tried “everything” to get Morphomon back, but what it seems like is that she banged her fingers on the computer to get code running despite being in a universe where things like Digimon evolution and manifestations have always required epiphanies of the heart (and every attempt to force any of this “manually” has always ended badly). Perhaps you could call it “refusing to think like a child”, thinking only “technical” solutions will be her way out. In terms of her actual mentality, she locked down even harder on the idea there was no way out and that she’d robbed herself of “possibilities” or “potential” by her choices, which, ironically, basically does make the problem even worse, because she blocks off all of her possibilities and potential by staying in a mental loop of considering only returning to the past and staying there as a solution. She constantly says that she and Morphomon were always together before their separation and acts as if Morphomon was suddenly just ripped from her without warning, not even bringing up the fact that they’d been emotionally drifting prior to that. And then when she witnessed Taichi and Yamato getting their own rings, instead of, I don’t know, talking to them about their lives or if they’ve had any existential crises lately, she concludes that “the strongest team” getting the same problem means, yup, this is totally an adulthood thing and everyone’s doomed!

In the end, when Taichi and Yamato’s actions and reaching out to her get to budge just a little, Menoa sees a glimpse of Morphomon again, and what she has to say is “I’m sorry” -- which is confirmed in both novels (Dash X and Shueisha Mirai) to be her apologizing for her failure to realize Morphomon was there the entire time. She hadn’t considered that possibility that Morphomon was still there in some form -- she’d resigned herself to such a cynical mentality of “it’s all doomed and we’re all better off just never getting to that point in the first place” that other ways of seeing the situation hadn’t even occurred to her -- so, again, she’d been the one who cut off her own possibilities in the first place.

And, on the other end, when you see Ken -- who ultimately ended up completely falling apart at the age of eleven and was eventually spared in going in this direction thanks to the intervention of some friends and understanding parents -- talking about what he’d heard of her as a well-known genius as if it’s another interesting factoid, and not as if something similar had happened to him as a kid, you can see that someone’s moved on so cleanly from all of this that he can talk about it like it has nothing to do with him, unaware of the irony of just how relevant to him this is on the meta level. But given the great time he’s clearly having with his friends in Kizuna, that’s probably for the better.

A digression with a completely unrelated video game

This part’s just for a little fun. I’m a Digimon blog first and foremost, but recently, it came to my attention that a certain video game called The Caligula Effect 2 (originally released June 2021, a little over a year after Kizuna, and recently localized to English) features a character with an almost unnervingly similar backstory and character background to all of the points brought up above. This is to the point where, after looking into it further, it turned out that this ostensibly completely unrelated game might actually be extremely useful for helping explain what exactly led to Menoa's mentality and the social conditions around it, so I've decided to bring it in to help!

Note that I spoil the game below, so feel free to stop reading if you don't want to have to see that.

On top of the friends who gave me tips about looking into this game in the first place, many thanks to @Moxagita on Twitter for providing necessary info and screenshots for this writeup’s coverage of it! If you happen to be interested in the game or the series itself, I recommend checking out this guide she participated in writing with an introduction to the game and relevant content warnings. I obviously cannot claim to be a particular expert on this game right now, but my impression is that its fans are really passionate about it and eager to help others learn about it, so please refer to the guide writers if you have any interest or questions about the series.

The premise of The Caligula Effect 2 (which is somewhat borrowed and tweaked from its predecessor) is that people who have “regrets” in their lives are spirited away to a virtual world called Redo, where they’re allowed to live out a simulation of their life with their ideal appearance in which things had played out differently. So, in other words, if you have a thing in your life where you think “if I just hadn’t done that one thing, I’d be so much happier now,” you get to live a simulation of the life you could have had if you hadn’t done the one thing. Unfortunately, a virtual simulated world is still a virtual simulated world, and an imperfect one at that, so the main party members, the “Go-Home Club” (a pun on a common pejorative usually used for students who fail to make any school club attachments and just “go home” every day after school), get together in an effort to dismantle the virtual world and escape.

One such member of the club is Ryuto, a middle school student hailed as a “child genius”. He noticeably tries to come off as more “mature” than his age should suggest, refusing to be treated as a kid, to the point he even seems to be a bit pretentious to some. And, eventually, when you (the protagonist) get to know him better, he reveals his “regret” that landed him in here in the first place, which covers some concepts that anyone who’s read the above may find to be unnervingly similar...

Ryuto’s regret is making a “choice” to enter a university prep school, because he believes that “choice” robbed him of a ton of possibilities, and generally felt that every “choice” he was making was causing more and more of his “possibilities” to dwindle, and because of that he’s wasting his potential and won’t be able to reach expectations. Wait, isn’t that exactly what we just talked about? He’s basically saying what Menoa said, right down to the specific choice of words!

Why does an unrelated video game have such striking similarities to Kizuna in this respect, right down to wording? I don’t think it’s coincidence -- not because the production backgrounds behind the two works are related per se, but rather, because this is a real issue that affects real people! That’s why I’m capable of speculating so much about the exact kinds of things Menoa went through despite only having the limited amount of canonical information I have, because this is such a common pattern and plight forced on those who get designated as “genius” or “gifted” kids that you can (rather unfortunately) predict it like clockwork, and both Kizuna and this video game are works intended to be relatable for the people who have gone through such hardships.

Ryuto’s a little more levelheaded and self-aware than Menoa, and moreover The Caligula Effect 2 has the luxury of being a long RPG instead of a fast-paced 90-minute movie, so we get to see him actually give a proper, drawn-out elaboration as to why he came to this conclusion. He likens it to effectively an intellectual version of “noblesse oblige” -- he’d been born with intellectual ability above that of the average person, which makes it his “duty” to serve and make most productive use out of those abilities for the sake of other members of society who aren’t nearly as privileged.

While there’s definitely some differences in nature between his issue and Menoa’s or Ken’s (Ryuto also states that part of this comes from his family being somewhat wealthy, so economic privilege is in play as well, whereas this wasn’t really implied to be as much of a factor in Menoa’s or Ken’s families), the point is that “gifted” or “genius” kids like him are very often told that they have so much potential that they shouldn’t be squandering. It’s a big reason as to why people in this situation end up constantly crumbling under pressure, terrified of failure, and perfectionist, because every single bit of failure is treated as “wasting potential” or “not being as good as you could have been”. Even the word “gifted” in itself carries this kind of nuance, as if you were magically bestowed a blessing upon you during your birth, which you must now exercise your gratitude for by contributing to society with those blessings. This is the kind of rhetoric that Menoa, Osamu, and Ken are very likely to have been utterly surrounded by once they were recognized as “geniuses”.

And it all ends up having a correlation with the sort of “inevitable fate” sentiment Menoa has during Kizuna, and why making choices is correlated to eliminating possibilities rather than treating everything as infinite options going forward. In a situation where you’re constantly pressured to live the Objectively Best Life Possible, it’s only natural to get into the mindset that there’s only one right way to live, for which you either succeed or fail, and that the outcome of your life is something determined for you that you can’t escape from. So by this logic, choices are bad because they keep eating away at that oh-so-important potential for someone who’s been expected to be some superhuman who could do anything since their birth -- and that’s why Menoa fixates on that concept of “fate” (shukumei), the idea that everything in her life is just trudging towards inevitability and something that others decide for her, and that the only way to escape it is to stay trapped in the past and refuse to walk towards it.

And, speaking of staying stuck in the past: Ryuto’s story also contains the same correlation of “childhood” and “adulthood” as the one presented in 02 and Kizuna. In the virtual world of Redo, a lot of its denizens are adults taking the appearance of high school students due to the romanticization of high school as the ideal part of one’s youth, but Ryuto’s a middle school kid in the real world and a middle school kid in Redo, because he’s terrified of growing up. The expectations placed on him are so high that he’s fearing “failure”, or wasting his potential by becoming a “failed adult”, so even the passage of time scares him and he’s trying to delay the need to grow up so that he doesn’t have to face his fear of making choices. Sound familiar?

So what’s the resolution to all of this? Ryuto bears witness to his fellow members of the Go-Home Club -- “failed adults” who aren’t even in a good situation in life anymore -- chatting happily and clearly having a lot of fun. Sure, they’re not living up to their maximum potential, but they’re getting a lot more fulfillment than he is, and observing them makes him realize that he’d be a lot happier if he allowed himself to be happy in a similar fashion. Even if he doesn’t somehow maximize his potential, he can still have a happy, fulfilling life, and approach it the same way everyone else does: not knowing what might be in store for him in the future, and taking it on anyway, seeing it as something going forward instead of some impossible goal that he’d probably never be able to realistically reach.

Over the course of the game, Ryuto eventually resolves to become a doctor who can treat cases currently considered impossible, choosing to believe in his infinite potential and future, because of people around him he cares about who would need it. It’s still a huge hurdle, and it’s still something that involves contributing to society, but it’s something he wants to do and has an personal, emotional stake in, not something that anyone particularly asked him to pursue. It’s not like he resolved to take the easy way out; rather, it’s simply that he’s reframing it to prioritize his own reasons for doing things, and doing it out of choice instead of inevitability.

It’s the kind of way of life Motomiya Daisuke would be proud of -- even if it’s not something society expects of you, or even if it’s not the single most ambitious thing you could be doing, you should do what makes you happy, and what you want, genius or no. And when you do find what you want to do, that’s when you should have the determination to pursue it with everything you have, even if it means overcoming intimidating-looking odds, but you’ll be much more likely to find happiness that way because you’re doing this for yourself and your own dreams. Menoa’s big mistake was believing that humans only have a limited number of futures with a limited amount of time, treating everything like a set future where everyone has to get as far as possible within it, instead of the reality of looking forward into the future.

#digimon #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #menoa bellucci #the caligula effect 2 #shihameta #kizuna spoilers

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thera-daydreams · 3 years

Text

INDAY

± A Trese Fic ±

[Crispin/Basilio/Maliksi/Dominic x Skymaiden!Reader]

01: Noon at Ngayon (✓)

02: Ang Kambal na Anak ni Datu Talagbusao, Diyos ng Digmaan (Link)

03: Ang Prinsipe ng Mga Tikbalang (Link)

04: Ang Pinuno ng Mga Aswang (Link)

05: (Link) 06: (Link) 07: (Link)

01: Noon at Ngayon

Back then, long before you were born, your mother used to work as a katulong of the Trese Family and was very close to its matriarch, Miranda Trese. Coming from the province, she was no stranger to superstitions—even more so after knowing the work of Miranda's husband Anton Trese, who was actually the Babaylan-Mandirigma of Manila.

Years later, after giving birth to you around the same time Miranda gave birth to her twins (one a stillborn, unfortunately), it was you and Alexandra who became best buddies instead, as different your personalities were. You two had practically grown up together and you yourself heard countless stories of the supernatural from your Tito Anton. It wasn't that hard to believe when he and his sigbin companions would sometimes come home tracking blood prints on the floors (which you'd helped your mother clean up). Heck, you'd even met Señor Armanaz, the Great Stallion himself and the ruling tikbalang of the Armanaz herd. That pretty, white-haired diwata seemed extremely fond of you, too, which was evident when you'd sneak in with Alexandra to Tito Anton's meetings and she would smile (even wave) at you happily.

You had absolutely no idea why the fae-like lady was so nice to you, but you weren't complaining at all!

However, in spite of your experiences with the supernatural, you and your mother always believed that you were normal humans. In actuality, that was who you were for the majority of your childhood. It was only until Miranda herself saw a vision of you—a much older you—fighting the monsters of the Underworld alongside her own daughter. During dinnertime, Miranda told your mother that she saw you blessed by the heavens with powers that would aid in the battle against evil.

It sounded absolutely ridiculous, right? Yeah, your mom thought so, too.

Your mother only laughed it off as she placed a steaming bowl of tinola in front of Alexandra's brothers, who instantly dug in like they haven't been fed in years.

"Boys! Dahan-dahan lang," Anton reprimanded his sons. "Or else you'll choke and the soup will come out of your noses!"

"Okay, Papa."

"Grabe ka naman, Miranda. I doubt that anything like that's going to happen to my daughter," your mom chuckled, watching your little hands try to feed Alexandra with a piece of chicken. "Unlike you guys, our lineage isn't anything special. Ordinaryo lang ang lahi namin."

Miranda sighed, looking at you and her only living daughter enjoying your time being kids, "I guess you're right. Baka panaginip lang talaga 'yun."

Anton glanced at her knowingly. Although he was aware that you and your mom didn't dabble in magic or anything like they did, he knew that whenever Miranda—one of the Seven Seers—had such vivid dreams, it was something of great importance. But he decided to say nothing, understanding how much your mother wanted to let you live as normal of a life possible in this household.

That was when you were seven years old. One year later, Miranda died fighting against a group of aswang who decided to betray Anton. Said man found the eight-year-old Alexandra hiding in a corner behind the waterfalls, scared and holding Sinag close to her heaving chest as she tried to hold her tearful sobs in.

Of course, a few days later, you and your mother attended the funeral with the mourning Trese family. All the brothers had done their best to stay strong, especially for their little sister who didn't fully understand yet what just happened. Little you ran towards Alexandra, holding her hand tightly as her mother's casket was lowered. Around you were various comrades, both human and non-human, paying their respects to their bereaved allies.

That day, as you turned your back to return to your mother's arms, you knew you would never forget the feeling of numerous unearthly eyes following your every movement.

Even they could sense that there was something about you, a so-called regular human child. You smelled human and had the aura of one, but there was something they couldn't place. It was like a tiny rock getting into your shoe, not coming out at all.

Much changed after that, but you and Alexandra remained close together. To your dismay, just after you graduated elementary, you and your mother had to move back to the province to stay with your sick grandparents. The last thing you could remember was kneeling in the back of the car, looking sadly through the rear windscreen as Alexandra and her brothers waved goodbye to you.

More than a decade had passed since then. You used to write letters to Alexandra, but after Hank told you she had to undergo the trials of the Puno ng Balete, you haven't heard from her (although Hank did disclose that she'd managed to come home safely, which was a great relief to you). You didn't blame her; you knew Tito Anton had passed away in the five years she was gone and that she had to take over the title of Lakan, as well as the Babaylan-Mandirigma of Manila. It was a demanding job! You remembered Tito Anton sometimes staying up all night—breakfast would be served and he would still be in his study, going over paperwork. On other days, he would be gone for consecutive nights handling cases all around Manila. You could only pray Alexandra was fine.

Your life had continued on, as well—you took care of your ill grandparents until they died, helped your mother in the province, went to a good highschool, then earned your degree in another prominent city that wasn't Manila.

Your mom actually recommended that you go to school somewhere else, given the constantly rising number of attacks in the capital of the country. And so you did. Life was hard, but normal until then.

The funny thing was that, when you reached the age of twenty-one, you finally understood why those supernatural creatures kept looking at you weirdly as a kid (and why Lady Diwata liked you so much).

What was even funnier was that the dramatic revelation came to you when you weren't in the Philippines. It was after you freshly graduated college, when you were traveling all over Asia to volunteer in charity projects. It was always your dream to one day expand your horizons not only beyond your province, but the Philippines itself, while also doing good in the world.

And here you were, walking that path you dreamt of.

The organization you luckily managed to become a member of provided everything you needed, and every few months, you would move from country to country. Because of that, you'd already been able to travel to so many places. First it was Thailand, then Indonesia, China, South Korea, India, Japan, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Malaysia, and currently, you were in Vietnam. Visiting those places was fun and gave you a whole new perspective of the world you lived in; it was a... learning experience, too.

Still, that incident happened when you were in Thailand, when you were the last one in the rented apartment balcony taping up the boxes for the donation drive tomorrow. Yawning, you cut more duct tape and stuck them to the open boxes tightly.

"Inday," someone said from behind you. You didn't bother turning around, thinking it was one of your fellow volunteers looking for you this late at night. Probably your roommate. She was the only one who usually called you by your nickname instead of your real name.

"Hmm?" you hummed, taping up more boxes. "Papasok na ako sa kwarto, Lyn. I just have a few more boxes to close. Alam mong mapapagalitan ako kung may hindi madidistribute bukas."

"Hindi ako si Lyn."

You paused, then slowly turned around, flinching at the sudden bright light that shone right against your eyes. For a moment, akala mo namatay ka na at hinaharap mo si San Pedro.

It was a glowing figure in white whose face you couldn't clearly see, which frightened you even more.

"Ay, mama!" you exclaimed, shielding your eyes and falling to your knees. Then, you gasped loudly, patting your body and panicking with closed lids. "Oh my God, am I dead? Nasa heaven na po ba ako?" Your lips wobbled. "Ngayon pa nga lang ako nakaalis ng Pilipinas... I haven't even done all the things I've wanted to do! Hindi pa ako nakapagpaalam sa nanay ko—aray!"

You'd felt something hit the back of your head. Hard. It was the glowing figure in white, but now you could see their unimpressed face scowling at you.

"Kalma lang, Inday. Hindi ka pa patay, pero makinig ka nang mabuti," they shushed you urgently (you weren't sure if they were male or female). "Do not be afraid. I am a messenger from the heavens, and I bear great news!"

"Great news...?" you trailed off, then your eyes widened excitedly. "Like, nanalo ba ako ng lotto? Isang milyon? Bilyon? Hala! Wait, is this a Mama Mary moment? I'm not ready to be the next immaculate conception!"

They glared at you, making you shut up instantly. "Sorry, I'll shut up now," you apologized with a mumble. This person (thing?) was kind of... strict. Whatever did you do wrong? You were just sleep-deprived and running on energy drinks (as well as kape).

"I have come to tell you that you are the vessel of the last skymaiden," they revealed, arms wide open. The light around them seemed to grow even brighter, making you squint. You felt like you were about the go blind! "Ikaw ang huling biraddali, Y/N L/N."

At ayun, zero brain cells remaining. Tunay na nagloading screen ang brain mo. Nag-error at nagcrash pa nga siguro, eh.

"... Ha? Ano?"

You blinked, completely speechless—as seen by how wide your jaw had dropped open. It wasn't that you were unfamiliar with the biraddali, it was just that you'd only heard of them once when you were just a young child. Your Tita Miranda had mentioned they were long gone from the world of the supernatural.

"Oh no, me? A biraddali? You're joking," you stuttered out, pointing at yourself. "Aren't they extinct or something? And, uh... not human?"

They nodded, "Yes. It is correct that everyone in the mystical world thought that the biraddali were long gone, even before the colonizers came to conquer the native lands. However, before the skymaidens all disappeared, the youngest and most powerful one among the seven sisters sealed her soul away to the rivers of time until the strength of a heavenly being was needed to help purify the evils of the world." The figure floated closer to you. "That last biraddali's soul, along with its corresponding power, traits, and knowledge, had chosen to reside deep within you the moment you were conceived."

Honestly, how were you even supposed to react? Your life was nowhere near ready for something like this. Was this a prank by your friends? Your colleagues? The light around this person seemed too authentic to be fake, though.

You stayed in shock for an entire minute, silent. The being in front of you only waited for a response.

"Ano 'to, Sailor Moon? Winx Club?" you whispered to yourself, before slapping your own cheek and scolding yourself. A stinging red mark was left on your face. "Inday, kakamanhwa mo 'yan! Nasosobraan ka na ata, matulog ka na!"

Sighing heavily, you rubbed your face tiredly, still in disbelief that you—according to this stranger—were apparently some old soul from a species of ethereal beings that were long gone. It sounded like something out of those reincarnation webnovels you got addicted to. What now, you were the MC? Wattpad ka, girl?

"Look, this is a mistake. I still have to wake up early tomorrow to give out the donations," you spoke to the glowing being (or whatever it was), laughing nervously. "I'm sorry, but I think you have the wrong person. Either that or I must be hallucinating from sleep deprivation, because I'm definitely not a divine creature. You're probably just a product of my imagination. Sorry, I'm going to bed."

Bang!

At that moment, the power in the building went out. The only thing you could see was the thing who assumed you were a biraddali (they were so bright they were like a flashlight in the dark for you).

"Brownout?" you blinked. It felt wrong, though. It was eerily silent. "Did a fuse blow up?"

"Nagsimula na ang iyong unang pagsubok, Y/N," they announced seriously. "Creatures of the dark have already begun to take over this building. You may not have noticed, but all throughout your life, you have always been helping and giving. It is your nature as a being descended from the heavens themselves, and now, it is time for you to accept your destiny."

"Hoy, sandali lang! Sandali, sandali!" You were absolutely wide awake now as you heard the sounds of strange whispers around you. It was terrifyingly creepy, much creepier than whatever you'd seen back in the Trese Residence (and you'd seen a lot in that house). You did not want to be a part of a horror movie-like lifestyle. "Don't I have a choice in this?! I—I don't have any training or fighting skills! Hindi ako Alexandra Trese o Babaylan-Mandirigma! I'm not ready for this, holy sh—"

The candescent creature raised a brow at you, "Inday, I just told you that you have the power of a lost mystical being. And tell me, if you had the power to save your companions in this building from the forces of evil, would you save them?"

You were silent, knowing the answer.

"Well?" they prodded.

You bit your lip, "Oo naman. I'm not heartless!" But you were a little impulsive. And apparently, insane.

"That's what I thought. I just need you to believe in yourself," the being encouraged, gentler this time. It transformed into something smaller and rounder—like a ball of light. "Ikaw ang huling biraddali, Y/N, at marami kang kapangyarihan. Isa dito ay ang pagtulong sa mga nangangailangan, lalo na laban sa masasamang nilalang."

Bestie, what had you just gotten into?

You swallowed apprehensively, then nodded in determination, "Sige. So, how do I save the people in the building? Biraddali were said to be able to shapeshift, right? If I remember the tale correctly. Oh my God, I can't believe this is happening to me right now."

"That's just one of your abilities, but I'll teach you. I'm actually your guide," they replied confidently. "With me, you'll be able to master your powers and exceed your capabilities in no time!"

"Wait! Anong pangalan mo?" you asked breathlessly, following them as they speedily flew out of the room. "Grabe, slow down! I'm not athletic! I haven't even exercised this week, goodness."

"... Gabay. Ako si Gabay."

Despite the adrenaline and fear running in your veins, you still grinned up at the ball of light, "Okay. Nice to meet you, Gabay."

This was just the beginning of your supernatural combat training abroad. When you returned to the Philippines three years later, you were stronger, faster, and more powerful than you'd ever felt before. It was crazy.

Oh, that guy who tried to rob you when you came back to Manila was crazy, too. The two identical-looking men in dark suits and white ties—you wondered how they were surviving the heat in that attire—could only watch in awe as you chased down that man who stole your bag while doing acrobatics and parkour.

"Uy, Kuya Crispin, sino kaya 'yun?"

"Ewan ko, Basilio."

"... She's kind of pretty. Type ko. Type mo rin ata."

"The more important question is, paano niya na nahuli ang magnanakaw?"

"Oo nga, no? One in a million chance 'yan dito sa Maynila, haha! Ang astig ni ate!"

(Next Chapter.)

± Author's Notes ±

Ayieee, type daw tayo ng kambal! 😌

How the hell did I write this entirely random thing in one day? 2k+ words? Ano daw? 😃⁉️

You know, this was supposed to just be a Trese one-shot or a bunch of drabbles for the characters I'm currently simping for... but it turned into a full-blown, shameless self-insert slash crackfic. Kakacellphone ko 'yan. 🤦‍♀️

Nagresearch pa ako ng articles about Filipino skymaidens because I wanted something similiar to the Japanese celestial maidens (tennyo). Very random idea but why not? Gusto ko ng badass Y/N na hindi takot lumaban sa mga mumu! 👻

Also, pagbigyan niyo nalang ang matandang 'to kasi ilang taon na akong hindi nagpopost ng mga writings ko. May track record pa naman ako bilang author na hindi nagtatapos ng mga fanfic, hehe. I also haven't read the comics so please forgive me for any inaccuracies and of course, misspellings/errors. Gusto ko lang matapos 'to para makakabalik na ako sa Jujutsu Kaisen. 🥲😗

Anyways, comments and constructive criticism are welcome! Hit those heart, reblog, and follow buttons for updates! Just comment if you want to be tagged in the next chapters. ❤

#trese #trese netflix #trese 2021 #crispin #basilio #maliksi #dominic #x reader #kambal x reader #crispin x reader #basilio x reader #maliksi x reader #dominic x reader #trese x reader #thera.writes

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unalivejournal · 3 years

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u mentioned only reading kripke era fic do you have a reclist 👀👀👀and if not could you link some of ur faves cuz the stuff that gets circulated the most right now is all like late late seasons fic and kripke era is my favorite too but im having trouble finding that many fics for it or even seasons 6-10 era which im fine with also. its just that like. the last five seasons were so bad that it makes fic generally worse too because people have to jump off of just Thee stupidest plot choices no matter how good their prose skills might be. but anyway yea if u have recs that would be awesome :)

hi anon i was thinking abt making a reclist and u just gave me the perfect excuse thank u

jess adamilligan’s kripke era fic recs

from making this ive learned that i never bookmark ANYTHING. sorry all of these r like….. 10k and under. i DO read longer fic but i don’t have any kripke era longfics bookmarked & tbh i prefer short oneshots

season one gen

disclaimer because it’s unfortunately needed: NONE of these are w*ncest! they’re all completely tagged as gen and i did not read them with the intent of consuming ship content.

Coaster Park by fogsrollingin, 10.4k, G, gen

Coaster Park had been experiencing an unusually high frequency of technical difficulties. Dean wouldn't have pulled a shift treating nauseated, heat-stroked, or dehydrated park-goers for that if he could've helped it, but when 'technical difficulties' were accompanied by rumors of things moving and stopping on their own in front of the operators' eyes, Dean had to throw down.

No historical tragedies or disasters in the area, ectoplasm, or EMF. Dean's only lead was a battered-looking kid that'd been coming to the park every day since it'd all started.

really interesting au fic! slightly ‘it’s a terrible life’. dean winchester is a hunter/EMT and sam wesson is a college kid destined to die on a roller coaster ride.

two basic motivating forces by sahwen, 7.8k, T, gen

He can’t cry, it’s not allowed; even as a child he was hushed into silence, whether his tears were from a long car ride or a late night or a raging fever. It’s never been an option, it’s never been an available outlet, and it’s not about to start being one just because he’s having an emotional breakdown on the bathroom floor.

Sam isn't only afraid of clowns.

BIG emetophobia tw (both for graphic depictions of nausea/vomiting and for the fact that this fic is about sam suffering from emetophobia) for this one but it’s my favorite sickfic. portrays anxiety over getting sick really well and is a fascinating examination of the different ways that sam’s fear of loss of control can manifest itself. also has lovely brothers content <3

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning (Remix of Just as Easy as 123) by nwspaprtaxis, 4k, T, gen

Dean’s functionally illiterate and Sam’s determined to remedy it...

PLEASE READ THIS ONE god it’s so sweet. dean never learned how to read properly due to his nomadic childhood and sam teaches him how.

dean/cas

Broadway Musical by Griftings, 9k, M, m/m

This is the day that marked the Holy and Blessed Union of Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle.

The merging of prominent bloodlines is always a grand occurrence, but breeding pedigree hunter families like Winchester and Harvelle is something to be rejoiced. It is also something to be meticulously planned, which thankfully the Host is very good at.

Or, the romantic comedy where Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle are destined to get married, Castiel is given the task of playing matchmaker and fails terribly, the entire Heavenly Host becomes a sitcom audience, God warns against male pregnancy, and Jimmy Novak is incredibly unimpressed with angels in general.

somewhat of a fandom classic and the humor holds up wonderfully. a very silly fic completed with commentary from angel radio throughout the entire thing.

Sappiest Season by dollsome, 2.7k, G, m/m

In which Dean and Cas have to stop an evil Christmas tree (like you do), and it requires a little fake couple action.

hilarious little s5ish fic. one of the first i read when getting back into spn. i don’t want to spoil anything but this is my favorite pick me up and i still giggle randomly whenever i think about it

The (Mostly Accidental) Courtship of Dean Winchester by tuesday

Angelic marriage rites were never intended to go quite like this.

another fandom classic. ik this one is recced a lot but how could i NOT include it. dean and cas get married (mostly by accident) and they’re huge cunts about it

the one thing in the galaxy god didn't have his eyes on by prufrock, 2.4k, T, gen + m/m

“Wait,” Dean says. “Let me get this right. You can fly, right—you can teleport—but you can’t drive a car?”

or, after the events of S5E03 "Free to Be You and Me," Dean teaches Cas to drive. Cas finds it stressful

im always a sucker for a good ftbyam fic. also i can’t drive so. resonation

So Says The Sword by komodobits, 85k, E, m/m

The briefing was simple: ‘Stand guard over the Michael Sword until the battle is ready to commence. Await further instructions.’

Castiel doesn’t mind working security duty; he was briefed shortly after the initial salvation of the Sword from the pit, and again before taking up his position. He knows what to do. However, it’s easy to forget that the green room isn’t real. Time moves differently there, the space ever-changing to make a prison of mountains, cathedrals, salt flats, orchards, and whatever Castiel was led to believe about Heaven’s greatest weapon—Dean Winchester is something entirely unexpected.

NO introduction neede. i think everyone on spntumblr has read this already but still. if you haven’t then i am demanding that you read it NOW. tbh i’m just adding this one so that i have at least one long fic here 😭

the weight by @myaimistrue, 3.5k, T, gen + m/m

“Do you…” Bobby sighs. “Listen, Dean, do you have something you wanna tell me?”

It’s the conversational equivalent of being punched in the stomach.

Or, Dean works through some things with Bobby's help.

WHEN I SAW THE USERNAME I GASPED I HAD NO IDEA THIS WAS U. anyway i Love coming out fics idk why i just do. the world is ending and dean comes out to bobby

canticles by 2street2car, 10.3k, T, m/m

“But you know something? If I couldn’t get you laid, at least I gave you a good first date.”

feat: footsies at a Ruby Tuesday, stargazing, the recreation of an iconic "Dirty Dancing" scene (no, not that one—the other one), and practicing for When You're With A Girl.

another ftbyam fic that skepticalfrog (i believe?) recommended a while back. made me feel at least 28 new emotions

Epilogue by JayneL, 28k, E, m/m

Bobby is here, swearing somewhere above and behind him; and Dean is here, talking about 2014 like it's a foreign country; and Sam is here, and is not Lucifer. Which means-- Bobby is here, swearing somewhere above and behind him; and Dean is here, talking about 2014 like it's a foreign country; and Sam is here, and is not Lucifer. Which means--

Cas is no longer when he was. Lucifer sent him back.

Coda to 'The End'.

2014 cas gets sent back to 2009, feelings ensue etc. i don’t remember all the details of this one bc it’s been a while but it’s really good

bonus

currently reading

Fragile As We Lie by perilously, 11k, E, f/f

Dragging Bela Talbot out of perdition isn't so much a decision as it is a frantic choice based on gut instinct. Her soul is bright, if fractured, and Anna yearns to do good again after the perversion of free will that immediately preceded her death.

Bela's no ordinary human, though; she's prickly and damaged and beautiful, and Anna doesn't want to leave her side. So maybe they can figure out how to navigate post-resurrection, post-Apocalypse-that-wasn't Earth together.

#sorry i took a few days to answer this haha #asks #anon #fic recs

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