#implies i might just be too invested in tragedy lately lmao

[luminoustico]

Sherlolly #1 (Soulmates AU) please? Something with a happy ending?

1: soulmates au. Also for @juldooz who wanted the same au.

Mycroft knew his brother was up to something when he walked into his bedroom, because Sherlock shot up to his full height and glared. Mycroft sighed, leaning against the doorknob.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Sherlock said quickly, all hair and height, disappointingly stereotypical for a young teenager. The high of his cheeks went beetroot red.

“Mummy says that dinner’s ready.” 

“Fine,” Sherlock said tightly, hurrying to the door and skirting past Mycroft. He yelped as Mycroft grabbed his arm.

“That hurt!”

“Be quiet,” Mycroft snapped, yanking his little brother to his side. He turned the inside of his brother’s arm upwards, towards the hall light. Marker pen was scrawled across his skin. Mycroft’s smile sagged as he realised what it said.

“Oh Sherlock…”

“I told you, it’s nothing,” his brother spat, wrenching his arm out of his grip. He tugged at his sleeve uselessly. “I was just experimenting.”

There was a horrible silence between them for a moment. As ever, Mycroft was the one who broke it. “It’s okay,” he said slowly. “I won’t tell our parents.”

“Don’t tease me,” Sherlock spat.

“I’m not—” 

It was too late. Sherlock had disappeared into the bathroom, slamming the door hard enough to shake the door off its hinges. The sound of running water filtered through.

“Boys!” called up the voice of their mother. “Stop fighting and come downstairs!”

Mycroft squared his shoulders, clearing his throat. He hurried downstairs, greeting his mother with a kiss on the cheek. Their family had suffered enough; it wasn’t his place to create further upset to his brother. He just had to manage it, that was all.

—

SOME YEARS LATER

The rain was pouring down. The London traffic crawled by, sleek saloon cars alongside hatchbacks with dents in every panel. That was something to admire about traffic jams; they could be a wonderful social leveller. Sherlock flipped up his collar as he opened the door, preparing to step out into the rain. 

“Sherlock,” said a soft voice behind him, and he quelled the temptation to roll his eyes. Turning instead on his heel, he faced Anthea. She had only the hint of a smile on her face, peeking out from underneath a large black umbrella.

“Don’t you get tired of being my brother’s gofer?”

Anthea, quite admirably, didn’t dignify his jab with a reply, and instead gestured to the car just pulling up alongside the pavement.

Sherlock eyed it, weighing his options. He could go through with his original plan; get a taxi, buy some takeaway and try to ignore it, as he had been doing for weeks now. On the other hand… the rain really was pouring down, and Mycroft’s drivers did always make sure the heating was ‘just so’.

With a half-hearted grumble, he climbed into the back of the car. Anthea slid in beside him, shaking off her umbrella and fetching her phone from her pocket.

The drive was shorter than he imagined, and didn’t, for once, take him to some dilapidated warehouse or empty office building. Instead, it took him somewhere worse. Far worse.

Molly Hooper’s flat had, in the past, been a place of refuge for him. She had taken him when no-one else had, when everyone else (even his brother) had lost their patience and thought he’d continue to slip down the drain; she’d let him sleep there, among familiarity, when the strangeness of being a dead man walking got a little too much.

Now, it loomed over him, the windows darker than he’d ever seen them, the door an intimidating shade of yellow.

The rain had petered off during the too-short drive, and Mycroft was stood on the pavement, leaning on his cane with his right hand, his left hand tucked into his pocket.

“Hello Sherlock.” In response, Sherlock tugged the collar of his coat up to line his chin. Mycroft stared hard at him. “Don’t hide.”

“I’m not… hiding.” As he spoke, the car door closed and its engine started, easily pulling away. Sherlock looked at the flat again, blowing out his cheeks slightly. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape to. Just as his brother wanted.

“I don’t know if you remember this, Sherlock, but when you were younger…”

“I know what you’re referring to.”

“What, then?”

“I was embarrassed about the fact that I hadn’t got my - mark - yet, so I tried to fool everyone by writing a name on my arm every morning. Until you got wind of it and told our parents.”

“I had to tell them Sherlock.” Mycroft sighed. “Mummy would’ve found out eventually anyway. She always did.”

“Not about everything.”

“That was a low blow. Which I shall ignore. If,” Mycroft added, and he pointed with the tip of his umbrella towards the windows, “you go up to that woman and stop denying reality.”

Our family is very good at denying reality, Sherlock thought bitterly. Against his worst instincts, he followed the line formed by Mycroft’s umbrella and stared up at the window. A lamp had been lit, lighting the curtains in a low sunset hue. A shape, small and obviously upset (going by the hunched shoulders), entered the frame.

“It’s very easy to get scared. You had your mark since you were a boy. Mine came the moment she got engaged. Is it any wonder I think I’m broken?”

“We’re all broken in this family,” Mycroft said softly, after a pause soundtracked by traffic. “The most radical thing we can do is find our piece of happiness and not let go of it. Everything I do is to protect my happiness, and help you find your own. I admit,” Mycroft continued when Sherlock opened his mouth with a retort, “I made bad decisions. Very bad decisions. But you have a chance to be better than me.”

Sherlock felt the temptation to squash his brother’s vulnerability with a cruel barb, but his eyes could only focus on that small silhouette.

He’d hurt her too many times to hurt her again.

Squaring his shoulders, Sherlock stepped forward and knocked on the door.

The silhouette withdrew from the frame. The yellow door swung open. It took some silence, but Molly Hooper carried forgiveness in her eyes as she smiled.

“Took you long enough.”

“Too long,” Sherlock said, glancing to his wrist. The name ‘Molly’ was etched like a delicate scar into his skin. He was still getting used to the itch that came when she came near, but right now, as he stepped forward and embraced her in a gentle kiss, the itch became a warm tingle, casting a fuzzy glow around his eyes. “Far, far too long.”

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Sarazanmai Episode 10: “I Want To Connect, But I Can’t”

There’s still one whole episode left and I already want to sue Ikuhara for emotional damages, lmao.

Somehow this episode managed to be even more intense and tragic and shocking than the last couple, and that’s saying a lot.

I was initially worried about whether he’d be able to pull off an 11-episode series, but if the final episode can stick the landing I think this will be cemented as one of this best series.

Thoughts under the cut.

I only just woke up like an hour ago and I already just wanna go back to bed now so I can process all this lmao.

Where to even start with this one. It was such a non-stop rollercoaster of intensity. I actually got surprised when the mid-episode transition card happened because it honestly felt like only a few minutes had passed.

I can’t remember if I ever actually got around to saying so, but I’ve been thinking for a while now that I really wanted to see Reo get his own Sarazanmai no Uta musical sequence, and that’s exactly what I got, and it was just as tragic in it’s implications as I feared.

Even though I technically saw that part coming, I didn’t expect the reveal of them being kappas. I thought that they’d turn out to be otters. But this makes sense in it’s own way. It does raise even more questions about Reo and Mabu’s history, though, especially when you take into account the manga and twitter account. I guess my main source of confusion is that it’s unclear if they’re ‘native’ kappas, or if they’re like the main trio, and they’re just humans who got roped into Keppi’s business and can now transform. The fact that Reo had to have his shirikodama extracted like the main trio makes me lean toward the latter, but the whole thing with them having served Keppi in the past makes me think they might actually be from the Kappa Kingdom.

I’m also still holding out hope that they’ll actually explain how exactly the prequel manga ties into the anime, since they still have yet to explore Sara’s relationship with Reo and Mabu yet. It seems like it’d be kinda bizarre if it doesn’t get brought up at all. It could still just be a prequel and it just hasn’t really come up yet in the anime that Reo and Mabu raised Sara as a baby, but I’m also still clinging onto the idea that the prequel manga might actually be an epilogue [or maybe the result of time being reversed and history changing]. At the very least, the fact that the Tokyo Skytree didn’t exist in the manga might not actually mean it’s necessarily a prequel. Given that it’s the otter’s HQ in the anime, it’s possible that over the course of the finale it gets destroyed, which could allow for an epilogue where it isn’t there.

No I’m not just clinging onto whatever flimsy hope exists that my wonderful gay cop dads might get a happy ending. How could you possibly suggest that? :v

[Fake edit: before I forget, it’s also worth mentioning that even though there’s been hints of Sara being familiar with Reo and Mabu in the anime, which seems to imply that she remembers them raising her, the fact that this episode makes it clear that the two of them were working for Keppi means it’s entirely possible that she only knows them for that reason, and the events of the manga might not have happened yet in the anime]

One way or another, this was the most singularly ReoMabu-centric episode thus far, and oh boy it sure delivered on the emotions, and laid pretty much everything out on the table. There’s still mysteries about their history and what exactly it even means that they’re kappa, but in terms of the more emotionally relevant aspects of their characters and the role they play in the story, this episode ties everything together and brings it to a tragic conclusion.

As I expected, Mabu has always just been Mabu, and Reo’s just been misunderstanding the situation. I mean, Ikuhara’s literally spelled that out in some recent interviews, but still. The show alone makes that perfectly clear, in my opinion. But I wasn’t expecting the whole detail of how Mabu’s mechanical heart was rigged to explode if he ever vocalized his love for Reo. It makes a lot of sense, but I didn’t see it coming. It really goes to show how the otters are just out to mess with people, and that they seem hellbent on destroying people’s bonds.

I initially thought that Mabu just had his emotions impacted by what happened to him, like what can happen to people when they have such near-fatal accidents, and in a lot of ways I think that’s still exactly what his situation is an allegory for, but there’s now a more in-universe explanation for his stunted emotions and how he seems to be holding himself back. Since he apparently literally hasn’t been allowed to express his emotions.

And as if it wasn’t already spelled out enough already, Mabu explicitly declares his love for Reo, before dying. WELP.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, we then got the even more tragic and shocking scene of Reo losing his goddamn mind as he falls into despair while also starting to forget Mabu, which makes him go even more out of control, and then Toi shows up and shoots him to death.

The very fact that they both died is in itself a bit of a can of worms that a lot can be said about, but to put it simply, I’m not genuinely upset about this, since for one thing Enta got revived at the end so that’s at least one gay character who avoided death, and also, the fact that they leaned so heavily into the tragedy and sadness with Reo and Mabu in the second to last episode makes me think that stuff will happen in the finale to give them a more happy/bittersweet ending. At the very least, as I said, the anime still hasn’t concretely explained Sara’s connection to them, and I find it very interesting that they decided to oh so conveniently show off near the end that Sara’s headpiece is a plate. I’ve been wondering for ages if the finale would involve a twist ending of Sara producing a gold plate of hope to make a wish of her own, and I feel like that scene was a huge nod toward that possibility. And similarly to how all of the tragedy with Reo and Mabu happened in the second to last episode rather than the last one, it seems important that Kazuki used the gold plate of hope to revive Enta at the very end of this episode, which makes me think it’s more likely that the actual climax in the finale will involve another wish being made.

Since this episode was so heavily ReoMabu-centric, I kinda ended up glossing over the scenes involving the main trio, lol. They were good and all, but I was way more invested in everything else going on. Thankfully since most of the ReoMabu content was covered in this episode, the finale should be more singularly focused on the main trio, so they’ll still get their time to shine.

The scene with Enta and the Otter felt a little too stilted in how it existed to provide exposition for what the Otters are and what they want, but it worked, and I liked the aesthetic of it all. And at the very least we really needed to get a clearer idea of what the Otters are.

I said above that they seem to want to destroy people’s emotional connections, but it also seems like they want to be the ones to then swoop in and control people by becoming their new objects of desire. So it’s less that they’re against connections, but more that they want to have people for themselves. And so we get stuff like the main otter dude trying to ‘replace’ Reo when he’s with Mabu, while also intentionally trying to drive a wedge into their relationship. And the whole thing with him transforming into Kazuki and trying to seduce Enta. And the whole thing at the end with the otter taking on the image of Chikai to lure Toi ‘outside of the circle’.

I’ve been a little iffy on the otters thus far as characters [or as a character, since we’ve basically only seen the one, lol], but this episode helped clear up the more obscure and confusing parts of their role in things. I never really expected them to be much more than representations of concepts that are important to the story, since the whole Kappa/Otter war thing has always just existed to serve as a narrative backdrop and not to be an actual thing that the show ever planned to dive into.

And having their motivation of wanting to destroy connections and monopolize people’s desire spelled out like this helps set up the emotional stakes of the finale. I imagine it’s gonna involve them trying to launch some wide-scale attack on humanity to destroy everyone’s connections once and for all.

It’s kinda funny that even this late into the anime I still have no idea how it’s going to end. Obviously I have a clearer idea than when the show started, but still. There’s just a lot of ways it can go, depending on what sort of ending he wants to tell.

I’m still leaning toward the idea that the finale will be a lot happier than people expect. Maybe that’s just me being delusional, but it does feel like they intentionally ramped up the tragedy in this episode so that the finale could be happier. I at least remember that Utena had a really tragic penultimate episode, and then a much more hopeful and fulfilling finale.

Plot-wise, as I said, I’m placing my bets on the idea that Sara will intervene and use her own dish of hope to do something like turn back time or revive Reo and Mabu [and maybe then insert herself into their lives]. She’s the biggest wild card in the whole story, so I think she’ll be important one way or another. I’m also still holding out hope for the idea that she and Kazuki might have a more important connection than we’ve seen thus far, but there’s not a whole lot of show left to do anything like that with. I’ve seen some people raise the possibility of Kazuki ‘replacing’ Sara, though, which I think could actually make a lot of sense, especially if the anime ends with Sara making a wish that leads to the events of the prequel manga happening.

Though tbh one of the things I’m genuinely most excited for is seeing what the final episode title will be. They’ve all been really relevant to the events and themes of each episode, so one way or another it’ll probably encapsulate whatever theme the ending is going to have. So it should be a pretty big deal. I have a feeling it’ll be along the lines of episode 6′s title and be a more hopeful title starting with ‘I Want To Connect, So ____’, but we’ll see. It might even entirely break the naming scheme and be something different.

And on the note of episode titles, this one just being ‘I Want To Connect, But I Can’t’ really just sums up the blunt emotional tragedy at the heart of this episode. And it really lays bare how that’s basically what every single episode title, except for episode 6, has been about. It’s always boiled down to ‘I Want To Connect, But I Can’t’.

Whether or not people end up being truly satisfied with the ending that Reo and Mabu get in particular, I think there’s a very good chance that the final episode will stick the landing and be really satisfying as a whole. It’s kinda hard to believe that Ikuhara’s managed to pull off an 11-episode series so well, after the bad things I’ve heard about Yuri Kuma Arashi’s pacing, but he’s done a really good job with the pacing and structure of this series. I’m really curious to see where people who’ve watched all of this stuff end up placing this one on their personal rankings. I’ve only watched Utena thus far, but I have no idea how I’d even try and compare the two. In spite of all their similarities, they’re so different that it’s hard to say I prefer one or the other. I think I’ve had a much stronger emotional reaction to Sarazanmai, but that has a lot to do with how I’ve been watching it as it’s come out.

One way or another, I don’t think it’d be very hard for me to end up enjoying the ending. Everything about the show’s central message makes me think it’ll only be bittersweet at worst. Though it’d really be icing on the cake if we find out that the ReoMabu manga is actually an epilogue, and ends up serving as their ‘canon ending’, lol.