#coffeeship can suck it

[theomegawaterbottle]

Just a little something I wrote, mostly so I can justify potentially writing more in the future, detailing how Haruto might have woken up after that dumpster fire of a finale. Epilogue doesn’t count, but so far, that’s really the only thing that has changed.

Nearly a month after the final battle, Tokishima Haruto started to stir from the coma his memory loss had fuelled. As the medical machinery around him began to register change in their displays, a few select cell phones received texts from the contact known as “Rainbow”. The owners of those cell phones justifiably dropped what they were doing and rushed to the medical wing.

Rukino Saki, the one and only pilot of Carmilla, was the first to observe Haruto’s life signs with her physical eyes, and whilst she would never have admitted it, a few tears may have started to well up. They were gone by the time the room was filled with the others who had been notified.

Because it hadn’t just been a month since Haruto had fallen comatose in the cockpit of 01. It had been a month of massive changes for the citizens of Module 77, and even more so for the pilots. Without Haruto as a source of runes, the Valvravn had stopped working, reverting to the original white colours.

“Pino, what is the condition of Tokishima Haruto?” L-Elf asked, in his usual straight-to-business tone.

“It worked! It worked!” The AI of unit 01 responded, seemingly as hyper excited as ever.

Shoko heard her phone beep indicating a text.

“Akira says she wants to know if she can use Little Witch again” she said as she read the text. She paused. “She also wants to know what happened. Specifically I want to know why Haruto was different to Marie”

Pino paused in her exclamations. On the display, Prue seemed to be rubbing his forehead with an expression on his face that clearly said “Oh lord, must we encourage stupidity?”

Pino’s face grew sad. “Marie’s limiter was broken. She couldn’t hold onto her runes..Even if I had given them back to her” If she had been a physical human, Pino looked and sounded like she would have burst into tears.

L-Elf nodded. “So you gave Tokishima Haruto back his runes before the Valvrave could use them. And because his ‘limiter’ isn't  broken, they stayed inside him?” Pino cheered up a little at the statement

“Yep! That’s why the other Valvraves aren’t working. There’s no runes in the RAVE engine! But now that Haruto’s awake, I won’t be so hungry any more!” Pino exclaimed. Saki got the implications of what she had said right away.

“Everyone, get out.” She demanded. The others in the room looked at her, confused. Shoko looked a little hurt.

“But I kinda wanted to be here when he woke up” she pouted, and Saki glared at her.

“If what Pino just said is true, he’s going to feed on the first one he sees, and I’m the only Kamitsuki around. I can take it.” Shoko started to respond, but L-Elf cut her off.

“Very well. Rukino Saki, contact us when it is..safer to be around Tokishima.” He started to shepard Shoko out of the room, but spared a look in Saki’s direction. If the girl didn’t know any better, she’d have thought that he was…no, there was no way he could’ve figured everything out. He was good, but surely he wasn’t actually a prophet? Once the door closed, Saki looked at the camera in the corner of the room.

“Akira..can you..turn off the cameras..” Moments later, a text message appeared.

Why?

“Because…I..Do I really have to say it?”

Apparently. He’s just gonna bite you, and someone should keep an eye on his vitals and such..

Back in Little Witch, Akira was looking confused at why Saki would want her to close off the cameras. Saki’s face filled the cameras view screen as she moved close.

“Please Akira? I can explain it to you later. But..” she was whispering, but she trailed off anyway, blushing. Soon, another text appeared.

Fine, the camera is off. Reset the switch at the back when you invite everyone in again

Unbeknownst to Saki, Akira had done nothing. She felt a little bad for lying to her friend, but she was acting odd. Something was up and Akira was gonna find out what.

As she moved back closer to Haruto, Saki passed the display that showed both Pino and Prue.

“Pino…Will he..Were all his memories restored? She asked,  softly.

Pino answered quickly. "Yep! Everything is as it was!” Saki moved to switch off the display, but Pino caught her attention. “Just make sure he eats more. I don’t know if I’ll be able to bring him back again if he doesn’t eat.”

“I’ll tell him” Saki said as she pressed the button and the screen went black. Then she sat down on the bed, and began to unbutton her school uniform, which of course, she was wearing.

-

Akira was looking at the screen even more confused than before. Saki had taken off most of her clothes and gotten into the bed with Haruto! And now she was…snuggling with him? From the camera’s viewpoint, Akira could see that Saki was whispering into Haruto’s ear, but the camera’s mic wasn’t sensitive enough to make out the words. Were Saki and Haruto…together? But that made no sense. Haruto loved Shoko. Perhaps he hadn’t acted on it too much lately,  but Akira was sure that it was still the case. And if Saki and Haruto were together, it would mean that Saki had lied about her motivations for getting into Carmilla in the first place. But if that were true…what else had she lied about? And furthermore, if they were together…was that why Saki had asked everyone to leave? So that the pair could have some 'alone time’? Akira blushed at the thought. Although, the baser side of her liked the idea of watching the two of them…She quickly shut those thoughts down. Now that there wasn’t a war going on, her hormones seemed to have been making up for lost time. The redhead reached out and grasped a pack of wafers that was floating inside the cockpit of Little Witch. If she was going to be watching a bit of action, she may as well have a snack.

-

Haruto..Haruto…

“That’s me” the boy thought, as he tried to locate the sound in the space he was in. Mostly, it had been the same space he’d been in for a while now. Occasionally he would be thrown into a scene as his memories fought to regain their places in his mind, but Haruto didn’t know that. All he knew was that someone was calling him.

“I’m here” he responded, or tried to at least. He had no way of knowing if his voice reached the other sound. But if someone needed him, he wanted to help them.

“That’s my Haruto. I know you can hear me now. All you gotta do is wake up. Then you can get back to the fun bits of life”

“Fun bits of life? No..I’m too cursed to ha-” Abruptly, Haruto felt a phantom flash of..something on his cheek.

“And off you go about the curse again. It’s getting old Haruto. Wake up so we can have this argument in person”

Didn’t the voice have any idea what the curse had done to the pilots? What he had done to Saki? He tried to voice his concerns, but only received another phantom flash. It was different this time. Hotter.

“Curse and Saki…you have a way with words Haruto. It was months ago, get over it. Although it’s good to know you remember that far back.”

Get over it? What? He had done horrible things to her. How could he get over it? He had to take responsibility.  “I have to take responsibility. I can’t do that to anyone again” he said, trying to make his voice reach the other, somewhere out in the black distance.

“Still going on about responsibility? Bad news, you’re still a Kamitsuki. We all need to feed somehow. So wake up and get to it”

He still had to feed..consume humans for their runes…of course he did. Wait..the voice had said 'we’. That meant..it had to be Saki that was talking, because Akira wouldn’t have left Little Witch.  “Saki?” He asked, almost afraid that the voice would confirm who was talking to him.

“Yeah, it’s me. Don’t worry, it’s just us. You can feed on me and no one will know. It’ll be our little secret” the voice, Saki’s voice, seemed to lower a little, almost as if she was whispering. And Saki wanted him to feed on her? Was she insane? It would be like last time…Haruto stopped his thoughts there. No, it couldn’t happen again. He had to wake up, get away from her. Find L-Elf. He had fed from L-Elf without going out of control, he could do it again. It was only when Saki spoke again, did he realise he must have said part of that out loud.

“Well personally I like to think I’m perfectly sane, and I don’t think L-Elf would want to be a part of it. Or at least I don’t want him being a part of it. I’m not sure how he fits in to the statement there.” Saki’s voice said dryly. But it didn’t really sound disembodied. It sounded more..real, like he simply had his eyes closed. And he could feel..something warm on the side her voice was coming from. Wait..was she ..lying next to him? Sluggishly..Haruto opened his eyes.

A darkened room. A little bit of light seeping in from under closed curtains, and a dozen tiny stars from the machinery scattered about the room in his immediate field of vision. And to his side, was long hair, bright eyes, and the seemingly flawless skin of Rukino Saki. He moved back in surprise, overbalancing on the narrow bed, and falling in a heap on the floor, now fully awake.

“Well that’s certainly one way to wake up. Get back into bed, it’s cold outside the covers” Saki said lightly, a smile gracing her features. She held the jumbled covers of the hospital bed open to Haruto, and his vision was immediately drawn to the fact that she was wearing very little under those covers.

“Ahhh, Saki, why are you naked!?” The boy gibbered before biting back a series of even further questions.

“Well I’m hardly going to let you ruin my underwear again am I? I liked those ones.” She said, fairly simply. “Now hurry up and get back into bed. Rather more comfortable than the ground I’d say.”

Haruto’s brain struggled with this new information. She thought he was going to feed on her again? After what happened last time? Already he could feel the curse rising, a  fog that crept over his mind and a tightness in his chest.

“No! I can’t do that! Not to you, not again!” He exclaimed. Backing towards the door.  "Saki, you have to get out of here!”

Saki’s expression tightened,  her mouth forming a thin line and her eyes becoming more of a glare. 

“Tokishima Haruto. There are two options here. The first is that you willingly feed on me. The second is that I force you into a frenzy where you feed on me anyway. Now choose an option” Saki said, a distinct tone of annoyance in her voice. Haruto, being Haruto, chose to be difficult, continuing with an assortment of “get out of here” and “I don’t want to hurt you”. So, Saki got out of the bed, and with a speed no one could predict, probably because it was so unexpected, ran up to Haruto, grabbed his head, and twisted. Hard. Back in Little Witch, Akira let out a soft gasp as Haruto sank to the floor like a puppet with it’s strings cut, before the familiar red markings appeared on his face and he let out a low growl.

Saki sighed. “I did say I would force you into a frenzy. And now we don’t even get to use the bed” she said, before Haruto’s body was lunging at her.

Akira watched with a mildly horrified expression. The tangle of limbs that was Haruto and Saki. Haruto was almost like a feral beast, whereas Saki..well Akira would have to check later when she had access to Little Witch’s systems rather than only her phone, but she could have sworn that Saki’s eyes were burning emerald, and similar marks were appearing over her neck and face. She stopped watching soon after, when it became obvious that whatever this was, it was a tad rougher than her personal preferences.

-

A while later, to the surprise of the technicians, each of the Valvraves switched from white to black, indicating that once again, they were operational. 

[franki-lew-yo]

Explainationexplainationexplainationtyme

There was a certain subsect of the SU audience who wanted SU to be a straight-forward space opera. It never was this. It was always a coffeeshop-slice-of-lifey sequel to a space opera you never saw which was more about the feelings of the characters than the events and effects of the world around them. It was about the lives of the existential horror space beings and their feelings and always was going to be about that (and the humans on earth, who were caught up in their own interpersonal drama).

It was also almost exclusively through Steven’s pov because that was the point. I think only two episodes of the whole series and those PSAs they made were definitely not being seen by Steven or stories being relayed to him. Steven is the title/focal character born during this coffeeship-slice-of-life timeperiod. He was never meant to feel responsible for this crap that didn’t involve him directly or be the force that tied everything together - he just ended up being that and ended up finding a way to save everyone. This is why he has his breakdown in SU: Future btw; it’s only when he’s older that he’s beginning to understand his trauma and how the responsibilities others expected of him and he expected of himself really meant. I don’t know how much more obvious a show can be about it’s goal+thesis statement then having all the characters; good, bad and extra bad that Steven managed to help come together to save him. The takes “SU should stop focusing on Steven” and “when do we get to the plot” were never what was actually wrong with the show. The actual problems with the show were pacing issues GALORE, some problematic implications like althistory, fan service, and it’s production being wack as hell sometimes - the hiatus’s sucked and helped contribute to the bad flow and pacing.

Now combine all that with the vibe of 2015 tumblr and how people treated this show like it was not just sweet but PERFECT and GOD-TIER. Imagine how annoying it must’ve been, even if you liked things about the show, to have these fans INSIST it was perfect and call you a MRA or homophobic cuz you didn’t like the writing/you just didn’t care for it - imagine, especially, how that must feel to LGBTQ+ folks who were ostracized for the crime of not liking this particular gay show just cuz it was 'all you had'.

To put that into context: I don’t like Invader Zim very much, but I think it’s objectively a good show. I find it annoying how goths seem to think you HAVE to like it or else you aren’t a “real” goth tho. That’s just about gothdom- about a subculture and chique. Tl;dr: when LGBT folks talk about how much the SU fandom made them feel like the show was integral to their identity, I believe them.

Star vs the Forces of Evil had a little something for everyone. It was always a goofy, slappy, memefest of the 2010s barfing on itself but it also got progressively more plot driven as it went along. Star vs was never interchangeable with SU, but it was for the above mentioned “focus on the gems/screw steven”-crowd WANTED SU to be: it was consistently and tonally different between it’s 1st season and it’s 4th, it’s plot thickened and got more and more complex rather than jot between tones and plots. Most importantly, Star vs was not almost exclusively about just Star and her perspective: It broke from her perspective a lot and had episodes where she wouldn’t even show up - those episodes were integral for you, the audience, to see but not for her or Marco to be a part in. That was the point of that show. Your exact thoughts on Starco and shipping mean jack squat: whoever got together in the end with who didn’t matter, it was how the plot involving Mewni was wrapped up that was important.

“Cleaved” could have been great…if it were a “Battle for Mewni” styled six or five parter and not this one episode which had no time to tie up all the loose ends. All it had time to focus on was the effects of Star’s decision on Star and Marco themselves and that backfired cuz it made Star and Marco look selfish and ruined their characters if you were in it for them. If you weren’t into them, it was still a bad ending because it speedrun past the actual climax and gave every other character no real resolution. It wasn’t unsatisfying because it wasn’t what I wanted it to be, it was unsatisfying because it was rushed.

Samurai Jack and Centaurworld are examples of shows which have obvious pacing/writing hiccups in their conclusions, but ultimately come together in a way that I think even the most nitpicky fans can agree worked for the most part. Ftr, Avatar the Last Airebender s3 is the same by the way sorry not sorry I still love it tho.

Nothing is perfect but I can’t help but notice as a critical-fan/viewer AND writer myself what the actual problems with these shows are vs what ppl think the problem is.

Steven Universe was never bad nor did it have a bad ending.

It’s problem was it wasn’t what people wanted it to be (inb4 “when can we focus on just the gems?!”; “why is it always Steven’s pov?”-folks @ me) and was never perfect when, in it’s 2014-17 hay day, it was treated as such. It’s finale WASN'T bad, it’s just that some people didn’t (and shouldn’t have to) like it.

Star vs. the Forces of Evil was a pretty good show that had a bad ending.

Whatever reason you liked the show during its run, it’s finale dropped the ball by being rushed.