#Mogami Kyoko

[emotional-support-waterbottle]

Kyoko during award season. She deserves to win (and I love drawing dresses). playing around with digital again.

supplies: pencil sketch, clip studio

[meiscella]

✨️ based on Veil by Kotteri-sensei ✨️

[artloife]

KyokoxRen Ship Week 2024

Posting date: August 19-25

It's an inconsistent fandom hobby, but why not celebrate two decades of this delightful manga? The point is the creation of material celebrating our favorite pair.

So!! Here's prompts for us to get to making fic, or art, or gifs and memes!

Day 1 - Memory Day 2 - Journey Day 3 - Allure Day 4 - Vibrant Day 5 - Surprise Day 6 - Curse Day 7 - Art-inspired (whatever art you like; from classical masters to the Skip Beat art books to modern-day fanart 😍)

There's a FAQ we've used in the past by fyeahkyokoren on tumblr for anyone that needs to look up extra info

[smoochaspoon]

Skip Beat! fans rise up ⭐️🐔💖

[sailorsaturnaf]

kyoko mogami as an angel(of death)

[mu-esli]

Overall, the anime adaptation of Skip Beat! was excellent, and I feel so frustrated that they stopped at 24 episodes!!

But I can't seem to forget this part that got censored and... kinda ruined imo haha

[tinnictheguardian]

So I finally caught-up to Skip Beat. I stopped trying to follow it regularly because the time between chapters was so irregular and the chapters themselves felt so unsubstantial that I just couldn't muster the dedication.

Last week, however, I suddenly got the urge to see how far Skip Beat was along and tried to look into it. But I totally could not remember the last chapter I read and went back quiet a bit before resuming read. It worked out because while I had read the newer storylines, they didn't properly register in my brain. So rereading them helped.

All that said, at one point, the story did become a total slog as Ren and Kyoko had increasingly stupid misunderstandings. I mean, I get that misunderstandings and "will they, won't they" are bread and butter of romance stories but I always hated when they dragged the misunderstanding out for no good reason.

Also, Skip Beat can get extremely repetitive and tedious without meaning to and as a result, between chapter 260 to 280, it became a real slog to get through. But finally, Ren just comes out and tells Kyoko that he likes her. They agree to take it slow, not only because Kyoko is still a minor (although as established in an earlier chapter, she is above the age of consent at 16) with next to no romantic experience but also because both and Ren have professional goals they want to achieve before they can work on their personal life.

Still, Ren and Kyoko can just meet-up and discuss things. Like Ren letting a Lesbian actress use him as a "beard" or Kyoko being able to explain properly that while she no longer has any romantic feelings towards him, Fuwa Sho is still her childhood friend and there is a mutual care there, despite everything else.

It all very refreshing and means the focus can be on the showbiz stuff now that they have started a new film that looks like a Sci-fi blockbuster that's being jointly produced by the USA and Japan. Kyoko is not yet a cast member but she's part of the support crew. Ren and Kyoko's friend Kanae are part of the cast and the signs seem to be that Kyoko will be offered an acting part eventually.

It's great to just read the showbiz stuff without Ren and Kyoko's romance issues hanging around like an unnecessarily unresolved plot point.

I am looking forward to new chapters, now that I have caught-up. But I am also not sure about the release schedule. So I'll play it by ear and with luck, there will be a additional seasons of the anime too!

[juliennaaa]

❤️

[offbeat-manga-ships]

SKIP BEAT! / スキップ・ビート！by Nakamura Yoshiki / 仲村佳樹 • chapter 6

mogami kyoko is the love of my life: pt. 19

[whetstonefires]

this is very much from nowhere but you've HAD skip beat! thoughts before and i am rereading parts of this nonsense and i am having thoughts. primarily, i think skip beat! would be improved by aging all the characters up like 10 years but keep key ages the same. e.g. kyoko meeting kuon whenthey were 6 and 10 respectively, her and sho going to tokyo at 16 etc. the introduction of vie ghoul rings a bit hollow when sho has only been famous 1 years, but if he's a properly established idol who is aging out of the circuit, you get complexity. the dark moon arc doesn't have the same punch since forbidden love and everything but that's easily adjusted for aged up characters. these thoughts are presented by the fact that i keep forgetting they are 16/17 and 20.

I HAVE ANSWERED THIS ASK THREE TIMES. SEVERAL HOURS OF EFFORT HAVE BEEN DELETED BY VARIOUS TECHNICAL FOIBLES. i used to highlight-all-copy long posts as I went for safety (this was imperfect) but the new block-based text editor doesn't allow it....

So short version of this answer now, you're probably better off this way without all my in-depth rambling textual analysis haaladksklask;dlk. Like, you're losing some fun content but hey third draft right. Condensed essence of idea.

So, I don't at all mind being spontaneously tagged in on something like this! :D But sadly, I must disagree. I don't think that would work.

First there are practical points, where I think you're underestimating how much the idol industry is a child-munching horror, and how having someone debut in her late 20s would be nonsense--that's Christmas cake, she's an old maid. Teenagers only. The basic career-arc expectations that give the plot its rough shape don't wash.

And then if Shou's career had been at this level for 10 years--he's been consistently chart-topping for months, inspired to new creative heights by his rivalry with Kyoko--he'd be the icon of a generation, and plagiarizing him would be a totally different ballgame. He'd have some measure of institutional power, instead of everyone expecting him to flame out any moment now anyway. (The Beagles could still run that con, the calculus would just look different.)

He is utterly disposable to his owners, right now; he's profitable but they haven't invested that much in him. He's already gotten further than anyone is expected to, especially without loads of nepotism. He's not aging out of performing at all, but people are in fact counting down to his expiration date as a wild success as a singer-songwriter, which is what Vie Ghoul threaten to bring upon him.

But more importantly in character terms, I think our leads absolutely have to be the ages they are--like, Ren was clearly only made 20 for Age Gap Reasons lol, but all his development since has leaned on it in such a way he'd become incoherent if he were more than like 2 years older, at this point.

When the personality under the persona starts to surface, a lot of him is still basically a precocious teenager, because he hasn't been living as a whole person since before the breakdown. But he has been living. The longer he'd been doing that, the more profound his alienation from Kuon would be, and that would change the arc.

He's only been Ren for about five years. He's left that kid behind but he's also only just stopped being a kid, really.

The difference between how you look back on and hate yourself at 15 when you're 20, versus when you're 30.......

And then, if Kyoko had lost twelve years to Shou, somehow not being discarded or figuring it out that whole time, and was now facing the world at 26 with nothing to her name but long-ingrained habits of service and self-abnegation and dozens of minimum-wage jobs from which she saved nothing because it all went to Shou, that would be much more bleak.

Do you know what it's like to be 26 and ruined, and to know you did this to yourself?

This jousei version is going to have a hard time not being about either 1) actual physical murder or 2) the grieving process for yourself as a preliminary to self-reinvention.

Kyoko absolutely does the latter in canon, but it works differently folded into a coming-of-age narrative. Bildungsroman for a woman in her late 20s whose formal education ended at age 14 getting out of an emotionally abusive relationship could be a really moving and meaningful work, but it couldn't be this story.

The thing is, this is a manga about trauma, especially childhood trauma, and its role in identity. Kyoko and Ren are both going through their arcs from the context of the very very weird and uneven development process that happens as a result of 'neglect' and 'parental fuckery' and 'bullying' and 'isolation' and 'child labor.'

They had very different experiences! Ren's parents adore him. But Shou's parents loved Kyoko too; it wasn't enough to make up for everything else.

Kyoko is super mature and hypercompetent in some areas and has huge developmental deficits in others. We are introduced to the traumas underlying this fairly quickly, for the most part, although detail kept unfolding for a very long time, and at the same time we watched her go through stages of self-recognition and acceptance, and start to heal. A huge part of this has been nurturing and honoring her inner child.

Ren, we come to see over time, has a lot of the same shit it's just subtler, and he has a much harder time unpicking it. Partly because of who he is as a person--a good liar for one thing--partly because Kyoko started off with a big burst of rage at an external target to launch herself forward and discard a lot of her repression habits in one go, while the main person Ren hates is himself.

(Remember their first conversation when he went off on her, totally breaking persona only we didn't know him yet to know it? I need to reread that again, it's been a while. But from what we know now it sure looks like he saw his younger self in her, and since he's fucked up this led to lashing out. Which was one of the most genuine human interactions he'd had in possibly years by then!)

Partly because he's older. Four years is not generally a whole lot when it's 26 to 30, but from 16 to 20 there's a big shift in plasticity of character, and he just spent his late adolescence cramming himself into a Tsuruga Ren mold only to realize there are limits to the efficacy of this coping mechanism and he's hitting them.

Due specifically to work, and the specific expectations of adulthood! Which, talk about realism wrt mental health struggles around age 20, oof.

Anyway yeah I think the age gap influences their relationships to their child-selves in ways that have been vital to their character developments and how they've influenced each other through them, which would make no sense if they were ten years older.

Would it be Less Problematic? I mean, yeah, but it also would lose the psychological realism that is, perhaps bizarrely, very present in this wildly stylized comedy workplace romance about acting and the processing of trauma.

Kyoko's characterization would be rife with insulting infantilization if she was approaching 30, but in fact she is A Teenager and this is exactly how she should be; it's a sign of health.

Honestly I just think a lot of the shit these characters do only makes sense because they are or recently were teenagers. The intensity of teenage emotions....like Kyouko's whole poltergeist phenomenon, that's classically adolescent for a reason. Shou being in the process of realizing that his shitheadery was like, actually bad; much more acceptable at 17 than 27.

They'd all be weirdly stunted individuals at ten years older, and just much weirder people than they already are. The whole cast can't be Takarada Rories there needs to be some variation lmao.

[utanoprincendymion]

Kyoko and Ren modeling some Valentine’s Day fashion for LME.

[emotional-support-waterbottle]

a Mucha-inspired Kyoko for spring

supplies: watercolor, colored pencil, white ink, clip studio

[meiscella]

[artloife]

KyokoxRen Week 2023!

It's time for a KyokoxRen Shipweek 2023! It's an inconsistent fandom hobby, but why not celebrate two decades of this delightful manga? The point is the creation of material celebrating our favorite pair.

When: June 12-18

What: Making fic, or art, or gifs and memes!

The Skip Beat Discord helped narrow down the prompts and here were the finals:

PAIRED word prompts, in which people can pick one of the words, or both.

12th: Never/Always 13th: Trick/Truth 14th: Moonlight/Sunshine 15th: Found/Lost 16th: Change/Same 17th: Belong/Alienated 18th: Free Day

Creators, hopefully this will be lovely inspiration! Here is a FAQ for anything this post doesn't cover. @fyeahkyokoren please reblog this, and maybe the FAQ you've made in the past just to be safe.

[dionysia-does-stories]

She's An Actress But She Ain't Got No Need

Cringetober 2023, Day 15: Song Lyrics

On AO3

Rating T - 953 words - Skip Beat! - Heel Siblings - Red/Kyoko

Summary: Setsu and Cain Heel have to return to Japan for an award press tour for Tragic Marker and can't even get through the strategy meeting without getting into a fight with Murasame. Song Fic to "Don't Trust Me" by 3OH!3.

Story:

Black dress with the tights underneath

I got the breath of the last cigarette on my teeth

And she's an actress (actress)

But she ain't got no need

Setsuka Heel leaned back in her chair, bored. The director was yammering on and on about the upcoming press junket. Setsu and her brother had been forced to come back to Japan by the production. 

Tragic Marker had been a run away success. (Setsu wasn’t surprised by this. Her brother was in it and everything he did was amazing.) But the Japanese cast were all fussing and celebrating.

Cain was going to have to go to so many talk shows with these annoying people. Setsu had promised to go to all of them with him. She would sit backstage and watch as the brittle, pretty hosts pawed at him. 

Cain had become a sensation. His BJ was frightening beyond measure, but also all the young (and not so young) woman of Japan had fallen in love with him. They wanted to be terrorized by him. Just like that empty headed Manaka.

But Cain was Setsuka’s alone to terrorize and be terrorized by. All of Japan could keep their paws to themselves.

As if sensing her thoughts, her brother placed a hand on her knee. Electricity zinged through her body. Kyoko’s spirit broke through the act for a moment. She lost Setsu and was now just her regular self with her boyfriend’s hand on her. In public. With nothing but ripped tights between their skin. She forced her body to hold Setsu’s posture until she could regain her character.

Setsu shot Cain a look that she knew would be enjoyable to the point of pain. Let his fantasies run away with him. He was the one touching her in public.

She's got money from her parents in a trust fund back east

T-t-t-tongues always pressed to your cheeks

While my tongue is on the inside of some other girls teeth

Setsu’s phone rang. Her ringtone was a metal band at full volume. The entire meeting ground to a halt as Setsu slowly pulled her phone from her purse. A dozen eyes glared angrily at her. They had all been asked that morning to silence their phones.

Setsu obviously hadn’t bothered turning off her ringer. Her calls were important. Hamsters like Manaka could silence their phones.

Setsu checked the caller ID, recognizing the number. She stood up to leave the room. 

Cain grabbed her forearm. “Where are you going?” Setsu could read between the lines. What he was really asking is ‘How could you leave me?’ and “There should be no one in the world as important to you as me.”

Setsu’s smile was indulgent in the face of his possessiveness. “It’s Mum,” she told him.

“Oh.” He let her go. “Tell Mum hi for me.”

Setsu nodded and went outside. The cast watched her go like they were a freak show. Every so often they said or did something that reminded them that they were ‘dangerous siblings’ and not regular lovers.

Setsu loved to shock them. Kyoko kind of loved it too. Kyoko loved the power of her acting.

T-tell your boyfriend if he says he's got beef

That I'm a vegetarian and I ain't fucking scared of him

“What the hell is wrong with you two,” Murasame demanded as soon as Setsu was out of the room.

Cain didn’t even look away from the door.

“Why is she even here,” Murasame continued. “She’s not really your manager. You’re keeping her like some kind of pet. Your good little P—“

Cain swung around to look at him. His glare communicating the rage in every muscle of his body. Daring him to keep talking.

Murasame knew he should just shut up, but he couldn’t. It wasn’t fair that Heel got someone like that. Someone who he shouldn’t be allowed to have. It was indecent. 

Murasame threw the gauntlet down, “She’d be better off with a different owner.”

Cain flipped the conference table on top of him.

She wants to touch me (whoa)

She wants to love me (whoa)

She'll never leave me (whoa, whoa, oh, oh)

Setsu heard the commotion from the hall.

“What’s that?” asked Julie.

Julie could hear Setsu’s eye roll in the tone of her voice. “There’s this complete idiot on the cast of Tragic Marker that Cain keeps fighting with.”

“Is it all okay? He isn’t struggling with—“

“Not anymore,” Setsu cut in. Kyoko screamed in the back of her mind that Setsu was disrespecting their honored mother by talking over her, but Setsu was firmly behind the wheel. “They used to, but my wonderful brother was able to work through it. These days, they mostly fight about me. The idiot is very insistent.”

“Well, tell Cain ‘Mum’ says to not let boys disrespect her beautiful talented daughter.” Julie wasn’t as onboard with the Heel sibling charade as Lory. But she did love that she got to be both of Setsu and Cain’s one and only mother. “And I’ll message you pictures of the dresses.”

“Thank you, Mum,” Setsu paused for a moment, thinking. “I love you.”

Julie’s voice was brimming with warmth when she replied, “I love you too, daughter-of-mine.”

Setsu hung up and went back into the conference room. She carried a sense of familiar contentment in her heart. It only amplified when she saw Cain standing on a table that he was using to crush Murasame.

“Mum says you should beat him up,” Setsu said. She was paraphrasing but still.

The other members of the cast glanced at each other. What kind of mother tells her child to get into a physical fight? The whole family was strange and dangerous.

[annabellaprinx]

Can’t believe I’m gonna say this… but I’m happy he’s back

Gotta admit the blond red flag does make things interesting(?) 🤣