#and similarly the people ragging on others for liking that ending piss me off too

[rattlingmycage]

.

[kaiunkaiku]

Sickdays 6, May 23rd: Red

Fandom: Bungou Stray Dogs

Summary: "Most of his hearing is taken up by the blood rushing in his ears, and his vision is clouded at best, but his other senses are working just fine – the taste of blood and bile in his mouth is familiar yet unbearable, the searing pain in his body is familiar yet similarly unbearable, and the stench of blood lingering everywhere is familiar and makes him want to puke again."

Warnings: Blood, vomit, injuries, hinted suicidal ideation bc it’s Dazai

Still Saturday in the States bitches.

Ao3

Chuuya pitches over the side of the bed and throws up another mouthful of blood. Most of it ends up in the bucket instead of the floor this time, but it’s not much of a relief – Dazai won’t be complaining as much, sure, but Dazai really isn’t complaining about much at the moment anyway. He can’t afford to, even if Chuuya is sure he’d love to, because Chuuya himself is the one throwing up blood and feeling like he’s going to spontaneously combust if he as much as sits up. His bones are on fire, his insides feel like they’ve liquified into nothing but blood, his joints are probably going to either snap or pulverize at any given moment, and he really, really fucking hates Corruption.

He can still feel the ghosts of the red markings on his skin, where it feels raw in a burn-like fashion even though the only thing visible is the bruising. He doesn’t know if his insides can be bruised, but they sure as hell feel like they are.

According to Dazai, he was under for nearly ten minutes, which is damn near the longest he’s ever used it for. He’s not entirely sure where he is, because while he is aware that it’s a safehouse, there’s nothing he can use to tell whether it’s a mafia safehouse, an ADA safehouse, or maybe one of Dazai’s personal ones. He hasn’t seen much beyond the small bedroom he’s in now, having been very much unconscious when arriving. He would like to have that unconsciousness back, now.

Dazai is talking on the phone just outside the room, clearly not caring whether Chuuya hears him or not. He does, though only barely and most of that, too, is too much for him to comprehend. He’s fairly sure he’s feverish, with the way he feels like he’s simultaneously burning and freezing, and with the nausea constantly surging through him.

Most of his hearing is taken up by the blood rushing in his ears, and his vision is clouded at best, but his other senses are working just fine – the taste of blood and bile in his mouth is familiar yet unbearable, the searing pain in his body is familiar yet similarly unbearable, and the stench of blood lingering everywhere is familiar and makes him want to puke again. There’s blood crusted in his hair. He knows he’s still bleeding internally, and he’s fairly sure he’s also bleeding externally, even if he can’t tell where. He almost wants to use For the Tainted Sorrow to force the blood back where it’s supposed to be, but just the thought of activating his power sends a wave of panic through him so fast his breath catches. The phantom markings on his skin feel like they’re sapping him of his control.

Chuuya opens his mouth, maybe to call for Dazai or maybe to just curse his fucking existence, but all that comes out is a choked noise, and then he’s hurling blood again. It feels like his lungs are drowning in it, and motherfucking fuck they just might be. His arms are shaking from the attempt to support him so he can throw up more blood in the general direction of the bucket. His vision is currently shit, though, eyes feeling like they have partially melted, so he can’t be held accountable if he misses it. He’s seeing blurred lines at best, and gray patches all around, and everything is twisting and swirling.

Hell. He might just be dying.

He leans back and tries to focus on breathing. The rattling in his lungs is audible, and even if it wasn’t, he can feel the air crackling in his throat. He feels heavy, in a way he usually only feels when Dazai is touching him, and so often it’s a pleasant feeling; now, though, it feels like it’s crushing his chest. He doesn’t think he’s getting enough oxygen. He’s too tired to panic about it, but he sure as hell isn’t tired enough to be pissed about it.

The details of what happened are hazy at best, but Chuuya is blaming Dazai anyway. The fucker most definitely had the chance to stop Corruption well before almost ten minutes, so Chuuya’s current state of being little more than a pained sack of blood is most definitely Dazai’s fault.

When it comes down to it, most shitty things in Chuuya’s life are.

He blacks out for a moment, or at least he thinks he does, because he blinks and suddenly Dazai is standing next to him, stupid bandages ragged and blood in his hair, and Chuuya can’t decide whether it’s startling or comforting to see him instead of just hearing his voice through the doorway. He likes seeing Dazai, though, even if he is pissed at him – at least the bastard is still here. Hasn’t left him behind this time.

It’s depressing that this is his life now. That after all these years he’s still in love with Dazai, who may or may not fuck right off without notice anytime and leave him with his dysfunctional Ability that could kill Chuuya without him.

There must be something in his eyes, or on his face, because Dazai gives him this little smile that made Chuuya accidentally destroy entire buildings as a teenager, and still makes something flutter pleasantly in his chest. Something presses against his hand and it takes him a moment to figure out that Dazai has taken it and is rubbing his thumb on his knuckles.

“Yosano-sensei will be here soon,” Dazai says, free hand absently moving to fiddle with Chuuya’s hair.

If that’s the case, and Chuuya can’t really see a reason for Dazai to lie even if he’s always searching for one, it must be an ADA safehouse, then. Dazai wouldn’t compromise his personal ones like that, and having two ADA members, both of whom Mori wants for himself, at a Port Mafia safehouse wouldn’t be very smart, or, well, safe.

“So try not to die before that, okay?” There’s an irritating, cheerful quality to his voice, but Chuuya knows it’s a cover, a lie, so he leaves it be. He turns his head so that Dazai’s hand shifts to his cheek.

“I’m pretty sure I’m actively bleeding out, you shitty mackerel.” It’s remarkable how little he feels about that fact; mild annoyance, at most. It’s not like he wants to die – he’s not Dazai – but death’s door is a familiar place, and he’s been aware for a long time now that one of these days he’s going to step over the threshold. He accepted that the day he first used Corruption voluntarily.

Dazai says nothing to that. His thumb comes to stroke Chuuya’s cheekbone, and he doesn’t jostle Chuuya awake when Chuuya dozes off.

When he comes to, there are two voices just outside the room, Dazai and a woman Chuuya faintly recognizes as Yosano Akiko. Dazai is explaining and Yosano is asking questions, so they’re either talking about him or talking about work.

Chuuya tastes blood in his mouth.

Yosano Akiko is an intimidating woman, even to someone who has trained under Ozaki Kouyou. She’s taller than Chuuya (a lot of people are, yes, he knows), and exudes an air of cold professionalism with a hint of sadism – all qualities Chuuya is familiar with, but her unique blend of them commands such attention and respect even before she walks in that all Chuuya can do once she does is stare and nod at her even if the motion pulls at something unpleasant in his neck.

She wastes no time, barely bothering to explain her Ability to him, and then he’s not bleeding anymore. He still feels like shit, though, because her Ability fixes injuries and nothing but injuries, so the phantom markings on his skin stay, and the bone-deep exhaustion that Corruption leaves him with doesn’t go anywhere. Just the injuries.

So at least he’s not dying today.

“You owe me a favor for this,” she says, already packing her things. “One each.” Dazai looks like he’s about to protest, makes an indignant squawk but nothing more.

“Sure,” Chuuya replies, a beat late. He does own his life to her, after all, so no point trying to deny a favor.

(He owes his life to a lot of people. He tries not to think about that.)

Now that he’s not choking on blood anymore, the exhaustion is claiming him fast. He tries to fight it, but he can’t pay attention to the instructions Yosano is giving Dazai when there’s no sharp pain keeping him alert.

God knows why, but he trusts Dazai; has trusted him for the past eight years, even the four filled with uncertainty and anger. So he lets himself drift off to the sound of Dazai’s voice and trusts that it’s safe to do so.

There’s a soft brush against his forehead and No Longer Human surges through him.

Yeah.

Safe.

[spookypastatoo]

Abandoned by Disney

Some of you may have heard that the Disney corporation is responsible for at least one real, “live” Ghost Town. Disney built the “Treasure Island” resort in Baker’s Bay in the Bahamas. It didn’t START as a ghost town! Disney’s cruise ships would actually stop at the resort and leave tourists there to relax in luxury. This is a fact. Look it up. Disney blew $30,000,000 dollars on the place… yes, thirty million dollars. Then they abandoned it.

Disney blamed the shallow waters (too shallow for their ships to safely operate) and there was even blame cast on the workers, saying that since they were from the Bahamas, they were too lazy to work a regular schedule. That’s where the factual nature of their story ends. It wasn’t because of sand, and it obviously wasn’t because “foreigners are lazy”. Both are convenient excuses. No, I sincerely doubt those reasons were legitimate. Why don’t I buy the official story? Because of Mowgli’s Palace.

Near the beachside City of Emerald Isle in North Carolina, Disney began construction of “Mowgli’s Palace” in the late 1990s. The concept was a jungle-themed resort with a large, you guessed it, palace in the center of the whole thing. If you’re unfamiliar with the character of Mowgli, then you might better remember the story “The Jungle Book”. If you haven’t seen it anywhere else, you’d know it as the Disney cartoon from decades past. Mowgli is an abandoned child, in the jungle, essentially raised by animals and simultaneously threatened/pursued by other animals.

Mowgli’s Palace was a controversial undertaking from the start. Disney bought up a ton of high-priced land for the project, and there was actually a scandal surrounding some of the purchases. The local government claimed “eminent domain” on people’s homes, and turned around and sold the properties to Disney. At one point a home that had just been constructed was immediately condemned with little to no explanation. The land grabbed by the government was supposedly for some fictional highway project. Knowing full well what was going on, people started calling it the “Mickey Mouse Highway”. Then there was the concept art. A group of stuffed shirts from Disney Co. actually held a city meeting. They intended to sell everyone on how lucrative this project was going to be for everyone. When they showed the concept art, this gigantic Indian Palace… surrounded by the JUNGLE… staffed with men and women in loincloths and tribal gear… well, suffice to say everyone flipped their shit. We’re talking about a large Indian palace, jungle and Loincloths not only in the center of a relatively wealthy area, but also a somewhat “xenophobic” area of the southern USA. It was a questionable mix at that point in history. One member of the crowd tried to storm the stage, but he was quickly subdued by security after he managed to break one of the presentation boards over his knee. Disney took that community and essentially broke it over its knee, as well. The houses were razed, the land was cleared, and there wasn’t a damned thing anyone could do or say about it. Local TV and newspapers were against the resort at the beginning, but some insane connection between Disney’s media holdings and the local venues came into play and their opinions turned on a dime.

So anyway, Treasure Island, the Bahamas. Disney sunk those millions in and then split. The same thing happened with Mowgli’s Palace. Construction was complete. Visitors actually stayed at the resort. The surrounding communities were flooded with traffic and the usual annoyances associated with an influx of lost and irate tourists. Then it all just stopped. Disney shut it down and nobody knew what the hell to think. But they were pretty happy about it. Disney’s loss was pretty hilarious and wonderful to a large group of folks who didn’t want this in the first place. I honestly didn’t give the place another thought since hearing it closed over a decade ago. I live maybe four hours from Emerald Isle, so really I only heard the rumblings and didn’t experience any of it first-hand.

Then I read this article from someone who had explored the Treasure Island resort and posted a whole blog about all the crazy shit he found there. Stuff just… left behind. Things smashed, defaced, probably ruined by the disgruntled former employees who had lost their jobs. Hell, the locals from all around here probably had a hand in wrecking that place. People there felt just as angry about Treasure Island as folks here did about Mowgli’s Palace. Plus there were rumors that Disney had released their aquarium “stock” into the local waters when they closed… including sharks. Who wouldn’t want to take a few swings at some merchandise after that?

Well, what I’m getting at is that this blog about Treasure Island got me thinking. Even though many years had passed since its closing, I figured it might be cool to do some “urban exploration” at Mowgli’s Palace. Take some photos, write about my experience, and probably see if there was anything I could take home as a memento. I’m not going to say I wasted no time in getting there, because honestly it took me another year after I first found that Treasure Island article to get around to going up to Emerald Isle. Over the course of that year, I did a lot of research on the Palace resort… or rather, I tried to. Naturally, no official Disney site or resource made any mention of the place. That had been scrubbed clean. Even odder, however, is that nobody before myself had apparently thought to blog about the place or even post a photo. None of the local TV or newspaper sites had one word about the place, though that was to be expected since they had all swung Disney’s way. They wouldn’t be out there lauding their embarrassment, you know?

Recently, I learned that corporations can actually ask Google, for example, to remove links from search results… basically for no good reason. Looking back, it’s probably not that nobody spoke of the resort, but rather their words were made inaccessible. So, in the end, I could barely find the place. All I had to go on was an old-as-hell map I’d received in the mail back in the 90s. It was a promotional item sent out to people who had recently been to DisneyWorld, and I guess since I had been there in the late 80s, that was “recent.” I didn’t really intend to hang onto it. It just got shoved in with my books and comics from my childhood. I’d only remembered it months into my research, and even then it took me another few weeks to locate the storage bin my parents had shoved it all into. But I DID find it. Locals were no help, as most were transplants who had moved to the beach in recent years… or old residents who just sneered at me and made rude gestures the second I managed to say “Where would I find Mowgli’s—“

The drive took me through an inordinately long corridor of overgrowth. Tropical plants that had run rampant and overpopulated the area mixed with the native species of flora that actually belonged there and had tried to reclaim the land. I was in awe when I reached the front gates of the resort. Tremendous, monolithic wooden gates whose supports to either side looked like they must have been cut from giant sequoias. The gate itself had been gouged in several places by woodpeckers and eaten away at the base by burrowing insects. Hanging on the gate was a sheet of metal, some random scrap, with hand-painted letters scrawled in black. “ABANDONED BY DISNEY.” Clearly the handiwork of some past local or an employee who wanted to make some small protest. The gates were open enough to walk through, but not drive, so grabbing my digital camera and the map, whose flip-side showed a layout of the resort, I set off on foot.

The inner grounds of the place were just as overgrown as the entryway. Palm trees stood untended and ragged among piles of their own coconuts. Banana plants similarly stood in their own stinking, bug-riddled refuse. There was this sort of clash between order and chaos, as carefully planted rows of perennial flowers mixed with obnoxious tall weeds and stinking, blackened mushrooms. All that remained of any outdoor structures were broken, rotting wood and various charred bits of unidentifiable material. What was most likely an information booth or an outdoor bar was now simply a pile of assorted debris chopped up by past vandalism and ravaged by weather. The most interesting thing on the grounds was a statue of Baloo, the friendly bear from the Jungle Book, which stood in a sort of courtyard in front of the main building. He was frozen in a jovial wave toward no one, staring into empty space with a silly, toothy grin as bird shit covered whole swaths of his “fur” and vines ensnared his platform.

I approached the main building – the palace – only to find the outside of it covered in graffiti where the original paint hadn’t peeled and chipped away. The front doors weren’t just open, they had been taken off their hinges and were stolen. Above the front doors, or the gaping map where they had been, someone had once again painted “ABANDONED BY DISNEY.” I wish I could tell you about all the awesome stuff I saw inside the palace. Forgotten statues, abandoned cash registers, a full-fledged secret society of homeless bums… but no. The inside of the building was so stark, so bare, that I actually think people had stolen the molding off the walls. Anything that was too big to steal… counters, desks, giant fake trees… they were all resting amid this empty echo chamber that amplified my every step like a slow rat-a-tat of a machine gun. I checked the floorplan and headed to all the locations that might seem in any way interesting.

The kitchen was as you’d imagine… an industrial food-prep area with all the appliances and space, no expenses spared. Every glass surface was broken, every door knocked off its hinges, every metal surface kicked and dented. The entire place smelled like very old piss. The huge freezer, not even remotely cool now, had row upon row of empty shelf space. Hooks hung from the ceiling, probably for hanging cuts of meat, and as I stood inside for a moment, I noticed they were swinging. Each hook swung in a random direction, but their movements were so slow and small that it was almost impossible to see. I figured it had been caused by my footsteps, so I stopped one from swinging by clutching it in my fist, then carefully letting go, but within seconds it started to swing once more.

The bathrooms were in much the same state as the rest of the place. Just like the Treasure Island resort, someone had methodically smashed each porcelain commode with coconuts and other implements. There was about a half-inch of rancid, stinking stagnant water on the floor, so I didn’t stay there very long. What’s odd is that the toilets and the sinks (and the bidets in the ladies’ room, yes, I went there) all dripped, leaked, or just ran freely. It seemed to me that they should’ve shut the water off long, LONG ago.

There were plenty of rooms in the resort, but naturally I didn’t have time to look through them all. The few I did peer into were similarly wrecked, and I didn’t expect to find anything there. I thought there was actually a television or radio in one room, as I really think I heard a quiet conversation coming out. Though it was like a whisper, probably my own breathing echoing in the silence, or just another case of the sound of flowing water playing tricks on the mind, this is what it sounded like…

1: “I didn’t believe it.” 2: (short, unknown reply) 1: “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that.” 2: “Your father told you.” 1: (unknown reply, or possibly just weeping) I know, I know, that sounds ridiculous. I’m just telling you what I experienced, why I thought there might’ve been something running in that room – or worse, some vagrants who had holed up there and probably would’ve knifed me. At the front doors of the Palace again, I figured I hadn’t found anything of note and had wasted the trip up. As I looked out the door, I noticed something interesting in the courtyard that I had apparently missed. Something that would give me at least ONE thing to show for all my trouble, even if it was just a photograph.

There was a lifelike statue of a python, maybe eighty feet long, coiled up and “sunning” itself on a pedestal right in the center of the area. It was almost time for the sun to start setting, so the light fell onto the object in the perfect way for a photograph. I approached the python and snapped a photo. Then I stood on my toes and snapped another. I moved closer again to get the detail of its face. Slowly, casually, the python lifted its head, looked directly into my eyes, turned and slithered off the pedestal, across the grass, and into the trees. All eighty feet of it. Its head disappeared into the woods long before its tail even left the sunning spot. Disney had released all their exotic animals onto the grounds. Right there on my floorplan map was the “Reptile House.” I should have known. I’d read about the sharks at Treasure Island, and I should have KNOWN they’d done the same here.

I was dumbfounded, just utterly stupefied. My mouth must have been hanging open for the longest time before I came back down to Earth and snapped it shut. I blinked a few times and backed away from where the snake had been, back toward the Palace. Even though it was totally gone, I still wasn’t taking any chances and backed my way into the building. It took a few deep breaths and slaps to my own face to get myself right in the head again after that. I looked for a place to sit down, as my legs were feeling a bit like jelly at this point. Of course, there was no place to sit down unless I wanted to recline in the broken glass and dead leaf carpet or haul myself up onto a desk of questionable reliability.

I had seen some stairs near the Palace’s lobby and decided to go have a seat there until I felt better. The staircase was far enough away from the front of the building to be relatively clean, save for a startling accumulation of dust. I pulled a wedge of metal off the wall, once again painted with the “ABANDONED BY DISNEY” motto I’d become accustomed to. I placed the wedge on the stairs and sat on it to keep at least somewhat clean. The stairway led downward, below ground level. Using my camera flash as a sort of improvised flashlight, I could see that the staircase ended in a metal mesh door with a padlock. A sign on the door… a REAL sign… read “MASCOTS ONLY! THANK YOU!” This perked up my spirits a little bit, for two reasons. One, a Mascots-Only area would have definitely had some interesting stuff back in the day… two, the padlock was still in place. Nobody had gone down there. Not the vandals, not the looters, nobody. This was the only place I could actually “explore” and perhaps find something interesting to photograph or wantonly steal. I had come to the Palace essentially agreeing with myself that it was okay to take anything I wanted because – hey – “abandoned”.

It didn’t take much to bust the lock. Well, actually that’s wrong. It didn’t take much to bust the metal plate on the wall that the padlock was hooked to. Time and decay had done most of the work for me, and I was able to bend the metal plate enough to pull the screws out of the wall – something nobody else had apparently thought of, or had been able to do at the time. The Mascots-Only area was a startling and very welcomed change from the rest of the building I’d seen. For one, every second or third fluorescent light overhead was illuminated, even though they flickered and faded randomly. Also, nothing had been stolen or broken, even if age and exposure were definitely taking their toll. Tables had notepads and pends, there were clocks… even a punch-in clock on the wall complete with filled-out time cards. Chairs were scattered around and there was even a small break room with an old, static-filled television and long rotted-out food and drink on the counters. It was like one of those post-apocalypse movies where everything is left in the state of evacuation.

As I walked the mazelike sub-basement hallways of the Mascots-Only area, the sights just became more and more interesting. As I went further, desks and tables were knocked over, papers scattered and almost melded with the damp floor, and a large carpet of mold was slowly overtaking the real rotting crimson floor-covering. Everything was just sort of “squishy.” Anything wood disintegrated into mush when I applied even the least amount of force, and clothing items hanging on hooks in one of the rooms simply fell to moist threads if I tried to unhook them. One thing that annoyed me was that the light was becoming more sparse and unreliable as I went further into the dank, suffocating depths of the place. Eventually, I reached a black and yellow striped door with the words “CHARACTER PREP 1” stenciled on it. The door wouldn’t open at first. I figured this was probably where the costumes were kept, and I definitely wanted a photograph of that twisted, stinking mess. Try as I might, whatever angle or trick I used, the door wouldn’t budge. That is, until I gave up and started to walk away. That was when there was a slight popping sound and the door creaked open slowly.

Inside, the room was completely dark. Pitch black. I used the camera flash to look for a light switch in the wall by the door, but there was nothing. As I made my search, I was jarred out of my sense of excitement by a loud electrical buzz. Rows of lights overhead suddenly flashed to life, flickering and fading in and out like the rest I had passed. It took a second for my eyes to adjust, and it seemed like the light was going to just keep getting brighter until all the bulbs exploded… but just when I thought it would reach that critical stage, the lights dimmed a bit and steadied. The room was exactly as I had pictured it. Various Disney costumes hung on the walls, fully put together like strange cartoon cadavers hung from invisible nooses. There was an entire rack of loincloths and “native” clothes on hangers toward the back.

What I found odd, and what I wanted to photograph right away, was a Mickey Mouse costume at the center of the room. Unlike the other costumes, it was lying on its back in the center of the floor like a murder victim. The fur on the costume was rotten and shedding, creating bare patches. What was even odder, however, was the coloring of the costume. It was like a photo negative of the actual Mickey Mouse. Black where he should be white and white where he should be black. His normally red overalls were light blue. The sight was off-putting enough that I actually put off photographing the thing until last. I took a picture of the costumes hanging on the walls. Upward angles, downward angles, side shots to show an entire row of frozen, putrid cartoon faces, some with plastic eyes missing. Then I decided to stage a shot. Just one of the bedraggled character heads on the slick, grimy floor. I reached for the headpiece of a Donald Duck costume and carefully removed it so the thing wouldn’t fall apart in my hands. As I looked into the face of the wide-eyed, moldering head, a loud clattering sound made me jump with fright. I looked down at my feet, and there between my shoes was a human skull. It had fallen out of the mascot head and shattered into pieces at my feet; only the empty face and lower jaw remained, staring up at me.

I dropped the duck head immediately, as you’d expect, and moved for the door. As I stood in the doorway, I looked back to the skull on the floor. I had to take a picture of it, you know? I HAD to, for any number of reasons that may seem silly, but only if you don’t think it through. I’d need proof of what happened, especially if Disney was going to somehow make this go away. I had no doubt in my mind, right from the start, that even if it was just gross negligence, Disney was RESPONSIBLE for this. That’s when Mickey, that photo-negative, opposite-Mickey in the middle of the floor, started to get up.

First sitting up, then climbing to its feet, the Mickey Mouse costume – or whoever was inside of it – stood there at the center of the room, its fake face just staring directly at me as I mumbled “No…” over and over and over… With shaking hands, a violently thrashing heart, and legs that had once again turned to jelly, I managed to lift the camera and aim it at the opposite creature now quietly sizing me up. The digital camera’s screen displayed only dead pixels in the shape of the thing. It was a perfect silhouette of the Mickey costume. As the camera moved in my unsteady hands, the dead pixels spread, marring the screen wherever Mickey’s outline moved to. Then the camera died. Went blank and quiet and… broken. I raised my eyes once again to the Mickey Mouse costume. “Hey,” it said in a hushed, perverted, but perfectly executed Mickey Mouse voice. “Wanna see my head come off?” It started to pull at its own head, working its clumsy, glove-glad fingers around its neck with clawing, impatient movements similar to a wounded man trying to pull himself free of a predator’s jaws…

As it worked its digits into its neck… so much blood… So much thick, chunky, yellow blood… I turned away as I heard a sickening tearing of cloth and flesh… only cared about getting away. Above the doorway out of this room, I saw the final message clawed into the metal with bone or fingernails… “ABANDONED BY GOD”

I never got the pictures out of the camera. I never wrote the blog entry about it. After I ran from that place, fled for my sanity if not my very life, I knew why Disney didn’t want anyone to know about this place. They didn’t want anyone like me getting in. They didn’t want anything like that getting out.

[50cyg]

Digimon Confession: I don’t like Takeru and Sora

This is in response to someone asking me why I don’t like Sora and also just for me to get my thoughts out into the open because I am curious about the feedback that will come of it. This post will be more Sora related than Takeru related.

Please no hate, I know many people love Sora and Takeru and that’s totally okay. I still sometimes like Sora… but only when I see her through the eyes of a Taiorato fan.  

First off I want to preface this by saying that I do not hate Sora or Takeru. It’s not like everytime they are on screen I get annoyed and want them gone, I just don’t care about them. If I could, I’d just eliminate them from the series.

When it comes to the 8 original Chosen Children (or Digidestined), I only like 6 as some people may have already noticed. Those 6 are Taichi, Yamato, Mimi, Joe, Hikari and Koushiro. I like Mimi, Taichi, Yamato, Joe and Koushiro about equally (if I have to choose a favourite it would be Taichi at the moment but it changes all the time). Hikari I like aspects of but I do think she is a little too perfect, I absolutely love the Yagami siblings together though. Actually, my favourite moments with Hikari are in the two movies directed by Momoru Hosoda, I find she has more personality in those movies than she does in the series and she is honestly just adorable. This is sooooo off topic…

Getting back on track… this wasn’t always the case. Actually, as a child, Takeru and Yamato were tied for my favourite characters (one of my fondest memories as a child was drawing Takeru at the kitchen table while trying to explain to my Grandmother what the show was about). And the characters I related to most were Sora and Takeru. Takeru because he was the same age as I was while watching the show and so he acted very similarly to how I might react in the same situation (or how I’d perceive I’d react cause let’s face it pretty sure we’d all be dead if we went through what the chosen kids went through). And Sora I related to because she was a Tomboy like me. I was that girl who would get a new pair of pants and have them grass stained by the end of the day. You could not keep my feet on the ground, I was always climbing everything from trees to the side of my house onto the roof, and I enjoyed being dirty and adventurous. Also, as a child I shipped her with Taichi to a certain extent. Not to the extent of many fans who were horribly disappointed they didn’t get together. Honestly, I didn’t care very much and soon forgot about the ending entirely (02 as a whole didn’t leave any kind of impact on me until years later when I re-watched it).

Although, there were always subtle changes in how I viewed characters as a re-watched the series throughout my adolescence and as I watched the Japanese version (the Japanese version made me fall in love with Mimi), I’m going to just jump ahead to when things really changed. Things really started to change when I re-watched the series in preparation for Tri and then began to watch Tri.

First off I started relating less to both Takeru and Sora.

Takeru for obvious reasons, I was no longer a child and started finding him to be a bit annoying or just boring… I didn’t find him to be interesting because compared to the others his character was pretty one dimensional, just your classic small child character. However, I did still find his relationship with his brother compelling enough but nothing to write home about. I was more interested in Yamato’s struggle than Takeru, mainly I think because more emphases was placed on Yamato’s struggles. Actually, sometimes I think Takeru was just created by the writers partially to have a young character and partially to round out Yamato’s character, rather than with plans to really give him his own development. In 02 I just found him really boring… I found him boring in this season as a child too.

Sora, I related less too not because I stopped being tomboyish, in fact I’d say I’m more tomboyish than ever. I stopped relating to her because as an adult I was able to notice more of her character than just the tomboy part and realized we have nothing else in common.  I’m not motherly, I love children but in the sense that I love playing with them, not that I am very good at taking care of them. I don’t bottle my emotions because I’m too worried about everyone else or because I don’t understand them. I’m not afraid of hurting other people’s feelings and I am the last person you want to come to when you need comforting…

In addition, I do not like Takeru in Tri. I don’t find his flirting funny. I don’t like playboy characters, they are just annoying to me, I actually think it makes him kinda one dimensional. I don’t find his relationship with Yamato very interesting (except when he points out that Yamato fights with everyone). There isn’t the struggle between them that there used to be, they seem to have adjusted very well to their circumstances. I didn’t find his struggle with Patamon interesting (I was far more interested in Koushiro’s struggle), I actually love the concept of the Digimon becoming infected and how the children respond but Takeru and Patamon did nothing for me… I think it’s because I had already lost interest in them at that point and I’m beyond the recovery line.

That’s about all I have to say about Takeru, on to Sora... lots to say about Sora...

So it really comes down to me feeling like she is pointless because every role her character has can be filled by someone else.

Basically, her primary roles are as follows:

Mediator: this role has been filled by other character’s in the series like Mimi and Joe, so could have been filled by them at other points as well or in some cases even by the Digimon.

Mother: It’s established that Joe is the Paternal one of the group, I don’t understand why we needed two parent figures in this rag tag team.

Person who is always making sure everyone else is okay: First off, Yamato fills this role a lot of the time, this aspect of him plays into his rivalry with Taichi who is more mission oriented than feeling oriented. Secondly, the digimon are meant to fill this role. They are the creature’s that always know when you are upset and will try their best to make you feel better again, it’s one of their primary roles next to beating the crap out of things.

Love interest: So much BS! First off, I feel like this is starting to become her primary role especially within the fan base and it’s annoying as hell.  I will get to how I feel about her relationships with the two boys later. 

I could literally take you through every line of her dialogue and tell you who I would have given the line to instead or why I would just get rid of it altogether.

Final thoughts on Sora is that ultimately, next to Takeru, I find her to be the least compelling character. I think Joe is more of a badass than Sora when he fills the Paternal role (like when he jumps on top of Unimon, or when he is attacking Gennai). I also prefer Joe’s way of mediating, Sora basically tells the boys to stop being stupid while Joe actually tried to solve the conflict and although it doesn’t always work, when it does it’s a more permanent solution. Examples of this are in the 3rd episode when he tells both Taichi and Yamato they would make great guards and suggests they share the burden, which not only makes sense but also satisfies both Taichi and Yamato’s need to be alphas. Example of it not working is him trying to decide in episode 7 who has the better plan regarding the mountain and although Sora is the one who ends the fight by telling them all to sleep on it, it is a temporary fix and Joe is the one who continues to try to permanently fix the problem. I also find her problem in season 1 pretty boring by comparison to the other chosen children problems, it also doesn’t offer anything new to the cliché of child and parent not understanding one another. As an adult, I find her relationship with Taichi boring unless they are fighting, when they are fighting I love it, I feel like it’s a really good representation of female on male relationships. I know a lot of people disagree with me on this but I love that she gets pissed at him over a hairclip in the movie, I think that argument is real AF. I’ve totally done that to my boyfriends and have also been the one mediating arguments like that between friends of mine who are a couple. Actually, their arguments are the one thing I don’t think could be filled by anyone else, even Mimi. However if they became a couple I feel like those arguments would be the dominant component of their relationship and then it would become cliche and boring as well. I don’t like her relationship with Yamato, I never have. I wasn’t angry when they got together I just thought it was dumb. I get why they could make a good couple but I don’t find it at all compelling, it actually feels like it would be too perfect… they are almost too perfect for each other.

Anyway, I think that’s it for now. This could get interesting depending on the response I get.