#I think it kinda got lost along the way of all the grief and ryugaing

[andro-dino]

been thinking about ryoma and victoria again...... so i wanted to ask, how much does sakyo specifically remember of ryoma? since he died when he was pretty young, did his entire impression of him rely on victoria's memory? how much of ryoma did victoria tell sakyo, what did she say about him?

oghhhhh my god kurayami family,,,,,, now these are the questions.

In the timeline I have in my head, I’ve placed ryomas death around four years after Sakyo was born, so Sakyo doesn’t have *no* memories of him, but they are very minimal. They lived in their little cottage in the mountains for the duration of the domestic life they had together, so I think a lot of Sakyo’s early memories are of the area and nature around where they lived. Again in the timeline in my head, Sakyo ends up returning to that busted up old cottage after Victoria dies to try to find any remnants or answers that might have been left there, which is when he takes Ryoma’s dragon claw belt, so I think he remembers a lot of the area very vividly. I like to think that the three of them went out on a lot of walks and mini adventures together around the area. I like to think that sakyo remembers and thinks of his father as a caring, gentle person, especially given that a lot of the stories Victoria told about him were about how he used to be real tough and mean but softened up after he met her, though Sakyo did also pick up on how ryoma was hiding something early on as well. He had a lot of these far away looks and even when he looked at Sakyo with so much affection and pride, there was something else behind it that Sakyo never quite knew what to think of or how to describe, but it burned into his memory very vividly. He only gradually started putting together some of the pieces later on when it was just him and Victoria. Victoria spoke very highly of ryoma and talked a lot about his passion, his drive, how he loved them and how he always wanted to protect them and protect Sakyo and wanted the best for him. She talked about how he changed and grew so much after she met him and how they helped each other and supported each other because she earnestly wants Sakyo to have the best impression of him he can. She also did a lot to enrich Sakyo in his Mexican heritage and family, as well as what she could of his Japanese culture as well, since I think she would hold the belief that culture and heritage is very important as is, but also because she feels kind of bad that she can’t really teach him anything about the dragon clan since ryoma never even told her much about it himself. All she really knows is that they weren’t great and that ryoma needed to get away from them and never wanted to impart anything they taught him onto Sakyo. Obviously though, kids are curious, and especially being taught about his moms side of the family and all that but never his dads, he wants to know more, and Victoria feels so bad that she can’t say anything more than that Ryoma’s family weren’t really the best. Manga timeline gives them time to try to understand and seek out more information together, especially when Victoria finds out about and meets the shishiyas, but anime timeline, with just everything else and other priorities happening in mind, Victoria never really got the time to be able to give Sakyo any answers before she passed.

Beyond just being curious, Sakyo also feels that calling that is inherent to his dragon blood, and the gaps in his knowledge that ryoma left him with really only increase that yearning to understand more about who he is and where he came from in that regard (see Inai by tricot and how that is now a kurayami family song to me). If im thinking about this right, it would be around this time that Sakyo has heard a lot about Ryuga and I think would feel drawn to him in some kind of way, especially with the resemblance that he bears to Ryoma, and so it would be then that he goes out to his childhood home to find anything Ryoma had about the dragon clan n things left and starts out properly on his journey as a blader and receives dragoon and takes up the role of ryuga’s successor. I think it’s an odd kind of feeling for Sakyo because he really mostly only has fond memories of his father and what Victoria told him about him, but the kind of desperation that he feels to understand more of himself and knowing that that is a gap that was left in him because of ryoma, it kind of builds a kind of resentment towards him in Sakyo. He doesn’t like that he feels this way and part of him knows that it’s not entirely fair to think of him that way, but a lot of the grief that Sakyo wasn’t able to process manifests in a really bad blend of sadness and anger towards ryoma, which only ends up combined with the general kind of personality that he develops, both naturally and in part because of his idolization of ryuga.