#that being said. feel free to cuddle kafka

[nightfal1n]

Reno's ride-or-die policy toward Kafka is outstanding but there's something about Kafka letting the boy 14 years younger than him scolds, drop kicks, handchops etc. on him without getting angry even once. Even when Reno's "don't transform senpai" reached its stupidity peak during the raid on Tachikawa base you'd think Kafka will yell back at him at least once but instead, he just keep his reason in his mind and go ahead. Especially when compared side-by-side with how Iharu reacts to Reno being Reno most of the times.

The same goes to his attitude toward Kikoru when she's in need of help. He don't even smirk or telling her to act better around him. He just help her, encourage her, and telling her she shouldn't be too reckless. Yes he allow himself to goof around, stealthy transforming to get the car back up just to look cool. But when it's really matter, he'll stand to protect her and demand nothing.

It's easy to feel offended, to want to getting back at someone for talking down on you. But Kafka with his life experience understand very well that Reno (being a kid) is just worried, and Kikoru (also being a kid) just want some kind of approval. Kafka might not meet all categories of what social expect from a grown adult (not many does), sometimes he just flat out a manchild but he's definitely not a teenager in adult body by any means.

[studiobeebo]

💐 🌺 🍀 + Kafka Hibino? 👉👈 if that’s not too many haha

listen i have been DYING to find more kn8 fans and have a chance to write for it so you are A OK MY DUDE!!!!! hope you enjoy!

💐 Do they enjoy giving compliments or do they like getting them more? What kind of compliments do they give/like?

I think Kafka is certainly smitten enough to give plenty of compliments just because they come easily to him! He’s not exactly *good* at keeping his mouth shut even when he tries, but when it comes to you he is more than happy to speak his mind and pay compliments to every little thing he finds compliment worthy which is…a lot. It can be your outfit, the way you did your hair, a good run at a training procedure, if you did it, chances are he’ll find something to compliment. ~

That being said, he’s a bit like a cute dog in that he will absolutely eat compliments up in a heart beat, especially if they’re coming from you. He’s had a looong string of years lacking in self confidence, so any sweet words of encouragement or flirty comments about his appearance will easily make his poor heart melt.

🌺 Do they like to tease their significant other?

He’s not a *huge* tease for no other reason than he’s practically in a permanent honeymoon phase when it comes to you. He puts his whole heart and soul into those he loves and cares for, even if he struggles along the way, and you’re at the very top of that list. He adores damn near everything about you and despite what flaws you may see in yourself or others see in you, you’re perfect to him so he finds very little to tease you about even if he ever wants to.

🍀 What’s their love language?

His love language falls somewhere between physical touch and quality time. Free time is something he seems to have very little of, especially considering his unique situation, but it doesn’t take him very long to start missing you *and* the comforting feeling of having you wrapped in his arms or cuddled up against him. To him the ideal end to his day would be to spend the whole evening doing something together before capping it off by falling asleep with his head resting on your chest. Granted he knows that’s rarely possible, but a few stolen kisses and/or light PDA throughout the day plus maybe eating lunch together when the two of you get the chance is enough to keep him happy as can be. ❤️

send me an emoji and a character for some cute hc’s!

[carolynpetit]

Vicarious Visions: Butterfly Soup and My Teenage Heart

Before reading this piece, I encourage you to play the extraordinary visual novel Butterfly Soup, which I discuss in detail below. It’s available here on itch.io for free/pay what you want, takes three or four hours, and is wonderfully sweet, heartwarming, and hilarious.

Sometimes games get caught inside me, entangled so deeply in my own past or present that the only way I can get them out of me is to write about them. Butterfly Soup is that kind of game. What I’m about to write isn’t intellectual or analytical. It’s confessional. It’s the writing I need to do to get this game out of me. To turn my time with it into a kind of prayer.

Today in a piece on Louis CK, Woody Allen, art, creeps, and criticism, New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis wrote, “One fallacy about criticism is that it can be practiced objectively, as if we could see and write about movies from some sort of out-of-body experience. As if it were possible for me to watch a movie in which women are abused for no apparent reason — without even a pretense of narrative rationale — and view this exploitation as simply another formal attribute, like the cinematography, soundtrack or superb camerawork.”

Art cannot be critiqued objectively, and it cannot be experienced objectively. Consciously or not, we bring our life experience to our experience of art. Sometimes, as with me and Butterfly Soup, we bring our lack of experience to our experience of art, too. 

I often recall this quote when I consider why films, games, novels and television are so important in my life:

I think that what a person normally goes to the cinema for is time: for time lost or spent or not yet had. He goes there for living experience; for cinema, like no other art, widens, enhances and concentrates a person’s experience—and not only enhances it but makes it longer, significantly longer. – Andrei Tarkovsky

This is one of the big reasons. Time and experience that illuminates and expands my own. Most of all, perhaps, time “not yet had.” Time I’ll never have. Things I’ll never experience for myself. Things I’ve missed out on. Some queer women may play games like Butterfly Soup and be reminded of who they were at that age. For me they are a way of living a life I never got to live, one I’m still hoping to have someday, even now, at 41, because in some ways my yearning, inexperienced heart is still 16, waiting for the teen experiences it never had. Experiences like Butterfly Soup help me speculate about who I might have been if I’d gotten to live the life I yearned for so intensely. And they help me explore who I might be, how I might love, what I might have to give, if I ever do get the chance.  

Books and films and games that vicariously give me this aren’t painless. They hit hard. They cut deep. Kafka said that “a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” That’s what such works are to me, and Butterfly Soup is the latest.

That may make Butterfly Soup sound devastating. It’s not at all. It overflows with warmth. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that this game is a flame that melts the frozen sea inside me. It is not painless, but it is good for me. It thaws me out. It reminds me that I am still really alive despite a pronounced lack of life in my life, and that there are things I still yearn for.

Butterfly Soup is accurately billed as “a visual novel about gay asian girls playing baseball and falling in love.” There are four Asian girls prominently featured in the story, and they’re all fantastic. But here, I want to talk about two of them in particular, Diya and Min. I see myself in both of them.

I see myself in Diya’s social anxiety. The way she fears that people laughing are laughing at her. The way she doesn’t understand how people around her just talk to each other in ways that seem so automatic and effortless.

 It’s gotten better since I transitioned, but in the midst of my gender dysphoria, when I couldn’t help but dissociate, I couldn’t comprehend how people could just talk about seemingly anything, lawn furniture or whatever. How could people have thoughts and feelings about lawn furniture? Maybe partially by not being in excruciating pain all the time, I guess.

I also see myself in the pain and anger Min experiences at being forced into a role that she knows just doesn’t fit her.

I see myself in her devotion to Diya, and her desire to make Diya happy… 

…and in the way she always wants to be closer.

Some people love, or say they love, or pretend to love everyone. Min is not this way, and neither am I. I have a general love for humankind, a hope that we can view each other and treat each other with compassion. I have a desire to see local and global politics shaped by love and not by greed. But the truth is that there are very few people that I love, and so I see myself in the way that Min sets Diya apart. The way Min sees the signs, even if she has to bend over backwards to find them. Even though it takes a mispronunciation of Diya’s name, Min is excited to notice that their names, put together, can make Diya-Min, which isn’t that far off from “diamond,” as in a baseball diamond. 

I see the signs too, sometimes. And even though I guess I don’t believe that they’re “real,” they still make me feel something, and I believe that, if we see each other with love, then we can take the stuff of cosmic coincidence and make it real.

I see myself in the way Diya wants to go slow, the way she wants time, the way she wants emotional intimacy, gentleness, cuddling and hand-holding. 

I need that, too. The world has taught me to be very guarded. The path to bringing my walls down requires a lot of patience.

I see myself in the way Min keeps the faith, keeping Diya in her heart even while the two of them are separated for years.

Before:

After:

I know I love like this too, or would, if I were ever given the chance.

I see my own heart in the way the connection between Diya and Min has fun and play in it. My teenage heart doesn’t understand a love without these things.

Love has to come out of friendship. It has to involve fun. Interest, stimulation, fascination, admiration, the desire to truly know a person, these are all a kind of fun. If someone is just “fun” in a superficial way, with no depth whatsoever, that won’t work. I need someone I can be 16 with and be 41 with. The sort of person I can be with anywhere–even the lights aisle at Home Depot–and think, there’s nowhere I’d rather be right now.

The awareness that, at my age, I still have so much in common with these teenagers is confusing. On one hand, it makes perfect sense. I’m as inexperienced as they are. I’m still waiting for my first real experience of mutual connection, interest, fun, yearning, love. And I don’t think that still being able to love that way is a bad thing. But on the other hand, I worry sometimes that it’s too late. That if that part of your life hasn’t started by now, then you’ve missed the boat, because nobody knows what to do with someone like you. There’s a message that appears onscreen toward the end of the game. It says “I really miss high school.” Well, I don’t. I didn’t have this in high school. Not really. I’m still waiting for it:

And like I said, that hurts. It always hurts, but games like Butterfly Soup activate the wound a little bit. So, then, if it’s not painless, if it cuts, why do I love it? Because by overflowing with warmth, this game welcomes me into that warmth. It doesn’t exclude me, or say that I don’t deserve these things in my life, too. I can’t connect with a person who isn’t sincere, and Butterfly Soup is one of the most sincere games I’ve ever played. Like a sincere person, this game’s sincerity opened up my heart. It doesn’t care that I’m trans, or that I’m a 16-year-old trapped in a 41-year-old’s body. Its warmth is for me, too. It lets me be Diya and Min and Akarsha and Noelle for a little while. It says you belong here. It says:

And so I do. In a world that hates me, it’s easy to forget that sometimes. It’s good to be reminded, in a bittersweet sort of way.

You know, stories about queer girls so often end in tragedy. Butterfly Soup doesn’t. It’s a game that really, really believes in love. In fact, the way this game ends makes you think that maybe, just maybe, Min was right all those years ago when she said:

There’s gotta be someone somewhere out there for me, right?  I won’t give up if you don’t give up.