#It's an integral part of him because sword rival; but come on; he can hold it lower Gosho

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[badass-queer-couples-battle]

Sword gays showdown preliminaries

Propaganda:

For Kazuma Asogi:

ok so he’s not CANONICALLY queer but it’s ace attorney. so… he does, however, canonically have a katana! a sword so integral to the plot it gives me shivers just thinking about it. the sword also has a name, it’s karuma (translates roughly to karma) and it gets passed onto the main character, ryunosuke naruhodo (who he calls partner), after kazuma (spoiler alert) dies in case 1-2. except (SUPER spoiler alert!) he isn’t dead! he comes back in case 2-3 and would you look at that he has ANOTHER SWORD, a more european sword (cause he ended up in england after his amnesia brain said he REALLY had to go to england). once he gets his memories back, ryunosuke gives karuma back to him and proceeds to use it to destroy the wax figure of his dead presumed serial killer dad (long story), and now he has, you guessed it, TWO SWORDS! for the next two cases he wears both swords at his sides, and also he broke the tip off of karuma attempting to murder someone (he didn’t actually murder anyone but still) and then turns out karuma’s hilt has the REAL serial killer’s will in it. very VERY important sword. in the end, kazuma gives karuma back to ryunosuke which is really symbolic but that’s besides the point, and they cross swords and it’s a whole big thing. 10/10 gay sword guy.

For Raiden:

Man catches knives with his heels and uses a sword to cut through robots 20 times his size

He's such a tragic character! Raised to be a super soldier from birth and is constantly being exploited by the government. As for the lgbt part him and his rival in the latest game he's in have so much tension it's unreal (gay). I headcanon him as trans too because he has a feminine figure, his voice gets more masculine as the series goes on (testosterone) and his entire body gets replaced with cybernetics (trans allegory...)

For Claudine Saijou:

Fights with a longsword! Should be number 1 for this line alone: “For heroes, there are trials. For saints, there are temptations. For me, there is you”, said to def not her girl crush but rival btw (stream Revue of Soul) Vote for my disaster theatre kid its what she deserves!

Her gay levels are off the charts. She has a homoerotic rivalry with another classmate (Maya Tendo/Tendou Maya) that is integral to her character, as she was always first until she met Maya. She’s also half-French, but that’ll be important later. When she’s looking at pictures of Maya stretching (to study her form of course) and another character asks her what she’s looking at, she panics, blushes, and says none of your business. Her and Maya have a heartfelt conversation while stretching with Claudine’s face pressed into Maya’s chest (between her stomach and breasts). Some art from a magazine has Maya pushing Claudine into a deep stretch, but it looks like something a lot different (Claudine blushing doesn’t help. Also I realized that there’s a lot of gay stuff related to stretching with these two).

During a two on two duel (I know it’s not a duel), they fight together. Not only that, but at one point they hold hands and take a pose typical of romantic partners in dancing. For no reason. They just pause and do it to show off. They aren’t even fighting. Anyways, when they lose, Claudine starts crying, not because she lost, but because Maya lost. So, of course, Maya starts speaking to her in French, with one of the things she says being “You’re cute even when you cry, my Claudine.” All of this is stuff that’s happened in the series (except the magazine thing).

Now for the gay stuff in the movie. Their duel with each other is so dense with sapphic undertones they can hardly be called undertones. For starters, the song that accompanies this revue is called “A Beautiful Person, or Perhaps it is.” While this title is incomplete, the director states that he wanted the watcher to fill it in and this removed the end of the original title. That title is “A Beautiful Person, or Perhaps it is a Love Song.” The duel is framed as a fight between a hero (Maya) and a devil (Claudine). Maya is in an outfit reminiscent of Renaissance Italy and Claudine is in a suit. Thus, Maya signs a contract giving her soul over to Claudine, as is the case with marriage. With her own blood, in the shape of Position Zero (an important symbol in the show), which happens to look like a T, for Tendou. After a few minutes of fighting, Maya disappears and monologues, appearing in a white dress. This means that Maya has signed her soul over to Claudine, and they are now both wearing a white dress and suit. Not beating the gay marriage allegations. Maya finished her monologue with “For heroes, there are trials. For saints, there are temptations. For me, there is a devil.” They continue to fight, Maya proclaiming herself emotionless and empty. Maya then cuts the medallion from Claudine’s chest (they wear medallions and you lose the duel if it gets cut off).

Claudine falls. Maya attempts to claim victory by stabbing her sword into Position Zero, which is then covered by steel doors. Claudine sits up and reveals she has another medallion in her mouth, which she does by sticking out her tongue in a uhhhh. Anyways, after a bit of back and forth, Claudine tells Maya that she’s full of arrogance and pride and envy and longing. She then says that “No matter how many times I die, I will revive! Tendou Maya! To beat you, my rival, into submission!” She then makes her stage entrance, taking Maya’s usual entrance speech and mocking it. She also says “I fill myself with exploding passion, now, and bash it into your heart!” After some talking, Maya makes her stage entrance, taking Claudine’s usual entrance speech and mocking it. Up until now, they have been playing characters, but still letting their own emotions shine through. Now, they are entirely themselves.

They begin to fight again, running downs white aisle before clashing swords, with Maya saying “Such an ugly, emotion drenched appearance-“ and is cut off by Claudine, who says “Show me more, Tendou Maya! Right now, you’re the cutest you’ve ever been!” To which Maya responds “I’m always cute!”  The song starts up again (duels are accompanied by songs), with Maya singing “With a grin of deception I’ll tear this piece of cloth.” Deception in Japanese is mayakashi, a reference to Maya’s name. Maya then sings “I want to show you my feelings becoming dyed in black.” Black is Kuro in Japanese. Claudine, in Katakana, is Kurodine, with her nickname being Kuro, so that line could also be interpreted “I want to show you my feelings becoming dyed in you.” Claudine then sings “Only me, always, forever,” before they sing in unison “You only need to look at me,” as they lock blades. Some fighting happens and they’re falling through the sky, holding onto each others clothes and Claudine says “Only I can make you lay everything bare!” To which Maya responds “I’ll expose my everything, on the stage!” Claudine shoots back with “There’s a partner you can expose everything to, on the stage!” At this point, there’s a short time with independent vocals for Maya and Claudine in addition to their talking. Maya has been singing “If I’m on the stage, if I’m in front of you,” for the last two lines of dialogue. Claudine sings “Be it ugly or beautiful,” as Maya sings “I will expose, anything and everything, all of me, all of me.” As this happens, Maya is saying “We love the stage,” which is continued by Claudine saying “And we can’t part from the stage!” Maya calls them both “Pathetic clowns!” To which Claudine corrects “No, rivals!” Maya says “If you’re there, I have to strive higher!” Claudine says “You make me even more beautiful! Maya!” Maya then yells “Claudine!” Claudine yells “For heroes, there are trials!” Maya continues “For saints, there are temptations!” Then, as one, their swords crossed, faces inches from each other, yell “For me, there is you!” Over top of this, their voices sing a line in unison: “Forever and ever, I’d like to cross swords with you.”

Claudine’s sword stabs through the contract, through the Position Zero in blood, which may be Maya’s family name, and Maya says as an aside “Saijou Claudine… You are beautiful.” Claudine cuts the medallion from Maya’s chest, finally beating her rival.

[breath-of-the-hobbies]

A Return to Darkness Ch. 2

(Chapter 2 of the fan-fic idea I’m playing with. Zelda awakens underground and attempts to find a way out, and Link has a bad day. Chapter 1 here.)

The smell was the first thing to break through Zelda’s unconsciousness. Judging from the acidic yet musty reek and the burning sensation all over her body, she had a bed of malice to thank for cushioning her fall. The darkness was so complete that she had to blink furiously to even be sure that her eyes were open.

She took stock, fumbling at her hip until she found the Sheikah Slate. It lit a soft circle of light at her touch, but the screen fizzed and crackled, displaying only glitched swirls of color. Broken ribs, concussion, sprained knee, she estimated as she maneuvered dizzily to her feet and retrieved her sword from where it lay nearly engulfed in malice some feet away.

“Link?” She whispered, acutely aware of the monsters they had encountered in the past months and unwilling to alert them to her present vulnerability. She swung the slate’s light across the rubble-filled ground, but her companion was nowhere to be seen. Ganon’s corpse was also absent, presumably still lying in the cavern above her.

Recalling her last sight of Link sent a stab of pain through her chest to join the throb of her ribs. The image of his anguished eyes and furrowed brow as he put aside everything to lunge towards her was imprinted indelibly in her mind. Was he still up above? Had the malice— she forced her mind away before she could complete the fatalistic thought. She had watched Link die once already, and the idea of losing him again was enough to make her breath shorten into panicked gasps. Come on Zelda, you held your own against Ganon for one hundred years. You can crawl out of a damn cave. She retrieved and lit her torch, then limped around the perimeter of the hole, leaning heavily on her sword.

It didn’t take long before she was certain that the floor above had collapsed into a nearly exact copy of the one holding Ganon’s body. The geometric carvings on the walls were the same as what she had seen in the moments before everything went wrong, and a single exit led to a path descending away and down. With no clear way up into the abyssal darkness, and no ability to teleport thanks to the malfunctioning slate, she had no choice but to venture into the tunnel, unaware of the eyes observing her retreating form from the darkness beyond her torch’s light.

It was impossible to know exactly how long she spent wandering, but Zelda came to time her rests with the regular shaking of the earth around her. Despite her newfound mistrust of the tunnels’ structural integrity, the walls and ceiling held strong around her. She fell asleep each rumbling with the spirals of the wall etchings spinning behind her eyelids.

After one such rest, she awoke with a sudden revelation dredged from the free association of her dreams. It was a memory, something Impa’s grandmother had told them when they were children. She had spoken of an ancient civilization, the Zonai, that had disappeared mysteriously long ago, leaving only ruins and secrets. Link had already mentioned that the carvings appeared Zonai in origin, resembling places he had seen in his travels, but now Zelda remembered Gran’s words. “The Zonai were not simply to be feared for their fierce prowess in arms. They were also brilliant magicians with technical advances rivaling even our best Sheikah technology. Had they not disappeared, our world would be much changed from how it appears today.” Then Gran had pulled a carved stone out of her sleeve and shown it to the children. She ran her finger along its swirls in a series of swoops, and when she finished, the entire thing began to glow an eye-searing turquoise. The young and bright-eyed Zelda had oohed and aahed, but the rather more battered young woman in the present bared her teeth in a wolfish grin and heaved herself stiffly to her feet, sweeping the light from the sad remains of her torch across the patterns that had haunted her for months.

There! she spotted a central swirl, one that all the others in the area seemed to radiate from. It took a few tries to emulate the pattern she had seen over a century ago, and she began to question herself, her mind inevitably returning to familiar paths of self-doubt. When she was almost ready to give up, the spiral lit. With a flash and a smell of ozone, radiance spread outwards, spilling into every line of the carvings until Zelda was blinded.

The earth began to shake more strongly than ever, knocking her to the ground. She curled into a protective ball as chunks of wall and ceiling crumbled around her, her stomach lurching in equal parts fear and motion sickness. After what felt like an eternity, the world calmed. The bedraggled princess pushed herself to a seated position with a groan, blinking purple afterimages from her sight. The lit carvings had settled into a calmer glow, and because of this it took her a moment to realize that a pinprick of natural light now shone at the far end of the tunnel.

Heart leaping, paying no mind to her shrieking knee, Zelda set off at a run towards freedom, her excited thoughts jumbling with ideas of newly collapsed walls forming impromptu exits. She was so quick that only reflexive bracing of her feet and scraping of her hands on the tunnel walls were able to bring her to a gut-wrenching stop as dislodged stones ricocheted over the edge of an impossible precipice.

Wind whipped her hair as she stared in utter disbelief down, down to the familiar landscape of Hyrule far below. She was in the sky.

***

Link had eaten some pretty terrible food in the past year, but after a week of clumsily cleaned mushrooms boiled with rice, he almost preferred his more dubious gastronomical experiments. At least those had some zest to them.

Although his arm was slowly regaining strength, his dexterity was lagging far behind. Stringing a bow was still out of the question, and the one time he encountered a boar in the woods, he had been mown down in humiliating fashion before he could even swing his blade. The mushrooms and occasional carrot were a far less likely source of embarrassment.

The entire loss of his right arm would almost have been easier to cope with than his present state; the energy pouring into the ancient tech and the rot constantly trying to push onwards through his body made even the shortest climb, swim, or even run into an exhausting task. Swinging a blade with his left hand was one thing: getting knocked out after falling out of a tree was another.

Besides the draining tech and the gnawing corruption, there was a third issue with his arm that Link couldn’t quite piece together yet. He had absolute faith in Purah—despite her eccentricities—and when she told him that she had added the Stasis Rune to his arm, he had no reason to doubt her. However, when he activated the rune to halt the fleeing boar in a last-ditch attempt at meat for dinner, it failed to stop it at all. In fact, the animal actually began running backwards, nearly pummeling a dumbfounded Link a second time.

He wasn’t sure how Purah could have made such a glaring mistake, and he honestly couldn’t picture a time when making his opponent move backwards would help him do more than get a second to breathe. Once he had found Zelda, he would have to go back and ask the scientist about it. Full but not happy about it, Link rolled up in a horse blanket and fell into a fitful sleep.

He was awoken by an agonizing buzzing sensation in his right arm, as though it was being continuously electrocuted. The entire limb, from fingertip to shoulder, was shining turquoise like his own personal monster beacon. His horse whinnied and pranced in distress as Link shook his arm like a man possessed. If he hadn’t been so preoccupied, he would have noticed the ground vibrating beneath him, but by the time the glowing light and electric tingling subsided, everything was calm again.

Now thoroughly awake, the perplexed hero broke camp and led his mount back to the trail in the false dawn. It wasn’t much further to the edge of the Great Plateau, the only thing keeping Link from reaching it the night before being his newly abysmal stamina. But as he trudged up the last rise, he was sure he had gotten turned around in the half-light. Nothing looked right. The ground was churned up and littered with boulders the size of houses, and whole landmarks had shifted and changed.

The sun broke over the horizon as Link crested the hill. He was overlooking the very same vista he had first seen without comprehension or recognition after the healing sleep, yet the view could not have been more different. The plains and forests in front of Hyrule Castle were simply...gone. The ground was carved out as though miners had been hollowing the earth for centuries. After taking in this sight, ice water freezing his heart, Link’s eyes followed the progression of destruction to the foot of the castle itself. At first, the reappearance of malice clouds encircling the base obscured the truly bizarre unreality of the situation.

The entire castle was floating several hundred feet above the ground.

Slowly, unbelievingly, almost unwillingly as though fearing what he would see, Link lifted his gaze to the sky. Far above, higher even than Vah Medoh had flown, floated hulking islands of earth.

He sat down hard, gulping back the frustration that closed his throat. His princess was further out of reach than she had ever been.

[princeasimdiya12]

I adore your talentswap backstories! I'd like you to write some headcanons for my Talentshift SDR2 au. It consists of Mechanic!Hajime, ReserveCourse!Mahiru, Photographer!Ibuki, Musician!Fuyuhiko, Yakuza!Gundham, Breeder!Chiaki, Gamer!Mikan, Nurse!Nagito, Lucky!Imposter, Imposter!Peko (impersonating non-despair Junko), Swordswoman!Sonia, Prince!Nekomaru, Coach!Teruteru, Chef!Hiyoko, TraditionalDancer!Akane, and Gymnast!Kazuichi. If not, I completely understand.

Hey anon! I’m glad you enjoyed them! ^_^ And I’d be happy to make some headcanons for your AU. But just to let you know anon, I would appreciate it if you asked me first before sending me your listed requests. I honestly don’t mind writing headcanons for talentswaps (I honestly enjoy doing that) but I would appreciate you asking me and then sending them to me. That way it doesn’t take me by surprise. 

So without further ado, here are my headcanons for your SDR2 Talentswap AU.

Peko Pekoyama as the SHSL Imposter

While Peko was adopted by the Kuzuryu Clan, she didn’t have a choice in her lifelong profession like Fuyuhiko did.

She was made to work as an infiltration agent.

As a professional imposter, Peko learned how to analyze and copy the body movements and behaviors of any potential person. 

She also was taught how to apply makeup to make her disguises as accurate as possible.

Her assignments involved abducting low level workers of rival clans and taking their place while disguised as them.

She’d then relay the rival clan’s weaknesses and business transactions towards the Kuzuryu’s so they can exploit them.

Peko was discouraged from having any personal interests or hobbies so that her infiltration and identity theft skills wouldn’t be tarnished.

This made Peko feel more like a tool and how she only existed to promote the success of the Kuzuryu Clan. 

When Fuyuhiko was scouted to go to Hope’s Peak, her superiors used their connections to grant Peko a spot with him to keep an eye on him.

She would take on Junko Enoshima’s image given that the supermodel was busy with her own personal affairs.

Although no one can recognize her while disguised, the viewer/player can recognize Peko with her thick glasses and piercing red eyes.

Hiyoko Saionji as the SHSL Chef

Hiyoko came from a family of culinary masters who amazed Japan with their creative and flavorful dishes.

There was unfortunately alot of drama within the family as they each wanted to train Hiyoko so they can pass their personal culinary training onto her.

Her grandmother managed to win and was one of the most ruthless teachers ever. 

Under her training, Hiyoko received burns, cuts and having her food thrown in her face just for making the smallest of slip ups.

Her brutal training mixed with having negative relations with her family made her bitter and aggressive towards everyone around her.

She also has a hard time trusting others to work with her in the kitchen due to multiple incidents where dishes were poisoned and nearly tarnished Hiyoko’s reputation.

Because of this, she prefers to work alone in the kitchen. When she’s assigned to work with partners or underlings, she can be best described as Gordon Ramsay if he were a sassy lost child.

She often holds a knife or a frying pan whenever she’s threatening someone she doesn’t like.

Her culinary specialties involve desserts such as wasabon and kompeito.

Ibuki Mioda as the SHSL Photographer

Throughout her childhood, Ibuki was neglected by her caregivers so she took up photography as a means of distracting herself from the loneliness of her household.

She managed to earn her success by taking high quality photos of lovers in romantic situations.

At her middle school, she made it a game for herself to see how many pictures she could get of different couples at her school without getting caught.

While developing her photos, the couples tried to chastise Ibuki for her actions but they immediately changed their minds when they saw how cool the photos looked.

Ibuki gained a reputation among her peers for her photos and now everyone wanted one too.

This resulted in Ibuki getting alot of “friends” who only wanted to hang out with her just so she could photograph them doing what they wanted while conveniently leaving out the photographer herself.

The fact that these people only cared about her talent so she can capture their memories for them gave Ibuki a sense of familiar loneliness.

Despite this, she wants to enjoy her talent as much as she can with an upbeat attitude.

Ibuki’s favorite subject to photograph are people.

She loves to people watch since the people walking around come in different shapes and sizes and are always doing something unique that you wouldn’t expect.

Sonia Nevermind as the SHSL Swordswoman

Sonia came from a family of professional swordfighters who taught her the power of the blade at an early age.

She grew up on European fairy tales and legends of powerful heroes who used their swords to fight for justice or prove their superiority against enemies who opposed them.

Her family taught her classical fencing, mordhau, the half-sword, destreza and several other fighting styles which she claims are a secret.

She earned her title after winning multiple swordfighting tournaments, many of which were held underground. 

Despite her victories, she’s actually been hospitalized due to the extreme injuries she received from sword wounds and physical attacks from her opponents.

Since these wounds have yet to diminish her fighting power, Sonia feels that it’s best to pay them no mind so she can continue her family’s legacy.

She’s never seen without her longsword which she made herself. She calls it Stjerneild because there were shooting stars on the night of making it and also since she burned herself during the process.

Sonia isn’t afraid to boast about her fighting skills and eagerly offers her girl friends the chance to learn how to use a sword.

Fuyuhiko Kuzuryu as the SHSL Light Music Club Member

Rather than becoming the next heir of his family business, Fuyuhiko wanted to pursue his dream of being an idol.

He takes his career extremely seriously and wouldn’t do stupid stunts or scandals that could jeopardize his work.

To make up for his young appearance, Fuyuhiko uses outfits that have a punk aesthetic while also incorporating black and gold color schemes to make him look older.

Alot of his songs feature themes of embracing your personal talents or how it’s better to carve your own path rather than rely on others.

He knows how to play the electric guitar and the keyboard. 

Having refused his parents’ intended career plans, he feels that he can’t screw up his career or else everything he ever worked for will be for nothing and he’d have to crawl back to them for support.

His sister Natsumi often joins him during his tours and unofficially becomes his manager and bodyguard during her visits. 

He has a hard time dealing with fanclub meetings because the fangirls would make jokes about his baby face which would drive him insane.

Akane Owari as the SHSL Traditional Dancer

Just like in canon, Akane had to take care of her younger siblings while struggling to survive her poor hometown.

While she did take different jobs to support her family, she would lose those jobs constantly because she kept getting into fights against strangers who tried to grope and harass her.

One day, while she was training by herself in an empty plaza, a woman passed by and paid close attention to her fighting form and rhythm.

She revealed herself to Akane as a traditional dance instructor and offered to train Akane to perfect her skills.

The girl wasn’t interested in doing something fancy like dancing but she changed her mind when she realized that her dancing could be used to raise money for her family. To which, she accepted.

While the instructor taught Akane the fundamentals of mai and odori techniques, the girl performed better when she used her own skills.

While frustrated, the instructor decided to rework her teaching style so Akane’s performances would be passable while also integrating her own skills.

She ended up winning multiple competitions and performances and used the prize money to move her family into a bigger and better house.

Although her reputation as an “easy waitress” would often rear its ugly head and would make Akane become agitated.

Her dancing moves incorporate alot of her old fighting techniques.

She wears a cherry red kimono with a yellow dragon etched on the side as a design.

At the end of each performance, she can be found at the snacks table eating just about everything.

Nagito Komaeda as the SHSL Nurse

Nagito lost his family when he was just a child.

Having pity on the boy, along with finding traces of frontotemporal dementia, the head doctor of the hospital he resided in decided to adopt the boy as his own.

Nagito became the doctor’s apprentice and learned of the different techniques that came with working in the medical field. 

The doctor taught him which drugs/medicines were used for what along with how to use the surgical tools properly.

He personally saw different medical cases each more mesmerizing than the last. 

He became fixated on the concept of death and how it was an integral part of life.

When he became old enough, he started to work as a nurse and partake in the same surgeries he saw as a child.

While he certainly participated in a number of cases that saved the lives of his patients, he also had a number of cases that resulted in death.

He personally requested to handle the patients that were unable to be saved so he can spend their final moments with them and capture the memory of their deaths.

There’s been word from the medical staff that he tries to comfort the dying patient and their family with speeches on how they shouldn’t be afraid of death and how the patient will move on to greater things in the next life and how the families will become stronger afterwards.

This has earned him the nickname “Angel of Death”. 

He wears mint green scrubs and carries a portable bag withhis own medical equipment.

Teruteru Hanamura as the SHSL Coach

Despite his physique, Teruteru has amazing stamina and is capable of lifting heavy objects that ordinary people would have trouble lifting on their own.

Teruteru can analyze a person’s physical stature and determine which exercise or physical activity best suits them.

He always offers massage therapy proclaiming that it’s the best way to strengthen the body and relax the mind.

There are multiple cases where the players he’s worked with have accused him of sexual harassment or groping their bodies. 

He has a complicated relationship with his family.

The younger siblings antagonize him for pursuing a career that isn’t related to their family’s restaurant business while putting more hardships on their mother.

His mom on the other hand, is more accepting of his career and asks that he focus more on what he enjoys doing in life.

Teruteru’s massages originally stemmed from how he would give massages to his mama to help alleviate her of her body aches.

He wears a dark red track suit and gold chain. Mixed with his combed over hair, it makes him look like a sleazy gangster.

Chiaki Nanami as the SHSL Animal Breeder

As the daughter of a rich family that hardly had time for her, Chiaki’s parents bought her a variety of animals to keep her company.

She found comfort with them but was heartbroken when she noticed that they became saddened and died.

She became motivated to learn from them so they could stay alive for long as possible.

Chiaki began studying different types of animals and what behaviors are ideal and which are concerning.

After school, she would venture to local animal shelters and veterinarians and offer to volunteer so she can work with different animals and examine first hand their behaviors.

She earned recognition by forming connections with the animals in her care and teaching them commands.

While she prefers the company of animals to humans, she will make an effort to help her human clients have a better relationship with their pets.

She can often be found napping alongside any of her animal friends.

Sagishi as the SHSL Lucky Student

Saigishi grew up in an orphanage having been abandoned by their family before they can remember.

They noticed that they had an unusual luck themed streak when it came to playing with the other kids.

If they were playing soccer, they would accidentally kick the ball into the window which surprisingly knocked out a janitor that was about to assault one of the orphanage workers.

If they tried to pass a love letter to another child they had a crush on, a burst of wind would fly the letter straight into the child’s face and they’d end up having a terrible accident.

If they were preparing food for an upcoming dinner, they would end up pouring too much vinegar into the meal which would spoil the dinner resulting in the staff having to order pizza for the kids.

Saigishi developed a reputation as a kid with creepy powers which both amazed and terrified their fellow orphans.

The kid realized that their luck would only benefit the people around them but would make bad things happen if they tried to use it for themselves.

At the urging of their friends, they ended up participating in the Hope’s Peak Lottery and wound up with the chance to join them as the next SHSL Lucky Student.

Sagishi was worried since something bad would eventually happen if it was the work of their luck, but they decided to take the offer knowing that they needed to make a future for themselves.

They wear a white collared shirt with old jeans. 

They still have a mullet which has a small ahoge on the top of their head.

Mikan Tsumiki as the SHSL Gamer

She still had a horrible childhood growing up where her family and classmates would bully and abuse her for a variety of reasons.

Not wanting to put up with their abuse anymore, Mikan decided to drop out of middle school and become a hikikomori.

Using her worn out computer, Mikan found comfort in playing online video games. 

She personally enjoys fighting games as she imagines her enemies as her abusers and would deliver swift justice on them by beating them up.

Mikan has a preference for playing as male characters since the female characters wearing skimpy/stripper-esque outfits bring back painful memories for her.

After sufficient online practice, Mikan gained enough confidence to try tournaments in the real world. 

But she kept this secret from her family in fear that they would use this to torment her.

When it comes to tournaments, she unleashes her pent up anger and frustrations for her past tormentors by cursing at her opponents as she beats them.

While her fandom is impressed with her gaming skills, they do question why they would call her opponents by a different name and accuses them of doing something awful to her.

When she wants to calm down after a heavy day, she likes to play relaxing games with cute animals.

Nekomaru Nidai as the SHSL Prince

During his childhood years, Nekomaru stayed in his room because of his heart condition.

He received private tutoring based on the history of his kingdom along with different world cultures.

His father and mother spared no expense in providing the best doctors and medical professionals who could ensure that their son would be physically fit.

When he started making appearances outside of the palace, there were rumors that the frail prince was placed in a secret government program that was designed to create super soldiers.

He’s often recognized for working first as a soldier under his father’s militia before becoming of it’s main generals.

Nekomaru is well versed when it comes to proper etiquette and engaging in the company of royals or high class aristocrats. 

He has a personal club made of suitors who have fallen for his image as a charming (and handsome) prince.

He also devotes alot of time to interacting with the middle class of his kingdom as he believes having a bond with his people is important for a royal to have.

The main uniform he wears is a blue military outfit with a silver sash and a black beret with a family jewel in the front.

Gundam Tanaka as the SHSL Yakuza

He inherited the throne of the Tanaka Empire at an early age due to the death of his father.

He wasn’t able to remember his father but the stories passed by his underlings and advisors describe him as a devil who was incredibly powerful but dangerous when provoked.

His mother on the other hand, remembers him as a loving man who was very attentive toward her needs.

Gundam would unintentionally embrace his father’s memory thanks to his “overlord” personality which would make him come off as overly dramatic and sinister to his enemies.

His reign as a yazuka lord involved more emphasis on spiritual affairs by bringing spiritual communities under his Empire.

He personally believes that maintaining ties with the spirits and Gods will grant the Tanaka Empire a stronger chance of survival.

While maintaining relationships with minor businesses under his control, he would also invite potential gang groups for tea ceremonies and offer them the chance to join him.

He’s been trained by his advisors in using a katana and gun making him skilled enough to handle even the most dangerous of gang members.

While he’s capable of defeating them, he vows never to take the blood of anyone weaker than him or unless he’s given no other choice.

Before entering high school, Gundam was able to have his upper and lower body tattooed with images of oni demons and spirits.

He found the Four Dark Devas when he passed by a street and saw the four hamsters foraging for food in a dumpster. 

He also expresses admiration for Sonia’s impressive swordfighting skills and has offered her an opportunity to work for his Empire if she wishes.

Kazuichi Souda as the SHSL Gymnast

Kazuichi got into gymnastics by reading alot of shonen manga.

He was impressed by how athletic and fit the heroes were so he wanted to train and be like them.

When not helping in his dad’s shop, he would try practicing parkour near the streets of his town to help him develop better flexibility.

While practicing at middle school, his teachers noticed his potential and offered him a spot in a gymnastics program.

His dad didn’t like him getting into “girly shit” like gymnastics and frequently insulted him for it. 

He would often perform for his friends which impressed them at first. But then things got troublesome when they requested him to do flips and jumps for their amusement.

It got worse when they tricked him into breaking into a second story classroom so he could steal the answers for an upcoming test.

Not wanting to be taken advantage of again, Kazuichi gave himself a radical makeover so no one would mess with him.

Along with his pink hair, his outfit consists of a black tanktop with neon green stripes and yellow shorts.

Hajime Hinata as the SHSL Mechanic

His parents rented his own shop for him to work at but they personally didn’t invest their own time to work with him.

To avoid having to think about his loneliness, Hajime placed all of his effort and thinking into his work.

He began receiving requests to repair average household appliances before moving on to bigger machines.

He’s received alot of praise for improving the appliances while also explaining to the owners on how they should best maintain their appliances so they can last longer 

The machines that he worked best with were vehicles and motorcycles.

Despite being underage, Hajime managed to practice driving on his own and learned how to drive the basic motor vehicles.

While he’s grateful for his mechanic talent, he often worries if he’s really living his life to the fullest and if there’s something missing that he needs to achieve.

His favorite invention is a hoverboard that he uses to ride around his hometown to clear his mind after a hard day’s work.

His mechanic uniform is a mechanic uniform with a design similar to that of a racecar driver. 

Mahiru Koizumi as a Reserve Course Student

While Mahiru was interested in the idea of going into Hope’s Peak, she wasn’t confident enough in her photography skills to go through with the entrance exam. 

At the insistence of her best friend Sato, Mahiru ended up in the Reserve Course so they can fight for the chance to be special.

While she didn’t mind the work provided by her classes, Mahiru took notice of how her peers had a hard time with paying for their tuition along with even getting into the Talent program. 

She also had to deal with Sato having to fight against her old rival Natsumi who was picking fights with her while trying to get recognized herself.

She became an unofficial peace keeper of her class as she would chastise her classmates for picking fights against each other or making rude remarks.

As time went on, Mahiru herself was unable to keep up with her classes since the money to pay for them was running low. 

She would later receive an e-mail from the Steering Committee offering her a chance of entering the Talent program through an unconventional method that was funded by the school.

She had to cast that thought aside when Natsumi ended up dead and Sato is all but stated to have killed her out of frustration.

Soon vengeance would claim Sato’s life with Mahiru finding her in an empty classroom and on the brink of death with her head bleading.

Before dying, Sato begs her friend to make something special with her life and not to waste it in the Reserve Course. She knows that Mahiru will do great things in her life and that she believes in her.

Casting her doubts aside and refusing to let her friend’s death be in vain, she accepted the Steering Committee’s offer by participating in the Hope Cultivation Project.

[villlainarc]

roceit highschool rivals to lovers? they argue and flirt in equal amounts and both of their respective friend groups are so tired of the romantic tension (so, maybe, they decide to take it into their own hands to get them together finally) ~ Lo 🍇

Here, Blinking In the Starlight

100 stars in the sky prompts

Summary: Roman and Janus are rivals.

(And despite what Virgil may say, that does not mean they are simply refusing to admit they’re in love.)

Pairings: Roceit, Platonic Logince, Brotherly Anxceit, Platonic Analogical

Warnings: vague fantasy(?) violence, death mention, weapon mention, an unnamed character gets stabbed (but doesn’t die and there’s no gore), what could be interpreted as non-consensual kissing (it isn’t but. the character doing the kissing doesn’t have explicit permission so. this is just to air on the safe side), implied threat of murder through poisoning, (this isn’t anywhere near as dark as those warnings make it out to be i’m just covering all my bases), three (3) swear words

Word Count: 4096

Taglist: @max-is-tired @raaindropps @kiribakuandcats @main-chive @emo-disaster @heavenly-roman

Notes:

me: *opens prompts in part so i can practice writing shorter fics*

also me: *write over 4000 words after vowing to make all of these no longer than 2k 😔🤙*

tldr this really wasn’t supposed to get this long i swear but also it’s roceit so i’m not gonna complain at least. not too much

ao3

_________________________

“Get down!” Roman cried, pointing at a spot just beyond Janus’s head.

Janus turned to see what Roman had been gesturing towards, ducking as they did. It was just in time, too, as the moment they had moved out of the way, a fist flew right over their head. They gave Roman a grateful smile before their eyes went wide and they pulled Roman flush against their chest, out of the way of someone else who had lunged at him.

“You saved me,” Roman said as soon as the danger had passed, fluttering his eyes innocently as he rested a hand against Janus’s chest.

Janus rolled their eyes at the way Roman’s hand moved to play with one of the curls by the side of their face, carefully extracting themself from Roman’s arms. “You can thank me later. How about we focus on getting out of here for now?”

“I think I’d much rather stay here with you.” Roman fluttered his eyelashes once more, peering through them to fix Janus with a pout.

“And I much rather not die, but to each their own.”

��Fair enough,” Roman conceded, twirling Janus out of the way of another incoming swing. “Dying really would put a damper on our relationship, my love.”

“Darling, you’ll have to finish saving me before we can truly call this a relationship,” they shot back.

“Oh, just admit it. You think I’m the most gorgeous person you’ve ever laid eyes on.” Roman’s cocky grin refused to fade as he spun them through the surrounding chaos, never letting Janus stray more than a few inches from his arms.

“I think nothing of the sort,” they replied, letting themself be guided through a flurry of swinging swords and outstretched hands that continued their onslaught in vain as Janus and Roman waltzed their way past.

Roman merely smiled at that, lifting Janus into the air and spinning them out of the way, causing two guards with who’d been rushing towards the two of them to crash into each other.

After Roman placed Janus back on the ground, there were only three guards left standing. “If you’ll excuse me,” Roman said, lightly kissing the back of Janus’s hand. “I have one more thing to take care of before you can officially call me your true love.” Leaving Janus standing there, holding the hand he’d just kissed their hand to their chest, Roman drew his sword. In one smooth motion, he turned around and drove it cleanly through the first of the guards.

The final two took one look at their newly fallen comrade and tripped over their feet trying to get away.

“Now,” Roman said, turning back to Janus, his smile just as blinding as it had been before, “love of my life, what was the gift I was supposed to receive for rescuing the princess, again?”

“You’re incorrigible,” Janus claimed, though there wasn’t so much as a drop of venom behind it. The smile they wore as they strode towards Roman also didn’t help matters, and when they wrapped an arm around his waist and dropped him into a dip, there was no question at all that their words had been purely for show.

They held him there for a moment, smiling coyly. Then, without warning, Janus drew Roman back towards their chest as they leaned into him and met his lips in a kiss.

“Stop, stop, stop. What was that, Janus? I don’t think there’s a kiss in the blocking, is there?”

“No, you’re right. Sorry ma’am, I just got caught up in the scene.” Janus gave their director a winning smile as they set Roman upright again. “Now that you mention it though,” they said, casually adjusting their dress, “I think that final scene would be more impactful if it did end in a kiss, don’t you?”

The director frowned. “I’ll think about it,” she replied. “It looked good, I’ll admit, but both you and Roman would have to be alright with the change in blocking. So, what do you think, Roman?”

Janus turned to truly look at Roman for the first time since they’d kissed him. A smirk grew on their face as they saw the brilliantly red blush that had taken over his. “Yes, Roman, what do you think?” they asked, genuine curiosity seeping into their voice that was completely at odds with the smirk that remained firmly in place. “If I made you uncomfortable in any way, I truly apologize.”

Roman had to take several deep breaths to steady his voice, opening and shutting his mouth a total of four times in rapid succession before he managed to say, “Uh, yes. Whatever you think would be best is fine by me.”

“I’ll have to see both versions again just to be sure, so if you wouldn’t mind running the scene from the top two more ti—”

“Oh! Would you look at the time!” Roman exclaimed suddenly, gesturing towards the clock hanging on the back wall of the theater. “Doesn’t rehearsal end at five thirty? And, wow, is it really five o’clock already? You usually give us thirty minutes to change out of costume so you can give us your notes before we have to leave, right?”

“Ah, so I do. Time really does fly when you’re having fun, huh?”

“It absolutely does,” Janus agreed, offering their arm out to Roman with a smirk on their face and a twinkle in their eyes. “Let’s go get changed, shall we?” When Roman remained too frozen to take their arm, Janus dropped it to instead take his hand with a wink, leading him off the stage.

And oh, how the universe spun with that one wink.

_________________________

“They kissed me!” Roman wailed upon sliding into the passenger’s seat of Logan’s car.

“I beg your pardon?”

Had Roman been feeling like his usual fabulous self, he would have replied with a flippant, ‘Then beg,’ but as it was, he could barely manage to form a coherent thought and was far from being at the top of his game. So instead, he continued in the most melodramatic voice known to man, “Janus Adler kissed me!”

“Janus Adler, your co-star in the spring musical? The one who plays your love interest? I fail to see how this would come as a surprise.”

“No no, you don’t understand, Lo. There is not a single kiss written into that musical. Not one! They made it up, they—” Roman’s head fell into his hands at that, “Janus Adler had the audacity to improvise a kiss in the middle of a scene! And I— I’m going to have to bring this up with the director. We can’t ruin the integrity of the musical by adding a kiss that isn’t even there!”

“Mm. What musical is this, again?”

“That’s terribly unimportant. Besides, I have it on good authority that the author doesn’t care about the musical at all outside of its ability to be used as a plot device, so really, the only thing you need to know is that it must not be deflowered by a kiss that was never in any way intended to be there.”

“Is this musical a classic, then? Or is it specifically stated that there were to be no kisses, no matter how many other creative liberties are taken? Perhaps you meant that the author cares about this musical’s use as a plot device, it’s lack of kisses, and nothing else? Is it—”

“That doesn’t matter, it’s the principle of the thing, Logan!”

“Interesting.”

“What is?”

“How did you react when Janus kissed you?” Logan deflected.

“I— what? Why do you— That doesn’t have anything to do with this! At all! And for the record, my reaction to them kissing me out of the blue was perfectly normal!”

“So you cringed at the fact that someone you are not romantically or sexually interested in kissed you? Or did you shove them away and tell them to never do that again because you so clearly don’t have a crush on them? Perhaps y—”

“You’re absolutely right, I don’t have a crush on them, but why did you feel the need to point that out?”

Logan sighed. “No reason at all. Now, did you react in any of those ways?”

“…Yes.”

“If you insist,” Logan said, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

“I very much do. Now, I would like to get home sometime within this century, so if you could drive me home and stop pestering me, I’d greatly appreciate it.”

“I’m going to force you to get your own car one day, you know.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

_________________________

“I kissed him!” Janus wailed as they fell backwards onto Virgil’s bed like an ailing Victorian lady.

“That’s fantastic. Get the fuck out of my room now?”

Janus sat up with a huff, dropping their over-dramatized persona. “Virgil, my dearest brother whom I love with my entire heart, you are the worst.” They fell backwards once more. “You don’t understand,” they said, bringing a hand to their forehead. “I kissed Roman Kingsley!”

“Roman Kingsley, your co-star in the spring musical? The one who plays your love interest? Isn’t that, like… supposed to happen? Don’t love interests normally kiss in musicals?”

“Well, yes, but not in that scene. I improvised a kiss, Virgil. Do you not understand how weird that is? Roman probably hates me.” They pouted at Virgil, looking solely for sympathy as they knew, judging by the blush on Roman’s face, that he very much did not hate them.

“Wow, that really sucks,” Virgil deadpanned. “Must be so awful to have the person you have constantly referred to as your rival hate you.”

“It is— wait, no. I don’t— did I really call Roman— oh, that’s interesting. Well, we aren’t exactly rivals anymore, especially since I started presenting more feminine and getting more female leads than male ones, you know? Less fighting over roles. And I don’t think he ever hated me, even when we were more officially rivals. There’s a very specific connotation implied when you refer to two people as rivals, and it doesn’t involve flat-out animosity, so—”

“Right,” Virgil nodded in agreement. “The connotation is lots of sexual and or romantic tension followed by pining. You don’t have to tell me, I know rivals implies fanfiction-style rivals to lovers, four hundred thousand word slow burn—”

“You know what! I think that’s enough, thank you. That isn’t what I meant by rivals, and you know it.”

“Did I really? Are you sure you weren’t implying that you might have at least a little bit of a crush on Roman Ki—”

“Oh, you are hilarious, Virgil. Truly.”

“I try,” Virgil grinned, fully looking up from his phone for the first time since Janus had entered the room. “Now, what was that about Roman?”

“Rivals,” they said, completely ignoring the blush they could feel rising on their face. “Rivals, and nothing more.”

“For someone who was cast as one of the lead roles in this musical, you’re awfully bad at acting.”

“I have no idea what you mean, though I do believe you asked me to leave your room, and I’d loathe to ignore your request.”

“Aw, you sure you don’t want to stick around now? I was just getting started!”

“And now you’re done! Funny how that works, isn’t it? Thank you so very much for your input, Virgil, now I recommend watching what you drink for the next several days.”

“Love you too.”

_________________________

“Hey L?”

“Yes, Virgil?”

“Janus is an idiot.”

“While that is true, I’m now inclined to ask what they did this time in particular.”

“Y’know how they’ve had the most obvious, stupid, disgustingly sappy crush on Roman for the longest time?”

“Ah, how could I have missed it?”

“Right? Anyway, I want to rub their vehemently denied feelings in their face and get them and Roman together.”

“Hm, I second that. Roman has been similarly insufferable.”

“Good to know that they’re both utter morons.”

“You say that like it wasn’t already the most obvious thing in the world.”

“Touché.”

“Did you have a plan?”

“Oh, hell no. Please. Planning is for losers, procrastinating until the last possible second is where it’s at.”

“Virgil—”

“Yeah, yeah, procrastination is bad or whatever the point is that I am very much looking to you when it comes to understanding the allos. Help me Logie Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”

“If you’re going to make a science fiction themed nickname, please do not make it a Star Wars one.”

“Fine, but only if you agree to help me.”

“You don’t need to bribe me, Virgil. Getting out of hearing Roman pine hopelessly after someone who is very much in love with him is incentive enough for me.”

“Good,” Virgil said with a smile, resting his head on Logan’s shoulder. “But we’re finishing this movie before any planning is going to take place.”

“…Please tell me you don’t hope to enact this plan tomorrow.”

“Okay, I won’t then,” Virgil agreed, deliberately saying nothing else.

“You’re lucky you’re my best friend.”

“You bet I am. We’re still waiting until this movie is done, though.”

Logan sighed, but there was little more than fondness behind it. If he asked for it, Logan would give his best friend the moon. Compared to that, sacrificing a few hours of sleep was negligible at worst and at best, it would be beyond worth it to see Virgil happy.

And whenever Logan spent time with Virgil, the universe did always seem to favor the latter.

_________________________

“This is a horrible plan.”

“Look, you were the one who agreed to it, you can’t blame me entirely,” Virgil said rather petulantly.

“I was running on four cups of coffee, so I feel I very much can. And you know, even then I’m fairly certain I told you that aggressively telling people what they’re feeling until they admit it really isn’t the best way to go about this.”

“Yeah, well…” Virgil shrugged. “Too late to change it up now.”

“No, it really isn—”

“Shhh,” Virgil shushed, holding a finger up to Logan’s lips. “Just roll with it.”

Logan sighed at that, having known Virgil for far too long to believe that there was any way to change his mind at this point.

“Oh!” Virgil tugged on the sleeve of Logan’s shirt to get his attention, nodding towards the person who had just walked up to the locker in front of them. “Janus’s here.”

“Hm, how wonderful.”

“We’re still doing this, right?”

Logan sighed once more, nodding his agreement. “If you insist.”

“Great!” Virgil wrapped his arm around Logan’s dragging him towards Janus, who had since stopped trying to open their locker and was now squinting suspiciously at the pair making their way towards them.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re just stopping by to say hello,” Logan said in a way that was likely meant to soothe Janus, but only put them more on edge.

“Hi,” they replied, taking a slow step backwards, growing more suspicious by the second. “I’m just going to… head off to class now.” They gave an awkward sort of wave, taking another step away from Virgil and Logan.

“Oh no you don’t,” Virgil said, his bright smile at odds with his vaguely threatening words. “We need to talk, so you’re going to skip your first class.” Upon seeing Janus open their mouth to protest, Virgil cut in, “And don’t pretend you haven’t ever skipped class before. And even if you haven’t,” he added once Janus started to protest again, “don’t pretend your grade won’t be perfectly fine either way.”

“Look,” Logan said, his tone much calmer than Virgil’s, “this conversation is important. And Virgil is right, your grades will not suffer because of one missed class.”

“…What the hell is going on? Since when has Logan Doyle been okay with skipping class?”

“Oh, my first period is free, so I am not skipping class.”

“That wasn’t really the point,” Janus pointed out with a frown. “Seriously, what the hell is going on?”

“You’ll see. How does the library work for you?” Logan asked, his demeanor still infuriatingly calm.

“You realize I have still yet to agree to this, don’t you?”

“Doesn’t matter, we’re doing it no matter what you say,” Virgil said, his smile quickly growing tired as he latched onto the sleeve of Janus’s jacket and began to tug.

Janus let out a huff at Virgil’s actions. “This is a nice jacket, let go!” When they realized Virgil most definitely was not going to let go, they gave a resigned sigh. “If I go with you to the library willingly, will you stop ruining my clothes?”

Virgil rolled his eyes, but he did release his hold on his sibling’s jacket. “Don’t be so dramatic, I was far from ruining anything. Come on,” he said, motioning with his head to indicate which way they were going. “I’m sure you don’t want to miss both first and second period.”

Janus gave Virgil a tired eyebrow raise as they followed him through the crush of bodies that filled the hallway, Logan just behind them. “You would be right.”

“Oh, I know,” Virgil said, shooting a grin over his shoulder at Janus. “Speaking of things that I know,” Virgil began, strolling the library doors in a way that was entirely too casual to alleviate Janus’s suspicions, “I know you’re in love with Roman Kingsley.”

Virgil was positively beaming at what was no doubt a horrifyingly shocked look on Janus’s face. And when they turned to see a matching smug expression on Logan’s, they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the universe absolutely despised them.

_________________________

“Roman,” Virgil sing-songed from behind his friend. “Roman, Logan and I need to talk to you,” he continued in the same ominously lilting voice.

Roman turned around from his seat at the lunch table with a frown. “Is something wrong?”

“Not at all,” Logan assured him with a kind and only barely forced smile. “You have nothing to worry about, there’s just an important conversation Virgil and I believe we should have.”

“If not worried, should I be concerned? You two are acting in a way that I feel should garner concern.” Roman’s question was met with a chorus of denial, and he shrugged. “Then what did you want to talk about?”

“Oh, nothing much,” Virgil said, sliding into a chair on Roman’s right.

“Just the fact that you’re in love with Janus Adler,” Logan said, nodding his agreement with Virgil’s words before sitting down on Roman’s other side as though he hadn’t just confirmed what Roman had always known to be true: the universe was working around to clock to bring about his doom.

_________________________

“Now, love of my life, what was the gift I was supposed to receive for rescuing the princess?”

“You’re incorrigible,” Janus claimed, wearing a smile as they strode towards Roman, and when they wrapped an arm around his waist and dropped him into a dip, that smile grew coy. After a moment of holding Roman suspended just barely above the stage, Janus drew him back towards their chest as they leaned down and met his lips in a kiss.

“Finish the scene now,” the director ordered, flipping a page of her script as she marked something down in it.

“But you love me anyway, don’t you?” Roman replied without missing a beat as Janus set him upright.

“Perhaps I do,” Janus said, their voice turning unusually quiet.

Roman paused, watching them intently. “Do you love me because I saved you? Or because I’m pretty?”

“I love you because you’re you, Ro— Your Highness.”

At this, the director looked up with a frown. As far as she knew, that line wasn’t in the script. Before she could interrupt though, Roman carried on with the scene. “Do you not think I’m pretty, then?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Quite the contrary,” Janus countered. “I may not have admitted it before, but I do believe you are the most gorgeous person I have ever laid eyes on.”

“Is that so?” Roman asked, trying and failing to hide how flustered he suddenly was.

“It is indeed. There’s much I haven’t told you, Your Highness.”

“Like what?” Roman’s voice grew hushed as he stepped even closer to Janus.

“Like the fact that I love you—that I have loved you for longer than I’d care to admit.”

“Is that so?” Roman repeated, watching with wide eyes as Janus brought their hands to his face.

Janus nodded, their smile growing upon seeing Roman’s deepening blush. “What about you, Your Highness? Is there anything you’ve been keeping from me?”

“I think I love you too.”

“You think?”

“I know.”

“Good,” Janus said, slowly lowering their face to meet Roman’s, giving him more than enough time to pull away.

He didn’t.

So Janus Adler kissed Roman Kingsley once more, showing no signs of ever wanting to stop doing so.

The director sighed, interrupting the silence that had fallen over the theater. “Look, you’re both great actors, but I think rewriting the final scene is a bit much as far as creative liberties go. Do you two have something more you want to say to each other, or…?”

Janus pulled themself away from Roman’s lips, blinking in a slightly dazed fashion. “Sorry, ma’am,” they said, smiling innocently at the director like they hadn’t been about to start shamelessly making out with their co-star on stage.

Roman coughed in an attempt to hide how out of breath he was. “What— what did you think of, uh, adding the first kiss to the blocking?”

“Or the second one,” Janus added, acting like both had been meticulously planned out over the course of at least several weeks.

Shaking her head, the director sighed again. “If you promise to stop changing the script, you can keep the first one, but I don’t think the second one really fits—”

“What about after the last line?” Janus asked, clearly having no ulterior motives when it came to wanting to kiss Roman at any and every given opportunity.

“You mean your last line?”

“No, the one that’s split between the four narrators, ‘and they lived happily ever after.’ What if we kissed during that? It seems like a pretty good way to show that we—we meaning the characters, of course—are indeed living happily ever after.”

“Fine,” the director said, sounding painfully tired as she marked down the change in her script. “Now go get into costume with the rest of the cast, we still have every other scene in the show to run through.”

As soon as the director turned away, Janus offered their arm out to Roman just as they had yesterday, the same smirk on their face and the same twinkle in their eyes. This time, Roman took it. “Something’s got you feeling bolder today, hm?” Janus said, setting off for the dressing rooms just down the hall.

“Blame Logan. And your brother. Mostly your brother, actually. He’s very convincing.” Janus raised an eyebrow. “And by convincing, I mean threatening,” Roman clarified.

“That he is,” Janus agreed. “I suppose I should really be thanking them both, though. I likely wouldn’t have kissed you that second time without their intervention, and that truly is a tragedy.”

Roman flushed. “You don’t have to do that anymore, you know.”

“What, flirt? Oh, but Roman, then I’d miss seeing you get all flustered,” they pouted. “And why ever would I do that?”

“Um… because you love me?”

“You make a strong argument, but I’m afraid no amount of love will convince me that your blush isn’t the most beautiful thing in the world.”

“I take it you haven’t seen a mirror, then,” Roman replied, looking smug.

Janus merely laughed. “You’re going to have to try harder than that, love.”

“Mark my words, I’ll figure out how to turn you into a blushing mess one day. You won’t even see it coming.”

Janus stopped and turned to Roman, fluttering their eyelashes. “Is that so?” they purred, taking slow, deliberate steps toward Roman and crowding him up against the wall.

“Yes?” Roman squeaked out, captivated by the way even the fluorescent lights overhead made Janus’s mismatched eyes look utterly enchanting.

Taking pity on Roman, Janus laughed and took a step backwards. “I look forward to it, my prince,” they said, keeping eye contact with Roman as they brought his hand to their lips and placed a feather-light kiss on the back of it.

And in that moment, the whole universe felt perfect.

_________________________

finding other things i’ve written in my masterpost

[gunnerpalace]

Hyperchlorate: How I’d Rewrite Bleach (Part I)

Okay, this is it, kids. This is gonna be—as best as I’m able to manage—the ultimate synthesis of all my scattered discourse on Bleach, combined with a condensation of what I’d do about it all. Buckle up, because these posts are going to be long, and I’m not putting it behind a spoiler. I’d apologize for destroying your dashboard, but I put in the work.

WHAT’S UP WITH THE NAME?

What's referred to as (liquid) bleach is usually a solution of sodium hypochlorite (NaClO) in water. Sodium hydroxide (NaOH) is usually added to slow the decomposition of bleach into sodium chlorate (NaClO3), and sodium chloride (NaCl)—that is to say, common salt. (How appropriate!)

Sodium perchlorate (NaClO4) is a perchlorate salt which is very closely related to the above and, when treated hydrochloric acid (HCl), makes perchloric acid (HClO4) and common salt. The former is very nasty in and of itself and is mostly used to make other, worse things.

In the context of chemistry, the prefix hypo- means one less oxygen atom than something suffixed -ite, while the prefix per- means one more oxygen than something suffixed -ate. (See here for a chart if you want.) The prefix hyper- isn't used in chemistry, but I think it sounds better.

tl;dr: It's a weird chemistry not-joke used as a code name for this project.

WHAT’S THE PITCH?

The short version of the pitch is: Most people who liked Bleach as a thing liked the initial Karakura and Soul Society arcs, and interest gradually dropped off after that.

Therefore, if you wanted to rewrite Bleach, you’d want to focus on that time period and expand on it and develop it further. You would also want to rework whatever came after, and more thoroughly integrate it with that time period in tone, focus, and perspective.

To do that, you first need to understand how it was structured and what made it work in the first place.

OKAY, WHAT’S THE LONGER VERSION?

The longer version of the pitch is: Bleach was supposedly a shōnen. One of the Big Three shōnen, in fact (in Western thinking). But understanding Bleach and why it worked (and why it fell apart) requires debunking that idea.

You see, the thing is that Bleach was never particularly good at being a shōnen, at least as most people think of such a thing. When people think of shōnen, they tend to think of four (4) things: 1. A Certain Kind of Protagonist, 2. Worldbuilding, 3. Plot, and 4. Fights. Bleach doesn’t really fit the pattern when it comes to these elements. I’ve been over these before, to a certain extent (many times), but I’ll reiterate them here:

A Certain Kind of Protagonist: Goku. Luffy. Naruto. Natsu. Kenshin. Yusuke. I don’t have to name their anime or manga; you already know who they are and what they’re from. Ichigo is certainly a kind of protagonist, but as Sera (@hashtagartistlife​) once pointed out, he’s very different from what one normally thinks of when they consider the genre. Ichigo is a punk with a heart of gold (a la Yusuke) but he lacks the inner drive and confidence of all those other protagonists. He is, in fact depressive at the start of the series; he’s at best listless and nihilistic, and at worst suicidal. He’s something of an outcast loner with a tsundere personality he developed as a kind of mental armor. He’s deliberately mediocre at and unengaged with things. That changes (and the story starts) when Rukia enters his life and gives him the ability to act on his desires to do good and protect people. In other words: his confidence comes from outside of himself. Indeed, it’s a recurring plot-point that the longer he’s separated from Rukia, the more his confidence wavers. In addition to all the other things that were noted as marking him out, this one is crucial, because the average shōnen protagonist is possessed of unwavering confidence. Having Ichigo’s confidence (and his animating ethos) externalized to Rukia essentially splits the traditional protagonist role in two. (Indeed, you could readily say Ichigo and Rukia are deuteragonists, despite the story focusing on Ichigo—he eclipses her visually, but her gravity is unmistakably present and dominant.) This by itself tells you that you are dealing with a different kind of story than usual. This fits in with one of the reasons people tend to like Bleach, specifically the first. 

Worldbuilding: Few shōnen rival Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings in sophistication and detail, but they usually have well-developed worlds where whatever is going on substantiates—and ideally enhances—the plot and the journey of the protagonist. Think of the world of One Piece, which is excellent at this, or those of Naruto or Fairy Tale, which still sufficiently sell that there is a living, breathing setting in which the story is taking place. Bleach is something more like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: it holds up on its own if you accept its premises at face value, but if you start to investigate more carefully, things stop really making all that much sense. My own personal go-to example is the identity of the two unrevealed Great Noble Houses which presumably wielded power in Central 46. (I don’t consider Can’t Fear Your Own World a satisfactory answer for this, or other questions, and notably it has only revealed one of them.) Another example is the history of the Great Noble Houses, or Soul Society in general, or the Soul King. All of these (and much more) were things that were shoved into data books or follow-on novels, if they were ever addressed at all. The more one inspects the worldbuilding of Bleach, the more it feels like it’s flat or significant sections of it were missing—like it’s a movie set instead of an actual place. Most fiction strives to present, as much as possible, a kind of simulated world that you could imagine existing. Bleach, perversely, rather brazenly gives us a set of stages with clearly defined borders instead. This ties into the third and fifth reason people tend to like Bleach.

Plot: In academic circles, you will be told that what distinguishes literary fiction from genre fiction is the former is about characters (i.e., how events impact them), and the latter is about plot (i.e., what happens). For example, White Noise by Don DeLillo is not about “The Airborne Toxic Event,” it is about what that catalyzes in the protagonist’s life. Something like One Piece is very much a genre story about adventure. Things happen to the characters, sure, but they don’t really change all that much over time. They’re all following their dreams, and those dreams are (for the protagonists) often immutable. Bleach doesn’t really follow that structure. Ichigo and Rukia have an ethical viewpoint, but they’re not really on a journey to implement it. Things largely just kind of happen to them. In this regard, Bleach is much more like a literary work than a genre one. It also features, as Sera pointed out in an earlier post, a depiction of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth within the Karakura and Soul Society arcs: we see Ichigo and Rukia go through the process of “becoming a hero.” Protagonists like Luffy or Goku already are the heroes, it’s just that nobody else knows it yet. The plots that unfold are thus very different. Furthermore, Bleach is also often a symbolic work. For example, the Karakura II, Hueco Mundo and Fake Karakura arcs are a sort of inverse deconstruction of the earlier Karakura and Soul Society arcs; they function as an anti-monomyth and refutation of it (think of it as being like “how a hero can fail”), a la how Bloodborne subverts the monomyth to incorporate Lovecraftian mythos: they are designed to cast down the achievements of the protagonists and demoralize the reader, rather than being triumphant and uplifting. Bleach also frequently prioritizes thematic elements over verisimilitude. One example is the association of romance with death (Isshin and Masaki, Ryuuken and Kanae, Kaien and Miyako, Rangiku and Gin, and so on). Another is loneliness (no one ever seems to really hang out or have many friendships), especially when it comes to parents (Isshin and Ryūken have strained relationships with Ichigo and Uryū, Ikumi is a single mother, Chad parents are dead, Orihime’s were reverse-abandoned, Keigo and Mizuiro’s are absent, Tatsuki’s are never seen, and so on). Bleach absolutely prioritizes characters and themes over traditional plot or plausibility—that is to say, how things feel is often much more important than how exciting or realistic they are, which ties into the second and third reasons people like Bleach.

Fights: Bleach’s fights tend to suck. There are some exceptions, sure, but the power of those exceptions usually stems from the emotional content and personal nature of them. Something like Ichigo vs. Byakuya, Uryū vs. Mayuri, or Rukia vs. Aaroniero (to name a later example) are very emotionally charged fights. That said, even fights that aren’t particularly interesting, like Ikkaku vs. Edrad, tend to be more about showing us aspects of the characters’ personalities more so than about the fight itself. In fiction, one is encouraged to show rather than tell, and more extreme situations (which violent confrontations are one example of) allow one to show deeper and more extreme aspects of a character than slice-of-life situations usually do. This is what Bleach’s fights are often in service of. This is evident from how uninteresting the average Bleach fight is. There’s a lot of sword-pressing, a lot of ineffectual diagonal slashes, a lot of appearing behind someone to their surprise, a lot of losing an arm as a serious injury, a lot of no-selling attacks, and whoever reveals how their powers work first usually loses. The fighting quickly boils down to shikai and bankai, or their equivalents, with the other aspects of fighting, like kidō (and the rest of zankensoki) being discarded except when they reflect some matter of character (for example, Byakuya or Uryū’s more analytical and technical approach to things). Combat in Bleach isn’t about a robust combat system or consistency, nor is it about what looks cool—it is about what shows off the character in question. This is unusual for a shōnen and ties directly into the second reason people like Bleach.

I’ve talked a lot about why Bleach is liked, and it’s now prudent to get into that. In my opinion, the reasons that early Bleach was well-liked and well-received can be boiled down to five (5) things: 1. Deuteragonists, 2. Character Designs, 3. Mystery, 4. Contrast, and 5. Urban Fantasy Setting. I’ve been over most of these before, but they also bear repeating.

Deuteragonists: I have explored this concept in quite some detail (see: 1, 2, 3) before, so I’m not going to go too deeply into its mechanics here. The most obvious selling point here is that splitting the role of the protagonist into two mutually supporting halves that are fallible in their own ways is A. relatively unique, and B. humanizing. Ichigo and Rukia are by no means either the first example of this (consider Sherlock Holmes and John Watson) or the last (I've not seen Psycho-Pass, but Shinya Kogami and Akane Tsunemori seem to have much the same relationship), but I am unaware of any (supposed) shōnen prior to Bleach that attempted it. (That’s not to say that it doesn’t exist, but rather, that its obscurity if it does simply reinforces the point.) That made it unique for its time. That Rukia is a (competent and independent, but still vulnerable and feminine) woman only makes it even more unique, especially given the medium and how women tend to be treated within it. It also allowed for both Ichigo and Rukia to have problems as characters, and to largely grow beyond those problems over the course of the series, rather than there being yet another immutable and unchanging rock of a protagonist like so many other shōnen feature. When coupled with their interpersonal banter and dynamics, they formed a major draw together simply because their sharing of the role was so unusual and well-executed.

Character Designs: Bleach suffers from a dizzying overabundance of characters. Many of them are only present for a few chapters, at most, and yet even characters who appeared very briefly have any number of adherents out there among the readership or viewership. Consider characters like Starrk, Bambietta, or Bazz B., who have little to no establishment, and little panel time relative to the series, but who nonetheless gained resolute fans. Sometimes they have backstories shoehorned in to help sell them (as in the case of Starrk and Bazz B.; the most hilarious example is probably Giriko being given a flashback several chapters after he was already dead), but often they succeeded without them. They also often succeed despite their personalities largely being remixes of existing characters. How? Because of their character design and attitudes. Bleach was enormously successful in delivering characters that appealed to somebody, even at almost only a glance. The characters almost radiate a sense of mie purely through their designs. This sort of visual imminence routinely overcame all other character shortfalls. 

Mystery: The anime of Bleach began airing on October 5, 2004. Coincidentally, Lost started airing on September 22, 2004. They began at almost exactly the same time. What does one have to do with the other? Nothing, except for the fact that they both relied heavily on mystery and both capitalized on it (in different markets) at almost exactly the same time. The bulk of Bleach is predicated on inculcating a sense of mystery. This is why basic facts that would often be mentioned in passing are kept tightly wrapped secrets until the end of the series and beyond. (Token examples, great and small: Who are the other two Great Noble Houses? Where’s Yoruichi’s zanpakutō and why can she turn into a cat? What’s the deal with the Soul King? Why is there a fox-man like Sajin around, and is he a yōkai or what? What was the Final Getsuga Tenshō?) Even things that were resolved, like Ichigo’s parentage, what was going on with his “inner Hollow” and zanpakutō, and so on, were kicked down the road as long as possible to create an air of mystery. The most obvious manifestation of this was all the guessing about the bankai of various characters that the series egged on. This sense of mystery and a desire for closure kept quite a lot of people invested when their patience for the rest of the series ran out.

Contrast: While lots of anime and manga frequently leaven their drama with comedy, or vice-versa, Bleach was unique for the means in which it did so. It’s worthwhile to draw a contrast with something very close to its opposite: Gintama. Gintama is particularly notable because of its odd mix of different elements; it has a fantastical alternate history setting and can go from irreverent comedy (running the gamut from pop-culture puns to crude toilet humor) to deadly serious drama in just a few pages. However, Gintama’s default mode is comedy. Bleach is a relatively grounded secret history with a default mode that is dramatic. In this regard, they are equal but opposite. Early Bleach was a very dark and grim, almost Lovecraftian setting, and often had elements of horror or was just plain gross, but was lightened up through the way in which it approached that and its frequent inclusion of humor. This contrast is also heightened by the relative lack of fighting in the early manga; when fighting does occur, it’s all the more notable because the focus is largely upon slice-of-life elements. As the series progressed, this element of contrast was lost as it became relentlessly serious (in the process, becoming desensitized to its own sense of horror, great or small) and tried to become a battle manga.

Urban Fantasy Setting: Although Bleach ultimately goes on to visit rather fantastical places, it started out in a very grounded and realistic fashion. The sleepy (fictional) suburb of Karakura in Western Tokyo is just the right mix of urban and rural to be relatable to almost anyone. Simply by virtue of being based on a real area (the region around Tama), Karakura feels lived-in and well-developed, despite the fact that we see very little of it. (This is especially true compared to Soul Society [be it the Seireitei or Rukongai] or Hueco Mundo, both of which are very sterile and fantastical in a bad way [especially since the former is really just a stylized representation of the Heian period in Japan]. There is a very old parody of DBZ featuring the line "We need to go to some place that's completely desolate and... that would never be in real life at all, and it's huge, and it's a bajillion miles wide and it's nowhere to be found on earth—but it's right over there!" and that accurately describes both Soul Society and Hueco Mundo. I’ll get into this more in the next post.) The initial focus on day-to-day high school life also gave it a solid grounding for the age bracket of its intended audience. In this capacity, it exactly nailed the setting of teen-focused urban fantasy. The interesting thing is it did so before a lot of the most prominent novels in that genre were written. In other words, Bleach was a market-leader in urban fantasy for teens, and beat many of its peers to the punch. Just as deuteragonists were a major selling point out of their sheer novelty, so was the setting.

As an aside at this junction, I’d like to direct your attention to something from the Wikipedia page on urban fantasy, regarding the distinction between urban fantasy and supernatural romance:

The two share 90% of their genre DNA. However, the main differences are this: Urban fantasy focuses on an issue outside of a romantic relationship between two characters. Paranormal romance focuses on a romantic relationship between two characters and how outside forces affect that relationship. The best litmus test to determine if a story is urban fantasy or paranormal romance is to ask the following question: 'If the romance between Character A and Character B were removed, would the plot still stand as a viable storyline?' If the answer is 'yes,' chances are good it's urban fantasy. If the answer is 'no,' it's most likely paranormal romance.

Now, whether you think the relationship between Ichigo and Rukia is romantic or not, I would note two things. The first is that if their relationship was removed, the plot would not “still stand as a viable storyline.” The second is that the events of the Karakura and Soul Society arcs are very much about “how outside forces affect [their] relationship.” (As were all subsequent events involving them, really.) In short, I would argue that it’s impossible to suggest that early Bleach doesn’t sit somewhere that very closely approximates paranormal romance, if not being one outright. In this regard, Sera’s assertion that Bleach is a shōjo is a lot closer to the mark than you might think, as is my own that it was on the path to becoming either a battle shōjo or a couple shōnen.

HOLY SHIT, GIVE ME AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY SO FAR?

To summarize, Bleach started off as a pseudo-paranormal romance (if not an actual one) that succeeded on the basis of being—on the one hand—grounded, characterful, and novel, while—on the other—also being mysterious, emotive, and meaningful. Bleach was, at the start, not necessarily trying to sell itself as an unbiased account of “things that happened in this fictional world,” or create an expansive universe. It was instead a rather intimate story set in a particular place, focusing very much on its characters and on conjuring up emotions.

Even when it went to Soul Society, you might still just as easily think it as something like an off-beat Kabuki play rather than a traditional shōnen. (Perhaps making it not so surprising that it was so easily adapted into a musical play.)

I feel that Bleach is also notable for embracing the aesthetic principles of Japanese art and culture that other traditional shōnen usually do not heavily emphasize; it features elements of not just Kawaii (of course), but Jo-ha-kyū, Geidō, Miyabi, Iki, Ensō, Shibui, Yūgen, and Wabi-sabi. (Indeed, I would say that an over-attachment to those last four is a major component of why it ultimately failed.) This also gave it a unique flair.

I think it was ultimately so successful to begin with because it was a unique melange of elements.

BUT I LIKED BLEACH BECAUSE OF SOME PARTICULAR THING YOU DISMISSED AS ANCILLARY!

There’s no accounting for taste. I’m just telling you what Bleach’s focus was and why it was initially exciting and good at what it did.

OKAY, FINE, WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH REWRITING IT?

Like I said, I think it’s important to first understand what worked and why. Then, it’s important to understand why things went wrong. (And boy, did things go wrong...) Only then can you reasonably propose solutions to fix things.

Next time, we’ll go into what went wrong, which involves a mixture of poor planning, shifting priorities, inflexibility, overindulgence, and hubris. But for that story, you’ll have to stay tuned for Part II!

[iohourtime]

Moeyo Ken (Burn! O Sword) - Novel Recap 2

This is the second part of the recap of Moeyo Ken, which will be adapted into a 2020 movie directed by Harada Masato. I will talk about the characters as they were described in the novel in more detail. If you want to learn more about the background of the novel and a brief description of the plot, please click here for the first post. This post will have spoilers.

The Characters

I am going to go with this order instead of the order of the cast list: Oyuki (Shibasaki Kou), Serizawa Kamo (Ito Hideaki), Hijikata Toshizo (Okada Junichi), Kondo Isami (Suzuki Ryohei), and Okita Souji (Yamada Ryosuke).

Oyuki

She was an original character created by Shiba to serve as the love of Hijikata’s life. Historically, there were no records of Hijikata forming deep attachments with any women. She followed her late samurai husband from Edo to Kyoto to learn to paint, so when he died, she continued to live there. Hijikata literally stumbled into her small apartment after a fight and fell in love immediately, but he treated her with respect (i.e. he didn’t immediately try to sleep with her). He viewed her as more than his wife1 and even took 2 days off to spend some time with her. (The man never took time off.) She was strong willed, kind and loved Hijikata, but that was pretty much her whole storyline. Based on filming reports, it seems like Harada is bringing her character into the story much earlier than the novel, and she's number two on the cast list, so maybe she has a bigger role in the movie.

Serizawa Kamo

He was the first commander of the Shinsengumi. Serizawa Kamo was not his real name and there were rumours that he was hiding from something. Kamo means duck, actually, which was an odd choice. Anyway, although his gang occupied key positions within the group, Hijikata made sure the real operational power rested with the Vice Commander and the team leaders, which were mostly filled with Kondo’s gang. Hijikata also asked Kondo to play a fool in front of Serizawa's gang so they wouldn't suspect the eventual coup.

Serizawa was crude and petty. One time, he killed a sumo wrestler because the guy took his preferred spot or something petty like that. He also fired a canon at a rich family's mansion to get protection money from them. The Bakufu was horrified and secretly told Kondo and Hijikata to get rid of him, not that they weren’t already plotting to do so. Okita once made a strange comment2 about how Serizawa might be the most “innocent” of them all, and director Harada said he wanted to explore that in the movie. I don’t know what to make of it since Serizawa was portrayed as a brute in both novels. Perhaps Okita meant he had no agenda? I don’t know. That Souji was a strange boy.

Anyway, Kondo’s faction made one of Serizawa’s right-hand man commit seppuku for failing the bushido. This move weakened Serizawa's faction and although he was angry, he did nothing to retaliate or protect himself. On the night of Serizawa's assassination, the kill squad disguised themselves as ronin and surprised Serizawa when he was being amorous with his mistress. They also killed anyone who might recognize then. After Serizawa’s death, the other 3 members were either killed in a fight or forced to commit seppuku.

The Trio

The Shinsengumi was really controlled by Kondo and Hijikata, though no one wanted to admit it. Since Okita had them wrapped around his little fingers, he was the big boss! (Kidding 😁) Taking both novels into account, I think Kondo was the face of the group, Hijikata was the guy who got things done, and Okita was the guy who knew everything including gossips, but only dropped cryptic hints when it was warranted.

Warning: major spoilers coming up.

Hijikata Toshizo

Hijikata Toshizo started off as an aimless punk (a baragaki) who dreamed of becoming a samurai. He even wore his hair pseudo samurai style, which was not what farmers did back then. He was rather handsome with cool and refreshing eyes and women loved him. He loved to sleep with women who he perceived to be above his social status. The first few pages of the novel were rather shocking to my modern sensibilities - his conquering of this priest’s daughter was straight up rapey, even though the reader was reminded that it was how things were back in those days and the girl subconsciously expected him to drop by or some $hit like that. I don't know why Shiba put in this fictional detail because it's unnecessary to the plot. Even if it presented a contrast to the man he eventually became, it's not like Toshizo didn't already do a lot of questionable things early on. Perhaps he hated Toshizo? 😅

Anyway, he started an affair with a woman with status he met during a temple (sex) festival3. Unfortunately, when he got caught sneaking out of her room one night, he accidentally killed a well known swordsman. This incident drove the story in the Hino arc as Shichiri, a member of a rival dojo, seeked justice for the dead (really an excuse to get rid of a business rival). Toshizo got into a few battles of wits & strength with Shichiri, through which we learned that despite Toshizo being a farm boy, he was a natural born strategist who specialized in guerilla warfare.

The Shinsengumi gave Toshizo a life purpose and allowed him to show off his organisational management skills. At that time in Japan, military and police organizations assigned two people doing the same job. Toshizo recognized the inefficiency in the structure, especially if they needed to mobilize quickly, so he borrowed from the French army and introduced this revolutionary idea of having only one person in each position and splitting up the group into teams with different responsibilities that report up to an executive branch. Yes, it sounded logical now but it was radical back then! The most important thing was that he transferred the real power to the vice commander level.

Toshizo was gruff, undiplomatic, and ruthless in achieving his goals. He did come up with the harsh Shinsengumi code after all. In fact, Souji once told him that the Shinsengumi members kind of hated him. Even Souji hated him for a minute because of Yamanami. But as Toshizo told Souji afterwards, he chose to be hated. He just wanted Shinsengumi to become a force to behold and for Kondo to succeed as its leader, so he took on the bad guy disciplinary role in order that the members would continue to love and admire Kondo.

Toshizo also hated the academic type, so he butted heads with Yamanami and Ito. His distaste and distrust were partly born out of his own lack of education. He felt that educated people only knew how to talk theory and kiss ass, and they impeded his ability to do real work. (And jealousy?)

In the battle of Toba-Fushimi, even though the Bakufu suffered a huge loss, Hijikata’s squad was the only one that managed to do some damage against the modern Western artillery. The Bakufu started to notice Hijikata’s military prowess and eventually made him a vice commander in the army. He really came into his own in the northern arc after Kondo was gone.

The continuous battles and deaths really took a toll on Toshizo. Earlier in the novel, while strolling with Souji, he said he liked spring. Souji commented that people who liked spring tend to place their hopes and dreams in tomorrow. Yet in Toshizo’s final days, he told one of his underlings that he only fought for today. In one memorable scene before the final battle, he saw the spirits of his friends in his room. They all looked tired to him. Knowing it was time to end so everyone could rest, he sent his page Ichimura Tetsunosuke4 and Saito Hajime away on missions, saving their lives so they could pass on the stories of the fallen brothers. For Toshizo, instead of surrendering, he chose to face his enemies head on - fighting for the Shinsengumi and going out in a blaze. He was killed by a bullet5.

As Shiba himself said, Kondo was a hero during the peaceful times, but Hijikata was a hero during chaos. As much as the Shinsengumi was born in the wrong time, Toshizo was in his element. I'll let Toshizo himself summarize his world view with what he told Souji:

_"This is a sword. A sword is made by a craftsman to kill. The sword's characteristic and purpose are both simple. It's just like the military strategy books describe, its only purpose is to defeat the event. But look, look at the pure beauty. A sword is more beautiful than a beautiful woman. When I see beautiful women in front of me, I won't feel nervous. The beauty possessed by a sword could melt the stone heart of a man, and took a strong hold of him. That's why our purpose needs to be pure, our thoughts need to be pure. The Shinsengumi can only exist for this integrity. Souji, for me, no matter how the world changers, or whether Bakufu admit defeat and surrender, if I have a single breathe left, I'll persevere. Can I waver like Kondo? Up to now, I've covered my hands with blood to protect Shinsengumi. Serizawa, Yamanami, Ito… they all did by my hands. Why did I kill them? When they died, they were all facing death without wavering. If I waver now, then how do I face them in the afterlife? The journey of a man - is to create beauty, my own beauty. This is what I firmly believe." _(A very dude thing to say. 😏)

Kondo Isami

Kondo Isami was Toshizo's best buddy, or “sworn brother”. He was the fourth master of TRR. According to other people's description, he was a true leader, easygoing and generally loved by the squad. I didn't see any incident in the novel that supported that except for his command over the Ikedaya mission and what others said about him.

He was an uneducated farmer, so he loved hanging out with the educated people, yet he got jealous of them when they became more popular than him. Unfortunately, he was also very susceptible to flattery, so he tended to keep sycophants around him. Once he got a taste of success, he started politicking with the Bakufu, keeping mistresses and dressing above his station, and was quite concerned about status. So perhaps he would have been a good leader in peaceful times, he really came apart when things turned, making bad decision after decision. In other words, I kinda hated this novel's version of him. (I think he's normally portrayed in better light. 😅) Actually, I think Shiba disliked him too, as his depiction in both novels were not flattering. He was basically a fool who thought he was clever. Again, this may not be how he was in real life.

While Kondo might seem like a forthcoming guy, remember how he conned Serizawa's gang into believing he was weak and foolish. He also fooled Ito by pretending to become Tobaku, when he was just trying to get him drunk enough to be assassinated by Hijikata's team.

As the Shinsengumi grew, Kondo and Toshizo's vision started to diverge. Kondo cared more about becoming a daimyo (a feudal lord with land) while Toshizo wanted to expand. Kondo was so blinded by the land the Bakufu promised that he didn't realize they were going on a hopeless mission to take Koshu. In the end, Kondo and Toshizo parted ways in Nagareyama due to ideological differences: Kondo wanted to surrender and Toshizo tried to get Kondo to go with him.

Toshizo: When we were on the rise, you were such a great leader; now that we were going down, you changed and no longer want your dream.

Kondo: That's right. I don't want to be remembered as a traitor. I'm not like you. I understand the meaning of greater good.

Toshizo: The power structure changes with time, but isn't surrendering shameful for a man? Win or lose, it's not important. As a man, it's most important to follow one's dreams or die trying.

Kondo: For me, it's more important to follow the right path. Even though we had been comrades in battle forever, did we ever really had a common goal? Let's go our separate ways now.

Toshizo: I don't care. You're coming with me.

Kondo: Thanks for being there for me, but Toshi, please set me free. You built Shinsengumi and made me the commander, but looking back, the Kondo Isami then didn't feel like me. Let me go.

With that, Kondo left. Toshizo didn't chase after him but vowed to keep pursuing his dream. Shortly after, Kondo was captured and executed by the new government. So for someone who was concerned about his name, it was a sad way to go.

Okita Souji

Okita Souji was one of the youngest members of Shinsengumi. He was technically Toshizo’s senpai at TRR since he started learning kenjutsu at the age of 9. He first showed up in the novel when Kondo asked him to investigate Shichiri's dojo. Here was what Shiba casually mentioned in the first 4 pages he appeared.

“Okita bit down on his cute lips and grinned” [while telling Toshizi he was dumb].

“This young man of around 20 looked quite handsome in this outfit” [thought Toshizo].

“Okita was very well spoken due to his good upbringing and he also had a face as beautiful as that of an irokoshou*”, [Toshizo thought as he watched Souji greet the enemy].

_* A koshou refers to a page for a general. They are typically younger boys (15 or so) and were sort of like their personal assistants. An irokoshou was the type of page that also serviced the general sexually… so they tend to be extremely beautiful. _

So, Shiba really wanted the readers to know how good looking Souji was above all else. The novel likely solidified Okita Souji’s short, pretty boy image6 in popular media for decades.

Souji was said to be very innocent, childlike, and polite. When he wasn't working, you could find him playing with children who lived near Mibu Dera. He was smart as well. In the Hino arc, whenever Toshizo started describing the plan of attack, e.g. if Toshi said “you three go to this bridge in the cover of darkness”, Souji would immediately know what strategy he was going for.

Souji's swordsmanship was explained with an anecdote. Toshizo and Souji were challenged by Shichiri to a 2-on-2 duel. Toshizo knew Shichiri would try to lure them into a trap, so he planned a sneak attack. Souji was naturally nervous as he had never killed before, yet he still managed to kill 3+ of the 20 or so enemies. After they escaped, Toshizo was dumbfounded when he noticed Souji didn't get a single drop off blood on his clothes after killing all those people with a sword.

Souji didn’t seem to have any ambition. He was just following his “brothers” when he joined the roshigumi. In his own words, "I'll follow Kondo and Hijikata-san even to hell, although it would be nice if we are going to heaven." What Shiba emphasized in the novel was Toshizo and Souji's bond. In my opinion, Toshizo loved and spoiled Souji unconditionally and unlike most people, Souji could say anything to Toshizo and get away with it. Some examples:

"If you have time, you should read more books, then maybe you can become a good strategist too." That came after Toshizo started laying out his battle strategy.

After Toshizo explained why he chose to be the bad guy, Souji apologized, "I'm too dumb. I didn't know you did all that so the guys won't have to hate Kondo-san." Hearing this coming out of Okita's mouth, Toshizo felt like he was being teased. [Souji added], "Of course, it is also a personality thing."

I guess Toshizo couldn't get mad when Souji said this stuff while “tilting his cute head”. It is always a bit unclear if Souji just had no filter or if he was throwing shade.

Here is one of the most famous HijiOki scene from the novel. Toshizo might be your typical macho man, but he had a secret. Once a month, he would lock himself in his room and everybody would freaked out because they didn't know what he was up to. Except Souji of course. He knocked and cheekily listened to Toshizo frantically tidying up. Souji casually walked into the room and snatched the "Hougiku collection of haikus" from its hiding place. Yes, Toshi wrote spectacularly bad haikus under the pen name of Hougiku (this actually exists)7. Even though Toshizo was embarrassed, he still waited expectantly for Souji's critique of his new work and lit up when Souji said one of them was OK. (Pretty low standards. 😅)

Hijikata opened up to Souji about everything, especially matters of love. When Toshizo got back to HQ after getting injured and meeting Oyuki, Souji went to see him right after the doctor left.

Souji: You got me all worried!

_Toshizo: Sorry… I almost didn’t make it back. But Souji, I think I have fallen for a woman. _

Souji: Eh?

Toshizo: Don’t tell anyone, especially Kondo.

Souji: Then why are you telling me?

Toshizo: You are different.

Souji: Why am I different? Please don’t make me your love counsel.

Toshizo: Ha ha. You are!

I think Shiba intentionally got us to like the cute, childlike, and slightly devilish Souji to make the next part hurt. Souji did not die in battle. Instead, he spent a couple of years wasting away due to tuberculosis. Back then, tuberculosis was basically a death sentence. Once you contracted the disease, it was just a question of how long you have. Shiba didn’t go into details in Moeyo Ken, but in Shinsengumi Keppuroku, after about 2 hours of intense fighting at Ikedaya, Souji started coughing blood. Of course, he was such a badass he managed to chop off his assailant’s head before passing out8. The first time we saw him cough blood in Moeyo Ken was when he chased after Yamanami. (His illness was foreshadowed early on.)

Yamanami Keisuke decided he was done with the Shinsengumi. As you may recall, leaving the group was punishable by death and Toshizo was not going to make an exception. Even though Souji looked at Yamanami like a brother, Toshizo sent him to bring Yamanami back. For the first time in the novel, Souji looked horrified but he still complied. He set out on horseback but because of the cold winter air, he started coughing. He saw the blood on his gloves and thought "I'm going to die soon", though not with sadness or fear. He never seemed too bothered by his own mortality. Souji found Yamanami, who simply said had Toshizo sent anyone else, he'd kill him. Souji told Yamanami he could kill him and make a run for it. Perhaps Souji knew he was going to die anyway and was willing to let Yamanami escape? It didn't matter. Yamanami accepted his fate and asked Souji to be his second for his seppuku.

Souji was basically bedridden in the second volume, rapidly losing weight because he couldn't eat properly. He stopped taking all medicine except for Toshizo's family medicine because Toshizo told him those were effective. Like all fictional characters, as he got sicker, he grew more beautiful and "translucent" (透明感). One thing that never changed was his brilliant smile. He was so blasé about his inevitable death that Kondo found it fascinating.

He still had some pride though. When Yamazaki died, the squad decided to give him a funeral at sea and Souji went with them. He insisted on walking up and down the stairs by himself because he didn't want people see the captain of the first unit be so weak that he needed to be carried. At that time, he already lost half his lung capacity, so even the simple task of walking was a struggle. That didn't stop him from teasing Toshizo when he got a chance.

Perhaps nobody saw the end of Shinsengumi better than this dying young man. The night before the Toba-Fushimi battle, Toshizo went to see him. After talking, Souji suddenly looked at the ceiling and said "Youth is over." Was he talking about himself, or about the many Shinsengumi brothers who would die in the upcoming battles? Toshizo cried.

Even when he was sick, he still worried about Toshizo's love life. 😅 He made sure Toshizo knew Oyuki had moved to Osaka so he could see her. Before he died, Souji also asked a friend to look after Oyuki and made sure she could go see Toshizo in Hakodate afterwards.

Souji spent his final days back home. His sister, Mitsu, tried to stay with him for as long as she could but her husband would be transferred to Edo at any moment. When that day came, she would have to say goodbye to her baby brother forever. That day eventually came. When Souji heard the news, his face was crestfallen for a second before regaining his trademark smile. He held out his now bony hand for Mitsu to hold, but she didn't understand. The siblings talked about some trivial things and their parents. Suddenly, Souji asked, "When dad died, I was just 5 or 6. When I die, will I see them there?" Mitsu finally understood why he wanted her to hold his hand. "Don't be silly. You still have to get better and get a wife." Souji didn't answer. He just asked, "after I'm gone, will there be anyone to light an incense for me (i.e. remember me)?"

Around a month later, they found him dead, collapsed in the hallway, clutching his favorite sword. Legend said he was trying to kill a black cat (a bad omen) but instead, he lost his life. He was buried in the family plot in Tokyo. The following obituary was written about his short life.

"Okita Souji Kaneyoshi studied under Kondo Shusuke, the 3rd heir of Tennen Rishin Ryo since a young age and shown some talent. When he was 12, he faced Oahu Shirakawa Abe clan (?) in a duel and won. He made a name for himself in that clan.

Souji, formerly Sojiro Harumasa, later changed his name to Kaneyoshi. In the 3rd year of the Bankyu era, he joined the newly established Shinsengumi. At the tender age of 20, he became the assistant to the vice commander and captain of the first unit, participating in many missions.

_Unfortunately, life wasn't fair and he was not able to live to an old age. On the 30th day of May in the 4th year of the Keio era, he regretfully passed away." _

He was 24. Even though Kondo was executed a month before, he never found out about it. He died still believing his two “brothers” were alive, still fighting for their dreams.

Okita Souji in Moeyo Ken could seem a bit one dimensional - cute, cheerful, childlike. But was he? Souji was also the captain of the first unit, who probably had one of the highest kill count in the squad. Perhaps his desire to do anything to protect his beloved “brothers” outweigh his gentle nature. As so little was known about Souji, it would remain a mystery.

Notes

Back then, many marriages were arranged so the relationships might not be that great. Guys with Hijikata's rank typically had a mistress or two. Kondo had 3 separate households in Kyoto. ↩︎

In Shinsegumi Keppuroku’s “Assasination of Serizawa Kamo” chapter, which Harada mistakenly attributed to Moeyo Ken in his director’s comment on the movie’s website. ↩︎

Supposedly people in that period were pretty open about sex. So there were these festivals held at the temple where you could look for willing partners. Then they turned off the lights and you get down to business in the dark with the partner of your chose earlier. ↩︎

He was 15 when he tried to sign up with the Shinsengumi before the Toba-Fushimi battle. Although Hijikata knew he was lying about his age, he kept Ichimura as his koshou (page) because he looked like Souji. 😏 ↩︎

There is some debate as to whether the bullet came from the enemy side or his own side. ↩︎

There is very little known about Okita Souji as there were no photos or drawings. There were some fake photos online plus a drawing of what they thought he looked like based on pictures of his grand-nephew, although his family said he didn’t look like that painting. In some records, it was said that Okita was tall, his face was like a flounder, and he slouched, although he had a friendly smile. In another account, he was small and cute. In live action shows, he is generally depicted as having the Samurai / bald hairstyle. ↩︎

Here's a sample: "Even if a single plum flower blossoms, a plum is a plum." Yeah, I’m not sure what that means either. https://mag.japaaan.com/archives/27079 ↩︎

Apparently, once you start to cough blood, you don’t have long to live. Ikedaya happened a while before Souji’s death and since then, he participated in a few other missions, so it is quite unlikely he passed out due to TB. It is generally thought that he passed out due to an unrelated illness or heat stroke. ↩︎

[arcanagala]

Guild Member Titles

For those of you who may not know, the titles given to guild members are based off actual Tarot cards- the Major and Minor Arcana. We highly recommend that you go over the titles so that you may know why we gave you a certain title. Titles are based off first classes and their corresponding 2nd and trans-class.

Currently, the only titles that may be different from others are the founder’s titles, guild storage, and the ones that are taxed.

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The Empress (Founder Title - Accepted Senra)

She makes no demands, sets no conditions, just loves everything equally and with all the power she can. From this, it can be said, derives her only real weakness, and it is something that all mothers deal with at some point. She is often over-protective of her creations, and wishes no harm to come to them at all. That would disrupt the eternal bliss and happiness of her realm. But as it is, the realm of the Empress is both the picture of beauty and of stagnation. So while the Empress’ love can make you feel as secure as if we are in your mother’s arms, it can also turn into a prison if experienced for too long.

The High Priestess (Founder Title - Rasha)

While it would be impossible for anyone to learn all of her mysteries and secrets, the High Priestess remains as a guide to those of us willing to venture deep within our minds to discover the true powers hidden deep inside each of us. This is the same power as that depicted on the Magician, but the scope of the Priestess’ power is far different. While the Magician focuses his powers outward, to achieve a meaningful effect on the world, the High Priestess shows us that we can also use these powers on an inner level, to enrich and transform ourselves. Such transformations are certainly not as dramatic as the Magician’s, but they are almost always more powerful.

The Tower (Founder Title - Hades)

Sometimes, when accepted and welcomed, divine wisdom and enlightenment flow freely like a calm river. The rest of the time, wisdom is blocked until it rages forth like a tidal wave and crushes anything in its path, including the recipient of the wisdom. This is the energy of the Tower card, an energy very similar to Death in that it is both a destructive and a creative force. When a building is old and decrepit, it must be demolished so that a new structure may stand in its place. The same is true of the symbolic Tower. When old attitudes and beliefs are outdated, you will have to let go of them, whether you like it or not.

The Heirophant (Founder Title - Kanesada)

The Hierophant is also a teacher or a mentor. One major role of a spiritual leader is to initiate others into the community and teach them the ways of the group. Obviously one who holds the secrets and is entrusted with the traditions of the group is a prime candidate to teach them to others, and the Hierophant plays this role well. Though his approach to teaching is one that centers on conformity and shuns individual expression for the moment, this can be helpful. Only once the student has mastered the ways of the group can he or she properly decide whether to remain or leave.

Page of Cups (Acolyte Class - Priest, Monk, High Priest, Champion)

A Page of Cups person will be gentle and compassionate, often highly imaginative and artistic. He values tranquility and peace, and as such is often out of place in the modern world because he cannot always cope with conflict. He seems dreamy and detached a lot of the time, though beneath his quiet calmness lies a bravery and studiousness that could rival a Knight’s. His ideas may seem elusive and impossible to realize but, more often than not, their base is solid. Though he can be moody and impractical because he is so rooted in the spiritual and the emotional, the Page of Cups is always ready to serve.

Ace of Wands (Mage Class - Wizard, Sage, High Wizard, Professor)

The Ace of Wands is the initial burst of creativity and outpouring of energy that energizes a project and inspires people to greatness. This is the spark that starts the fire, and though it cannot tell us whether the fire will burn brightly or fizzle out, its power remains.

Ace of Swords (Swordsman Class - Knight, Crusader, Lord Knight, Paladin)

In the right hands, the sword is a powerful weapon that can serve the needs of justice and authority. But the sword cuts both ways, and when in the posession of those who seek to use it for evil, its power becomes wholly negative. Every Sword card in the Tarot bears the duality but the Ace is particularly susceptible to it. It is the beginning, the spark of potential that will influence all that lies ahead. The Sword by itself can never be positive or negative. The bearer of the sword determines whether he will wield it with clarity and truth of purpose, or with anger and agression.

Judgement (Archer Class - Hunter, Dancer, Bard, Sniper, Clown, Gypsy)

Its energy is neither violent nor catastrophic despite the fact that its power is far greater. This is the energy of creation without destruction, impossible on the material plane but certainly possible in the world of the spirit. There is rebirth not through discarding negativity, but through integration of all parts of the self. The spirit is cleansed and restored without loss or addition. It remains the same, but different.

The Moon (Thief Class - Rouge, Assassin, Stalker, Assassin Cross)

The Moon does not emit light of its own, it simply reflects the light of the Sun. Regardless of your place in the hierarchy of society or of evolution, you are still susceptible to illusions and deception. The Moon shines the same light down on everyone, though what you see when that light reaches your eyes depends on who you are, not on what you see.

The Hermit (Ninja Class)

When questions about the nature of existence and the purpose of life start eating away at your mind, answers will not be found in the physical world. They can only be found inside of you. You have risen above your desires and emotions because they will no longer help you on your journey. Now you must become like the Hermit, who seeks the answers alone. Only the whispers of his Inner Voice, and the light of his lamp, will guide him now. Eventually even that lamp shall be cast away, because it is artificial and will not help the Hermit forever. His own inner light must learn to shine in the absence of the light of others.

Temperance (Taekwon Class - Taekwon Ranker, Soul Linker, Star Gladiator)

Temperance represents an appreciation of moderation through experience of the extremes; to use an analogy, to live through the darkest night and the brightest day to appreciate both the twilight and the dawn. Only through seeing and acknowledging both sides - the positive and the negative - can you integrate both into your personality. Another facet of the Temperance card is that you must not strive to become totally positive, even though that might seem like a good goal. Life seeks balance and if you strive to be a totally positive being you will be fighting the current all the way. Better to embrace moderation and go with the flow.

Strength (Gunslinger Class)

These are cards of ideas, feeling and beliefs; trying to make a Major Arcanum depicting someone strong of body would be a pointless exercise. But strength is not always measured in terms of how much you can lift or how fast you can run. True Strength is fortitude of character, and the ability to not only control the emotions, but to rise above them, and triumph over all out lower impulses and desires.

The Sun (Super Novice Class)

The Sun symbolizes many things depending on how you look at it. The ancients saw the sun as the giver of life and light, and almost every polytheistic faith has a Sun God. It brings light and clarity after a period of darkness and confusion, and in this sense the Sun God is often a redeemer as well; a bringer of peace and good times after ordeals. Finally, the Sun is a symbol of steadfastness and reliability, for no matter how bleak your situation may seem, no matter how many problems you have, the Sun will still rise in the morning. All of these attributions, and more, are reflected in the Tarot card that bears the same name as our solitary star.

Ace of Pentacles

(Merchant Class - Alchemist, Blacksmith, Creator, Whitesmith)

The Ace of Pentacles is the foundation for all kinds of projects in the real world; this foundaton is as valuable as gold, and as solid as concrete. It is the cornerstone of a building that might stand for decades, or crumble to dust after a few years - this is determined by how the rest of the structure is put together. The Ace of Pentacles is not the promise of long-lasting financial and material security that some might expect, but it is the sign that such things are within your reach. It gives you the resources to go in search of higher goals.

Blank Card (Temporary title for character’s not given titles yet)

This title is given to characters that have been invited by any of the founders, however not by the Guild Master. This title is not part of the Tarot cards.

The Keeper (Given to guild storage character)

This title is also not part of the Major or Minor Arcana. This title is exclusively only for the guild storage and no one else.

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Titles currently not in use:

The Fool

The Magician

The Lovers

The Chariot

Wheel of Fortune

Justice

The Hanged Man

Death

The Devil

The Star

The World

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Special thanks to Rasha for fixing, naming and giving the titles to each and every class! As well as the others who have contributed.

Note: We do not accept title changes, if this does not sit well with you, we will do our best to explain and we hope that you may cooperate. If any of you have any more concerns regarding the titles, please message me or Rasha about it. Thank you.

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