Word of God/movie backstory aside, it suddenly came to me that there is one other gap of knowledge that has probably contributed to a significant part of the alienation between Touga and Nanami, and it's something that existed throughout all of Nanami's life, so it's given that she wouldn't truly notice it: Touga knows they're adopted, Nanami does not. I think that makes a big difference.
Touga's backstory is bound not to be the exact same as the movie (After all, Nanami isn't even there with him), so I'll let myself speculate a bit. Their biological parents could have died, they could have abandoned them or sold them, or the siblings could have been removed from their care, and unless Nanami was brought in later to wherever Touga was, it's safe to assume that he spent at least 5 years with his original parents. He has memories of a different family, and of losing that family. Nanami doesn't even know about any of it. She doesn't realize there is a side of her brother that she never got to meet.
"Blood" is very important to Nanami. Blood is what Nanami uses to try and reassure herself that the parents who are cold and distant to her, and the brother who's grown cold and distant too, have an eternal unbreakable bond. It's very brittle though. Nanami constantly fears being replaced, discarded or harmed by her family. Most often by Touga, who ironically, happens to be her only blood relative there.
Her anxiety can be very easily explained by her experiences with how she was treated growing up in the Kiryuu household, but I do wonder if there's some subconscious parts of her that tap into these knowledge gaps too. I already felt like it was there, in the way her love for her brother is as protective as it is possessive, and how to protect him from harm, be it real or perceived, she can go feral, often shooting wildly at whoever she thinks is to blame, always hitting the wrong targets; and so maybe, I thought, it is possible that her anxieties are also tied to these repressed early childhood memories. Ones of once having a family, and then losing that world, being thrown someplace unfamiliar. Vague mostly forgotten memories fueling her fear of abandonment, working like a constant little nagging at the back of her head signaling to her how little blood ties really matter in the end.
"Blood" doesn't matter to Touga in the same way. He doesn't hold into a rose colored view of it. He knows by experience how easily those ties can be severed, how fickle they are. That's why when he found a little girl in a coffin, a little girl who spoke of there not being anything eternal, of how those you care about are bound to leave you, and questioning what's even the point of living then, he couldn't give her anything. He couldn't save her. He didn't know the answer for himself either.
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inspired by a scene from this heaven of mud by @garagepaperback
Sitting near but far, legs spilled off the edge of the bed, Potter turned to look at him. There were two wide windows on either side of the bed, drapes drawn back. The lights in Draco’s bedroom were off but it didn’t matter, the flat being in the city. Draco learned it was called light pollution- It meant you couldn’t see the stars. It meant it was much harder not to see what was right in front of you.
Potter looked beautiful. It should have ended months ago, preferably before it started.
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so one of the things that's so horrifying about birth control is that you have to, like, navigate this incredibly personal choice about your body and yet also face the epitome of misogyny. like, someone in the comments will say it wasn't that bad for me, and you'll be utterly silenced. like, everyone treats birth control like something that's super dirty. like, you have no fucking information or control over this thing because certain powerful people find it icky.
first it was the oral contraceptives. you went on those young, mostly for reasons unrelated to birth control - even your dermatologist suggested them to control your acne. the list of side effects was longer than your arm, and you just stared at it, horrified.
it made you so mentally ill, but you just heard that this was adulthood. that, yes, there are of course side effects, what did you expect. one day you looked up yasmin makes me depressed because surely this was far too intense, and you discovered that over 12,000 lawsuits had been successfully filed against the brand. it remains commonly prescribed on the open market. you switched brands a few times before oral contraceptives stopped being in any way effective. your doctor just, like, shrugged and said you could try a different brand again.
and the thing is that you're a feminist. you know from your own experience that birth control can be lifesaving, and that even when used for birth control - it is necessary healthcare. you have seen it save so many people from such bad situations, yourself included. it is critical that any person has access to birth control, and you would never suggest that we just get rid of all of it.
you were a little skeeved out by the implant (heard too many bad stories about it) and figured - okay, iud. it was some of the worst pain you've ever fucking experienced, and you did it with a small number of tylenol in your system (3), like you were getting your bikini line waxed instead of something practically sewn into your body.
and what's wild is that because sometimes it isn't a painful insertion process, it is vanishingly rare to find a doctor that will actually numb the area. while your doctor was talking to you about which brand to choose, you were thinking about the other ways you've been injured in your life. you thought about how you had a suspicious mole frozen off - something so small and easy - and how they'd numbed a huge area. you thought about when you broke your wrist and didn't actually notice, because you'd thought it was a sprain.
your understanding of pain is that how the human body responds to injury doesn't always relate to the actual pain tolerance of the person - it's more about how lucky that person is physically. maybe they broke it in a perfect way. maybe they happened to get hurt in a place without a lot of nerve endings. some people can handle a broken femur but crumble under a sore tooth. there's no true way to predict how "much" something actually hurts.
in no other situation would it be appropriate for doctors to ignore pain. just because someone can break their wrist and not feel it doesn't mean no one should receive pain meds for a broken wrist. it just means that particular person was lucky about it. it should not define treatment.
in the comments of videos about IUDs, literally thousands of people report agony. blinding, nauseating, soul-crushing agony. they say things like i had 2 kids and this was the worst thing i ever experienced or i literally have a tattoo on my ribs and it felt like a tickle. this thing almost killed me or would rather run into traffic than ever feel that again.
so it's either true that every single person who reports severe pain is exaggerating. or it's true that it's far more likely you will experience pain, rather than "just a pinch." and yet - there's nothing fucking been done about it. it kind of feels like a shrug is layered on top of everything - since technically it's elective, isn't it kind of your fault for agreeing to select it? stop being fearmongering. stop being defensive.
you fucking needed yours. you are almost weirdly protective of it. yours was so important for your physical and mental health. it helped you off hormonal birth control and even started helping some of your symptoms. it still fucking hurt for no fucking reason.
once while recovering from surgery, they offered you like 15 days of vicodin. you only took 2 of them. you've been offered oxy for tonsillitis. you turned down opioids while recovering from your wisdom tooth extraction. everything else has the option. you fucking drove yourself home after it, shocked and quietly weeping, feeling like something very bad had just happened. the nurse that held your hand during the experience looked down at you, tears in her eyes, and said - i know. this is cruelty in action.
and it's fucked up because the conversation is never just "hey, so the way we are doing this is fucking barbaric and doctors should be required to offer serious pain meds" - it's usually something around the lines of "well, it didn't kill you, did it?"
you just found out that removing that little bitch will hurt just as bad. a little pinch like how oral contraceptives have "some" serious symptoms. like your life and pain are expendable or not really important. like maybe we are all hysterical about it?
hysteria comes from the latin word for uterus, which is great!
you stand here at a crossroads. like - this thing is so important. did they really have to make it so fucking dangerous. and why is it that if you make a complaint, you're told - i didn't even want you to have this in the first place. we're told be careful what you wish for. we're told that it's our fault for wanting something so illict; we could simply choose not to need medication. that maybe if we don't like the scraps, we should get ready to starve.
we have been saying for so long - "i'm not asking you to remove the option, i'm asking you to reconsider the risk." this entire time we hear: well, this is what you wanted, isn't it?
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Alright yeah I want/need to do all of this so let's try this out.
25 notes = Finish crocheting bearded dragon from scrap yarn
75 notes = Find and finish crocheting owl and crochet his crown
125 notes = Start using a self care app again
150 notes = Crochet a seagull plush
175 notes = Track my sleep again
250 notes = Crochet my fursona plush
300 notes = Begin learning C#
400 notes = Try again at learning pixel art
600 notes = Set a consistent schedule for showering and actually follow it
800 notes = Begin work on a Rain World mod
1200 notes = Try to get hired as a page at the local library
1750 notes = Buy a chest binder
2500 notes = Finally resume therapy and try to get a different therapist
5000 notes = Clean my room? Might change this one if I can think of something more important, but for now it sticks
OLD 5K NOTES GOAL, NO LONGER APPLICABLE: Come out to relatives as non-binary and tell them my new name (yeah this one just kinda Happened lol, it was surreal)
And some tags!
@fymo-blogs @therewillbenoromance @theshaddowedsnow @wxtchesheart @the-principality-of-sealand @non-tyrannical-usa (sorry countryverse members I don't have big moots lol)
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