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kyouka-supremacy · 1 year ago

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Gin is such a tricky character. They've got a very good premise and compelling relations with other characters which makes them very interesting to explore. They have near to no screentime which makes everybody have a personal and original idea of what their personality is like with equal canon basis, so that in the end it feels like the fandom is filled with as many different Gin-ocs as people that are in it. I'm forever pursuing the objective, doomed to be unsuccessful by its own premise, of finding a fanfiction that features a Gin characterization that perfectly aligns with my own Gin-oc.

Anyways, meet my Gin-oc:

I already mentioned this, but Gin and Ryuunosuke aren't biologically related. Back in the slums, everyone assumed they were for their similar looks and how they never left each other's side, and they never bothered correcting them; what did it matter anyways? In the end, when all their friends were slaughtered, they ended up being the only family they had.

Gin's quite confident actually: she could cut your throat at any given moment, and she knows it. That's the consequence of always having been quite spoiled by Ryuunosuke: not really with words, but it'd be extremely rare for him to criticize anything she does, and he would let her win on everything more often than not. She is the youngest sibling. The difference in age feels a lot bigger than what it actually is.

Gin's the blunt, sharp type; doesn't talk a lot, but when she does it's sure to cut you. She's similar to Ryuunosuke in that. She's the only one who can speak back to the most feared pm member without fearing consequences... And it shows.

The only thing that intimidates Gin is for people that have only ever known her in her work attire to see her in civilian clothes, or the other way round.

Gin is also a little naive compared to their brother: she doesn't contemplate the endless fight between good and evil or what it means to take a person's life like Ryuunosuke is used to, she just gets her job done. She's younger than Ryuunosuke and, although she's still a feared Port Mafia operative, I think she is fairly more immature than him, also given the fact that, again, Ryuunosuke used to spoil her and always tried to shield her from seeing the most gruesome, terrifying sides of the world. It's not like he managed to keep her blind to everything, she is from the slums too and she did see her family being slaughtered in front of her eyes and she does know how cruel the world can be a thousand times more than your average Yokohama citizen; it's just slightly better than it is with Ryuunosuke, that's it. And keep in mind that to me Ryuunosuke is quite naive too, so they're also close in this.

Gin and Ryuunosuke live together. Ryuunosuke moved them to a little rented apartment as soon as he could when he started receiving pm retribution, and they later moved to a big flat when he got promoted to command unit (the apartment was destroyed after Dazai left the pm because. yeah).

Ryuunosuke was actually against Gin joining the pm too. He never contemplated it being a possibility when he accepted to join himself. But Gin never had any intention to sit around uselessly, and was going to join whether Ryuunosuke liked it or not. He eventually gave in, reasoning the pm would have protected her, so it was all for her to be safe (a little naive thinking on his end, but he was young too).

The one and only time Ryuunosuke ever got mad at Gin was when he found out that she killed someone for the first time. Which like, what else did he expect ever since she joined the mafia? And yet he had thought (perhaps, hoped) that her role would be limited to low stakes missions, and that she would have maintained a low rank (he's a little stupid). He was furious. Which sounds quite hypocrite given the fact that he's killed countless people, but the thing is in his mind he always was the only one supposed to stain himself with sin, never Gin. Despite all the lives he's taken, I have reason to believe Akutagawa still values life and understands what burden it is to take other people's; a burden that Gin should had never known. He's quite the protective kind. But Gin is not afraid of Ryuunosuke (of course, he's her dear brother), and she wasn't afraid to speak back at him; in the end, she did what she wanted, but it was a tough tooth to swallow for Ryuunosuke.

No one has to know they're siblings– no one. Ryuunosuke is dead serious on the matter and mildly obsessed by it; he's tormented by the idea of any of his enemies getting revenge on him through Gin, and that's literally his greatest fear and worst nightmare (not only Gin dying, but also Gin's death being his fault). The only people to know they're related are the executives and Hirotsu; if Ryuunosuke ever found out anyone else knew, he would instantly hunt them down and kill them, no matter who they were. At work, Gin and Ryuunosuke act like they don't know each other; Gin never protested, because she understands just how vital the matter is for their brother, and how it would be impossible to change his mind on this.

Gin and Ryuunosuke love each other more than anything. They're always going to be each other's priority, always, I can't stretch this enough. 50% of the reasons Ryuunosuke joined the pm to begin with was because of Gin, because he wanted to take her away from the slums, because he wanted her to be safe. Yet they just... Have no idea how to help or comfort each other. Both of them are entirely inadequate with words when it's about comforting someone. So their only way to show affection ended up just being there for each other, silently. I can picture, in one of Akutagawa's lowest moments, when months of being beaten up are starting to really feel on his already frail body, and his illness is starting to emerge, him vomiting blood at home; and Gin just being next to him without saying a word– because what could she possibly say? But she's still there, next to him, and she's the most important thing for him; and it doesn't make the world any less cruel, doesn't lessen the pain that's killing both of them, but at least there's some sort of white comfort in knowing they're not facing it alone. I really believe that as much as Dazai worked to dehumanize Ryuunosuke, tried to make of him a mindless killing beast only existing to follow orders, Gin was the only thing left to keep Ryuunosuke hanging to the glimmer of humanity left in him. On that front, I find the relationship between them to be similar to the one Kyouka and Atsushi share in Beast: their life is walking through the darkest of nightmares, but they do so holding each other's hand.

Although, those moments of connection became always less frequent as time passed and both of them grew up. The more time Ryuunosuke spent working for the pm under Dazai, the more he was reluctant to show himself vulnerable, the more they grew apart. Ryuunosuke was going through a very hard time and for him it was of vital importance that Gin had nothing to do with it. On Gin's end, it was draining to have to powerlessly, passively witness her brother slowly destroy himself and his own humanity without being able to do anything about it, and ironically that led to her distancing herself from Ryuunosuke in turn. In a funny, cruel way, seeing Ryuunosuke so pained without being able to do anything about it activated the fight or flight response the slums installed in her: since there was nothing immediately tangible she could fight against, her instinctive response was to run away from the situation. I just feel like powerlessly having to see a dear one suffer so deeply without being able to do anything has the potential to be even more painful than having to bear the suffering yourself, and I can see how she would have wanted to distance herself from it. Gin and Ryuunosuke didn't move away or anything, but the time they spent together significantly decreased to the point they were both actively avoiding each other. Ryuunosuke was constantly moody and angry at the world and although it was never - ever - directed at Gin, can you really blame her if she didn't want to spend time with him? It's hard for me to explain this without making it sound like Gin didn't care about Akutagawa, wasn't aware and suffered from his pain, didn't want to help him; because she really did care, and was concerned for his suffering, and wanted to help. It's just something really hard to deal with on daily basis when it drags on for several years, and there's so little you can do, especially if the person you want to help would rather die than let you help them.

It got better, though. I feel like Ryuunosuke touched the bottom when Dazai left the pm. But his and Gin's relationship got better after that. Very slowly, very gradually, but it got better. I like to think something switched in Ryuunosuke with the Moby Dick fight, and he started to change. And if he had to change, he decided to start from his relationship with Gin, because she's the person he cares about the most. He tried to be there for her more often, tried to spend more time with her, and it made her so happy. It took a while, and it was a little awkward at first: after all, Ryuunosuke is still his brooding self, who will tell her “It's been a while // Let's go home” with a frown on his face; but even despite that, what matters is that he's still there where he wasn't before, he's there wanting to spend time with her, and Gin is overjoyed by it, and she smiles sweetly to him. They're fixing their bond together, and I think they will get there! I think they will get their close-to-normal siblings relationship.

Differently from Ryuunosuke, Gin actually grew to quite like her job, especially after the Black Lizard was born. Hirotsu soon enough became the closest to a father figure she could have ever wished for. And she has lots of fun with Tachihara– in a way, they share much more of a siblings relationship than she and Ryuunosuke ever had. They constantly jab at each other, they have inside jokes; they threaten each other's lives on the daily but unfailingly have each other's back in battle. Gin eventually opened up a lot to Tachihara, who she felt like was the only one who could really understand her; she had found a solid common ground in their shared experience of having a distant older brother they struggled to connect with. And she trusted the sentiment was mutual, that Tachihara opened up to her as much as she did to him, completely oblivious to his half-truths. When she found out he was a spy– when he told her he was a spy, it broke her. She felt deeply, thoroughly betrayed; it changed her. She's not much the forgiving type. (talked about the Black Lizard dynamics some more here)

#Also as in: me giving female characters the complexity author doesn't care enough to give them #But I've slowly grown to have such a precise perception of Gin's character that I supposed I could as well write it down #although once again it has NO canon basis #gin akutagawa #ryūnosuke akutagawa #bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd analysis #my analysis #mine #q.#26/12/22 #I opened this saying “meet my Gin oc” and yet spent most of it only talking with her relationship with Ryuunosuke #I'm so extremely embarassed for that and I apologize 😭😭#But it really is hard not to talk about character B when handling character A who's is literally born from a novel of character B's namesak #and who's only canon info we have literally is being character B's sister 😭😭😭😭#But also like. I really like Gin and Ryuunosuke's relationship for what it does to both their characters‚ Ryuunosuke as well!#I think it really adds to his character beyond the “obsessed with Dazai's approval��‚ you know.#Btw: Gin drinks coffee like Ryuunosuke drinks tea #And neither of them can cook. They carry on through leftovers and what Hirotsu / Tachihara / Higuchi brings them

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foldingfittedsheets · 5 months ago

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I’d like to entertain and enliven you now with the saga of my Slut Era.

I’ve always been a serial monogamist and my shortest long term relationships clocked in at three years. So perhaps that’s why when I finally broke it off with my ex I went insane on dating. Part of it was definitely just that between anxiety and loneliness I wanted to fill up my time.

This happened when I was living alone for the first time, no roommates, just me and my little cat Leeloo. I didn’t want to come home to an empty house so instead I set up dates.

Most of these were disastrous. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea and I had a lot more first dates than second because they’d seen enough, including the one where people aggressively complimented me.

But after a few months I had four people I was seeing simultaneously. I was up front with all of them that things were not exclusive, and they all agreed, so no infidelity took place here, just a lot of hijinks.

Here’s who was on the dating roster:

• An apprentice woodworker that we’ll call Jill. I honestly thought at 26 years old that her being 21 wasn’t a problem age gap and I quickly learned that there was a vast gulf of both maturity and life experience between us. Jill described herself as “heteroflexible” and had just dumped her first boyfriend to flirt it up with me.

• A married woman looking for a friends with benefits. We’ll call her Alice. I insisted on meeting her husband first to be sure I wasn’t part of a cheating mess and he gave me his blessing when I stayed over at her house. Years later when he and Alice had divorced I would go on to sell him and his new fiancée an engagement ring and we both realized at the end how we knew each other and it was wildly awkward. Alice was nice, but a hardcore vegan who insisted I brush my teeth if I so much as ate string cheese before I could kiss her. She was also unhappy in her marriage and was feeling out if I’d want to get serious.

• A bartender dubbed Snakebites, so called because of her signature piercings. She cooked me a steak so raw it was still mooing and some of the best asparagus I’d ever had. In our singular sexy encounter she bit my nipple and I never got over it. Really don't bite someone if you don't know their preference and work up in pressure. We weren’t terribly compatible but neither of us were willing to admit it yet. Truthfully I considered still dating her solely because I desperately wanted her bathroom. It had all black tile, black toilet, black sink, a rain shower in the corner and a jacuzzi tub. I may not have loved her but god I loved that bathroom.

And finally,

• My beloved, who I would go on to marry, who was dealing with a lot of personal stuff at the time. Obviously that meant I liked them the best of all the people I was seeing because we were both disasters at the time.

So that’s the cast of this little misadventure. Now, our story begins with Jill.

Jill was someone who heightened my anxiety. Each of the three times she came to my home she brought and left more stuff. A self help book, a ramen kit, the entire Teen Titans collection of DVDs. It was like she was trying to move in. She also liked to deride my taste in things, frequently calling me a pleb when I mentioned a band or show I liked.

She was working on a gorgeous little decorative table in her woodworking program. The main wood for the top had a beautiful dapple of knots like jaguar spots, and when she showed me a picture I exclaimed how pretty it was.

“Do you want it?”

“Oh- I mean it’s lovely, I wouldn’t mind having it, but you should sell it and make some money!”

But she was adamant. She’d give me the little side table. At about this time, Alice was starting to get awfully lovey for a FWB. I knew she wasn’t happy with her husband but I also knew we were not a good fit. Fun fact: Alice and her husband were step siblings with a pretty hefty age gap. They got together when he stumbled upon a kink photo shoot she’d done with vegetables. None of their family was happy about the relationship but they weren’t related by blood so it was fine.

So I was fending off more overt romantic advances from Alice, and feeling increasingly like I needed to break things off with Jill. Snakebites wasn’t ever initiating communication and I decided to pull a lot of plugs at once.

I ghosted Snakebites, told Alice that I thought we should cool it, and in a move worthy of a rom-com I asked my beloved if I could pretend we were exclusive to put off Jill. They agreed and I texted Jill to let her know that I was no longer single.

I was not prepared for Jill’s response. She. Was. Devastated. She flew off the handle. She’d just been waiting for the right time to tell me how she felt about me! How dare I do this to her!

What about the table?!

“You should keep the table, it’s gorgeous, you’ll be able to sell it, but I don’t expect a free table.”

Silence met me after that text. I worried and fretted and eventually headed home.

There on my doorstep. The table.

It was a small little end table, reeking of oil and polish, but very beautiful. I brought it inside. The little drawer didn’t even have a knob or guide rails. But it did have a handwritten bill proclaiming that it was costing me $500.

“I can’t afford a $500 table, Jill!” I texted.

“Well you kept saying how nice it was. I spent a lot of time on it.”

“I’m not saying it’s not worth $500” (it wasn’t, it was a tiny side table made by an apprentice) “but I can’t buy a $500 table.”

“Make me an offer.”

I stared at the little table. I did actually like it, but I worried about the repercussions of entering into this deal. Hesitantly I typed back, “$300.” I didn’t think it was worth that much but I didn’t want to insult her too badly.

This suited her for the night. But the next day she informed me she needed a new bed, and that she’d take her $300 in credit toward a new mattress. I spent the whole next day basically wrangling with her over what she wanted and eventually she spiked back up to demanding $500 for the damn table.

“Let me just give it back,” I begged. It was not the first, second, or even third time I’d asked to return the thing but this time she finally relented and gave me her address. Since she lived with her parents still I’d never been over.

I called up my beloved and said, “Hey, I need moral support, can you run an errand with me?”

They agreed which is how we loaded up a self help book, a ramen kit, the entire Teen Titans DVD collection, and the table from hell into my little car together. Jill had said to meet her at one o'clock. I intended to drop everything off at noon and be done with this madness.

But while my beloved and I were on the doorstep leaving everything I heard, “Jill? You’re home early,” through the door. Her mom opened it to peer at us in confusion.

“I was just bringing Jill’s stuff back!” I chirped in alarm.

With little tact and a lot of speed we left her with Jill’s collection of things and then I sped out of there like my tail was on fire. I handed my phone to my beloved as I zoomed away instructing them to block Jill’s number. I was free. The tabletross around my neck had been returned.

It was about a month after that when my beloved and I officially began dating exclusively. I had wrapped up all my messy dating threads and it was a relief to be in a relationship again. They went on a trip to Mexico shortly after we made it official.

So I knew they were out of town. But next morning I walked out to my car and beheld a lipstick kiss pressed to the drivers side window.

I was petrified. I had just dumped three girls at once and had an extremely messy back and forth with one of them. Did I have a stalker?!

Of the girls, Alice seemed like likeliest candidate, being of a stronger lipstick variety girl than Jill or Snakebites. We had ended things a bit stiffly, but still cordial. She just laughed when I asked if she knew anything about it. “Nope,” she said, “but good luck.”

I’d rather have walked over broken glass then text Jill, and I’d firmly ghosted Snakebites so I was scared to reopen communication to ask if she was stalking me. I had to drop it. But it haunted me, that lipstick kiss.

For months I was jumpy, wondering which of my spurned lovers had done it. And why. Was it a threat? A goodbye? I lay awake thinking about it, worrying about how everyone I’d dated knew where I lived, which car was mine.

Finally, nothing else happened and I moved on. The kiss would remain a mystery and I had to be content with that.

It was a year later when I finally started filling my mom in on my dating escapades that I finally got closure. She was hooting and laughing as I went over the table debacle. Then I paused and added, “And then this kiss showed up on my car.”

“Did you like it?”

“What? No! I’m pretty sure one of them was stalking me! Who else would leave a kiss on my car?”

My mom started bellowing with laughter. “I did!” She wheezed.

Apparently. My mother had been driving by my place. And decided that a cute little gesture would be to leave me a kiss. And then decided to never mention it to me even though she’s never done anything like that previously.

“It scared the crap out of me!” I yelled while she collapsed with helpless laughter. “I thought I had a stalker! How could I possibly have known that was you?!”

“How could I have known you’d just broken up with three girls at once?” She wheezed in rejoinder and like. Fair play.

So that’s how my mom convinced me I had a stalker and I got out of buying a $500 table.

#ramblies #funny #ffs foibles #dating #the table #writing #story #funny story

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