#Why would large age gaps with a child and an adult be any different??

[some-pers0n]

You can just say it's a mistake. It's so much worse to try and excuse it

[liquidstar]

i think something important we all have to remember about characters is that they are not real. but they are symbolic representations of types of humans. especially when you incorporate fantasy into the mix, where these representations become a bit less literal.

so, like, when you have characters that are immortal/ageless/reincarnations/vampires/whatever, who are, on paper, much older than they actually look... it really just comes down to "if they walk like a duck and talks like a duck, then it's probably a duck."

basically what i mean is if a character is functionally a teenager within a story, emotionally and societally and such, then for all intents and purposes they ARE a teenager. because the thing that they are coded to symbolize is a teenager. regardless of fantasy factors that dont exist in the real world. maybe the closest thing is someone who is an adult but looks young (i still get mistaken for 16, its a struggle) but thats a false equivalence, you are still an adult, you cant be coded as a teenager as if this was a story (though you can certainly be immature lol).

conversely, "1000 year old dragon lolis" are coded as children. they represent children. no matter how many spins you try to put on it, that is a symbolic representation of a child. there's a huge difference between the reality of an adult who just happens to look young, and the fantasy of a child who by some loophole can consent. because thats the intent the character was created with.

obviously im not saying this applies to ALL characters who are immortal children though. it can be used for all types of different effects, like, for example, pride in fullmetal alchemist mangahood uses this to enhance his Creepyness factor, due to the disconnect between his appearance and his demeanor. he walks like a duck but doesnt talk like a duck. there are for sure ways to do this trope that arent creepy in the other sense.

same thing goes for immortal teenagers- once you introduce a power imbalance into the mix that makes them functionally just an adult who looks young, thats when the dynamic can begin to feel creepy. and its a tricky thing to pull off, because you have to balance the immortality with the teenager-ness, and it seems like lots of life experience will often contradict the latter. but its not impossible (at least in writing). a character can be more knowledgeable without having power over the other, and i think it largely comes down to how theyre treated socially too. if they have just as much power as any other teenager in their society, then theres not really an imbalance. how theyre treated by other characters will inform the viewers on how to treat them by extension.

like, weird example, but the vampire girl from hotel transylvania (i forgot her name, i watched it when i was 12) is like 100 years older than her love interest. but shes still a pretty stereotypical teenager who has to listen to adam sandler her father, and has the same amount of power in this situation as any other teenager would. the movie sets up the leads as being on the same level socially so theres no issue (this may have been made extra clear because its a kids movie, which is why its an easy example). contrast this with twlight where edward obviously has power over bella specifically due to his vampire-ness, and thats why their dynamic is one that many people find uncomfortable because the fantasy age gap plays a part in this.

but yeah at the end of the day thats why id never, like, call c.c from code geass a pedophile for kissing lelouch (utilitarian reasons or otherwise), but that's also exactly why i'd call isekai man #208 a pedophile for having a loli love interest. these characters are not real, they are symbols. you cannot take symbols literally (thats oxymoronic) by just looking at the numbers of their ages, you have to look at what they represent of the real world inside the story. what does this fantasy immortal SAY about age and such. what do their actual dynamics reflect in the real world.

fiction isnt reality, but its a mirror that reflects it. sometimes a funhouse mirror, but you can still see whats being reflected if you look closely.

anyway please dont take this as any sort of discourse, i really am just musing about how fiction Works, and how different tropes apply in different ways and such. this isnt a response to anything or anyone im just thinking out loud. peace ✌️

[sapphire-weapon]

i know this is off topic from the rest of your asks but something that bothers me about interpretation of sherry and leon (and sherry and claire) is how rigidly nuclear the dynamic between them is and how that probably hurts them. i can't belive I have to say this, but not every pair between a child and adult has to be daddy-daughter. characters don't have to be within two years of age difference to be considered siblings. as someone who has a somewhat large sibling gap (sibling turned 18 when I was 11) I don't like how empty the interpretation of leon's responsibility towards sherry is. legally, he could adopt her to protect her, but emotionally he wasn't ready to be a full father, especially to a child who, in some interpretations, has never had a normal family. there could have been something said about how much leon wants to take care of her, despite only knowing how to guide her somewhat as a peer, and how sherry was willing to take any adult in the place of her parents. it would have also opened the door for sherry to have her own struggle with trying to protect leon as she gets older (younger sibling guilt).

but no. Stoic Father Man must rear Delicate Girl Child.

sorry for the rant

i... don't think anyone was asking for/expecting leon to be a full father responsible for raising sherry and helping her with her homework and shit. and if they are, they're stupid.

leon legally adopting sherry would've just been a protective measure for her, because certain decisions about her life/what happens to her would've had to have gone through him. he was only the one in position to do that -- not claire or anyone else. but that's not what he did. he just surrendered sherry to the government and then trusted (for some reason) that they'd do the Right Thing with her if he kept his end of the bargain, and he didn't even have the good graces to go see her again at any point after that. he literally disappeared from her life. claire, at least, fucking visited her from time to time.

and the reason why this sticks out as a point of contention is because leon was so insistent on taking responsibility for her in the first place -- to the point where he actively pushed claire away. claire wasn't wholly comfortable with just leaving the two of them injured on the side of the road, but it was leon's assurances that he'd be able to take care of things that convinced her to go.

and then he almost immediately bungled it. and he never once tried to make up for it or right the wrong.

it would've been one thing if claire had just been like "lmao ok im gonna go find chris now, peace" and just saddled leon with sherry and fucked off, but that's not what happened. it was his fucking idea in the first place. and he shouldn't have put himself in a position to be sherry's caretaker if he was unwilling to or incapable of taking care of her to begin with.

like, no one reasonably expects leon to be An Actual Father for sherry. but they, at the very least, expected him to be the chris to sherry's claire (since chris was, more likely than not, claire's legal guardian at one point, too) because that was literally what he volunteered to do, but then just... didn't.

[queenofzan]

i really don’t understand why people are so willing and apparently eager to believe people in the past found large age gaps and child marriages acceptable. like, i understand we have an urge to feel better and smarter than people in the past, but humans are basically the same now as we have been for thousands and thousands of years.

historically, it was most common for teenagers to marry other teenagers. and honestly most of the time that was viewed pretty much the same as modern teens getting married right out of high/secondary school, ie, as a rash and hasty decision that they would probably come to regret (that might work out. maybe. if they were lucky.)

“but ani, what about political marriages in europe? we know they were getting fourteen-year-olds married!” first of all, that was a fairly uncommon thing when it did happen. most of the political marriages involving quite young people or large age gaps were in fact betrothal or marriage contracts for years before they were actual marriages. it was also afaik usual practice to let these marriages remain unconsummated for years, until both parties were of an age for it to be appropriate instead of creepy. (there was also more than one case of a political arrangement being imperiled by the failure to consummate a marriage that had been in place for years.)

like, when anything remotely resembling young teens being married to adults for political reasons happened, it was a: considered weird by most people b: given some leeway to the child participant to at least wait until they were closer to adulthood (which was usually somewhere around 16-20, not 13. being old enough to get a job and being old enough to get married were not necessarily the same thing.)

“oh but what about in [foreign country], i’m sure they did it” i bet you $1000 that any examples you could find are either racist propaganda or an outlier scenario!

the first ~20 years of human life have been pretty much the same for as long as we’ve existed, in terms of developmental milestones. if you think it would be weird and inappropriate for a 14 year old to marry a 35 year old, so would most other humans in history. 

like, i’m not saying abuse and rape and child sex abuse didn’t happen historically. obviously they did, just like they happen today. but it wasn’t some kind of wide-spread thing everyone accepted in most societies. it is in fact a sign a society is deeply sick when such things are tolerated and not looked at with a critical and watchful eye, and plenty of rules to make sure any children involved are kept protected by the standards of that society (which are often not that different from yours).

idk man it’s just really weird to see people arguing with historians about medieval people finding a grown-ass man having sex with a 16-year-old inappropriate like “oh they wouldn’t have seen anything wrong with it” buddy,

do you see what’s wrong with it???

[booksngoodstuff]

Book Review: Something Happened in Our Town

Activity:

The activity I chose to undertake was a book review, specifically of a banned book, as my chosen topic of focus was censorship. Censorship, specifically in media is something I’ve done personal research into before, so I chose a book I was already familiar with to write a review on – a children’s picture book titled ‘Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice’ by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins & Ann Hazzard; illustrated by Jennifer Zivoin. I chose this novel out of the American Library Association’s (APA) lists of most banned and challenged books. This was the sixth-most banned book in the year 2020, despite its publication and various awards in 2018, in the wake of George Floyd’s death. It was cited to be challenged for “divisive language and because it was thought to promote anti-police views.” (2020) I reviewed the book based on its narrative and its learning integrity as an educational tool.

What I learnt:

The book goes into adequate depth about racial injustice and prejudice black people and other people of colour face in their daily lives, in this case displayed by a black man who was shot by a white cop, and a Middle Eastern refugee student who was facing social exclusion by his classmates. Due to this book being banned in the United States specifically, I had higher hopes for having an easier finding a copy of it here in Australia. I learnt that wasn’t such the case, however, since I combed through three different library chains in New South Wales and couldn’t source a single one short of buying it online – as there also seemed to be none in store either. Censorship is a large issue everywhere, Australia not excluded, though I didn’t expect that finding the book in question would be so difficult. I cannot properly ascertain why there’s a significant lack of accessibility, though my assumption would be that there was a lack of distribution from the US due to its status as a banned and challenged book.

In the Library:

Book reviews are common practice across all reading material, children and young adult books notwithstanding. It is an especially prevalent tool for educating, whether you are a parent or a teacher of any form, and when catering to children specifically, can be a great form of researching into researching if the material is age appropriate, educational and/or entertaining. The book I chose also came with additional resources for parents to do their own research – attached to the book and also displayed on the American Psychology Association (APA) website – though one might not find those before picking up the book itself, and thus, resorting to reviews as a first impression. The gaps in my knowledge appeared while I was thinking about how applicable this book would be to a teaching environment; there are many stories of educators and other authors landing in controversy over their promotion of banned books, despite those books largely being challenged due to content that isn’t deemed ‘age-appropriate’ – due to topics such as racism, sexuality and topics alike. In my opinion, these are things that children start discovering at a young age, especially due to easier accessibility around them, and there should be more resources fostering discussions around them instead of suppressing them.

Bibliography:

American Psychology Association. (2013, March 26). Top 10 most challenged books lists. Advocacy, Legislation & Issues. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10/archive#2020

American Psychology Association. (2022). Something happened in our town. Apa.org. https://www.apa.org/pubs/magination/441B228?tab=5

Linder, S., & Majerus, E. (2016). Can I teach that?: Negotiating taboo language and controversial topics in the language arts classroom. In Google Books. Rowman & Littlefield. https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ZzWNDAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA3&dq=banned+books&ots=_vepT79N3d&sig=Zw3hxqiwzXscW18Jgb9EiEwRr8M#v=onepage&q=banned%20books&f=false

Scales, P. (2018). Celebrating banned books week with something happened in our town [Review of Banned Books: Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story about Racial Injustice , by M. Celano, M. Collins, & A. Hazzard]. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2568752643?accountid=10344&parentSessionId=X58X%2BdTGz1zy%2FuWMHp7KnWqs3STiU1qvOwr9jFue1HI%3D&pq-origsite=primo&sourcetype=Trade%20Journals

Something happened in our town: a child’s story about racial injustice. (n.d.). Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37953987-something-happened-in-our-town?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=T2PTSSGTc5&rank=1

Louw, K. (2023). Library, books on table and background for studying, learning and research in education, school or college. Reading, philosophy and open, vintage or history print book, university blurred background stock photo. In iStock. https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/library-books-on-table-and-background-for-studying-learning-and-research-in-gm1460007178-494280033?searchscope=image%2Cfilm

Miroshnichenko, I. (2021). Banner with books. Business and education background. Back to school concept stock photo. In iStock. https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/banner-with-books-business-and-education-background-back-to-school-concept-gm1354989842-429596752

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

5 questions with Nii Ayikwei Parkes

Why do you write?

This is an odd question for me, because I don't think I've ever not told stories. I think writing is a vital part of my conversation with the world, it's one of the ways I make sense of things. So, perhaps I write so I can be less foolish.

Azúcar has elements of magical realism, for example, the fictional island of Fumaz and the Soñada family tree bring to mind Márquez’s creation of the Macondo and the Buendía family in 100 Years of Solitude. Have you been inspired by the genre? How has it informed your own storytelling?

I have an aversion to the name of 'magical realism', but I have absolutely been inspired by the work of Vargas Llosa, Garcia Márquez, Fuentes - as well as African writers such as Mongo Beti and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, whose work leans on satire. Reading Latin American fiction in translation, the way they owned and moulded the Spanish language to their cultural experience of the world, pointed me to greater possibilities in my use of the English language, which I had been taught to use in very rigid ways. Azúcar is partly a thank you note for those language lessons.

A large part of your writing focuses on women and girls not only your experiences, but the collective feminine experience, which you describe with empathy even while writing about a time when, as you say in Azúcar, “a woman hid her true powers”. Would you agree the feminine experience is a significant aspect of your work, and if so, how have you come to think about it with such a heightened sensitivity?

The odd thing is everyone's first experience of the world is through women, but I never really thought about women's experience as distinct until I read So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ at the age of 12 or 13. I mean, that's the power of privilege; when you have it, you can't see the world as anything but complete. Once I began to see from the additional perspective that reading that book gave me (a West African woman's perspective), I couldn't experience the world without that filter. The time I had always spent in the company of women and girls suddenly became revelatory. My mother was a midwife so we had women coming to our home for advice all the time, and I just soaked it all in with the fervent commitment of a seasoned eavesdropper. I think the accumulated experience of over three decades of listening is what gives the sense of the feminine experience in my work. However, I would argue that it is not significant; it is as it should be, but we have largely learned to read without expecting it, so it stands out when it is simply present.

A lot of your poetry, for example, your collections The Makings of You and The Geez, cover a family history that moves from the Caribbean to Sierra Leone, and your own life between London and Ghana. Is it hard to write about this cultural experience while engaging a wider audience who may not have a similar background?

I really don't obsess over the journey of the audience; I trust that if I render any story with true honesty and vulnerability, then a human audience will be engaged (in ways that I can't predict). Ultimately, how similar are backgrounds? We receive stories according to our interior landscape, and those can differ wildly even amongst people who have grown up in the same exterior circumstances - cases in point would be the adult versus child experience of the same war, or the masculine versus feminine experience of the same space.

Charlie Parker or Charles Mingus? Robert Johnson or Lead Belly?

Oooh, the first option isn't even fair - completely different expressive outlets, but both genius. Robert Johnson over Lead Belly though, just because I like when a story has gaps, leaving space for my imagination to inhabit. I think Lead Belly is a more accomplished storyteller, but Johnson makes you feel an incredible range of emotions and his guitar technique is stunning.

__________________

Buy a Copy of Azúcar from Peepal Tree Press

Thank you to Lila Bovenzi for her help with the questions.

[informationcentral]

1. Runaway

(F/Y) ~ Favorite YouTuber

TWs ~ Child Abuse/Neglect, mention of sexual relationship with a large age gap (both adults, just a big age gap)

        You sighed, staring blankly up at your ceiling. You could hear the muffled voices of your parents arguing below you, your cheap headphones not being able to fully block out the noise. You were listening to some music on max volume, and it was giving you a headache. You'd rather a headache than having to hear the disgusting words your parents were screaming about each other and you. Somehow, your parents always managed to drag you into every single one of their arguments. They always blamed you for destroying their marriage, and complained about how your mom regretted not having an abortion. You pondered why they didn't just give you up for adoption. Your best guess was that they would get in less legal trouble taking out their physical anger on you than one another. Whenever your dad even got too close to your mom during an argument, she screamed abuse and called the police. You just didn't have the energy to fight back against them, so it was easier to hit you instead. You were just happy that they even let you live with them, you were sure they would've kicked you out the second you turned 18, but here you are.

You threw your legs over the side of your bed, standing up. Glancing over quickly at your old digital clock on your nightstand, you realized just how long they had been arguing. It had been at least three hours. Dread and anxiety pooled in your stomach and you tore your gaze away from the clock. You instead looked over at your creaky wooden door, and quickly walked over to it. You checked the lost, triple checking it to make sure it was locked. Usually if your door was locked they held off their abuse until later, or forgot they even wanted to hit you completely. That was only usually though, and this was far different from usual. they never argued this long unless your mom found out something particularly terrible. By that, you usually mean she found out your dad was sleeping with another woman. Everyone knows your dad has been cheating on your mom for years, and he even had a woman - who is half his age - get an abortion because he had gotten her pregnant. You're honestly surprised that only happened once, factoring in the sheer number of woman he sleeps with. You huffed, and furrowed your brows. You felt like crying, but stopped yourself from doing so. It wouldn't help anything, other than maybe letting out some pent up emotions. Your parents would probably hear, though, and you didn't need any attention from them right now.

You shuffled tiredly over to your desk, sitting down in your chair. You might as well do something over than laying in bed idly, maybe you could watch one of your comfort youtubers. You turned on your laptop, and opened YouTube. You browsed the recommended videos, eventually clicking on one by (F/Y). You paused your music, and plugged your headphones into your laptop. The video played in the background as you opened up Google Classroom. You hadn't started your homework yet, and it was getting late. You started with your Language homework first, quickly finishing what you needed to do. Language and Science were always your strong suit in school, and even with the advanced classes you took, you were still ahead of your peers. Math and Civics on the other hand were definitely not your strong suit. Civics was okay, just extremely boring, and Math just had you completely lost sometimes. You still had good grades in those subjects, they just took you some more time. Another thing you excelled in was Art, it was one of your biggest hobbies other than writing. You had art hung up on your wall, depicting your favorite characters and things. You took a second away from your work to look at the art hung up above your desk. It was some drawings of a few creepypasta characters, and recreations of the slenderman posters. You had done a pretty good job recreating them, in your opinion. 

You finished your work pretty quickly, and decided to browse the internet. You found some badly written creepypastas, and read them to help boost your spirits. It actually worked pretty well, and you found yourself feeling much better after reading a few of them. Eventually, you got tired and bored. Checking the time, you saw it was 10:48 at night. You questioned why you were tired for a moment, since you always went to bed late. You assumed it was just because you had been sitting for so long, and decided to make a quick bathroom break from your internet browsing to stretch your legs and splash some water on your face to refreshen a bit. You took out your headphones, straining your ears to listen for any sounds from your parents. Luckily, you didn't hear anything coming from either of them. You walked over to your door, opening it just enough you could slip through. You quietly snuck through the hallway and into the bathroom, looking at yourself in the mirror. You looked disheveled and greasy, but that was usual for you. You turned on the sink, cupping your hands under the stream of cold water, You bent over the sink, splashing the gathered water on your face. You repeated this a few times before closing the faucet and patting your face dry with a towel.

You listened a bit more, still not hearing a peep out of your parents. You crept back to your room, making sure to avoid every squeaky floor board. You had successfully made it back to your room, closing the door behind you. You breathed a sigh of relief, and began walking back to your laptop when you heard a door slam open from somewhere in the house. You froze in place, eyes moving to gaze at your door like a deer in headlights. You heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, and you could immediately identify the footsteps as your mother's. Your breath sped up, and you already knew what was going to happen. You shut your eyes tightly. "No, shit! I don't want to get beat, what the fuck do I do?" You thought, looking around your room wildly. You laid your eyes on your schoolbag sitting discarded in the corner of your room by your bed. You rushed over, grabbing onto it. It was pretty empty since you only took a few notebooks from school, leaving all your unneeded text books in your locker back at school. You slipped on your shoes, and grabbed your laptop, charger, and headphones, shoving the objects into the bag as fast as you could. Your mom started banging on your door, yelling at you from the other side to unlock it before she tore it down and never let you have a door again. You didn't listen to her, instead slipping your phone into the bag with your laptop. You grabbed the charger for your phone as well, and finally grabbed your wallet. Zipping up your bag, you rushed over to the only window in your room that was next to your desk. You pried it open just as your mom started trying to break down the door full force. A gust of cold wind came in from the now-open window, and you reached over for the switch blade on your desk last second. You shoved it into your hoodie pocket as you crawled out your window. Luckily you were only on the second floor, and there was a big tree outside your window. You had crawled out onto it before, but it had been a while. The tree branch wasn't the absolute sturdiest, and you didn't really want to take any chances. Now, though, it was either take this chance or get your ass handed to you by your mother and inevitably your father when you were late to school the next day.

You crawled onto the branch, and it bent slightly under your weight. You began climbing down the tree, and halfway to the bottom you heard your door aggressively slam open in your room. Adrenaline pumping through your veins, you jumped to the ground. You hit your arm on a branch going down, but you didn't even register the sharp pain as you ran at an Olympic pace away from your house. Your mother was screaming for your father, telling him that you had run away and to call the police. You had blanked out, and were running to no particular destination. You only stopped when the adrenaline began to wear off, and your feet began aching along with your arm. You stopped and doubled-over, gasping for air as your chest burned. You looked around, noticing a bench nearby that you immediately dragged yourself over too. You collapsed down on it, trying to calm yourself as you looked around. You were in a park, and there was no-one else in sight. You knew the park you were at, which you were happy about. At least you hadn't gotten yourself lost. You went to this park often when you were younger - your parents usually dropped you off unsupervised and let you go wild for a few hours. At least they cared enough to pack you a lunch box with snacks. You sighed, letting your eyes flutter closed as you regained strength. You were sure you had ended up bruising your arm, which was annoying. Better than whatever was waiting for you if you hadn't ran for it. 

You sat on the bench in silence, listening to the sound of the crickets and leaves rustling in the cool wind. Your serenity was interrupted when you heard a male voice coming from a few feet away. Your eyes snapped open, scared since you were out at night alone. "Oh sorry! We didn't mean to frighten you." The female apologized, holding her hands up by her shoulders. You fear died down a bit, but you were still suspicious of the two. The guy was tall, probably the tallest man you've ever met. His curly red hair and clothes contrasted against his dark skin. His hair looked died as it was a faded yellow at the edges. His outfit was odd, as he wore a grey button-up shirt with a tie the same color of the blonde part of his hair. His pants were dark brown, and he wore a pair of dressy shoes. He wore something similar to a knight's cape, and appeared to have his sleeves rolled up to his elbow. His right arm was obscured by the cape, but by how the fabric bent, he appeared to be missing his arm past about halfway down the forearm. To top it all off, he had a pair of goggles resting amongst his hair. The woman he was with had light blonde hair and even darker skin than her companion. She had red lipstick on, and eyeshadow the same coral shade as her dress. She had long white gloves that ended right before her elbow. She had a scar in the form of an X on the left side of her chest, as well as a more faded one over her left eye - that appeared clouded over. Like the man, she was tall. You had to crane your head upwards to meet her eye. 

"We just asked if you're okay, you look hurt." The woman said, looking at you with worry. You shook your head dismissively, slouching forwards. You didn't feel like opening up to strangers, especially ones that could easily overpower you in a fight at the dead of night no less, but you had no where to stay. You had a chance of getting hurt, or killed, no matter what option you went with. The woman seemed pretty trustworthy, but the man had a very mean aura. He glared daggers into you, obviously impatient with the conversation. You didn't answer for a moment, and he groaned and rolled his eyes.

"Come on, Rosemary! We're going to be late if we stop here any longer, you know this." The man complained, moving his gaze over to who you now know is Rosemary. She sighed deeply, turning to look at the other.

"Come on Jaskier! The poor kid looks hurt. I thought you didn't even want to go, anyways. Lets at least see if we need to call the police before we just run off." Rosemary scolded the other, who you mentally noted was named Jaskier. Jaskier moved his hand to grasp the opposite side of his cape, pulling it closer to his body and making his missing arm more obvious underneath the fabric. You noticed that there where bumps on the existing part of arm, all connected by something similar to a vine. This just served to make you confused.

"You can do that, I'll be on my way. You can survive walking there without me." Jaskier hissed, turning on his heel and walking away. Rosemary shook her head in disappointment, pinching the bridge of her nose. She looked back over at you, adopting a friendlier stance and facial expression. 

"I'm sorry about him, he's not always like that." Rose tried to console you. "Anyways, back to my original question: do you need help? What happened?" She asked, her tone hushed and motherly. You felt your heart squeeze at the semblance of motherly attention. You felt tears well in your eyes, and looked down at you lap so she wouldn't see them.

"I'm fine, I just don't have anywhere to sleep tonight. Stuff happened at home." You told the women quietly, your voice barely above a whisper. You felt a hand on your shoulder, and the woman knelt before you. You looked her in the eyes, trying to hold it together. She pushed one of her braids back, giving the kindest smile you've ever received.

"Hey, it's okay honey. I get it, something similar happened to me when I was younger." The woman said somberly, reaching into her hand purse. You were confused for a second, then you noticed that she was pulling out cash.

"Oh, no ma'am - you really don't have to!" You said, tensing up. The woman just shook her head, counting through the cash. It looked like it was around 150 dollars, which just made you feel even worse. You didn't know how you'd repay her for this, or if you'd ever see her again.

"No, sweetie it's fine! It doesn't change much about my life, but it could change a lot about yours! Here, take it." She said humbly, handing you the cash. "There's a hotel about a mile from here. I can walk with you, if you'd like." She told you. You shook your head, politely declining her offer.

"No, ma'am you've already done enough for me. I don't want to bother you any more, or make you later for whatever you and the guy you were with have to go to." You explained, letting her gently pull you to your feet. 

"Well, if you insist. If you're ever in a pinch again though, please call me." She pleaded, handing you her business card. "Also I do genuinely apologize for how Jaskier acted. I don't know what gets into him sometimes!" Rosemary apologized, her tone dripping venom at the end. 

"It's fine, I really didn't mind. I'll be on my way now, thank you again. Thank you so, so much." You told her, and she smiled again. "She sure does smile a lot, huh?" You thought as she playfully shooed you away. You began walking in the direction she pointed you in, trying to ignore the painfulness in your feet. You began to fully process what just happened, questions about the two people you had just met plaguing your mind along with many other thoughts. The fact that you were homeless for the night finally set in, and your head felt like it was spinning. Everything started crashing down on you as the situation fully set in. You walked a bit faster, hoping that if you made it to the hotel fast enough you could escape your thoughts for a little while. "What will happen when I go home? They'll probably just kill me if I ever go back.... oh fuck." You thought, the situation becoming even worse for you. Before you could ponder the thought more, you reached the hotel. It was nice-looking, and clean. You pushed open the glass door, the desk lady looking up at you blandly. You shuffled over to the front desk, and the woman straightened her posture a bit.

"Hello, how may I help you?"

[in-tua-deep]

Are you into my hero academia? What about an AU or crossover with tua?

UHHHH I am technically, like, peripherally? I watched some seasons of the show like two or three years ago and since then have simply absorbed all content through osmosis, reading fanfiction that has canon events, and my sister telling me about the arcs of her fav characters lmao

so a crossover hmmm

First of all you'd have to like, establish whether bnha is an alternate universe or just The Future If No Apocalypse with quirks being traced back to the descendants of the kids born without mothers

So let's say it's that - the glowing baby was the "first quirk" but the truth is people had powers before that. But - well, the Umbrella Academy was obviously a marketing gimmick to those in the future! There were even comics based on them

In the future, you might find some of those comics in museum exhibits dedicated to depictions of powers in the pre-quirk era, but they're just fun depictions and much less popular than, oh, DC or MCU comics which are also in the exhibits!

End of s2 doesn't happen I guess in this au?? No sparrow academy at least lmao. So, the Umbrella Academy stop the apocalypse (again) and the Commission threat is? Neutralized? Whatever. They decide to jump back to the future

Five warns them that time travel is a crapshoot, that he has no fucking idea when they'll land beyond some nebulous "future" because Five can at least control the direction if not exactly how long

Also, Five is like. Super tired. Incredibly tired. Homeboy still has a healing gut wound, time traveled twice, has been jumping all over the place, gotten even more injured, experienced paradox psychosis, and managed to undo time all in the space of like, two weeks. There actually more than that but we don't have time to get into how fucking tired Five is from his ~Month of Hell

Like genuinely this is like putting someone almost delirious from lack of sleep in the driver's seat of a car and expecting to get to your destination in one piece

But hey, the siblings are like "do it uwu" and Five has sacrificed everything for them already so why not get behind the wheel again

So Five jumps them, and of course something goes wrong because Five has pushed his powers like a great big rubber band and honestly it was only a matter of time before he lost his grip and it snapped back to hit him

So here be the umbrella academy: spilled out into the future like a cup of bad coffee.

Five probably isn't in too good of shape tbh, like they're hundreds of years in the future (but hey at least confirmation of no apocalypse am I right) in a world full of superpowers and Five is like. bleeding from his ears and nose probably idk

Let's handwave a little bit - Reginald made them all polyglots so the squad all speak varying levels of Japanese. Allison is the best at it, Five is second best but tends to use more archaic words bc he had missions in Japan back when he was with the commission, and Klaus is third best.

(Ben is the worst bc he decided when he was 16-and-dead that he didn't have to do anything regarding lessons and maintenance and hasn't given a shit since - but also he's dead so)

So you have a bunch of weird adults with a bleeding child in like, an alley who have appeared from nowhere

so of course heroes get involved

Anyway, the squad get taken in and Five is conscious but like, barely? And he's not going to let himself get separated from his siblings again fuck-you-officer and there is a lot of confusion

anyway detective tsukauchi ends up getting involved and ends up having to hear this batshit story and be like "...truth." which sends all kinds of people scrambling because fucking time travel? Like yeah, it's been theorized to be a possible quirk but there's no recorded cases of any sort of time travel that is for more than 24 hours let alone hundreds of years

"I'm an adult." Five says sourly, "I just happened to be returned to my 13 year old body when I time traveled one time."

"True." Tsukauchi says, feeling his soul leave his body, but like. absently. the way he does when he's called in at 2am after getting off of work at midnight.

"I'm 58." Five says.

"Lie." Tsukauchi says, because this is a headcanon hill I will die on.

"I'm probably 58, but it was hard to keep track. I'm at least 50." Five corrects.

"True." Tsukauchi sighs like these six (seven? they keep referring to another sibling and Klaus said 'ghost' like that was fine and it registered as true and Tsukauchi is not nearly paid enough for this) are not giving him a migraine by just existing

on the bright side there's like, probably protocols in place for individuals who are Legally Chronologically Adults but thanks to quirks are Not Physically Or Not Mentally Adults with tests to determine if the individual needs a guardian or not

though i'm gonna be honest idk if Five would pass the test bc he literally cannot take care of himself at all, has never paid taxes or understands how to exist legally, and also his emotional maturity is stunted as all hell. also like. we don't actually know how much being in his thirteen-year-old body affects his mental state but yeAH Five is vibing

anyway Tsukauchi probably phones a friend on this bullshit because Time Travel Child alone is probably enough for the Hero Commission to be like "find a way to control and use it or nuke it from orbit" and that's not even touching whatever the fuck Klaus is doing (shit gets real once 'dead men tell no tales' stops being true) let ALONE Allison's whole deal

on the bright side like, at least Vanya isn't getting side-eyed that much bc Big Destructive Quirks aren't exactly unknown? if vanya wanted to i guess quirk suppressors exist for that until extensive training on how to control a super powerful quirk happens

Tsukauchi in the group chat: Aizawa please I am literally begging you to take this bullshit on

Aizawa: in this economy? with my class?

RatGod: lol we'll take them ;3c

Aizawa: no

Anyway they probably end up having to live at UA while Five insists on trying to get them home still and everyone else is like "oh hey we used to be child soldiers as well! (:" and Aizawa is like "i hate everything about this and everything about all of you but also like nedzu is making me interact with you so :/"

nedzu is out here vibing like "lol i just don't want the hero commission to get their little paws on these time traveling fuckers, i think you should make then teaching assistants or something"

honestly the siblings are probably like. figuring out how to function in the bnha universe and getting like, legally registered and stuff while Five ferally refuses bc that's like saying he's giving up on getting them home and he can do this

Recovery girl tries to heal him a little when he arrives and he passes out for two weeks like, immediately bc homeboy is running on fumes and spite at this point

also i think on principle it would be REALLY FUNNY if the squad got to tag along with the class bc like. Five is thirteen and the class are all 15. this does not sound like a large age gap. anyone who has interacted with teenagers know that the class would squint at Five and be like "who is this sassy lost middle schooler."

I feel like when I was a sophomore we were still like "freshman... babie" even though we were literally only one year older.

i think the difference between the umbrella academy and school kids would be pretty funny like. objectively the bnha kids are lowkey child soldiers?? like they're 15 and fighting villains but like, there's all this red tape and laws and stuff but,,, deku still be breaking his limbs in a child fighting ring against equally superpowered children for like. entertainment and sponsorships sooo

but also like Five would be like "oh cool when is the experimentation class"

"the what"

"you know, when your powers are pushed real hard by putting you in different terrible situations while your dad and sibling stand by with clipboards writing down the exact voltage it takes before you can't use your powers anymore when being electrocuted"

"hound dog's office is right there. therapy is available to you at any time. i need you to know this."

all might calls Luther "my boy" like one (1) time and Luther just breaks down crying probably because he is starved for positive attention

klaus and midnight get along like a literal house on fire, aizawa tried his best to keep them apart for as long as possible but god damn

(klaus: your name is shimura nana??

all might: immediately dies choking on blood)

i feel it absolutely necessary to point out that aizawa, present mic, and midnight are all like, 30? and the umbrella academy are all between 29-early 30s? they are PEERS but like. the umbrella academy are more chaotic due to childhood trauma

the umbrella academy probably get offered to like. also train to be heroes. i mean,, there HAS to be some sort of track for people who change careers right?? you don't have to cement your future as a hero when you're 15 i'm sure there must be something and the squad already have experience if they want to go be legal heroes

diego probably does at least?? diego just vibes honestly. diego gets momo to make knives during a team exercise and they just go feral on everyone else and it ends with diego highfiving momo and someone getting way to close to being stabbed for comfort

Five might just be. legally enrolled as an Actual Student? But also i think it's funny to picture the entire squad just. all in the back of the classroom with luther trying to fit into a high school desk as they take notes on the laws of The Future surrounding heroics

every word out of the umbrella academy's mouths just make everyone more concerned on principal but like, five and klaus are probably the worst offenders. Klaus just says whatever comes to mind with no filter and Five doesn't get what people would consider to be abnormal anymore like

Five: yeah our dad bought us when we were babies and experimented on us throughout our childhood in order to make an elite team of child soldiers superheroes, it happens

Todoroki: ...have you heard of quirk marriages?

izuku probably has an aneurism bc he's is the only person who might recognize them from the comics because you know ya boy extensively researched the idea of heroics in pre-quirk eras (batman was an inspiration alright???) and might dredge up a memory of a less popular comic series

Five: I can time travel but it is very hard, which is why we are hundreds of years in the future. And why I look like a child.

Kaminari: so are you a kid or not?

Five, serenely: whatever is most convenient for me at any given moment

Mina: hell yeah game the system

they have a brief lesson on astronomy and Luther raises his hand like "ooh! i was isolated on the moon for four years and did SO MUCH research" and then just gets up and starts infodumping like way too much information on the moon

Izuku sitting there like "damn if quirks hadn't popped up we could have achieved so much in terms of space travel. please tell me more giant man who lived in pre-quirk era."

Vanya finds out about the quirkless and is like "oh mood that genuinely sounds like my childhood, being ordinary in a house full of extraordinary people, and then i found out that i did have powers but only much later in life after i had already been emotionally scarred by the experience"

deku: vanya we have so much in common

iida and uraraka: concerned noises

aizawa: hound dog. therapy with hound dog for all of you.

there's probably some conflict with like, the hero commission wanting to get their hands on the time travelers?? but probably especially five and klaus as a) time travel and b) ghosts (the hc def has bodies they would like to stay buried)

five has a pavlovian reaction to anything with 'commission' in the name and hates them on site, probably plays into his age in order to become a ward of UA or something to protect him from the commission a little bit.

(this makes nedzu Five's legal guardian. aizawa has his resignation papers all prepped in a drawer marked 'in case of emergency' but let's be real, if nedzu wants to take over the world aizawa should probably be on the rat-bear's side of things :/)

five: ah, i do recall the inhumane experimentation that we were subjected to

nedzu, who was experimented on: haha same hat! want me to dig up the location of reginald hargreeves's remains so you can spit on them?

klaus: nah no worries we dumped them out in the courtyard unceremoniously like, a while back. how long ago varies for each of us because of time travel!

luther: you said hound dog's office was down the hall and to the right?

on the bright side, Luther probably feels like. way less self conscious about his body, partially bc of his fighting and all that in the 60s but also bc !! now he genuinely doesn't feel like a freak. no one even gives him a second glance. one of the teachers looks like a slab of cement with a face. gang orca looks Like That. there is literally a student with an entire bird head and goth aesthetic. Luther does not stick out at all

allison and shinso bond over having "villainous" voice-based quirks

allison and shinso having worn muzzles at some point in their youth as punishment 🤝

aizawa probably helps train vanya as well with the whole, being able to erase a world ending quirk safely thing he's got going on which makes for a very nice safety net

i don't think vanya would want to be a hero at the end of things though. maybe the assistant teacher in the music class or something?? all vanya wants is to be able to not end the world

i feel like as time goes by, five brings up trying to get home less and less. part of that is because like,,, genuinely what do they have to go back to?? Allison has Claire, but like. I'm 100% sure the first thing she did in the future was try track down Claire's records and found out Claire was like. fine. became an adult, had a family, probably became the ancestor of the first "quirked" kids who officially popped up after light baby. had a good life, died at an old age etc. etc.

they start settling into the bnha world with like, "we can always hop aboard the five express into where the fuck ever" as a plan Z if things go completely pear shaped (again)

i'mma be real, five himself doesn't give a fuck as long as there is a) no apocalypse and b) his family is alive. Like that's it. His bar is so incredibly low and yet his life keeps fucking trying to limbo under it

i just think it would be funny to have like, Five trying to get along with his "peers" and make friends while the siblings do the same but like, in the staff room

also think it would be funny for five to just walk into the staff room and get coffee occasionally.

a teacher: why is a student in here -

Five, sipping coffee: i'm an adult

nedzu like "what kind of guardian would i be if i didn't teach my new son all the tunnels around ua so he can pop out wherever"

five like "hey new dad can i put stashes of supplies all around ua of weapons, money, food, and other assorted things that might be useful if one needed to fight or make a run for it" and nedzu is like "haha just put your list of what supplies you want in your go bags on my desk and i'll critique it later!"

anyway a bnha/tua crossover would be incredibly chaotic but probably very funny

[shihalyfie]

An analysis of Iori and his character arc

Iori has a particularly interesting position in 02′s narrative (and, even more widely so, in perhaps all of both Adventure and 02) in that his base profile is rather unusual-looking even from the get-go -- the youngest child in both groups, yet with a (seemingly) mature demeanor that surpasses even his seniors. On top of that, Iori ends up having a very deep relation to 02′s themes and plot itself in a way that isn’t initially apparent, but actually makes him a very vital centerpiece of 02′s story.

Before we get into Iori’s role in 02′s actual plot, it needs to be established that a very, very large amount of Iori’s character is heavily shaped by his family background and upbringing. Prior to the start of the series, the Hida family had a large void in it, with Iori’s father Hiroki having been killed in the line of duty. Being a mere five-year-old child who had lost his father barely into actually being sentient and basically had to live the following three years going off hearsay on what he was actually like, Iori ends up raised by his mother Fumiko and his paternal grandfather Chikara.

While not in exactly the same way as the Takenouchi family (which is literally working in cultural preservation and study), the Hida family is very traditionalist Japanese -- Fumiko makes traditional Japanese food and snacks like kanpyoumaki and ohagi, and a lot of attention is given to the butsudan altar in their house where they honor the late Hiroki (also note the tatami flooring). That, combined with Chikara’s naturally strict personality, led to Iori being raised with “very strict manners”, and by a set of very firm guidelines on honor, respect, and the like.

Having been raised into this kind of formality, Iori speaks almost exclusively in polite-form Japanese. This happens to initially make him come off a bit like Koushirou -- likely a deliberate parallel, given the Knowledge connection between the two (being the kind of person who admits that you don’t know everything and wants to know more requires a bit of humility, after all). That said, Iori’s way of doing this has some key differences from Koushirou:

Unlike Koushirou, who was largely polite out of an attempt to keep distance from everyone and thus had a streak of being somewhat non-confrontational, Iori is perfectly willing to say harsh or critical things -- in other words, his way of speaking is formal, but it’s not necessarily polite, and in fact Iori is probably the single most passive-aggressive person in this cast. He has absolutely no qualms about dunking on whatever he feels truly deserves the dunking, and he’ll certainly do it with a lot of grace, but he is very capable of being extremely cold when he wants to be.

Koushirou stuck to formality out of detachment and intimidation, to the point that, as per Adventure episodes 38 and 54, he was compulsively unable to bring himself to speak casually unless he forced himself. Iori, on the other hand, often “slips” -- on top of willingly defaulting to casual form whenever he’s talking to himself or (occasionally) to the Digimon (who are outside Japanese levels of propriety), he also has a tendency to start using casual form whenever he gets particularly emotionally compromised. (While it doesn’t quite come off in the translation, the above screenshots from 02 episode 10 are an example of this, with Iori losing his temper at the Kaiser and slipping into casual form -- and a bit of fun foreshadowing, guess who’s the one to successfully calm him down? Takeru. Remember this for later.) In other words, Iori’s formality is not compulsive, but a conscious thing he tries to maintain as he holds himself to high standards, and is unable to completely uphold during times his emotions get the better of him.

Ultimately, Iori may come off as “mature and composed”, but he’s still an impressionable nine-year-old child, who’s effectively parroting the rules his grandfather instilled in him because he sees it as The One and Only Guide to Living Life. In trying to figure out the right thing to do in any situation, Iori ends up constantly trying to fall back on “this is the right way to do things!” and taking it rather badly whenever things start falling outside of the expected pattern. Despite being the one responsible for Iori’s tightly principled life to begin with, even Chikara himself comments that Iori’s not being flexible enough in his thinking in 02 episode 5 -- because it’s not like he’s expecting Iori to be like this, but Iori is simply having a hard time applying these principles practically when he’s working with the limited range of being a nine-year-old child.

And as much as it may be tempting to see Iori as stoic, watching his expressions and way of emoting throughout the series, he does very much have the full range of emotions and curiosity and even cheer of a nine-year-old child -- it’s that he’s just constantly holding himself back for the sake of being principled and well-mannered. This has the unfortunate side effect that Iori is, as the Animation Chronicle calls it, “clumsy at expressing himself as a child”. Because he’s constantly restraining himself like this, he has a hard time expressing himself or letting himself enjoy things in the way a normal child would.

It also goes a long way in explaining why Iori is never seen hanging out with any other peers his age, and is exclusively depicted in the company of either the rest of the 02 group, or his own family. While part of it is simply because (as per Japanese school procedure) he’s too young to be formally enrolled in any clubs, 02 episode 3 goes out of its way to show Iori being left alone in the classroom with only a teacher stuck supervising him, as he tries to force himself to finish his lunch due to his stubborn adherence to principle (even though he seems to hate tomatoes). In other words, it’s heavily implied that Iori’s own behavior ended up isolating him from his peers. Considering that the 02 group is generally made up of kids who are socially displaced in some way, it naturally follows that, despite being significantly older than him, they end up welcoming him into their friend circle and treating him as an equal.

When the series starts, Miyako and Iori seem to have gotten a certain degree of closeness (with Iori as one of the only people Miyako drops honorifics on). It stands to reason that Miyako, being open-minded towards people and rather aggressively friendly, would be willing to befriend her neighbor despite the three-year age gap between them, and so they already seem to have developed a rapport where Miyako’s willing to come over to his place to help work on the Hida family electronics in exchange for food.

So, you know, this and that happens, Iori becomes a Chosen Child, and this is the start of where Iori’s “principles” start coming into conflict with each other. The nature of the Digital World crisis is a no-brainer -- the Kaiser is doing terrible things, and Iori’s just been given the tools to do something about it, and so for him, upholding his principles to do the right thing means proactively doing something about it. But getting involved in this territory war will mean “fighting and hurting other people” (bad) and “hiding things from his family and sacrificing obligations to them” (also bad). Chikara advises him in 02 episode 5 that he still needs to be the one to decide what he wants and needs to do at any given moment, but it’s clear that this is still a new concept for Iori to swallow.

It’s also important that 02 episode 5 is also the episode that introduces Jou, who very much understood the dissonance between “adhering to principles in spite of how practical that may not actually be”, which means the two of them end up bonding over...ditching real-life obligations to come to the Digital World. This bonding happens despite the fact that they have the largest age gap out of any two given kids out of the Adventure and 02 group (Jou is 15, and Iori 9) -- and yet, they’re able to bond over being like-minded like this. And while they come from different contexts, there’s also a parallel drawn between the two on “the importance of personal choice” -- because back in Adventure, Jou’s story involved channeling his desire to help others in a way different from his usual expected path as a doctor or as a Chosen Child, and, likewise, it will be up to Iori to find his own way towards what he thinks is right.

Iori’s “adherence to principles” also needs to be distinguished from Jou’s in that Jou was someone more likely to be stuck to “practical” rules (one might call him Lawful) such as waiting for adults to help them with things, or what to put on eggs. Iori, on the other hand, has self-enforced rules that are far more ideological -- he doesn’t actually care that much about institutionally-enforced rules (note how he has absolutely no issue with sneaking into school with his friends in 02 episode 6) as much as he enforces a moral code on himself about “the right thing to do”. For instance, that he has to show his respect to Jou by formally finishing his introduction, even if it’s clear they know each other by now already.

But, again, it bears repeating: Iori is a nine-year-old child. The rest of the kids respect him enough to not treat him like a younger child -- other than a brief moment of emotional compromise that Daisuke quickly apologized for, the group is never really depicted as paying particular mind or care to the fact that Iori is so much younger than them, and for the most part treat him like an equal. But Iori himself is conscious of this -- after all, it’s why he’s constantly speaking politely to everyone all of the time, but 02 episode 16 also implies he’s very self-conscious about this. The plot of the episode kicks off when Iori momentarily gets caught up in his excitement about potentially getting a new Digimental, and, once things start going south, he starts blaming himself for causing all of this and lashing out at the others for (at least, in his mind) singling him out to be the one to escape on the grounds of being the youngest. After all is said and done with the incident, Submarimon lets Iori have a moment of something Iori really does need: a bit of a chance to actually get to enjoy himself as a young child instead of restraining himself so much.

Speaking of 02 episode 16, this is also where we first get to see how the pressure of maintaining Iori’s moral code starts to emotionally tear at him. It’s the first time we see Iori lose his composure this much. To everyone else here (and, perhaps, the audience, to some degree), Iori’s making a mountain out of a molehill -- he’s calling himself an unworthy person for telling a lie that even Jou himself clearly didn’t mind. But remember, Iori is someone who’s still learning a lot about how the world works at such a young age and is inclined by default to fall back on whatever his grandfather’s told him (to a point that even said grandfather considers to be overdoing it). Right now, Iori has basically built his entire view of morality based on this kind of thing, so putting a dent on it is like encouraging a slippery slope of potentially falling into moral depravity.

The reason why I say Iori’s character arc has a lot to do with Adventure and 02’s storytelling itself is that it’s a surprisingly pragmatic series when it comes down to it -- “it’s okay to lie, sometimes” is not exactly the kind of moral you’d expect out of your average kids’ show, but, perhaps a bit unusually, this series prefers to skip all of the preachiness and focus on pragmatics. (After all, back in Adventure, a lot of the final arc revolved around the question of “is fighting the right thing to do when there might be casualties?”, with the probably-kind-of-uncomfortable-but-frankly-very-practical answer of “it certainly beats having more casualties that would happen if you sat around and did nothing.”) Iori’s character arc is, effectively, this in a nutshell -- what’s the “right” thing to do when following principles alone doesn’t seem to be doing it? In the end, both Adventure and 02 are big on this -- preachy words and moralistic principles mean nothing in the face of striving to practically minimize damage and help others.

And so, Jou -- who himself grappled quite a bit with the dissonance between principles and pragmatism back in Adventure -- is the one to successfully reframe it in a way that Iori understands: most of all, Iori doesn’t want to see people get hurt, and whether “lying” or “not lying” is the right thing to do is not as relevant as “whether people are getting hurt”. Iori not lying would have caused a great deal more of hurt than lying, and it’s through understanding this kind of principle that Iori accepts that he still has a long way to go in terms of exercising his duty to others. The secondary Digimental arcs have a heavy theme of “acknowledging your deficiencies and resolving to improve”, and in the case of Iori and the Digimental of (this thing has been translated half a dozen ways, but, effectively, honoring your obligations to others), it involves his first major moment of coming to terms with the idea that the principles on paper he’s been stubbornly following aren’t going to do it by themselves.

Once the Kaiser arc concludes and the group is posed with the question on how to handle Ichijouji Ken, Iori’s reaction to him is the most infamously extreme: Ken is a Bad Person who is completely beyond forgiveness, and Iori wants nothing to do with him. It probably needs to be made clear that Iori’s stance on not wanting to forgive Ken is not inherently unreasonable. Ken really did some awful, horrible things in the first half of the series, and it is completely within Iori’s rights to decide that he doesn’t want to forgive or like Ken thereafter.

The part where Iori’s behavior starts posing issues is not the part about whether he likes Ken or not, but rather that Iori gets so hung up on that lack of forgiveness that he becomes very bad at observing the practical reality in front of him. Or, in other words, Iori gets so fixated on the principle of what happened in the past that he’s unable to make good judgment calls on what should happen going forward. It is abundantly clear to everyone by (at the latest) 02 episode 26 that Ken is not going to easily lapse back into his old ways and would like to make an effort to repair the damage he caused; regardless of whether they like him or not, it’s in their best interest to cooperate with him and let him help out (and even keep an eye on him to make sure bad things don’t happen again!), especially when the factor of Jogress comes into play and turns out to be a very valuable asset in the fight ahead. But Iori has a a rather squeamish, petty response when he tries to claim that they shouldn’t need Jogress (in the midst of everyone else being excited about the possibilities it poses, even without Ken in the equation) in 02 episode 28, and even when he does go along with everyone working with Ken in 02 episodes 28-29 during the Giga House Incident, he approaches it like he and Ken are bartering favors and that he’ll have to “repay” Ken before he can properly return to pigeonholing Ken as an Unequivocally Bad Person.

And so the issue here is: Iori being so determined to fixate on trying to stuff Ken into a neat box of a Bad Person isn’t good for himself, either, because it basically means he’s going out of his way to run pointless mental loops and maintain the feeling of stewing in a grudge against him, even when it’s helping absolutely nobody. Note the metaphor drawn when Iori practices kendo with Chikara in 02 episode 24 -- he keeps doing the same motion over and over again despite the fact it’s clearly not going anywhere, and Chikara has to warn him that doing nothing but aim for the head isn’t how you’re supposed to do it. Right now, Iori is having a hard time parsing things in ways besides shoving things in neat boxes of black-and-white morality, and this lack of flexibility is severely restricting his ability to be productive.

What starts to really cause Iori to make a major shift in his thinking process is none other than his connection with Takeru, a subplot that had already started kicking off all the way back in 02 episode 19, when Iori witnesses Takeru suddenly taking a violent shift in mood against the Kaiser to the point it scares him. Iori, of course, considers Takeru to be a “good" and “kind person”, but someone like that should (in his mind) logically not be making sudden, violent outbursts like that -- and especially once he starts advocating for BlackWarGreymon to potentially be killed if it comes down to it, going very against Iori’s fundamental principle that killing anything that’s sentient is unforgivably immoral.

This “contradiction” is what leads Iori to realize that he needs to do much more if he wants to understand Takeru properly, and it’s also the start of how Iori grows into the trait of his first Digimental, “Knowledge” -- or, more specifically (as defined by Koushirou in Adventure episode 24 and 02 episode 2), “curiosity and a drive to know more”. In the case of Iori, this manifests in “I want to know more about other people.” It’s Iori effectively understanding that his very limited view of the world and how people work isn’t sufficient in itself, and this concept becomes the crux of his character arc for the rest of the series.

After tussling around and getting increasingly confused about Takeru’s seemingly paradoxical behavior, Iori finally goes directly to Yamato to consult him about it in 02 episode 35, and Yamato explains the backstory behind Takeru’s trauma from losing Angemon back in Adventure episode 13, as well as a reminder that as much as it may have been his own fault, Ken technically went through some pretty similar trauma, and everything that’s happened since his fall from being the Kaiser hasn’t exactly been sunshine and roses for him either. Iori reflects on this as he goes home, with the important statement attached: he understands Takeru’s feelings. He’s now able to understand why Takeru acts the way he does, not on the grounds of principles of what’s right or wrong, but based on the fact that Takeru’s simply a very messy human being who’s not handling his own tendency to suppress his emotions well.

Because Takeru is such a convoluted person, and because Iori’s fundamental issue with approaching things involves unraveling some very deep-seated tendencies in his mentality, the way the two finally connect in order to properly Jogress requires something a lot more convoluted than just happening to clash in a single magical moment like Daisuke and Ken or Miyako and Hikari did. Iori starts off the episode catching himself when he’s about to fall back into “principles over practicality” again -- he starts railing on the others for (in his mind) taking the impending BlackWarGreymon fight too lightly, before Armadimon reminds him that he’s hungry, and Iori realizes -- again -- that he cannot effectively enforce “the right or wrong thing to do” without taking other people’s feelings properly into account. Realizing that this is is a barrier between him and the others, especially Takeru, Iori tries to adjust his thinking pattern and even becomes the one to advocate that everyone get some proper food and rest instead of charging into the fight unprepared.

The meal results in Iori getting yet another rare moment of letting himself truly enjoy something without restraint, and is also followed by Takeru speaking openly to him about their potential Jogress -- openly, honestly, not covering it up, not even with the same light playfulness he would usually put on (including what he had with the very same topic at the beginning of this episode). It is an acknowledgment from Takeru’s own part that he’s been watching what Iori’s doing and also wants to connect, and an open and serious statement from someone who had constantly tried to cover up everything with a smile up until that point, and, with the two reaching an understanding, they finally achieve their Jogress at the end of the episode.

This connection with Takeru, and the understanding that came from it, is what allows Iori to start applying a bit more flexibility towards approaching other situations. 02 episode 38 has him finally accepting Ken’s invitation to his Christmas party, after so many episodes of despising so thoroughly -- because now that he’s taking Ken’s position and feelings into account, he’s able to properly recognize him as someone doing his best to make amends going forward and be friends. Later, in 02 episode 44, despite having originally been the one more staunchly against it on principle, Iori handles the shock of having to kill an enemy with somewhat more grace than Miyako does, because not only had he already started considering the difficulty of fighting an enemy that cannot be reasoned with and wants nothing but wanton destruction (back during the end of 02 episode 29), Takeru is there to remind him that their priority must, first and foremost, be “saving lives” -- like, for instance, the girl in a wheelchair in front of him.

And so, the final episodes of 02 put everything Iori’s learned to the ultimate test, when he learns that the major perpetrator behind it all is none other than a friend of his departed father.

Up until this point, much of Iori’s mentality had been shaped by the rather saintlike image everyone had put up of Hiroki -- it’s almost certain that he must have had his own flaws as a person, but the resistance to speaking ill of the dead, and the generally positive influence he’d had on his friends and family and his untimely death by “protecting someone”, painted him as effectively a perfect, impossible ideal for Iori to strive to. Much of Iori’s justifications for his own behavior had consistently been reliant on “my father said this” or “would my father would have done this?”, such as his reason for forcing down his lunch in 02 episode 3, or using him as a mental model in 02 episode 44. For Iori’s former mentality of “good person” and “bad person”, this is the ultimate contradiction that threatens to rip apart everything Iori had built his own values system on -- that someone so incredible and saintlike and virtuous would be friends with someone so unambiguously doing horrible things like Oikawa. Iori, taking this as an awful emotional blow, parses this with a desperate desire to understand the motive behind why someone would do this, because it’s not enough for him to continue until he does.

And in 02 episode 49, we see Iori effectively forced to confront the fact that he can’t keep relying on the model of his father anymore as the sole basis for his way of life when, in the end, his father will never return. Iori doesn’t even know him that well; he can’t conjure up an image of him talking, or anything beyond just a flat, serene smile. And when the image of his father finally disappears, Iori almost immediately accepts it, as if he’d known the whole time.

It’s also significant that Iori declares that what he’ll do next is introduce Armadimon to his mother -- because, in the end, Iori is at least now capable of “moving forward”. He can’t get his father back, and the best thing he can do is make use of his existing support group and keep pushing forward with the people he does have in his life -- quite the opposite of Oikawa, who responded to the loss of that exact same person by clutching onto the remnants of the past they shared, and never becoming able to move on.

Hence, 02′s finale ends on none other than Iori, and when you think about it, this is actually a pretty unusual position to be in for someone who’s not the lead protagonist (Daisuke) nor the most prominent focus of the story (Ken)! But it’s a testament to just how important Iori is to this narrative on a thematic level -- all of the struggles about the morality of fighting and the disparity between principles and practicality (which dated all the way back to Adventure), and 02′s prominent theme of coping with loss and regrets and figuring out how to best move on, are all tightly entwined with the character arc of this nine-year-old child. (If you want to take the parallel between the Adventure narrative and Iori even further, Iori and Armadimon sharing the same voice actress is possibly one of the most prominent ways of indicating how a Digimon partner is fundamentally meant to express one’s inner self.)

And especially since Iori is the person who should have been the most vehement about having any kind of sympathy or compassion towards Oikawa -- just remember how determined he was to be cold towards Ken only half a series ago! -- and it leaves a strong impression of the huge, huge journey Iori had gone on through this series. Iori’s arc closes on him understanding the nature of what Oikawa had wanted this whole time, and understanding exactly what it meant for him to make that sacrifice right after finally meeting his partner, and ends the story the most emotionally affected by it -- because, after all, that’s the sort of truly kind person Iori is.

Iori after 02

By the time of Spring 2003, when Iori’s had some time to reflect on it, we learn from Iori that he still does not forgive Oikawa. That in itself is fine; remember, Iori is perfectly within his rights to not do so after all that he’s done. However, again, a distinction must be drawn between whether Iori forgives him, and whether he still considers it to be important to understand the mentality behind why Oikawa did what he did, and to reflect meaningfully on that instead of running himself in circles fixating on a grudge. Again, it’s about going forward with what he knows and has, instead of getting fixated on past deeds -- and with that, Iori resolves to “study”.

In The Door to Summer, we also learn that Iori allegedly has a “girlfriend” -- or, at least, someone Daisuke calls his girlfriend (Daisuke is a bit of an unreliable narrator here, given he’s also totally blown Hikari’s “rejection” of his beach hangout offer up as if it were a full-on total rejection of him completely). It is, perhaps, interesting that Daisuke is capable of getting this impression about Iori’s relationship with someone outside the 02 group, given that he’d been rather isolated from his peers all the way back in 02 episode 3...

Iori occupies an interesting position in Kizuna, because we only have one point in time where we got to intimately know him, and that was back when he was only nine years old -- and between that and Kizuna, there is a massive eight-year timeskip. He's 17 now, and we don't get any kind of catch-up period in the middle like we did with Takeru and Hikari in 02, and that is a time period where a lot of changes in demeanor could have happened with him compared to all of the others.

At first glance, it seems that he’s gotten much more stoic -- but this is actually something that should reasonably be expected, because now that he’s a teenager, it stands to reason that he would be much better at actually controlling his emotions and not necessarily get overwhelmed as easily. Plus, it’s not like he’s shown to be completely emotionless throughout the movie; he’s just doing a much more graceful job of holding himself back (look carefully at the credits and you can see him sweatdropping at Armadimon barging in on his practice), and moreover you can still see him deliver some pretty direct bluntness about the ramen in New York. Still with formal language, but nevertheless, no flattery is to be had here; Iori will dunk on you if he thinks you deserve it (even if it’s to do with mediocre ramen).

But there are some other interesting observations -- for one, the official website profile states that he’s actually settled on his future career in law at this point, and has made himself extremely busy in order to do so. (On top of that, he at least seems to be on friendly enough terms with his peers at school that they’re happy to greet him on their way out.) The drama CD indicates that Daisuke considers him the busiest out of the entire 02 group -- yet he and Takeru went out of their way to pick him up from school, because he’s that important to them. (Think about it -- how often do you see university students going this far to go retrieve a high school kid to hang out with them?) And likewise, Iori doesn’t even hesitate to state that he’ll make time for them, and throughout the movie he’s conspicuously seen in his school uniform, implying he really is moving things around to make it happen, because they’re that important to him.

He also engages in the single most chaotic action from this group, which is getting Armadimon to break into Menoa’s lab. It’s not that he’d inherently been against this kind of thing before, especially for something important (recall that he’d been happy to sneak into school for Golden Week with the others back during 02 episode 6), but it does beg the question of where and how he got this information that Armadimon could break electric locks. Perhaps he’s become a bit more, ah, pragmatic of a person since 02...

So, in the end, Iori does become an attorney, and specifically a defense attorney (the Japanese law system does draw the distinction). The person who once wanted to stick people he considered to be doing wrong into a “bad people” box and call it a day eventually came to embrace a career that involves understanding people and advocating for their perspective, or at least bargaining for something other than defaulting to the harshest assumption and a solution that allows all of the parties to best productively move forward.

He also has a daughter, who seems to have been raised to be as well-mannered and formal as he was. But, thankfully, he himself is there to help raise and guide her as she grows up.

[bigskydreaming]

Making an additional post to respond to @fuyunoakegata’s response to @fiyaerrigan’s post here without derailing or going too far afield from the OP:

I think an additional thing to consider that the other kids had by benefit of Dick being the eldest is......every single one of them to varying degrees had Dick to look to as a precedent for like.....reassuring themselves that their presence in Bruce’s life wasn’t a temporary thing. Dick’s constant or recurring presence was an affirmation of permanence - that no matter how bad things got between Bruce and one of his kids, since things HAD been very dicey between Dick and Bruce for awhile - Dick still was there, at the end of the day.

Now, the obvious sorta exception to this is in Jason’s POV, with it being a sorta exception cuz there’s a couple different ways you can play this. By emphasizing how much Bruce and Dick were on the outs from Jason’s POV while he was living with Bruce, you CAN cast doubt on the idea that Dick was proof things would never get so bad with Bruce that he would just stop being part of their lives. And then this in turn can be used as a sort of explanation for why Jason was so convinced that there was no coming back from a lot of what he’d done by his return to Gotham, even without the events of UTRH....like, you can make the case that this is why Jason escalated things to that extent period. He thought reconciliation was never truly ever an option.

But by the same token, you can also use the fact that Dick IS reconciled with Bruce by the time of UTRH to seed doubts about this in Jason’s head, because he DOES remember just how bad things were between Bruce and Dick when he was younger....and if they could come back from that, maybe it WASN’T just wishful naivete to think that there could be a future for Bruce and Jason’s relationship as well, y’know?

To cycle back to the beginning though....it should be acknowledged imo that Dick never had the benefit of this proof of permanence, this security blanket of knowing that no matter how bad things got with Bruce, there wasn’t truly a point of no return. That WAS in doubt for him a lot of the time. Which gives him all the more motivation to see what we so often see evidence of in the comics - Dick going above and beyond to stress to his siblings that they aren’t temporary in his eyes, and their connection is not just limited to being via Bruce. They’re his siblings with or without Bruce in the picture.

Now to respond more directly to what @fuyunoakegata had to say in that last reblog addition, I think the fact that Dick is so good at translating what Bruce leaves unspoken is actually a key part of the conflict between Dick and Bruce at so many points. Because the thing is....Dick should never have HAD to become that good at it. He became good at it by necessity, because Bruce does leave a lot unspoken and taken for granted, and at a certain point Dick realized he’d just have to fill in the blanks himself.

But given that Dick was the traumatized kid that Bruce chose to take in as an adult - no matter how young of an adult he was - there’s an inherent disservice in not recognizing that it should never have been on that kid to feel HE had to be the one to bridge the communication divide between himself and his guardian when said communication felt lacking. That is the responsibility of the guardian or parent, its literally a key part of the sense of security its their job to offer the traumatized orphan in their care.

That’s not to say, however, that its not realistic for this to happen this way - and for reasons that actually have nothing whatsoever to do with Bruce, and everything to do with Dick. Because it is possible that Bruce just never quite clued into just how much Dick was assuming the burden of translating Bruce’s intentions into actual communication and filling in the gaps where Bruce was leaving stuff unsaid.....because as I’ve said before, for all their similarities and parallel tragedies, a key part of Dick’s tragedy that Bruce simply couldn’t relate to, was the abandonment fear of being sent away for not being good enough or being too much of a burden. Bruce has HUGE abandonment issues due to his own tragic loss of his parents - but his abandonment issues tend to be more geared around losing people to tragedy or death. 

Now from a parental standpoint, he does have fears of driving his kids away by not being good enough for them or by hurting them in various ways, true.....BUT the specific overlap he lacks is that he’s never really identified from the perspective of a child, with that fear of a parent or guardian not wanting to deal with him or be burdened by him anymore. When he was raised by Alfred, he feared losing Alfred in a variety of ways, but not really so much by driving Alfred away or making him sick of him....because there has always been at least an implicit awareness, even while acknowledging that Alfred basically raised him, that Alfred still technically worked for the Wayne family, and Bruce simply wasn’t ever in a position to feel quite as dependent on Alfred and say...his ‘whims’ or whatever, as other children might in regards to their own parents. Alfred’s loyalty is readily apparent and of a more....fundamental sort than most others can claim, y’know?

So I think one of the key divides between Dick and Bruce, a NATURAL area of oversight for Bruce, who tends to take for granted at times how much he and Dick are alike in certain ways.....is that it wouldn’t necessarily ever occur to Bruce just how much Dick feared being a burden who could and might be sent away at any time he became too difficult to be worth putting up with anymore. And by not realizing how big a role this played in Dick’s thoughts as he grew up, its natural that Bruce wouldn’t necessarily notice just how almost....eager Dick was to jump at filling in gaps in communication himself rather than risk having to insist Bruce clarify himself or his intentions in order to be understood instead. Dick didn’t want to give his guardian any reason to send him packing - so he voluntarily took up the role of Bruce-translator early on, before ever even alerting to Bruce that there was anything about his communication tendencies that might be lacking and left Dick occasionally grasping for assumptions to fill in the blanks.

But see, the problem that naturally arises from this sort of inherent miscommunication or oversight, no matter how understandable it is....is that it over time builds in an expectation or even reliance on Dick doing the majority of the work and emotional labor when it comes to understanding each other. And the precise problem this creates lies in when Dick for whatever reason - such as believing Bruce has already as good as cast him aside and no longer wants to be burdened with him - like, if for whatever reason Dick STOPS doing the majority share of their communication, if he no longer sees a reason to translate Bruce’s thoughts into actual words of affirmation and read approval into his actions or assume the best of Bruce’s intentions......if Dick basically just stops TRYING here, because he’s convinced there’s no longer any reason to try and the worst has already happened, the very thing he was going above and beyond in filling in Bruce’s gaps in communicating himself in order to avoid happening in the first place....

Then Bruce is going to flounder, naturally, because all of a sudden its going to seem like nothing he says or does in the ways he’s always been used to communicating himself like, seem to be getting through to Dick or leaving him with the same understanding or awareness of Bruce’s true feelings that he’s grown used to Dick having, based just on whatever Bruce DOES actually do or say.

So from Bruce’s perspective, its going to be like nothing he says seems to make any impact on Dick or convey to him that Bruce does in fact still love him and care....BECAUSE Bruce hasn’t quite realized yet just how much Dick has HAD to fill in those blanks for himself, because Bruce’s actual communicating of them has not actually involved ever FULLY expressing those sentiments.

Hence, their complete communication breakdown after Dick was fired and/or Jason was made Robin and adopted without consulting or even alerting Dick to the fact beforehand, or reassuring him that this didn’t actually say anything about Bruce’s feelings for his eldest. As well as Bruce’s seeming obliviousness as to why.

And another thing I want to add here is that I always tend to push back a lot against people bringing up how young Bruce was when he took Dick in, and how that explains his lapses in parenting....

Because the thing this fails to take into account IMO is that like.....by and large, and with obvious occasional exceptions like Robin: Year One.....its almost unanimously agreed that Bruce was at his BEST as a parent to Dick - whether thinking of himself as his father yet or not - in their early years together. So I don’t see how Bruce’s young age can excuse his later lapses in parenting Dick, when it was at his YOUNGEST, that Bruce was at his BEST in parenting Dick. To me, his age has nothing to do with it. The difference in Bruce’s effectiveness in being a parent to Dick at various stages in my mind lies entirely in the fact that in those early years, Bruce was most consistently putting in his most effort into being there for Dick, being the person Dick needed him to be, etc. 

Basically, those early years were so good between them, compared to other periods, because even with Dick assuming more responsibilities than he ever should have had to - but for completely understandable reasons ie Bruce simply not REALIZING Dick was so desperate to not be a burden he was making sure Bruce never realized there was a problem here at all -  the bottom line was it was in those earliest years that Bruce most consistently TRIED. He put his best foot forward. He did the WORK.

And thus the problem in the later years of Dick’s youth, IMO, had nothing to do with Bruce’s own relative youth - it was that I think Bruce had just gotten comfortable with their dynamic and lost sight of how much of that was due to his own EFFORT. He started to take Dick for granted, and thus defaulted more towards frustration when he didn’t understand why Dick did something or where he was coming from....where previously, he would have been more patient as he applied his intellect towards trying to figure out for himself WHY Dick was acting the way he was or what it might signify.

BUT. The point of all this digression is like.....me working my way around to how there’s not JUST an opportunity for Dick to buttress Bruce’s lapses in parenting for his younger siblings, and for them to benefit from him having gone first.....BUT, if people WANT there to be....there’s also every bit as much to fix or address a lot of the flaws in Bruce and Dick’s relationship via Bruce learning from things with his younger children like....an awareness of WHY he and Dick grew apart and how it can be addressed.

For an example.....with Jason. I’ve commented before on how a lot of authors doing revisitations of Bruce and Jason’s early years together in fic actually do a GREAT job of showcasing how patient Bruce is with him, and understanding of his history and why he behaves in various ways or reacts to things differently than Bruce would or expects.

And a lot of focus is put on how in the comics, when Bruce talks to Dick about why he took Jason in, he describes himself as having seen Jason as being a lot like him, and thus thought he could help him with his anger, etc.

See, I have always, ALWAYS, called bullshit on this point. (And that’s aimed at the comics canon btw, not fic writers).

Because uh, I just don’t see it at all. First off, Jason has always had even less in common with Bruce than Dick did, and second like, the only thing that Bruce has ever pointed to as feeling similar to Jason in....is Jason’s anger.

And like....early Jason, even after the post-Crisis origin retcon, like...wasn’t that angry! His supposed anger issues come from all of like, two different stories and that’s it. And I don’t buy that Jason was the first kid in all the time Bruce had been Batman by that point, that like, Bruce saw as a kindred spirit due to just being ANGRY. Umm, no. Sorry. That doesn’t track for me.

Especially because like....when Bruce first encountered Jason? When he first MADE the decision to take Jason in? First when meeting him stealing his tires, at which point he took him to Ma Gunn, and then after finding out that was a criminal front and deciding to take Jason in himself? Jason was like....literally not even angry in any of those encounters, lol. He just wasn’t.

Jason was scared. He was defiant. He was stubborn. He was proud. He was vulnerable. He was doing his damnedest not to show it. He was a lot of things.

What he wasn’t.....was...angry.

And so I truly don’t believe that Bruce took Jason in for reasons that had anything to do with identifying with him and seeing himself in Jason.

I think Bruce looked at that tiny young vulnerable but proud, spirited and defiant kid before him, utterly unrepentant about stealing Bruce’s tires and then hitting him with a tire iron and then with the Ma Gunn storyline....

And Bruce saw a young Dick Grayson reflected in the boy before him. 

Bruce missed Dick and took Jason in as a kind of do-over, a chance to fix the mistakes he barely understood making with Dick to lose him from his life or drive him away in the first place....and just resolved to do BETTER this time. To not make the same mistakes. To be patient, understanding, to try and get why Jason did and thought the things he did instead of just making his own assumptions.

And the painful irony is that despite Bruce’s best intentions in the comics, history DID repeat himself. He and Jason became estranged, even before Jason’s death - by Bruce projecting himself and his own issues and viewpoints onto Jason rather than see Jason as an entirely different person from him. He grew to take Jason and their dynamic for granted the same way he did with Dick. A significant element of the Garzonas story that never gets talked about is that after they captured Garzonas the second time, after Gloria’s suicide and before taking him into the police where Garzonas ended up just walking again....

Bruce stood back and literally encouraged Jason to take out his anger and frustration on the man. The same way Bruce sometimes did with criminals himself. He literally stood there and watched as Jason vented his anger by beating up Garzonas further.

And THIS is the heart of why Bruce reacted the way he did with Garzonas’ death, I think. Especially when you couple it with how much of Bruce’s reactions in UTRH are based around how HIS entire reason for being unwilling to kill the Joker is because he doesn’t think he could just stop there, couldn’t pull himself back from doing it again. I think Bruce just ASSUMED that Jason had pushed Felipe to his death, because he projected himself into Jason’s shoes, and saw that moment playing out from how he feared HE HIMSELF would have reacted in that moment, if he were say as young as Jason still was at the time, and frustrated by how futile everything felt. He assumed the worst of Jason, because he identified with Jason, and in that moment, was projecting his own worst assumptions of himself in a parallel moment of intense emotional frustration and anger.

Like I said.....he drove Jason away by making the same mistakes he’d made with Dick in essence - he projected too strongly on identifying with them and thus viewing their actions or choices through the lens of how he would behave in similar circumstances and WHY....and he stopped doing the WORK of keeping in mind that they were very different people from him with very different reasons for choosing the things they choose, different histories, different priorities, different contexts.

So the point is like.....instead of letting things play out like that, since fic IS an opportunity to improve upon canon, you can draw upon literally ANY of these ideas, and like.....examine what happens if not only Dick helps his siblings in their relationships with Bruce by drawing from his own experiences with him and the mistakes there.....

But you can also examine what happens if Bruce is helped in his relationship with Dick by drawing from his experiences with his younger children and using those to identify mistakes he made with Dick specifically, and address them even now....instead of just writing off his relationship with Dick as the best it’ll ever be now and damaged beyond further repair and so instead devoting himself to trying to just do better with his younger kids.

Because see what happens then, if you use Bruce’s patience and understanding while raising a young Jason, and awareness of just how different Jason is from him....to glean for HIMSELF, without having to be told by others....an awareness that no, maybe he took in Jason for reasons that had far more to do with regrets having to do with Dick than because of identifying with Jason just himself. And from there.....a simple examination of his relationships with Dick and Jason respectively, like, even just to wonder what’s so different about his differing dynamics with the two and why is so much better now than the other...that’s literally all that’s needed for Bruce to become AWARE of how patient he is with Jason and his seeming idiosyncracies, to acknowledge the work and EFFORT he puts into building and maintaining his relationship with a young Jason....and from there....the realization that....holy shit, he’d taken Dick for granted, and THAT’S why things broke down between them. He’d stopped TRYING to understand Dick the way he was working so hard now to understand Jason, and instead just started getting frustrated with the fact that he so often DIDN’T understand Dick, period.

And once you have Bruce HAVE that epiphany, GAIN that awareness....

Its the easiest thing in the world to just write him GOING to Dick and just like...acknowledging this. Owning his faults. Admitting that he took Dick for granted and put too much reliance on Dick doing most of their communicating, fell back on it being easier that way and stopped placing importance on being the one to take the LEAD in their relationship and addressing its flaws, as the PARENT.

And just saying.....its not too late to fix this. If I can do it with Jason, if I could do it with you in the first place, I can do it again. All I need is for you to give me the opportunity to try to do just that, to do better, and instead of demanding that or expecting it from you or even just hoping for it but never actually voicing it....here is me asking for it, but letting you know I understand if you don’t trust me with that or want to risk yourself like that again.

And whammo zammo, you’ve got yourself a road to a healthier, happier Batfam, and it doesn’t require actually vilifying anyone or expecting anyone but the patriarch of the family to like....take the actual wheel.

[merakimelareloaded]

Beauty is the Beast

The following fan fic is my @mlsecretsanta gift for @buggachat for the 2020 gift exchange.

I sincerely hope Buggachat enjoys this fic, as her content has brought me a lot of joy over this past year and this gift is a chance to pay some of that back. It’s a multi-chapter fic, and I’ll be working as hard as I can to update it frequently.

Summary:  When a talented young bard with something to prove walks into the life of an isolated young lord with a dark secret, not only do they find themselves drawn to each other, but also closer to the thruth about themselves.

Rating: I recommend Teen & up, as there will be some description of semi-graphic violence down the road.

Read on Ao3 instead

Chapter One: Enter the Bard

It was a quiet, average day for most in the bustling village of Miracule. Most, excluding one young bard named Nino Lahiffe, who was currently doing his best not to panic as he made his way to his new job at the Agreste estate. As an excessively wealthy noble family, they could afford to hire not only cleaning staff and knights, but also entertainers such as musicians and jesters. What Nino wasn’t expecting at the time of his hire, was that he was expected to move into one of the spare rooms of the property, so that if anyone in the family felt the urge to listen to music, he’d be there within five minutes. At the time he was too stunned to turn it down, but as he approached the gates, he wished he had. The idea of living with snobby rich people only for the sake of catering to their whims sounded awful, and that’s before thinking about how much they’d judge his appearance and his lack of etiquette. So far, he’d only met the head of staff, and even she looked down on him! He didn’t even understand why he got the job in the first place.

“If those people are smart, they’re going to care more about how talented you are than how expensive your clothes are.” His mother had said that morning. He almost laughed at that, remembering that with Princess Chloe as the only noble person he had met before, there was every chance they’d care more about his clothes than how well he can play the lute. He figured even if they were all as dreadful as the princess, it would still be worth it for the salary he’d expect on the job. With the money he’d be able to send back home, his parents would be able to upgrade their house to make it safer at night, lest the beast that terrorises the village and surrounding areas feels the urge to attack. It hadn’t ventured that far into the village too often, but it cheered him greatly to know he was helping keep his loved ones safe.

Reaching the gates, his thoughts immediately sobered. Guarding the entrance were two intimidatingly large men, who both glowered down at him as he came to a stop before them. Quickly, it dawned on him that he had not been given instructions for entering the estate. Watching their expressions grow impatient, he cleared his throat.

“G-Good morning.” He stammered out. The men didn’t react at all, faces locked as if waiting for him to say anything of value.

“I’m meant to be starting work here today as an in-house musician. My Name is Nino Lahiffe.” He continued. Still no reaction. Suddenly, Nino became anxious of the chance that he had misunderstood what he’d been told. Was he meant to arrive a different day? Was he not meant to come at all, and he hadn’t actually been hired?

“H-Has Madame Sancouer told you I was coming, or do you need to check with her before letting me in?” Nino asked, hoping name dropping the head of staff and a question would spring the imposing men into action. While the one on the left didn’t move, the one on the right let out an unpleasant laugh.

“You expect me to believe that Lord Agreste went and hired a scrawny street urchin instead of some upper-class musician?” The one on the right questioned in a cruel, mocking tone. Nino furrowed his brow, forcing his anger to quell as much as he could.

“No, but I do expect you to believe he’d pick me. I am no street urchin, sir.” Nino replied as firmly as he could. He may not have anywhere near as much wealth as the Agrestes, but he was far from destitute. Even if he was, it gave the man no right to look down on him. The laughing expression dropped back to a scowl, now far more irritated than before.

“You’ve got some nerve talking to me like that! I ought to beat you bloody and leave you for the beast, you little –”

“That’s quite enough, Sir Talan.” A sharp, familiar voice interrupted. Through the gaps in the metal gate, Nino could make out Madame Sancouer standing stoically behind it.

“You were instructed to intimidate away unwanted guests, not insult those who have been invited here. As a member of Lord Agreste’s staff it is unacceptable for you address your equals in such fashion, even more so for him to be seen talked to in such a way. You won’t be warned again.” She scolded coldly, not looking up from the scroll in her hand. Without any warning, the guard on his left silently turned to pull the lever behind him, which seemed to activate something metallic sounding and before he knew it the gate was lifting.

“Follow me, Lahiffe. Lord Agreste does not have all day.” Madame Sancouer said blankly, before pivoting sharply and walking further into the property. Nino ducked past the intimidating men, pretending not to see the one on the right scowling angrily at him, and paced quickly to catch up with the woman. His stomach flipped with anxiety as he followed her down the path leading through a large courtyard scattered with knights who were training very intensely. Between the imposing gate guards and Madame Sancouer, he wasn’t sure who he was more intimidated by. Sure, those men could probably snap his neck with one hand, but Madame Sancouer had complete control over them, not to mention she could read. He didn’t even know if noble women were allowed to read, let alone someone who was part of the working class. If she’s expected to read, what expectations did this Lord Agreste have of him?

Sooner than he’d have liked, they had wound through several hallways until they reached a set of large doors that Nino could only describe as “excessively glamourous”, as the carvings in the rich oak were far more elaborate than he’d ever think was necessary. Looking over at Madame Sancouer, Nino couldn’t help but feel as though she looked somewhat nervous. The feeling in his stomach worsened. If she was nervous, then he really didn’t stand a chance. Madame Sancouer schooled her expression back to neutral very quickly, before knocking clearly on the door.

“What is it Nathalie?” A man’s voice called, muffled but the door.

“I have brought the court musician I had hired. I thought it be best you appraise him before he settles.” Madame Sancouer replied with a clear, yet blank tone.

“Very well. Enter.” The voice said abruptly. Without hesitating, Madame Sancouer pulled the one of the double doors open and gave a subtle gesture for Nino to enter.

If he thought the doors were a lot, they were only a taste of what was to come with the room they lead to. Between the chandelier and the gilded tapestries, everything about the room screamed “I have more money than I know what to do with”. Towards the centre back of the room stood a massive, black table that was just as elaborately carved as the door. Standing on the other side of the table was an older man with fading blond hair that was slicked back out of his face, which wore an expression that somehow showed focus and boredom at the same time as he looked down at the map that was spread out in front of him. The fact that the man was yet to look up gave Nino the confidence to shift his focus to the painting on the wall behind him. The painting was enormous, stretching from the floor to the ceiling in height, and depicted the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. He couldn’t believe a real person could hold such beauty, so he could only speculate that either she was the product of an artist’s imagination, or the woman’s feature’s have been heavily embellished. Before he could ponder if that were commonplace for nobles and royalty, the man standing at the table looked up at him, forcing Nino’s attention back down to meet his gaze. He immediately regretted making eye contact with the man, as the moment their eyes locked, Nino felt as though he had been shot with an arrow with how sharp his gaze was. Was he not meant to make eye contact with the lord? Should he look away? Or would looking away show weakness? Nino severely wished he knew the first thing about etiquette before coming to this nightmare place.

“Nathalie.” Was all the man said, not breaking eye contact with Nino.

“Yes, my lord?” Madame Sancouer voiced.

“That is a child.” The lord stated. Nino bit back a retort, knowing that talking back to this man would be the stupidest thing he could do in this moment. He wasn’t a child, he was seventeen and soon to be eighteen, so he was essentially an adult at this stage in his life. Hell, most in the village were considered adults by the time they were sixteen as they could efficiently work and bear children. Nino was even tall for his age, so he’d gone passed annoyed and into confused as to why this man thought he was a child.

“I believe a more fitting term would be young adult.” Madame Sancouer commented dryly, which surprised Nino. He wasn’t expecting her to be in a position to sass her boss.

“That may be, but in terms of what talent he could have possibly accumulated in his life for music, he is essentially a child. I know I made it clear that you were to find the best.” Lord Agreste elaborated in an irritated tone, his eyes scanning up and down Nino like an apex predator.

“I have followed your criteria. “Best” does not mean “most experienced”. Out of everyone I saw, he showed a range of becoming qualities that made him the best suited to our needs. He not only had just as much talent as men several years his senior, he also has an impressive repertoire and was far more up to date with modern styles than the other candidates. He composes his own music too, so you’d be far less likely to grow bored with his playing. As for his age… if I may be candid, I believe it would be good for Adrien to practise with someone his own age. After examining his training with the knights, his performance always improved when partnered with a knight that was closer to his age.” Madame Sancouer explained thoroughly. Nino hoped his dark skin hid the heat that was rising to his cheeks. He had no idea he had made that much of an impression on the stoic woman. But his joy at the appraisal halted at recalling the name she had mentioned. Adrien. Where had he heard that name before?

“I hope this isn’t some poor attempt at giving my son a friend, Nathalie. He is already friends with the princess, he doesn’t need some common boy for company.” Lord Agreste groaned, rolling his eyes and finally shifting his gaze away from Nino. That’s right. When he had met Princess Chloe, she had mentioned her friend Lord Adrien and prattled on about how the two of them were perfect for each other and when they got married no peasants would be allowed to attend because she didn’t want them to ruin her big day with how filthy they were. If he had known that a requirement of his job would involve spending time with someone who was a perfect match that nightmare girl, he’d have definitely turned it down.

“It was merely a choice I made based on observations of Adrien’s performance levels. Nothing more.” Nathalie replied, expression completely schooled to show no emotion. Lord Agreste sighed before returning his attention to the map.

“Very well. Take him to his room, then introduce him to my son.” He commanded with a lazy wave. With that cue, Nino hastily followed Madame Sancouer out of the room, eager to leave the intimidating man’s presence as swiftly as possible. She led him down more corridors and across a couple of different courtyards, eventually leading him into a section of the estate that while much plainer than where he’d met the lord, was still considerably more decadent than the home he grew up in back at the village.

“This is the staff quarters, where you’ll be staying while you are employed by Lord Agreste. When you are not summoned, you may stay in your room or relax in the courtyards where you can be easily found. If you for some reason need to be anywhere else on the property make sure the nearest guard is aware of where you are going so you can be found quickly if you are called upon.” Madame Sancouer explained to him as they made their way down a hallway, before they came to a stop in front of a simple, unmarked door.

“This is your room. Put down all your possessions except for your lute, then we’ll go to the young lord’s quarters.” She instructed, standing stiffly by the door as she waited for him to finish. He quickly entered the room, placing his worn-out bags on the decent looking bed. The room looked pretty good to him. On the opposite side to the bed, he had a dresser and a desk, and the far wall had a large window that opened out to a balconette that was just large enough for a person to perch on if they wished to sit and feel a nightly breeze. He couldn’t ask for more, really.

Deciding he could inspect his room further later, he darted back out of the room, shutting the door behind him. With a brief nod, Madame Sancouer was on her way again, leaving Nino to trail behind once more. As they walked, Nino silently prayed that he would not have to spend too much time with young Lord Adrien if he was anything like Chloe. After what felt like walking to the opposite side of the property, it finally clicked that Madame Sancouer had said the young lord had his own quarters. This section of the estate was twice the size of the staff quarters, and a thousand times more extravagant.

“How can one person need this much space?” He thought out loud, immediately blanching at his lack of control. Madame Sancouer quirked an eyebrow at him, before turning her eyes back to the direction they were walking.

“The young lord is prohibited from leaving the estate, so Lord Agreste decided it would be best if he was provided anything he could want or need within his quarters, so that he may never be tempted to leave.” She answered. He stopped himself from rolling his eyes. One the one hand, this guy sounded just as pampered as the princess. On the other hand, he felt a little sorry for him. A gilded prison is still a prison, after all. After a few minutes, they reached a beautifully decorated set of double doors that were lined with several locks, with a bored looking knight standing guard. When the knight noticed their approach, he jolted into a better posture and scrambled for the set of keys on his belt. Meanwhile, Madame Sancouer pulled out her own set of keys and made her way to the door. Nino watched as she unlocked half the locks, and the knight the other half in pure disbelief. What in the world did Lord Agreste think was going to happen to his son? Surely nobody would want to kidnap him that bad. Once the locks were done, the knight pulled the doors open for the pair of them, gesturing for them to enter.

As Nino walked in, his eyes blew wide open in shock at the size of the room. He’d guess it was as large as his entire house back home, and this was only the bedroom! Looking between the canopy bed, the bookshelves, the chaise lounge, and the clavichord, he wondered what all the other rooms were even for. He scanned the room looking for its inhabitant, only to realise nobody was in here.

“Adrien?” Madame Sancouer called out, only looking nervous for a second before managing to school her expression once more.

“I’m out here, Nathalie!” A bright voice chimed back from beyond the window, which he soon realised was more of a door, which lead to a large looking balcony, from what he could see. Madame Sancouer led him to the glass doors and out onto the sunny balcony.

On a stone bench pressed right against the rail of the balcony sat a poised looking young man whose golden hair caught and bounced the sunlight as though it were made from its beams. Like the senior Lord Agreste, he was also dressed exquisitely, his black jacket and pants fitting his lean form perfectly. The young man had his head turned away from them as he leaned on the rail to look at whatever view he had.

“Adrien, you have a visitor.” Madame Sancouer announced. The young man, now confirmed as Adrien, perked up as he turned to face them. Nino held back a gasp as he took in the young lord’s face. His vivid green eyes were a perfect match for the woman in the portrait, and the young man’s face was every bit as beautiful as he had previously speculated was impossible to be real, if not more. Adrien’s expression brightened with visible excitement as he looked at Nino. The bard wasn’t sure what confused him more; why this guy was so excited to see someone he’d never met before, or why his own heart was suddenly beating so fast.

Next Chapter

[ryukyuan-sunflower]

Response to the Moral Question of the MugenxFuu Romance

This is a full response to an anonymous ask I received: 

“Can I ask why you ship fuugen? Isn’t Fuu a minor and Mugen is 19.”

This is a rather...complex and loaded question. There’s multiple things to address but I’ll start simple and work up from there. I will first go into my personal feelings on why I ship the pairing, evidence, and then the more complicated concept of the character’s ages both in reality, as well as in the fictional anime. Hopefully it will alleviate some distress on the issue. If it doesn’t, and you consider the age gap morally unacceptable, then it might unfortunately serve to make Mugen out to be a morally questionable character, implied romance aside.

The Simple Question: Why do I ship it? 

I ship Mugen x Fuu because it’s implied canon by the creators.

I believe strongly, and have found and provided plenty of evidence in my numerous other posts that support my belief, that Mugen and Fuu were written to have romantic feelings for one another. These feelings were never addressed, acted upon, nor explicitly spelled out for viewers. But the subtle implications of their unsaid feelings added up, episode by episode. The interviews of Shinichiro Watanabe, Ayako Kawasumi and Ginpei Sato only solidify my interpretations and findings.

The actual anime aside, here are the links to my posts concerning the interviews, if you are interested.

-Shinichiro Watanabe about Mugen’s Character.

-Ayako Kawasumi and Ginpei Sato about Fuu’s Feelings for Mugen in the Roman Album.

I adore the entire cast of Samurai Champloo, as much as by themselves as I do as a trio. I love Jin just as much as Mugen and Fuu. However, I do not see any implication of Jin having romantic feelings with either of them. His romance is canonically with Shino and his role for Fuu feels more brotherly and fatherly to me.

Personally, I am not a “crack shipper”. I am not someone who typically likes two characters and pairs them off together for my own amusement. I have nothing against crack pairings, nor their shippers, but it is not my taste. I enjoy romances that have some type of evidence or backing behind it. So it is not as if I simply ship Mugen and Fuu because I like Mugen more than Jin.

If hypothetically, all the things that happened with Mugen and Fuu happened with Jin and Fuu—if Jin saved her constantly, if Jin and Fuu had strange, intimate moments like the wrist grab scene,  if Fuu jumped in the way to save Jin’s life, if Fuu cried for Jin seven times, if Fuu’s voice brought Jin back from death, if Jin gave up his sword for Fuu—well, I would not be a fan of the Mugen and Fuu ship. I’d be a fan of Jin and Fuu. 

But that is simply not how the anime was written. 

On that same note of liking an implied romance, I am not as interested in blatant romance stories either. Implied, subtle romance is so interesting because it leaves enough clues that one has to find themselves, and then you are able to make your own interpretations and “what if” scenarios surrounding it. This is why I enjoy the story types of, say, the Souls video game series and its related titles. (Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro). The story lines have to be figured out, and while there is evidence and clues dropped all over, nothing is ever specifically stated. But even so, we can come to solid conclusions that are difficult to disprove, but also never fully confirmed.

Samurai Champloo spells out very little for viewers. Example: Never does the anime state what island Mugen is from. We only know it’s in the Ryukyus. But based on historical evidence, and also symbolism in the show (the paantu and the trees in his flashback) we can assume it’s Tarama-shima or another island in Miyako.

Never do Mugen and Fuu state they have feelings for one another, but it’s in subtle dialogue, numerous times. Most blatant however, is when Sara tells Mugen “It’s as if you’ve never been loved by anyone.” and then Fuu proves her wrong by saving his life by throwing her own in the way, only seconds later.

Their actions fascinate me. Both Mugen and Fuu demonstrate self sacrificial behavior for each other, and show how much they care with actions rather than words. Most of all, I enjoy the romantic trope of “love leads to a character’s redemption.” Mugen’s feelings for Fuu is what redeems him from the sins of his past, and saves him from a life without meaning and only pain, anger and hatred. These aspects of his dark character are highlighted both by the dialogue of Mukuro in Episode 13 and Sara in Episode 21. Fuu being his redemption is also symbolized in her saving him on three separate occasions. The last incident, when she calls him back from death and the Paantu taking him away, is the most symbolic of his “redemption”.

Samurai Champloo is a direct response to the cynicism of Watanabe’s previous work, Cowboy Bebop. Where revenge and the past consumes Spike, ruining his future and love, Mugen is redeemed by love and is able to face his past and press on. 

Here is a fantastic article about the concept of Mugen’s love for Fuu being his redemption and also being a direct response to Cowboy Bebop. 

All of this aside, because of the second comment, I’m assuming that this isn’t necessarily what you were asking. 

“Isn’t Fuu a minor and Mugen is 19?” 

I’m guessing you’re implying that either the romantic pairing is impossible due to their age gap, or it’s morally wrong.

I was conflicted how to answer this, at first. I know this can be a triggering topic. So I decided on providing several explanations. I hope at least one answers the question properly, or at least sheds some light on the issue.

Either it will justify why there is nothing morally reprehensible about the Mugen x Fuu romance, or, it will unfortunately show that Mugen is morally questionable, depending on how the evidence is taken.

First, at 15, Fuu is not a minor in her time period. Second, Mugen is either 19 or 20 depending on the source.

Samurai Champloo is not set in one specific year of history, as the anime is not only anachronistic, it historically takes place in multiple years that could not coincide. In essence, Samurai Champloo is not one year, but “a chanpuru of one whole era.” This era is the Edo/Tokugawa era, which includes the years of 1603-1868.

In the Tokugawa Era, Fuu is considered an adult. She is a young adult, yes, but in the eyes of everyone, she is an adult. This is both historically accurate, and is also demonstrated numerous times in the anime. Fuu’s sexualization and her being seen in a romantic way is never frowned upon by any of the characters in the entire series.

Brief disclaimer: Nowhere in my love of the Fuugen pairing or fan interpretations of the characters’ futures, do I see any sort of sexual relationship between Mugen and Fuu developing when she is 15. After they part ways, is where I like to make my fan conclusions on them meeting again when she’s older.

I also want to clarify here and now, that I’m not a supporter of a 15 year old entering a romantic relationship of any kind, let alone a sexual one in real life. I think that teens should work on themselves and not get swept away by romance and sexuality, especially frivolously. It’s irresponsible and dangerous. But, it’s also unrealistic to believe all young people will never fall in love, whether it’s fake or real. If there happened to be a man who was 5 years older than a girl and the two did develop feelings for each other, I believe nothing should be pursued between them until they are both of age.

Adulthood in the Tokugawa Era

I want to first talk about the concept of Fuu being a minor. In short, she is not a minor in her time period.

To begin with reality first, the life expectancy hundreds of years ago was much lower than now. In Japan now, the average life expectancy is in the 80s. But hundreds of years ago, it was estimated to be about 50. Women in particular had the complication of fatality from childbirth. Led makeup, childbirth, and also STDs were a huge threat for courtesans of the time period as well. Many women died in their twenties.

As for the concept of ”adulthood”, the adult age of 18 only started in the Meiji Restoration (late 1800s- early 1900s) when Japan contacted the west and emulated its practices. The age of 18 being an adult nowadays is largely based on the setup of the education system. Whether 18 is too young or too old is a matter up for debate and varies country to country. 

Specifically, in the Tokugawa Era, the age of adulthood was considered when one entered puberty. This was generally 15 for a male and 12 for a female. 

Here is a link to the full article on the topic of the shifting coming of age, if you are interested.

In the case of aristocratic children, such as boys raised as samurai, the Genpuku ceremony that transitioned children to adults varied in age. During the early Tokugawa era, it was 15-17, while later into the Tokugawa era, during less civil unrest, the age dropped to as low as 13. At this age, these young men could then marry and were likely pressured to do so. Marriages in the Tokugawa Era were very different than nowadays as well. Many nobles and royalty had their daughters married off at young ages such as 8 years old.Though, the sexual nature of these relationships did not develop until the girl was likely of child bearing age, which was in the teens.

Taking the historical 12 year old age into account, Fuu being 15, is then already three years into adulthood. 

Fuu’s Depiction as a Woman in the Anime

In regards to Fuu’s maturity, she has no guardian, nor caretaker, which shows she is an independent adult making her own decisions. Yes, Mugen and Jin are her bodyguards, but they are not her legal guardians, because she does not need one. It is her who commands them and leads them. After they part ways, she is fifteen years old (perhaps a year older based on the time span of the anime) traveling the country alone.

She was forced to grow up very fast. Not only is she an orphan, but Fuu’s resourcefulness allows her to survive on her own. She tricks two complete strangers to escort her across Japan. But Fuu is fully functional as an adult, arguably more than Mugen or Jin in some ways. She works, fishes, cooks, sews, tends to wounds etc. Fuu is by no means innocent to mature situations either. She’s seen Mugen and Jin kill numerous people in front of her, which is traumatizing in itself.

In regards to Fuu’s sexualization,on separate occasions, there are bath scenes in the anime, showing Fuu partially nude. There are also scenes of her undressing. Morally correct or not, it is clear she was sexualized like many young anime females.

Aside from that, here are examples of male characters viewing Fuu as an adult woman, romantically or sexually.

Episode 3 and 4: Fuu is thrown in a brothel. While the legality of her being forced against her will just for the sake of paying off a debt is somewhat in question, the fact that she is 15 in a brothel is not. Brothels were not an undercover organization. It was completely legal in Tokugawa Japan, and Fuu being 15 as a courtesan was not illegal. When an ugly rodent man buys her, it’s served as comedy.

Episode 5: Fuu becomes a ukiyo-e model, the backwards beauty, for Moronobu Hishikawa, who was a real historical figure. This grown man, probably around Jin and Mugen’s age or maybe older, also is not considered a creep for his attraction to her. In fact, it’s not even considered wrong that he paints a nude picture of a 15 year old. Again, because she’s deemed a woman in this time period.

Episode 8: Nagamitsu, who is leagues older than Mugen and Jin, asks Fuu to become the “harem of his heart”. He is attracted to her, sees her as a younger version of his wife when he first met her, and even asks her on a date, to which she accepts. This entire interaction is played off as comedy, and not that he’s some creepy grown man attracted to a minor. More like, he’s a bumbling buffoon. His two sidekicks, the beatboxer and Ogura do not intervene, nor make a comment that it’s wrong he is interested in a 15 year old when he’s in thirties or forties. Because quite simply, in this time period, it’s not wrong.

Episode 16: Okuru tells Fuu that “a woman with a healthy appetite is a good woman” when she is devouring fish.

If you stand firm that it is still morally wrong and all these characters were creeps for being interested or saying these words to a 15 year old, that is fine. If you think it is morally wrong to ship Mugen and Fuu because of the age gap, and refuse to believe that the two are an implied romance, that is fine too. I can’t convince everyone.

However, I will make the counter argument then, that liking Mugen as a character means liking a morally questionable character. Romance and feelings aside, the reason for this is simply how he treats and talks to Fuu.

Mugen’s Questionable Dialogue to Fuu

If shipping them is wrong, then what Mugen directly says and does to Fuu is just as wrong. In my opinion, it makes it weirder if he doesn’t develop feelings for her.

Episode 2: In the original Japanese dub, Mugen tells an unconscious, intoxicated Fuu that he’s going to rape her. “Okasu kureru” is the dialogue.

The English changes this to “Let’s strip her and dump her.”

Episode 11: When Fuu asks why Jin needs to go see a woman when she’s around, Mugen then responds “Because you’re flat chested”, not to be confused with “You’re a child.” When she says her kimono makes her look slender, Mugen calls her a liar and then says “Show me.” He asks Fuu to undress for him and show him her breasts...

Episode 20: Mugen stands up naked for Fuu in the hot spring even though she’s clearly flustered. Exposing oneself to a minor is an offense in the modern era. But he doesn’t stop there. He berates her, and then peeks his head out to look at her naked too.

All of these examples are meant as fluff and comedy too, no matter how offensive they can be. It also implies his attraction, interest and his consideration that she is indeed a woman. This is then furthered in his dialogue with Jin.

Episode 12: When they read Fuu’s diary, Mugen asks the odd question to Jin. “Man to man, what do you think of her?” This “man to man”, implies Mugen wants to know how Jin feels about Fuu as a woman.

As for a debatable canon example, I have the need to bring up the Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked video game on PS2. In Japanese, it is entirely voiced by the same cast as the anime: Kazuya Nakai, Ayako Kawasumi and Ginpei Sato. In English, Mugen is not Steve Blum, but Fuu and Jin are the same voice actors as the anime: Kari Whelgren and Kirk Thornton.

In it, Mugen develops an attraction to a girl who looks nearly identical to Fuu: brown hair in a ponytail, big brown eyes, pink kimono, three hairpin beads. The kicker is her name is Yuu. The even bigger kicker is that she is younger than Fuu.

Here are the links to the scenes. Japanese audio is much better, as a warning.

Link to English, Fuu catches them alone and tells Jin “I had no idea Mugen was a cradle robber!”

Link to Japanese: Fuu calls Mugen a “lolicon”.

When the girl asks “Do you like me? You can lie if you want.” he tells her:

Link to Japanese: “Suki da. Uso jane.”

Link to English: “I like you. I ain’t lyin’.”

And the two share a kiss, before she dies. Worth mentioning, Fuu also admits to being jealous about all this and a fortune teller tells Fuu that this is her “heart talking.”

While debatable canon, the video game still highlights this concept that Mugen will even like a girl younger than Fuu (anywhere from 12-14), so long as she resembles Fuu.

If we pretend for a moment that Fuu is indeed a minor in her time period, then that makes Mugen’s actions and comments out to be even worse. Not only is he a pervert, but he’s then a pervert flirting and making sexual comments about a ”minor”.

Underaged Girls and Age Gaps in Other Japanese Romances

If you still believe that there is something morally wrong, regardless of the time period it takes place in, I have more modern examples in media.

Modern Japanese shoujo manga and anime (shoujo being a genre directed at teenage girls) is rife with romance stories of older guys with younger girls. It’s not frowned upon in Japan, and even for its readers in the west.

I will give you some major examples I can think of, off the top of my head.

Inuyasha: Inuyasha and Kagome. Inuyasha is over 150 years old (not counting the other 50 years he was comatose). Yes, he ages slower as a half demon, but that is still 150 years of experience in life. Kagome meanwhile, is 15 years old and does not come from the Sengoku era. She’s from the modern era. If one wants to argue that Inuyasha doesn't count because every decade for him is one year, meaning he’s supposed to be “15 in human years”, then there is the matter of Miroku. Miroku is 18 years old, and fondles not only Kagome who is 15, but Sango who is 16. And he and Sango later become a romance.

Shugo Chara: Ikuto and Amu have an age gap of 17 and 12. While there is a love triangle element, it is debatable that Ikuto is more her true love interest in the manga. This takes place in the modern era.

Dengeki Daisy: Kurosaki and Teru have an age gap of 24 and 16. This also takes place in the modern era.

Incidentally, all of these aforementioned romances share some parallels to Mugen and Fuu in some way. Whether the guy is argumentative with the girl, a homeless wanderer, antagonist by nature, teasing about her lack of a figure, a bodyguard/protector role etc. 

These are just a few of the more pure Shoujo examples directed at young girls.This does not include age gaps between characters, or underaged girls in anime meant for men or adults in general. They can get far more morally questionable, in my honest opinion. Mugen and Fuu barely scratches a surface. There is clearly a cultural gap between Asia and the West and the concept of age gaps, regardless of one’s personal moral stance on the subject.

Mugen and Fuu’s Actual Age Gap and Maturity

In the Tokugawa Era, their age gap of 4 to 5 years is incredibly small. Even nowadays, that age gap is very small, if Fuu was a legal adult in modern times.

Tsuru-himegimi, the real daughter of Shogun Tsunayoshi was 8 years old when she was married to her husband Tsunanori of Kii, who was 12 years her senior.

As for the anime’s depiction of them, there was never a sense of “Fuu is child. Mugen is a man”. It always felt like the two were in a similar age bracket. 

I must ask the question, if Fuu or Mugen’s ages was never revealed, would it change the context of the story at all? If Fuu was older, would it change it? Personally, I don’t think so. In this case, because she is both physically developed and also deemed a woman in the anime and historically, it changes nothing.

Their interactions, their bickering, their attitudes, and the way Mugen yells at her, and the way Fuu reprimands him, it always felt like they were similar. They both exhibited many immature, innocent qualities, as well as adult qualities. It was Jin who had a more mature demeanor, being the calm, responsible one, who would rather not intervene with their nonsense. This is another reason why I see Jin as a father figure to Fuu: a representation of the samurai who smells of sunflowers that she did not have growing up.

These images here show their similarities in behavior quite well. And there are many more examples.

Conclusion

A good, well developed character is not a perfect one. There is no denying Mugen is flawed, morally questionable and sometimes straight out an antagonist. He steals, he kills, he was an ex-pirate who likely raided and pillaged… Realistically, he would have no qualms about being attracted or developing feelings for a woman who is 4 or 5 years his junior, let alone the other crazy stuff he’s done. Especially when, in their time period, there is nothing wrong about it at all.

Regardless if his morality is in question or not, what makes the implied romance so interesting is the fact that he didn’t act upon anything sexually with Fuu. His actions towards her were selfless, and Mugen developed greatly by the end. But because of his actions and words,and jealousy, it does not come off as simply a sibling or familial relationship that the two have. This differs from how Jin and Fuu interact.

Most importantly, Fuu serves as the catalyst for Mugen’s growth and redemption of his sins. Unlike Jin, Mugen saves Fuu time and and time again, making him her hero, despite being seemingly an ex-criminal that only works in self interest. Jin did not require this change, as he was always an honorable samurai from the start.

Both men found purpose for different reasons.

Mugen needed love.

Jin needed duty.

I think that covers everything. Well, unless your question is simply why do I ship them when the characters are young and I’m older than them.

As of the time of making this post, I am a 23 years old woman. The first time I ever set eyes on the anime, I was 8 or 9 years old. As a kid, I had my first innocent, childlike suspicion of a romance between them when Mugen first went to save Fuu from the “bad place”, being the brothel in episode 4 without any reason to, while Jin didn’t. Also, he saved her in Ep 1 and 2 and Jin didn’t.

The first time I got to watch the whole anime, I was 13 and saw the full story play out. And at that point, I was more convinced. Over the years, I rewatched, looked into a lot of the history and symbolism used in the anime, analyzed the episodes, and I became more convinced. I shipped it when I was Fuu’s age of 15. I shipped it when I was Mugen’s age of 19/20. And, I will likely continue to cherish the beautiful story of Samurai Champloo and the implied subtle romance of Mugen and Fuu for years to come.

Perhaps it is a reminder of the purity and innocent nature of love for me. These two did more for each other, cared more for each other, and were more entertaining with each other than so many cliche, blatant romance stories.