#I feel very stagnant but I also have zero motivation to do anything

[eyescanbecruel]

.

[proiida]

the misperception of iida tenya

honestly, i’m kind of in awe at how well-written iida’s character is. he probably has one of the most clear paths of genuine character development in bnha. for one, he actually gets scenes dedicated to developing his character, which is a lot more than most bnha characters have going for them. on top of that, out of the characters that actually do get development, his development excels. this isn’t even me speaking as an iida stan. horikoshi tends to write characters in a way that can make their development unclear. other characters might develop in conflicting ways, have their development stated rather than shown, or just straight up have no genuine development. but iida? he has some of the clearest moments of development, filled to the brim with insight on what he values, why he takes the actions he does, and how he improves on past mistakes.

and yet, despite just how well-written his character is, there are few who are willing to invest the time and effort to actually see the amount of substance his character has. it’s strange in a way, because it is very easy for a member of the audience to see him as another depthless character. there are a variety of reasons that iida’s character is often misperceived. of course, a lot of iida fans speak of how ableism affects the way that his character is viewed. while this is true, it’s not what i am going to focus on in this piece. rather, i want to focus on how the narrative places him at a disadvantage in terms of audience perception.

when we first see iida, we don’t think very positively of him. there are various points in the yuuei entrance exam where iida seems more like an asshole than anything else. when the practical exam is being explained, iida admonishes izuku for izuku-ing, and points out what he assumes to be a oversight in the entrance exam. then, we get iida reprimanding izuku yet again, for trying to speak to uraraka. the initial impression here? “ah, that pretentious asshole who’s probably going to end up being in the same class as the main character.” i wince every time i see the entrance exam scenes, because they make him seem so bad. “pretentious asshole” is worse than than seeing him simply as “the class representative who’s a stickler for rules”, which, while an oversimplification of his character, isn’t completely off the mark. sure, someone who was familiar with his character would see that these scenes demonstrate his tendency to jump to conclusions, and understand that he genuinely wants to be on equal ground with his fellow test-takers. what someone who is unfamiliar with his character sees, though, is someone who assumes the worst of others and disguises bad intentions with well-meaning words. it doesn’t help that his words question the protagonist, either. as the audience, we typically feel that the protagonist is in the right because we are working from the perspective of the protagonist. it’s part of what makes us feel indignant at shinsou’s statement that izuku wouldn’t understand what it’s like to not be blessed with an amazing quirk, even though shinsou has no way of knowing izuku used to be quirkless. similarly, iida has no way of knowing that encouragement would have helped uraraka, or that that’s even what izuku is trying to do. so he acts on the assumption that izuku’s actions will end up distracting uraraka. it’s hard to see the situation from iida’s perspective though, so the audience assumes the worst of him. it’s less an issue on the part of the audience, and more of an issue on the part of the narrative.

if you watch the anime, there’s another scene during the entrance exam that likely contributes to this negative perception of iida, whether intentional or not. when the zero point robot comes out, both the manga and anime show iida running away. in the manga, he is merely in the background of a panel focused on izuku, with a text bubble saying “people show their true colors when they face that thing”. however, in the anime, “a person’s true character is revealed when they’re faced with danger” is said, and it shows a slow-motion view of iida looking at izuku on the floor as he runs away, and then looking away and continuing to run. it almost seems to suggest that iida’s motives as a hero are impure, to some extent greater than any of the other people running away. is this the intentional effect? probably not. however, what a piece of media intends to portray is often different from what the audience actually perceives.

then, as we progress into season one, the audience’s perception of iida changes. we realize that, no, he is not quite the pretentious asshole we thought he was. rather, he is the class representative trope! mr. stickler for rules! i’m not sure why, but the fact that iida happens to fit the class representative trope often makes people write his character off entirely. perhaps it is because the word trope is often viewed as something negative, to define an “overused cliché” in media. i have to disagree with this idea though, because tropes are merely recurring themes in literature, and the fact that some tropes lend themselves more easily to boring, repetitive characters doesn’t necessarily mean that every character who fits a certain trope is going to be boring. i mean, quite frankly, every character fits their own set of tropes, whether subtle or obvious. that’s just how literature works. alas, people are typically inclined to stick to the view that popular character tropes are overused and cliché, and thus they see iida as overused and cliché! and here is where the audience begins to label iida as a terrible thing for a character like him to be labeled, because quite frankly, he is anything but. the audience sees him as a stagnant character, before even giving him the chance to get his own development. from this point on, any change he does make is likely to be glossed over because of this assumption that he won’t change. this perceived stagnancy plays a huge role in how iida is seen by people. in season one, it isn’t much of an issue, because he doesn’t get much development, but later on in bnha, it becomes much more significant as he gets proper development. notably, the stain arc, which is the most obvious example of iida’s development in the series.

there are two ways to view the stain arc in terms of iida’s character. you can either see the arc as an example of his development, or you can see it as a reason to not like him. iida’s decision to seek vengeance for his brother by trying to locate and murder stain on his own is very clearly a mistake. we see some of his negative traits within this arc, such as the way that he prioritizes his own emotions over the safety of others, which stain points out as unheroic. at the end of the arc, iida takes stain’s words into consideration, and decides to leave his left hand injured as a reminder that he needs to work to be more heroic. it’s one of the most standard development arcs that a character could have. character makes mistake, events happen, mistake causes consequences, character learns from mistake. and yet, what do people choose to fixate on? they choose to fixate on the mistake, not the development that arises because of it. quite frankly, it’s unfair to iida. part of what makes iida’s character so strong to me is that he represents the learning hero. he’s a kid trying to live up to the legacy of a (former) hero, and in the process of doing so, he struggles to find the balance between duty, honor, the law, and caring for those important to him. if i may once again emphasize, he is a kid. he is fifteen during this arc. he is still learning, and isn’t going to be the perfect hero.

people don’t give him a chance by accepting his learning process, though. instead, they almost ignore it. but why? admittedly, iida makes an enormous mistake, but he’s not the only one. bakugou nearly kills izuku in the battle trial arc, but it’s nothing i’ve ever seen anyone hold against him. you might argue that those are different situations, but trying to be a vigilante murderer and launching an attack that you know could kill your classmate are both very serious actions. what makes bakugou different than iida, though, is that unlike iida, people know that he’s going to change. bakugou wouldn’t have such a prominent role in bnha if the end goal was not to have him be a better person than he is as the start. the audience doesn’t give iida the same chance for development that they give to bakugou, though, because they aren’t receptive to iida’s development. again, it comes back to this perceived stagnancy in his character. once you’ve written off iida as a stagnant character, it’s hard to let yourself see the ways that he develops. some people genuinely do not see how pivotal the stain arc is to iida’s character. they’d rather see the stain arc as nothing more than a way to further the plot of bnha, even though it’s also a chance for his character to develop. instead of seeing a negative trait of iida’s presented to us and then improved on, people merely see a negative trait of iida’s that never changes.

another case of people ignoring iida’s development in favor of fixating on the negative aspects of iida is much more subtle, but it’s probably what inspired this meta. it’s the scene during the hideout raid arc, where iida punches midoriya after explaining why he doesn’t want his classmates to rescue bakugou. the reason that this scene is a less noticeable case of people ignoring iida’s development is that not very many people actually see it as development on iida’s part. and yet, it’s one of my favorite scenes showcasing his development. there are some things that the narrative does that make it hard to see how iida develops, of course. iida is pit against the wishes of the protagonist, which makes the audience inclined to perceive him as being in the wrong. additionally, the fact that the plan is executed without anyone getting harmed makes it seem like iida was worrying over nothing. while the setup of this scene doesn’t really make it easy to see why this scene is so important for him, it isn’t entirely to blame.

i was initially going to take the position that any negative impact this scene has on the audience’s perception of iida is mostly a consequence of the narrative, but honestly, looking back at the scene...it’s so hard to not see where iida is coming from. we get an entire three pages dedicated to the reasons why iida tries to stop his classmates. 1.) he is worried that his classmates will make the same mistake he did, 2.) he is angry because he believes that todoroki and izuku are ignoring the lesson he learned from the stain arc, 3.) he doesn’t want yuuei to take the fall for their actions, and 4.) he is worried that his classmates will get gravely injured the same way that his brother did. i’d say that that’s a pretty solid case he has. sure, he might have been overestimating the gravity of the actions his classmates were going to take, but his concerns are still entirely valid. what the kids are planning to do isn’t the safest thing to do. this is him showing that he has genuinely reflected on the events of the stain arc, and that he meant it when he said he was going to be a better hero in the stain arc. only thing is, people yet again ignore this sign of change, to focus on the fact that he punched izuku. the punch is often misunderstood as iida being a shitty friend, even though it mostly exists to emphasize how intense his emotions are in that moment. izuku believes that iida doesn’t want them to go because they’d be breaking the law. following this statement, iida punches izuku, who fails to understand why iida is so concerned. iida doesn’t want them to go because he values the safety of his friends over the law.

it’s interesting that the first thing that comes to mind when people think of iida is his focus on rules and laws. when i think of iida, the first thing that comes to mind is how he prioritizes those he loves over anything else. you know what iida does in the hideout raid arc, in spite of every reason he’s expressed against rescuing bakugou on their own? he decides to go along with them. because at the end of the day, he prioritizes the safety of his friends above all. maybe others see the fact that he goes along with the plan in spite of all his complaints as a random, plot-convenient action, but i think it’s one of the most in character things for him to do. him going along with the plan to rescue bakugou isn’t him saying that the points he previously made were meaningless, it’s him showing just how worried he is for his classmates. this scene is probably one of my favorite moments of his, because you can really see his thought process, how he’s changed, and what he values. it’s a very concise moment where his character shines. but it’s one of the moment he’s most hated for. and y’know what, i don’t mind if people want to hate him for it. punching your friend in the face isn’t exactly the nicest thing to do, after all. what i do mind, though, is when people fail to even try to understand where exactly he’s coming from.

iida’s development as a character is a strong one, and it’s an interesting one. even if you don’t like him as a person, there’s a lot to like about his character. the problem is that people refuse to see the depth of his character, whether they realize it or not. if people didn’t dismiss the potential of his character from the get go, we would be seeing a very different reception of iida. i think a lot more people would appreciate his character if they just gave him a chance, by understanding that he’s a developing character and developing hero. it’s very easy to see him in a negative light, but with a bit of effort, it’s also possible to see him as one of the most interesting characters bnha has to offer.

[callsignbaphomet]

I can’t give out any proper art/writing advice or tutorials or whathaveyous but the one thing I can say with certainty is when you post art in whatever site you post art in do not under any circumstances add any negative comments about it, yourself or your work.

Do not. Not on the post, not in the tags, no, not even in the title. DO NOT DO THIS. STOP DOING THIS.

There are hundreds of reasons why you shouldn’t do this but I’m only covering one specific reason here. Why not? Because it’ll help you in the long run. Instead just add whatever text you wanna add to it that pertains to the work, maybe an explanation, say it’s fanart of your favorite thing/character/whatever/artist/friend. If you were practicing something or trying to experiment go ahead and type it up.

It takes a while to get the hang of this as talking shit about your work and abilities is sooooo easy--let’s face it, you’re your own easiest target to bully, and in a very strange way it makes a lot of us feel better and without even thinking it through we just do it automatically but trust me that “good” feeling doesn’t last and it does far more harm than good.

If you absolutely hated how your shading came out or how your color scheme looked or anything else that bothered you and you just have to rant about it then do it on a separate post. Hell, I’d even go so far as to say don’t say “Aw, fuck, I hate how that lineart came out!” Instead try typing “Aw, fuck, I should work on my lineart!”

Eventually you stop talking shit about your work and abilities and instead look at it in a whole new way. You start to think of the things you hate as things that could use some improvement and eventually you start to zero in on that thing and improve little by little.

When you say “shit this paragraph is bad and my writing sucks” when you post your work your closest friends and supporters will automatically tell you that it’s great and that you’re doing a great job and you get that feeling of reassurance and validation for 5.2 seconds and then it’s gone and you feel shitty again and the cycle continues. Meanwhile you don’t bother to improve, you feel like shit when you draw or write or create something and you stay stagnant and go nowhere. Talking shit gets nothing done.

Hell, go ahead and say what you liked about your work! Say how proud you are that you managed to try a new technique and it worked! Say this is the best (insert media) you’ve done to date and revel in that pride! Enjoy your hard work!

No, fool, it ain’t cringey, it ain’t making you sound stuck up or anything like that. It’s not like you’re saying you’re a master artist/author and that the world should suck your dick. You’re saying you’re proud of your work and you should be!

Yeah, this takes a bit to get used to and sometimes you’ll slip. That’s ok, just go back and edit the post to remove anything negative from it. If you rant and vent on a separate post it’s ok too but try to lessen it and keep it at a minimum and also try not to post art and then rant about it as soon as you hit the send button. You’ll never get out of that mentality that way.

Also please stop comparing your work to others. This is really a killer and it helps no one. If you have to go ahead and stop following artists you find yourself comparing to. Make it easier on you to relax; it ain’t a race. If you feel like your art gets more attention in specific sites then by all means go and post there, validation leads to motivation and yes, dammit it feels amazing! Go ahead. Check to see which tags get the most traffic in each site and use them. Ngl Twitter is not artist friendly unless you’re like extremely popular. Tagging system is...odd. Or maybe I’m just having seriously bad luck lol

And at the risk of sounding like a bitch don’t just sit there and beg for notes, likes, retweets, reblogs, asks, comments and validation and not give any in return. You come off like a greedy asshole. Right off the bat Ima say that only likes (Tumblr, Twitter and similar sites) are a waste of everyone’s time. Better if you just don’t like it if you aren’t gonna bother to retweet it or reblog it, this ain’t YouTube, likes do NOTHING. Maybe when you reblogged someone’s art/writing/work they went to your blog and see your work and also reblog it. Maybe they liked it so much they follow and they keysmash in the tags about how much they like it. You know, give and take.

This got a lot longer than what I had in mind but it’s just several thoughts on a tweet I saw sometime ago and it was still in my mind.

[humansofhds]

Eliot Davenport, MTS '18

“Recently, I have realized that, at the bottom of everything, I came to the study of South Asian religion and Indian philosophy because I couldn’t imagine not reading Sanskrit every day.”

Eliot graduated in 2018 from the MTS program at HDS and is currently applying to PhD programs in South Asian and Religious Studies departments, where she will continue to study Sanskrit and Indian philosophy.

Leaving the Bubble

I am Texan, through and through. I was born and raised in Fort Worth. Same house, same school, same all-the-things for my whole childhood. Religion tied into my life in an early way. When my mom found out she was going to have kids, she thought, “What was important to me when I was small? The Church!” So she immediately started attending again, and my sister and I were raised in the Episcopal Church. My mom worked as the secretary to the rector, so we ended up going to the church school for K-12. It was sort of a bubble of a life.

For most of my life, I wanted to be a priest. Whenever anybody asked me what I wanted to do I would say, “I want to be an Episcopal priest,” and they’d be like “Great, except that you’re a lady.” Turns out that I totally could have, but my diocese was very not progressive. It was stagnant. I didn’t know that women could be clergy until I went off to college and I had already changed my plan at that point. I was good at math and I thought I’d just be an engineer, so I moved to College Station and earned my bachelors of science in civil and ocean/coastal engineering at Texas A&M.

Once I found out about female clergy I called my parents and I was like “what the heck, I could have done this!” They suggested that I put a pin in it and try out the engineering thing. So I did—I worked as an engineer in Austin for about five years. But I still always thought I wanted to go to seminary. About a year into the formal discernment process in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, I thought, “Wait, that’s not what I want after all. Turns out I want to study Sanskrit.” And everybody said, “Excuse me, what?” That’s how I ended up coming to Massachusetts in a nutshell.

Serendipitous Encounters

When I moved to Austin to begin my first real job after graduating from Texas A&M, I realized that engineering had taken up my whole life. I just felt like I didn’t have much of a personality outside of my education and career. So I started to do a bunch of stuff, thinking that year that I would do literally anything that came my way hoping that something would catch me and hold tight. One day somebody said that I should go to a yoga class. I initially thought, “No thanks,’ but something changed and I walked into one, some free class somewhere, and it just stuck. It became my thing.

A couple of years later I started yoga teacher training and was introduced to Sanskrit. From the moment we started learning proper syllable pronunciation, I was hooked. I realized that if I intended to be a yoga teacher who said the names of poses in Sanskrit and spoke with any sense of authority about anything related to the Yoga Sutras, then I better be able to read them as a primary source and not just as an English translation. So, at the suggestion of Professor Clooney, I applied to the University of Texas to try my hand at first-year Sanskrit, and three years later here I am applying for PhD programs.

I started practicing yoga in 2012. I became one of those people who practiced multiple times a day, then I started teaching, and then I quit my full-time engineering job all-together. Then I came here (HDS), and it disappeared from my life. I didn’t grieve the loss of this thing that I had loved; it was just that it's time sort of ended for me. I still do it from time to time, and I’ve started doing it more since graduating. Although yoga is the thing that introduced me to Sanskrit, my relationship to yoga is different now. For me it is physical. I don’t buy into the way that people are trying to package a spiritual experience and a bodily experience all at once. After coming to HDS, I separated the philosophy, the language, and then finally the actual physical practice, so when I do it now I do it just to feel good in my body.

I usually don’t get a lot of good reactions when I tell people this story. Overall there seems to be a sense that this undeniably modern avenue into the world of studying religion, South Asia, and Sanskrit somehow indicates an inability to take it seriously. People have mixed reactions to the idea that the billion dollar, stretchy-pants yoga boom could lead somebody into the academic study of religion, but it did for me and I hope others are lucky enough to let it do the same for them.

Learning Curve

Engineering school never felt right. I never really meshed with that culture. Honestly, even when I thought I was going to be a priest, that didn’t feel quite right either. And then I walked into that first class of beginner Sanskrit at UT and I was like “Oh! I found the thing, and it’s not a place, or a particular career; it’s this other new thing that I’m so glad I ran into.” It was a beautiful accident. And I’m thankful for it, every day.

Because my first year at HDS was also my first year in the humanities, my time here was like a compressed undergraduate education. There was a huge learning curve. I mean, my first paper in my life that was longer than three pages was my first paper here at HDS. So, I had to give myself time and space to properly develop an idea of what I wanted to do. Even now I can say more easily what I don’t want to do than what I do want to do, whether it’s in regard to a simple term paper or a future book. My dearest friend back in Austin teases me that I went from wanting to do everything in all the libraries in all over the world to wanting to do something in all of the libraries on one continent, and now I’m trying to shrink it down to one country, one city, and perhaps a single library.

Recently, I have realized that, at the bottom of everything, I came to the study of South Asian religion and Indian philosophy because I couldn’t imagine not reading Sanskrit every day. This whole world didn’t initially open up to me through English translations of Sanskrit texts or even from the mouths of my professors. I became familiar with some of India’s epic narratives and philosophical works simply by reading them in the language in which they were meant to be heard and read. In fact, it was only after my second full year of language study that I was finally asked to think critically about them from a non-language-based perspective. This perhaps odd way of doing things, learning the language before knowing what my academic questions might be, has certainly affected the way I study. I’ve finally zeroed in on the thing I love reading the most: Indian philosophy. In particular I’m interested in epistemology, philosophy of language, theories of sensory experience, and the efficacy of sound as a source of knowledge. I’m interested in not just what these philosophers had to say, but also the intricacies of how they chose to say it. What do they have to say about language and how, in turn, do they utilize language to do so? For a lot of people, it probably sounds like the most boring thing in the world. But this is what’s captured my imagination, so I am just going with it.

Hidden Motivations

In my last semester, I took a class with Professor Hallisey about Buddhism and modern fiction. In this course, it was incredible to me how we were all presented with the same paper prompts and every single one of us wrote on distinctly different topics for each. When we were asked “What is the author of this novel asking us to reflect on?” each of us zeroed in on such fascinating and differing topics that it made me wonder if we’d even read the same book.

In the final paper for that class, the basic question was: Why read fiction at all? I started thinking about how fiction forces us not only to look into the minds of different authors, but also to dive deep into our own brains to see what we’re reflecting on. Fiction is a conduit for us to live other lives and see what in those lives is important to us. I wrote about grief and loss for one assignment and about the human tendency to self-deceive for another. As I wrote the final, I thought back and self-psychoanalyzed a bit, realizing that those topics are things that are always present in my mind. I was totally unaware of this while I was reading the novels and writing the individual papers. All this to say that this class changed the way I want to approach the works of certain Indian philosophers. In addition to looking at what they were trying to convey through their arguments, I want to analyze the ways in which they were attempting to convey it in order to gain insight into their world. Perhaps this insight may be able to add to our own experience in unexpected ways.

What is it that I think I’m going to discover there? I don’t know. But I want to get into their brains and I want to know why they chose to talk about the things they chose to talk about. Who were they? What was important to them? What motivated them to write these difficult, intense, complicated things? The engineering side of my brain wants to break down the structure of the texts, the specific sentences, words, and letters. But I also want to put the puzzle pieces together of what they were thinking about on the surface to see what they may have been thinking about below it. Hopefully it leads me somewhere I can’t quite yet imagine.

Elton John

I played the piano competitively for a long time. I started really young because The Lion King was my favorite movie. I remember walking out of the film and being like, “Mom—that music! Who wrote it?” And she told me “Elton John!” I said “I’m going to marry Elton John.” She replied by saying, “Do you want to play the piano?” Soon after that I started to play and still do just for fun. Elton John came here last fall when he was awarded the Harvard Foundation’s Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian, and I finally had the chance to see him in person after 25 years. It was amazing.

Interview and photos by Anaïs Garvanian

[philosofangirl]

Fan Theory: Perception of Time in VK/VKM

Hello VK/Zeki Fam, long time no see! *Hugs everybody*

I’ve been offline for a millennia due to a new job and family life stuffz but I I finally have some free time to go into the VK meta I’ve been dying to sink my teeth in to! (beware, there may be terrible puns ahead.  You’ve been warned.)

From what I’ve seen in the Vampire Knight meta-sphere, reactions towards the past two chapters are mixed, leaning towards the Hino-san, what the fruitcake are you doing to us now? end of the spectrum. 

@getoffthesoapbox​ @soulisthirsty​ @zerolover66​ and others before me have written some excellent analyses & theories, and I don’t plan on doing a full rehash.  Instead, I’d like to propose a different theory...

I’ll start this fan theory with a question:   Do Yuuki and Zero perceive time differently?

This may seem like an odd question, so let me break it down.  

Do people perceive time differently?  

It can be argued that they do.  You often hear folks talk about “life changing experiences” or how a near death experience alters their perspective.  If you are diagnosed with a terminal illness, and know that you only have a few months left to live, your perception of time will likely be very different than that of a healthy teenager.  Even though both individuals could theoretically die in a freak accident at the same time, or the sick individual finds a miracle cure, the way they value their time, more likely than not, differs.  

You can also look at it this way: one year to a 3-year-old is 1/3 of their life, whereas one year to an 80-year-old is 1/80 of their life.  Time passes differently for children versus adults.

Which leads me to another question: 

In Vampire Knight, do mortals with finite time perceive time passing differently than immortals with infinite time?  

From what we’ve been shown canonically, I believe there’s a chance that the answer is yes.  

Let’s take a look at a scene from VKM chapter 10:

In this panel Yuuki comments that 60 months feels like 1 month.**

60 months = 5 years

That means 5 years feels like 1 month of “normal life” (basically 1 month to the rest of us.)

Take your age and divide it by 5. If you’re 20 years old, that’s the equivalent of 4 months.

(More under the cut!)

I’m no math whiz (believe me haha) but I found this factoid intriguing because I believe it gives us some insight into how much time has “passed” for Yuuki, and what time feels like to purebloods.  It’s easy for human fans like us to question how Zeki could be together for so long without significant progression, but, if Yuuki perceives time differently, it could explain a lot about her character.  

⚜ ════ • ⚜  • ════ ⚜           

Overly simplistic calculation time: let’s go with how long 50 years “feels” like:

(note: if my calculations are incorrect hit me up, math and I are barely on speaking terms xD )

12 months * 50 years = 600 months

Let x = the amount of time 50 years feels like to a pureblood. (Keep in mind, 60 months feels like 1 month)

1 month / 60 months = x /600 months 

60x = 600

x= 10 months

That’s less than a year.

⚜ ════ • ⚜  • ════ ⚜

So, do mortals and immortals view time differently?  

Going off what Yuuki said and my calculations above, I believe they do!  Another canonical example of this can be found in Yori & Hanabusa.  Yori openly wonders how different her life would be if she had the same amount of time to do things as Hanabusa.  Hanabusa also expressed that he wanted to cherish every moment because he knew just how fleeting their time together would be. Even after Yori’s death, he still looks young, and as a noble vampire he will probably live on for many, many years. 

The pressure of Yori aging spurred their relationship development, and they got married before any of the other characters in relationships (that we know of.) This wasn’t by accident.  In contrast, vampires like Shiki and Rima never had that kind of pressure (at least not after Rido was dealt with) so they could wait 50 years before getting married.  This didn’t seem to faze either of them.  Also, in Volume 1 Ichijou celebrates his 18th “human” birthday, showing that vampires do seem to measure time differently (though I can’t recall whether this was ever thoroughly explained.)

Back to the original question: Do Yuuki and Zero perceive time differently?  

I believe this answer is an unequivocal yes, and arguably this difference in perception has led to Zeki not being on the same page romantically speaking. I would argue that this difference has also played a key role in their different character motivations. They may have the same destination in mind (marriage, babies, happily ever after and all that jazz), but they are not in agreement about how long it should take (or what it will take) to get there.

Let’s start with their childhoods:

ZERO grew up in a family of hunters.  He always felt he needed to take on a heavier load to ease Ichiru’s burden.  Hunters, given the nature of their profession, almost certainly have a high mortality rate, and low life expectancy rate.  They’re trained to fight, but they can still die in combat.  This is something that Zero is aware of from a very young age.  Then, Zero’s family is attacked by Shizuka and he is damned, doomed to become a level E. Every day he knows there’s a chance he can go mad, hurt someone and be killed by one of his comrades.  It even drove him to the point of suicide.  Thinking you can die or lose control at any moment isn’t the sort of mentality that easily goes away.  He always slept with a weapon close at hand for a reason.  

YUUKI, in comparison, did not grow up with constant reminders of death.  At a young age, she was very sheltered and told she would live forever as Kaname’s bride. In high school her lost past and vampires concerned her, but she didn’t live in fear of death every moment of her life. When she was reawakened she discovers anew that she will live forever, outliving everything apart from other purebloods.  It takes her some time to adjust to this reality.  At one point she convinces herself that the only way to fix everything is to sacrifice herself.  But in this scenario she was the biggest threat to herself, since Zero and Kaname were ready to do just about anything to stop it.

When Kaname sacrificed himself, she made it her mission to return the favor and atone for her sins one day.  Suddenly she was no longer going to live forever, now she would live up until the time was right.  Yet, just like the concept of “forever”, there’s no exact date so how long she has remains rather vague beyond “sometime far into the future.”

Given their backgrounds and physical differences, I posit that the two of them view time very differently, and this difference needs to be communicated. Is 50 years a long time? Yes, yes it is. Does this excuse letting problems fester this long? No, it does not. 

However, even though Zero deserves all the patience awards for how long he’s stayed by Yuuki’s side, if my theory is correct, Yuuki perceives her time together with Zero the way an immortal pureblood would, not a human being nor a soldier.  Being a pureblood likely exacerbates this compared to the average vampire.  This discrepancy could mean 50 years to Yuuki feels like 10 months, but 50 years to Zero actually feels like 50.  It may sound absurd to us, but we’re talking about immortal fictional creatures after all.

Now hold onto your hats, because I believe the implications go beyond her relationship to Zero.

Other Out-There Theories

Theory #1: given Yuuki’s perception of time, her carefree attitude, and her idea of what being in a relationship consists of, there’s a chance that Yuuki still “feels” like a teenager. Even Zero commented offhandedly that Ai acts more mature than Yuuki.  In some ways that’s why the people around her (particularly Yori and Zero) say they love her—a certain loveable idiot/ innocence and uncomplicated desire for the people around her to be happy. I believe her pureblood influenced perception of time, (and possibly self if she really sees herself as a teenager and not a grown woman) is at the root of her stagnation. Compared to her 3 thousand year old parents, being ~80 would still be seen as very young for a pureblood.

Theory #2: I, like many readers, had hoped that Yuuki would mature during this period post Kaname, and in some small/subtle ways I believe she has. When Yuuki says “there’s nothing innocent about us anymore” in VKM10, I recalled her time with Zero in the shower at Cross Academy, which in many ways was portrayed as a “loss of innocence” and a “sin.” But then after her arc 1 development you go to arc 2 where Yuuki is treated like a child and a doll by Kaname. Maybe her perception of who she really is got screwed up along the way.

Yuuki has gone through a lot, and even she has noted just how much time has passed. She let her hair grow out, she had a kid.  Yet, she still clings to Kaname, a symbol of her childhood, when the healthy thing would be to move forward for the sake of those around her.  Others have theorized that this might be related to some sort of trauma. If Yuuki really does still “feel” like or “see herself” as a teenager, and 50 years feels like 10 months, the wounds caused by Kaname would still feel very raw. 

I have PTSD myself, and sometimes an event that happened four years ago feels like it happened just yesterday.  I can’t imagine what it would be like to live with it while holding a skewed perception of time.  It’s not as simple as “getting over it” and letting time take its course. I believe the only way she can get back on the preferred path is to confront what happened to her head on.  Only time and Hino will tell whether that happens. Until Yukki deals with these issues and learns to step forward, she’ll remain stagnant.  

Why would Hino do something like this?!  

Some of you may be wondering: teenage Yuuki again?  What does Yuuki “feeling” like a teenager mean? I believe it means that she can also, at times, still act like one.  At the end of the day this is a shoujo manga, and the largest reading demographic will be teenage girls who need to relate with the characters.  Plus, it’s a story; conflict drives the plot engine along. I suspect this was intentional on Hino’s part, but maybe I’m giving her and the character too much credit o.o’ 

What would this discrepancy mean for Zeki?  

I predict how time passes/ how they perceive time passing will probably come up (and definitely should come up) at one point in their relationship.  After all, if Yuuki is just biding her time while Zero is counting every day, the narrative will grow dull and things will not turn out well. If they’re not on the same page, how could things work out between them? 

We’ve already seen it on the character’s minds to a degree: Yuuki expressed her fear of abandonment/ loneliness/ oblivion in arc 2, and Zero has reminded Yuuki that her time is her own to spend how she pleases. How one spends their time and with whom one spends their time is a recurring theme. It took a long time (practically 2/3 of the original series) for Yuuki and Zero to accept their very existence as pureblood and hunter, but they’ve never had to really work at the logistics of a romantic relationship between a pureblood and non-pureblood (something we haven’t seen, at least not any longterm/ healthy ones.) 

With Yori’s death and Ai in sleep mode, I expect to see time and how they spend their time to crop up again.    

Throw away observations:

If Yuuki has difficulty assessing the passage of time, it makes it that much easier for her to cling to certain portions of her past. In some ways, when Kaname changed her he was trying to encase her in resin like the rose, almost freeze her in time as the loving girl he desired.  Yori, and to an extent Ai, probably served as reminders that time was passing in a world where most of the people Yuuki deals with pretty much stay forever young.  It’s possible that, despite time passing, she herself is still frozen.  Yuuki has been shown as sentimental on several occasions, including VKM 10 where she explains why she still holds on to her charm bracelet.  She talks about keeping it as a reminder of her promise and as a reminder of a time when she was human.  But, as she’s shown on numerous occasions, she’s a vampire. Body and soul. She has no plans to change that, yet she still clings to a piece of her humanity.

Interestingly, in VKM before Zero’s death Yuuki said she would devour him showing her love “the way vampires do.” In VK, drinking the blood of your beloved, the only one who can quench your thirst, is how vampires traditionally express their love for one another. In VKM10, when Zeki are discussing their relationship and Zero asks what a restart means, she begins with several very innocent, naive suggestions that harken back to their days at Cross Academy. Soon after, in one of their first on screen “acts” as an official couple, Yuuki tells Zero to drink her blood to the last drop. 

This scene is controversial among Zeki fans given its (some would say Yume-like) undertones. But, it got me wondering whether Yuuki really knows how to participate in a mature relationship, whether either of them know how to be in a healthy romantic relationship.  If Yuuki thinks “drinking blood is the way vampires show their love for one another” and she acted on that, then is she just going through the motions and doing what she thinks she should be like she did in the Kuran Manor?  Or, was this just a natural impulse? (oh, the multitude of interpretations!)

I think Yuuki’s desire for something “human”, or her image and expectations from when she was a human teenager, could be in conflict with what she believes vampires are supposed to do.  This inner struggle between her two selves may have cause the disconnect and tone shift.

This is all conjecture, so hopefully we’ll see more of what’s going on inside Yuuki’s head in the chapters to come.  I keep thinking back to Yuuki’s dark expression when talking to Ai as a child about the relationship between the three MCs, and of the mystery box.  Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking on my part, but I don’t think Yuuki is as daft or simple as she’s sometimes portrayed to be.

That’s all folks!

Thanks for reading my philosophizing this far!  Please let me know what you think, or if you have theories of your own!   

Philosofangirl, out.

**Note: So far, we have no way of knowing how subjective this statement is.  This could be Yuuki’s interpretation of time, or it could be accepted as common knowledge by purebloods.  All the same, if this is what Yuuki believes then this informs how she perceives time passing, and I believe Hino included this detail deliberately.