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Sarah Monette, the Victim Dilemma, the Aesthetic of Suffering and the Uncanny Valley of Arse Rape

by Wardog

Monday, 27 April 2009

Wardog fails to finish Sarah Monette's Corambis.~

Massive massive massive massive spoilers for about 1/3 of the book. Also, as the title suggests, this article is about nasty things so don’t read if you’re likely to be upset

Preramble (like a preamble but … d’you see?)

This is a bleak day indeed. I just got my hands on a copy of Corambis, the much-anticipated (by me at least) concluding part to Sarah Monette’s Doctrine of Labyrinths quartet and the truth of it is, I don’t think I can finish it.

Oh, Sarah, what happened? I do still love you, I just don’t think it’s working out.

I think it’s partially problems associated with reading through a series over a lengthy period of time. When I read Melusine, The Virtu was already out in hardback and I tore through at them enthusiastically, so drawn into the world and the characters that I barely noticed they were so heavily saturated in angst and woe that one could drown in it by simply opening the book a little recklessly. There was a bit of a wait for The Mirador – which I seem to recall I felt slightly less positively about but still adored – and I fell upon Mehitabel Parr’s I’m sure welcoming bosom to save me from the tidal waves of A&W. As much as I love Felix and Mildmay, it was Mehitabel’s narrative voice that made The Mirador bearable for me. It was such a necessary contrast to the boys: someone with some redeeming sense of self-irony, hurrah!

Of course, Mehitabel isn’t in Corambis. And, God, I miss her. There is a new viewpoint character, Kay Brightmore, blinded and imprisoned and weighed down by the terrible military failure that kicks off the book. He’s basically lost everything that ever mattered to him, can no longer fight on account of being blind and, needless to say, he has angst out the wazoo about it. I was broken and crying by Chapter three.

And, quite frankly, I just can’t take it. I know there is redemption in the future of these characters (characters I really care about, having spent three books with them), I know there is self-actualisation and the potential for happiness, I know because I cheated and looked, but I’ve really really struggled with Corambis. The worst of it is, I’m sure it will be a triumphant and satisfying conclusion to the quartet. Sarah Monette is an excellent writer, I love her world, I love the way she uses language, I love her characters, I love everything about her but I think I’m going to have to accept the fact I simply can’t read her.

Oh, Sarah, what happened? I do still love you, it’s not you, it’s me.

Maybe in a couple of years we’ll be able to work something out.

I think circumstances might be playing into this unhappy state of affairs as well. When I read the early books, there wasn’t a cloud in my sky. But having emerged from a rather bleak year, there’s something a little too close in all that guilt and grief and self-loathing and despair, and I can’t distance myself enough from it to enjoy it. There is a systematic aestheticisation of suffering to be found in all of Monette’s books. I’m not going to try and argue that as either a positive or negative quality in her work. I think it’s probably neutral: it’s

something

art

does

sometimes

. I acknowledge the difference between literary suffering and real suffering, in that there can be a romance in the former which is impossible in the latter. Also literary suffering exists in a wider, symbolic and allegorical sphere than that of an individual having shitty things done to them by life or others, mainly, I suspect, because it’s not real. Take madness – there is something deeply attractive and romantic about the artistic representation of madness (like Felix’s madness in Melusine) and it’s perfectly possible to appreciate that, and to find in it a kind of beauty, without ignoring the genuine distress suffered by the mentally ill. In short, Ophelia is not my friend who killed herself last year.

But the boundaries between the fictional and the real are not comprehensively signposted. There isn’t a traceable spectrum between Lavinia, daughter of Titus Andronicus, and Elizabeth Short. And ultimately I think there comes an impossible point when the literary and the real collide, corrupt each other and prove they are utterly irreconcilable and yet simultaneously inseparable. Yes, they must be understood as different things operating in a different way – a painting of St Sebastian is not the same as footage of the prisoners at Guantanamo bay – but there comes a point when it is necessary to remember what it is that’s being aestheticised and ask yourself why.

Page 152

Okay, so, there’s a gang-rape scene in Corambis.

Felix – former prostitute, broken gay wizard with ex-cruel master and traumatic past - ends up subjecting himself a thaumaturgic orgy in order to earn money to pay for his ailing brother’s medicine.

It’s awful.

It’s not that it’s explicit, just awful.

And I’m no wuss, okay. I’ve read Last Exit to Brooklyn. I’ve read The Wasp Factory. I’ve read American Psycho.

But something about this scene in this book bought me a first class ticket on the ARGH! Train and whizzed me straight out of my comfort zone.

It’s strange to say that something is “outside your comfort zone” in that it feels like a confession of personal failure (also something that’s outside my comfort zone). And then I thought about it more, and I thought: hey, so what, gang-rape is outside my comfort zone. Surely that’s normal. Gang-rape is absolutely something that should be outside all our comfort zones. But here’s where it gets complicated: in fact, fictional gang-rape is not outside my comfort zone. I play H-games, for God’s sake, where they’re ten a penny. You can’t take two steps in an H-game without stubbing your toe on a gang rape. So it’s something more specific than that. It was something about this particular portrayal of it.

It’s not shock value. Felix gets himself sexually abused on a pretty regular basis, so much so, in fact, that it’s kind of part of the fun, and it’s very much tied into Monette’s aesthetic of suffering.

I could not see, and I could barely hear, save for my own harsh breathing. But I could feel. I could Malkar’s hands like silk, running up and down my back, tracing the scars, the old palimpsest of pain. I could feel his body arching against me, his bulk, his heat. I felt his hands slide under my hips, stroking, exciting, felt the stiffness of him against my thigh. Pain, then, but not too much. Pain … and arousal all woven together like a tapestry. I was moaning, gasping; the only word I could form were “Please, Malkar, please, lease,” and I didn’ tknow if I was begging him to stop or continue. Not that it would made the slightest difference either way.

Let’s pin our colours to the mast here. That’s beautiful. Terrible, but beautiful and absolutely literary in its unrealness. It’s also about as accurate a portrayal of sexual abuse than St Sebastian up there is of martyrdom. Perhaps I’m just an irredeemable sicko but I’m pretty sure it’s there, to an extent, to be enjoyed, partially as spectacle (straight women do not generally write about beautiful gay boys sexing each other manipulatively because it’s a Serious Social Issue) and, also, partially as vindication for all the crappy things that have been done to innumerable female characters in a seventy years of fantasy fiction. I’m not, of course, advocating backlash (more manrape!) but there is something compelling and, even perhaps comforting, in characters like Felix, Alec and friends, these beautiful men, who are as sexually vulnerable as women, suffer and fear the sort of things women suffer and fear, and are very much created to be subjects of an extra-textual female gaze and the intra-textual male gaze. I’m not saying that men don’t get raped and looked at, but the sheer saturation is demonstrably less. I am not trying to say that what happens to Felix at the start of Melusine isn’t dreadful. It is. But it’s a literary violation, and it reduces him to a literary madness that is as terrible and as beautiful as the horror that creates it.

But let’s talk about gang rape. Now there’s something you don’t say everyday.

The scene itself written in a very similar style – opulent, not too explicit although more explicit than above, and contains the same awkward issues of dubious consent. In Melusine, Felix chooses to go to Malkar in a fit of self loathing. In Corambis he agrees theoretically to an orgy in order to raise money for Mildmay’s medical treatment. In both cases what ends up happening to him is far more devastating than what he originally signed up for but, equally, there’s an element of complicity to it. If you return to your abusive master, expect to get abused. If you agree to be the centerpiece of an orgy, expect to get fucked. This abject stupidity is granted a psychological plausibility because Felix is a messed up little bunny, with a supposedly tragic conviction of his own profound worthlessness.

Obviously I don’t want to get into real issues here, but I think the reason the dubious consent became one of the bothering aspects of the scene in Corambis is that the sex abuse came plot-approved. I mean, if Felix was walking down the street and happened to get jumped and gang raped by a bunch of guys I think many a reader might rightly cry “Sarah Monette, what the fuck?” as there are very few occasions in which it is either appropriate or necessary to get one of your characters gang raped. But this way he has a “real” reason to put himself voluntarily into a position where he might be. It’s even, perhaps, meant to be on some level noble – in a hopelessly fucked up way, of course. So what you end up with is a deeply uncomfortable situation in which everything conspires, including (conveniently) Felix himself, to create a scenario in which a horrible but beautifully written gang rape is, to an extent, okay. And this is where the aesthetic of suffering starts to come apart at the seams.

Essentially this scene falls right into the uncanny valley. If it was purely designed for titillation I wouldn’t have a problem with it, but as it is there are elements are titillation and elements of horror. We are meant to be shocked and appalled – and it is shocking and appalling – but it’s framed in such a way that we are simultaneously liberated to relish the aesthetic. And quite frankly that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I think there’s something profoundly hypocritical and, indeed, deeply disturbing in the idea of enjoying both moral outrage and illicit sexual excitement (see Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse). The scene bears all the hallmarks of erotic non-con (there are elements of psychological exposure as well as physical, the victim is physically aroused throughout, the abusers are appreciative of his beauty and his apparent eagerness, and so on and so forth) but worked through a guilt-appeasing filter of “oh gosh, isn’t this terrible.”

My ankles were still chained and somebody had me scruffed like a kitten; I was keening in protest, but I was dragged upright, forced to straddle someone’s thighs, while he continued fucking me with the same relentless steadiness. I was displayed for all of them, my arousal jutting out shamelessly, the tear tracks on my face attesting to my weakness.

Now, I know that, unlike erotic non-con, Felix is not secretly into what’s being done to him and that he’s breaking and being broken here but you still have a scene that’s running in two directions simultaneously and trying to have its cake and eat it. It goes out of its way to tick the non-con wink-wink boxes but then slaps you face in the face with its insistence that this a terrible and traumatic event. Essentially you can’t have a gorgeously written gang rape that positions itself within a carefully constructed aesthetic framework and a psychologically accurate and traumatic portrait of a terrible ordeal.

And, ultimately, I guess you have to ask yourself if it’s okay to have an aesthetic gang rape scene full stop. The idea bothers me less as pornography but here, I would argue, that it gains an added erotic piquancy from the fact it really is annihilating Felix, which, again is troublesome. Essentially it’s why raping Clarissa is so much more interesting than raping Justine, and why it’s all right to get off on the latter and not the former.

The more I’ve thought about this and tried to articulate my issues with it, the more complex and convoluted it has become. There is, of course, an element of the purely personal about – I didn’t like it and it upset me – as well as these more abstract, intellectualizations of it. I dug around on Monette’s Livejournal – on which is usually charming and sensible – to see what I could find and, lo and behold, she has written quite comprehensively on the subject, which I shall now quote pretty much in its entirety:

I knew from very early on that Felix was going to turn back to prostitution to get the money for a doctor for someone he loved (I knew this was going to happen before I knew Mildmay existed), and I knew that he was going to end up in a situation that was completely out of his control and that hurt him badly. Because Felix is reckless and self-destructive and because under all his vanity, he doesn't think he's worth protecting. And because it is a kind of answering horror to his being raped by Malkar at the beginning of Mélusine. And because he needed something that would force him to confront these issues--force him to see that he doesn't deserve to be abused--and it had to be something superlatively unbearable if it was going to get through to him, because Felix has way too much experience at ignoring his own pain.

Say what? So it’s redemptive gang rape, the sort makes you a stronger and better person? What … the … fuck? It’s like those Hollywood amnesia plotlines (one blow to the head gives you amnesia, another blow cures it) except with sexual abuse. I know, again, we’re operating in a fictional sphere but this is so made of wrong that I’ll just content myself with linking to Dan’s article on

the victim dilemma

and throw my hands up in despair.

I quite enjoy Monette’s aestheticisation of suffering, I could probably navigate the uncanny valley if I really had to but I am sick to death of male fantasy writers using sexual abuse as a textual shortcut for character development and I’m damned if I’m going to deal with women doing the same thing. Sarah Monette, you are better than this.

Sexual abuse is not good for you. It happens and people react. Constantly depicting characters who react to it in courageous and life-enhancing ways is not empowering, it’s fucking demeaning to people who struggle along every day as best they can.

I’m sure in a different time in a different mood I’ll pick up Corambis again and I’ll get to page 152 and I’ll shrug and go “gang rape, meh” and read right on.

But not today.Themes:

Damage Report

Books

Sarah Monette

Sci-fi / Fantasy

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~Comments (

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Arthur B

at 14:44 on 2009-04-27It's depressing when series go south like this. It's especially annoying when they burn down the virtues of the earlier volumes. I was looking at your first Monette review and you were saying how you were impressed by the fact that Felix was gay, but it kind of wasn't a big deal; I'm getting the impression that as the series goes on that becomes less true, since that LJ extract makes it sounds like Monette intended all along to reduce Felix to a weepy gay man being abused by angry gay men. (If I'm interpreting that right - if Felix pimping himself out predates the existence of Mildmay, that means that Monette was planning to make this happen since before the first book, right?)

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Wardog

at 15:11 on 2009-04-27Mmm, that's part of the problem though. I don't actually think it's "gone south" - despite the Xtreme angst I was quite absorbed until page 152. It was merely that scene that tripped me out. I'm sure if I could put it behind me and just get on with the book, I'd probably really like it.

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Rude Cyrus

at 20:32 on 2009-04-27Great, now I need a shower.

While I suppose rape can be presented as being aesthetically pleasing, like in erotic non-con, I still don't like it. I've always found consenting sex between happy, willing partners infinitely more pleasurable -- don't ask me why. This sort of stuff just makes my skin crawl.

What's funny is that I can make it through The 120 Days of Sodom without blinking, but I think that's because De Sade insisted on using the driest, most tortured language possible.

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Wardog

at 21:15 on 2009-04-27Sorry Cyrus. I'm not sure but I think it's probably easier to be into erotic non-con / rape fantasy if you're a woman than a man, either because you're more likely to imagine yourself as the rapee rather than the rapist which is slightly easier to deal with morally speaking or because the world seems generally reluctant to admit that women can rape people too. Whereas if you're a man who fantasies about forcing women to have sex with him ... well ... hostility many ensue from quarters unwilling to concede the very real difference between fantasy, reality and simulated non-con.

Hmm, I think the thing about 120 Days of Sodom is that, as you say, it's incredibly dull. And de Sade is a terrible writer. There's only one thing worse than a rape scene and that's a badly written rape scene!

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Arthur B

at 21:18 on 2009-04-27I do wonder sometimes whether deSade was an early pen-and-paper troll. Most of his books seem to be the literary equivalent of telling someone a particular link goes to an interesting and thought-provoking philosophy website when actually it points to goatse or 2girls1cup.

I mean, he went to jail for it, but you have to make sacrifices for "the lulz", as I believe the young people call it these days.

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http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/

at 02:43 on 2009-04-28"Constantly depicting characters who react to it in courageous and life-enhancing ways is not empowering, it’s fucking demeaning to people who struggle along every day as best they can."

I have to disagree here- not with the point you make, but with the accusation being levelled at Monette. Felix has spent three books getting abused and every reaction to it has been, basically, "I was right all along, I am worthless. Hmmm, should I hurt myself again or just re-alienate everyone who cares about me tonight?" The enormity of the gang-rape is something he's not prepared to consider his just desserts, and it isn't the only influence on his growth as a person. A lot has to do with having Mildmay -who has been developing his own self-confidence, on his own, without the help of shitty things happening to him- be there for him and push and push to get him (Felix) not to hurt himself any more.

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Wardog

at 09:13 on 2009-04-28

The enormity of the gang-rape is something he's not prepared to consider his just desserts, and it isn't the only influence on his growth as a person.

I do see your point and I wasn't really dissing Monette, who I actually adore. There was just something about this scene, or the way it was presented, or *something* that was a bridge too far for me. And at first I was inclined to just ignore it and tell myself to stop being a wuss and then I got interested in *why* this scene was so problematic and, secondarily, I realised that, on a wider level, it should probably be okay to stand up and say "for me, this gang rape is not okay."

I will at some point finish Corambis, because I have *hugely* enjoyed the Doctrine of Labyrinths quartet (I have some reviews knocking around here in which I give much sweet sweet love), I think I just need some time to get away from the gang rape.

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Wardog

at 09:29 on 2009-04-28

I do wonder sometimes whether deSade was an early pen-and-paper troll

Dan and I like the idea of historical trolls, and also explains the Marquis far more than most of pop-psych nonsense I've read does =P

Lucifer, of course, would be the first troll - complaining about the mods.

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http://miss-morland.livejournal.com/

at 11:54 on 2009-04-28*giggles at the thought of de Sade and Lucifer as trolls*

I haven't read Monette's books, but I still found this post very interesting - it articulates my issues with non-con and dub-con in fiction very well. (I do wonder, though, if ambiguous portrayals of rape scenes are sometimes meant to make the readers think and question their own attitudes, instead of jumping to the safe reaction of 'OMG so horrible'?)

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Dan H

at 14:25 on 2009-04-28

I do wonder, though, if ambiguous portrayals of rape scenes are sometimes meant to make the readers think and question their own attitudes, instead of jumping to the safe reaction of 'OMG so horrible'?)

You might well be right, but even if that is the intent, it's a deeply flawed one.

Perhaps I'm just an arrogant shit, but I really hate it when people try to make me think about stuff unless it's in a medium *specifically designed* for that.

If you want to challenge my preconceptions about rape, write a book that is *about* challenging my preconcieved notions about rape. Don't try to do it in the middle of a fantasy series that is mostly about hot gay wizards gettin' it on.

If I want to have my ideas about absuse challenged, I'll read Lolita, or possibly I'll track down some abuse-survivors' weblogs. I won't read an otherwise ordinary fantasy novel or, for that matter, watch

Dollhouse

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Dan H

at 16:05 on 2009-04-28

The enormity of the gang-rape is something he's not prepared to consider his just desserts

I can't speak for Kyra, but the problem I have with this is that it suggests, falsely, that the more traumatic an experience is the less likely you are to blame yourself for it. I'm by no means an expert on the subject of abuse survival but from my limited experience people's tendency to self-blame for things is wholly unrelated to the severity of the abuse suffered. For that matter, the whole idea of rating abuse experiences in order of severity is a bit of a dodgy precedent.

Essentially I think there's an important, and worrying, difference between "Felix has experienced things like this before but, because he has grown as a person, and because of the influence of Mildmay, he does not blame himself for this experience" and "Felix has experienced things like this before but, because this experience is so much worse than the others, he cannot blame himself for it".

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http://sistermagpie.livejournal.com/

at 21:38 on 2009-05-01I haven't read this last book yet, but I'm glad for the heads-up. Having read the other 3 I can definitely see how this kind of thing would play, and I'm not surprised that she'd planned something like this from the beginning. It does make you think thought, about the idea that this character is constantly going through situations like this, and it's finally when he acheives the kind of abuse he might have always thought would be what he deserved, that he realizes he didn't deserve it. Even if Mildmay and other experiences are also part of his turnaround, I don't know whether that kind of catalyst will click for me the way another one might.

Like, rather than having him be in a situatio that's the same as before, but with one clear difference that makes him see it clearly, it's almost like Helen Keller at the well. Repeated fingerspelling over and over and finally he gets it.

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Wardog

at 15:28 on 2009-05-11I lost this temporarily in the deluge of comments about other things.

It is possible I've over-reacted to the gang rape; I suppose responses to these sort of motifs are always going to be extremely personal. I feel almost hypocritical because, as you say, there's plenty of indication previously that we were on the Sex Abuse Superhighway and something like this was probably bound to happen. But the way it's framed and written, combinated with its narrative function as a catalyst for change really really squicked me out. I know it's not necessarily meant to be psychologically plausible but there's something deeply worrying in the idea that there is a scale of sexual abuse, the extreme end of which teaches you self respect.

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valse de la lune

at 14:04 on 2011-07-12I tracked down

this interview

and I'm now extremely, thoroughly grossed out with Sarah Monette:

I think this does happen to gay male protagonists (the most obvious example is Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald-Mage books). And I think Felix does fall into this trap to a certain extent, although in my defense I will say that the reason he gets raped is because I was interested in the tension inherent in a character who could be both rapist and victim. Which could have been a woman, or a heterosexual man, but it was most obvious and easiest to mobilize with a gay man. I also chose a gay male protagonist because my abiding interest is in the power dynamics of human relationships, especially sexual relationships, and it is VERY VERY HARD to write about that with a heterosexual female protagonist without pigeon-holing her and yourself into either a re-inscription of patriarchal gender roles (male dominant, female submissive) or a simple gender reversal (female dominant, male submissive) (which I did work with some in my novella, "A Gift of Wings," in The Queen in Winter). A lesbian relationship is also a possibility, but it's far more interesting and attention-grabbing to take power away from a man than it is to give power to a woman. [...] Also, because we live in a patriarchal society and have for several thousand years, there's nothing new or shocking about the idea that women are victims. (I'm not saying this is a good thing, mind you.) You can get more narrative charge out of victimizing a man and you aren't reinscribing the same old gender role patterns into that ever deeper groove of men act and women suffer.

What the fuck, Monette? My word, lesbian relationships aren't just ~hawt~ enough unlike slender

yaoi stereotypes

wizards sexing it up and... female empowerment is just too boring? Female victimization is just too

banal

to write about so gay men being degraded (and in this case, often raped by women) has more "narrative charge"? There's also something toward the end that basically goes "well, if you are writing about male rape it's super

titillating

shocking so people will recognize RAPE IS HORRIBLE whereas women being raped is just so

every day

so... hey, manpain! That'll get people

thinking

, right? Right!"

I don't know, all of this reads like the slash fangirl's justification why she's not interested in writing girls but wants to write hot boys instead, all disguised under a pretend layer of ~*soshul justeese*~.

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Wardog

at 23:33 on 2011-07-12Oh dear. I'm actually really annoyed with myself that it took me to Book IV to unpack what was going on with the, err, sexay mainpain and all the arse rape. I did quite like Monette initially - I think partially because when I first read Melusine I was still under the impression that gay characters were pretty rare in fantasy. To give Monette credit, when she actually bothers to be interested in them, she does write interesting female characters - I mean I *loved* Mehitabel from this series.

I think what freaks me out the most is that, as you observe, it's blatant titillation under the label of trangression. I have no problems with people getting their kicks from whatever they get their kicks from, as long as it's a carefully demarcated fantasy space, but pretending it's anything else is deeply toxic.

Also that interview was just awful :(

Maybe it's just because it doesn't apply to me but I don't understand why so many women find two dudes so unbelievably hawt but two women apparently tedious. Ho hum.

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valse de la lune

at 05:06 on 2011-07-13I think gay characters are still pretty rare in fantasy, but the gay dudes all seem to come from the same wellspring of fanfic tropes. I've read all the arguments as to why dudeslash is a female-positive space that enables women to explore their sexuality and I do get some of it, but I can't shake the feeling that so much of that is hot air; no matter how hard a slash fan argues I can't really see how spamming rape at gay dudes is particularly, y'know, feminist. Maybe it plays with power dynamics and whatnot but, on the other hand,

rape culture

I don't get the thing with YAY HAWT BOYS EWW GIRLS ARE BORING either, though it's been explained to me that most female characters aren't decently written so people'd sooner generate fanfic about boys instead. But that doesn't fly because fandom churns out great volumes of fanfic dedicated to minor male characters, even though some of them barely have a presence in the book/show/movie--see Figwit of the LOTR movies fame--whereas women, primary or tertiary, still get written out or villified. There are even

bingo cards

. Somewhere in that

a valid clause regarding how we're trained to look at media through male gateways thanks to patriarchy and we internalize that. Still don't get it on a personal level because I've always preferred female characters over male, but there it goes.

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Melissa G.

at 06:30 on 2011-07-13

Maybe it's just because it doesn't apply to me but I don't understand why so many women find two dudes so unbelievably hawt but two women apparently tedious. Ho hum.

Speaking as a straight woman who gets paid to translate yaoi, I can understand that pretty well. :-) It's not that I find girls boring as characters, but as someone who isn't sexually attracted to women, I find myself gravitating toward situations where I can look at/write about two sexy boys instead if I'm looking for smexy times. (Though I'm very, very picky these days about yaoi because of tropes I'm sure I've mentioned before.)

I feel some sympathy for Monette because I do have a hard time verbalizing my tastes without resorting to those same basic arguments about power play or feeling the need to judge the female character and how she is portrayed specifically because she's female (which I wish I didn't, but I do so...). What I find odd is the fact that everyone insists on asking me *why* I find male-on-male romance so appealing, and then I'm stuck in this hem-hawing, putting-on-airs defense because I'm too embarrassed to just go, "Two guys doing stuff to each other is hot?"

(Uh-oh, now I'm having Dorian Gray flashbacks. Oh, Ben Barnes, you scamp, you!!)

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Steve Stirling at 07:07 on 2011-07-13

I don't get the thing with YAY HAWT BOYS EWW GIRLS ARE BORING either

-- you get exactly the same in reverse from male writers a lot, so I don't see that there's any mystery about it.

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valse de la lune

at 07:20 on 2011-07-13I don't think Kyra's asking "why male-on-male?" but more "why do people find women inexplicably boring?"

but as someone who isn't sexually attracted to women, I find myself gravitating toward situations where I can look at/write about two sexy boys instead if I'm looking for smexy times.

That doesn't make sense to me because, even outside of sexual context, a lot of slashers just don't want to write women period and I'm sure we don't always only write about what's sexually/romantically attractive to us (or no straight man would ever write male characters).

It also doesn't really answer why women are so villified and hated by fandom at large: why people like Monette believe "it's more interesting to take power away from a man than to give power to a woman," or why slash is passed off as some wonderful female-positive space when it involves a lot of female-negative things, including but not limited to slut-shaming and othering women. Ogle hot boys, whatever (but even so, why so much fucking rape all the fucking time? Why the infantilizing tropes?). But I think you can do that without contributing to misogyny and rape culture.

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Steve Stirling at 07:24 on 2011-07-13

I don't think Kyra's asking "why male-on-male?" but more "why do people find women inexplicably boring?"

-- I don't. I actually had to start flipping coins at one point to make sure my characters weren't predominantly female.

Maybe it's because I was in single-sex schools for a lot of my adolescence, but I just find women more interesting than men. More complex and variable, on average.

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Steve Stirling at 07:38 on 2011-07-13

Ogle hot boys, whatever (but even so, why so much fucking rape all the fucking time? Why the infantilizing tropes?). But I think you can do that without contributing to misogyny and rape culture.

-- I don't read much (any, really) slash, but the actually-published equivalents like the book described here don't seem particularly misogynist to me. Just obsessed with Hot Boys in Chains.

As for the rape and stuff, a lot of people get off on that. Trying to tell people that the sexual fantasies which ring their chimes aren't permissible is roughly equivalent to trying to scold water until it voluntarily runs uphill. Much effort, little result.

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valse de la lune

at 07:45 on 2011-07-13

I don't. I actually had to start flipping coins at one point to make sure my characters weren't predominantly female.

Thank you, Minority Warrior, but if you are a bloke that's not exactly addressed to you.

I don't read much (any, really) slash, but the actually-published equivalents like the book described here don't seem particularly misogynist to me. Just obsessed with Hot Boys in Chains.

I've only read the first book and the gang-rape scene in the fourth, but a lot of the women in this series like to rape gay men for some strange reason.

Melusine

opens with an anecdote about the pure, true love between men. Two women get between it; one proceeds to rape one of the men repeatedly until he wants to kill himself. So, yes, both fandom slash and published slash perpetuate a lot of the same crap. Then there's Monette's interview and strange leaps of illogic which read sexist as hell to me.

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Melissa G.

at 08:48 on 2011-07-13

I can't speak to that. I don't know why so many writers are so anti-female characters, and it would take me pages of musing to try and come to a conclusion. I was referring specifically to sexual situations (by which I mean stories centering on sex) because the comment I was particularly responding to was "why do so many women find two dudes so unbelievably hot but two women apparently tedious". Which I read as "why do so many women love writing about two guys (sexually) but find writing about two women so boring (sexually)". Perhaps I misinterpreted what Kyra was saying. I stated clearly that I don't find women boring as characters to read and write about, but that I understand why many women gravitate toward male homosexual relationships and why they might find it arousing when they are writing merely to titillate themselves/others.

I haven't read the series in question so I take everyone's word for it that the rape isn't handled well and misogyny abounds. And trust me, I'm the first person to get fed up with the kind of tropes male-on-male stuff tends to come with - especially when written by someone who's probably never even spoken to a gay man before. I got fed up with one author in particular because her protagonists kept falling for their rapists, yuck. But just because a lot of it sucks and perpetuates some seriously shitty stuff doesn't mean that it's not okay to find guy-on-guy stuff hot. And I really don't appreciate being made to feel like because I like it, I am somehow in danger of losing my feminist card.

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valse de la lune

at 09:57 on 2011-07-13I don't think I have been suggesting that if you like slash, you're in danger of losing your feminist cred; being a feminist doesn't exactly mean everything you consume must be feminist, after all, and we all enjoy things that are problematic to some degree. I just don't like how it's put forward as a YAY WOMEN field when it's not really. Likewise, I've been shouted down in fandom spaces for calling out misogyny in slash, something along the line of

you will find it is you who is misogyny

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valse de la lune

at 10:06 on 2011-07-13(Sorry that I'm coming down harshly such that you feel you're being discredited as a feminist, though.)

One more thing--I've been told over and over that there is a strong presence of queer women in slash circles, so for some it's not so much a matter of "I'm straight so more cocks yay!!!" In fact, with so many queer women around--so many lesbians even--you'd think there would be more F/F fanfic. But there isn't, so...

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Melissa G.

at 10:23 on 2011-07-13

I don't think I have been suggesting that if you like slash, you're in danger of losing your feminist cred

I think I was responding defensively to this comment:

Ogle hot boys, whatever (but even so, why so much fucking rape all the fucking time? Why the infantilizing tropes?). But I think you can do that without contributing to misogyny and rape culture.

It basically felt to me like my entire sexual preference/fetish/whatever was being boiled down to "ogling hot boys". It’s those kinds of dismissive, judgmental comments that make me feel like I need to somehow justify what I find arousing. That’s why you have people arguing that it’s pro-women or empowering or whatever to write and read man-on-man love stories. When an attraction is called into question, I think often women in particular feel the need to base that attraction in something intellectual and philosophical. Because it would be wrong for a woman to just find something titillating or arousing. Because women aren’t supposed to like sex just for sex.

I think there are ways that it can be empowering (I wouldn't go so far as to say 'feminist'), but most of it fails in this regard. For me, when I read a story with a male bottom that I can relate to as far as sexual behavior, it makes me feel less weird. There's something freeing about the behavior being related to the position and not the gender, for me anyway. I think that also relates to why an author might find it more interesting (and by interesting I mean because they find it hot) to take power away from men. For some women who are attracted to men, there is something very fascinating and seductive about a man submitting (either sexually or emotionally), probably because it's something so commonly associated with female behavior. So again, it becomes less of a gender thing and more of a relationship role thing. If that makes any sense....

I just don't like how it's put forward as a YAY WOMEN field when it's not really.

I totally understand that. I actually avoid fan written slash like the plague because most of it is just not good. Most of it is (I think) influenced by yaoi, which oh dear god, has such problems. There is so much rape and questionable consent and a lot of "I'm only gay for that guy" and such overly traditional female behavior (even though one of them is male, go figure). And the kind of people you've probably argued with are likely the kind of people who make me afraid to admit I'm part of the yaoi subculture.

But there is good stuff out there. I promise. :-)

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Melissa G.

at 10:26 on 2011-07-13

Sorry, I made my long post before I saw this! That is odd. Why don't they focus on yuri? Yuri is slowly becoming a more female dominated genre. It's kind of cool actually that the female authors are slowly co-opting a genre that was once basically male-written lesbian porn for men. To each their own, I guess?

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valse de la lune

at 10:59 on 2011-07-13

It basically felt to me like my entire sexual preference/fetish/whatever was being boiled down to "ogling hot boys".

But... I said that because I think it's pretty dandy if you're just in it for the ogling of hot boys, or balls being cupped gently, or even self-lubing anuses. I don't think you, or anyone else, need to justify it any further than that. Think it's hot? Go for it! That's excellent. Objectifying

men

in and of itself, separate from the concern over straight people fetishizing homosexuality, doesn't really bother me. I'm not questioning the appeal of slash: I'm questioning some of the tropes, the homophobia, the misogyny. Which certainly aren't universal, but there sure is a lot of them to go around. Hell, gay male characters written by straight men also get raped an awful lot (hi Richard Morgan, thank you for that graphic schoolboy gang rape).

Disclosure: I think lesbians are awesome. I'd like to read more stuff with lesbian representation. Being homoromantic does have something to do with it, though.

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Melissa G.

at 11:11 on 2011-07-13

:-) I think it just came off as hostile because of the swearing, lol. To be honest, I was probably overly defensive because it's kind of a touchy thing for me.

I'm not questioning the appeal of slash: I'm questioning some of the tropes, the homophobia, the misogyny.

Yes, I'm with you here. I have a lot of trouble with a lot of boy/boy stuff that's out there.

Re: Lesbians

If you're looking to try out some yuri, I can lead you to some scanlation sites. I haven't read much yuri so I can't totally vouch for the content, but these are sites that I know of:

Lililicious

Payapaya

Just be sure to check for ratings and such. There was one on Lilicious I read years ago that I was enjoying.

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valse de la lune

at 11:14 on 2011-07-13OMG yay :D :D :D Thanks for the links. My friend's been sending me some too. I'm also quite pleased to see that a lot of yuri writers are female. Awesome.

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Cammalot

at 15:23 on 2011-07-13I JUST WANNA WATCH DUDES EMOTE. ;-)

I actually got into yaoi (not slash for whatever reason) because I was attracted to what I thought was the innate equality in such a a relationship. There are a variety of reasons I don't really seek out much fanfic anymore (one of which is the decade-plus that has gone by) but one of them is that I don't really see that equality getting embraced. (I'm necessarily truncating this, I have to imitate being a productive employee at the moment.)

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Melissa G.

at 19:40 on 2011-07-13

I JUST WANNA WATCH DUDES EMOTE. ;-)

Ooh, yes, good observation. I like that too.

I actually got into yaoi (not slash for whatever reason) because I was attracted to what I thought was the innate equality in such a a relationship.

Ditto. That's what I really like about it too, which is why I hate when they skew the power dynamic too far in one direction without somehow compensating for it in another way. I've never been into fanfic, but I do love doujinshi.

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Cammalot

at 19:48 on 2011-07-13I wrote up this whole long comment yesterday, but today with you guys' further conversation I realized I was addressing something that Pyro was not talking about, so I'm tweaking, but I don't think I'll have a chance to get to it today.

The extremely short version is that there's a very definite blockage that some women seem to have about writing women, and I had it myself for some time (and that some more extreme versions of it outright baffle me), and have spent a lot of time trying to process, discuss, and debate what the fuck that is about. With theories. I have theories.

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Melissa G.

at 19:53 on 2011-07-13

The extremely short version is that there's a very definite blockage that some women seem to have about writing women,

Definitely noticed this myself at times. I gravitate toward writing male characters, or at least I used to. I'm very interested to hear your theories whenever you find the time to write them up. :-)

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Sister Magpie

at 20:07 on 2011-07-13

I would guess that that's probably not all that related to the whole "that's my kink" thing, only not all kinks are sexual. That is, expecting them to explain it would probably be similar to having anybody explain why they find one thing more hot than another.

For instance, I like het and I like slash, but there are certain kinds of stories that could definitely be considered non-sexual kinks that I am more likely to read about in a m/m pairing than a f/m pairing or f/f pairing. I suppose I could try to relate it to power issues with gender IRL, but it's probably more just a kink if it's something I've pretty much always been drawn to.

I don't find that rape or "I'm only gay for that guy" seems to dominate most of the slash I come across, but I think that might often come down to different pairings leaning towards different dynamics. Or else also some authors being better than most.

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Steve Stirling at 22:44 on 2011-07-13Pyrofennec:

-of the women in this series like to rape gay men for some strange reason.Melusine opens with an anecdote about the pure, true love between men. Two women get between it; one proceeds to rape one of the men repeatedly until he wants to kill himself.

-- that is odd. I'd say it was evidence of misogyny if a guy wrote it, but I have trouble -imagining- a guy writing it, even a gay man. You'd need a very strange set of quirks to do so.

#Ferretbrain #Corambis #Sarah Monette #Wardog

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pamphletstoinspire · 6 years

Photo

Understanding The Bible - A Practical Guide To Each Book In The Bible - Part 40

Written by: PETER KREEFT

SEVENTEEN

________

Letters to Paul’s Helpers: First Timothy, Second Timothy, and Titus

First Timothy: “How to Be a Bishop”

Timothy was a young convert via Paul’s preaching. He became the bishop of the important city of Ephesus while still young. Paul wrote this letter to him personally for encouragement and advice on how to administer this great responsibility. The title could be “How to Be a Bishop”.

There were problems in the Church at Ephesus (where aren’t there?). Some members needed discipline, widows and old people were being neglected, and there was false teaching. Timothy was apparently having a difficult time dealing with these problems because he was young (4:12), sickly (5:23), and timid (2 Tim 1:7). Paul encourages him to “fight the good fight of the faith” (6:12).

The qualifications for a bishop mentioned in this letter are not worldly administrative or organizational skills, but personal piety and spiritual strength (3:1-13). The same is true also for the more practical office of deacon.

Ten notable passages are the following:

1. First Timothy 2:9-15 is perhaps the most hated passage in Scripture to feminists. Women are forbidden to have authority over men in the Church. They are commanded to be silent, submissive, and modest in dress. That seems pretty clear, however unpopular. Less clear is the assertion that woman will be “saved through bearing children” (2:15). The one thing that should be clear is that Paul exalts the uniquely feminine work rather than demeaning it. Those who interpret Paul in the latter way reveal nothing about him but much about themselves.

2. The passage of 3:4-5 makes clear that it was normal for bishops at this time to be married. That is not a matter of unchangeable doctrine but of changeable discipline, like fasting rules.

3. First Timothy 3:16 seems to be an early creed: “. . . the mystery of our religion: He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”

4. The passage of 4:1 speaks of the middle of the first century as already “the last days”, and already full of heresies, especially Gnosticism (4:3-4), with its attack on nature, especially marriage. Radical feminism corresponds exactly to ancient Gnosticism in every way (except Gnosticism’s disapproval of sexual promiscuity).

5. First Timothy 4:8 should prove an embarrassing verse to modern health fanatics.

6. The passage of 4:14 speaks of the sacrament of Holy Orders.

7. First Timothy 5:8 is a stronger version of “charity begins at home”: “If anyone does not provide for his relatives and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

8. The passage of 5:23 threatens the principle of teetotalling for everyone. Note, however, that Paul recommends only a little wine.

9. First Timothy 6:6-8 is a famous and beloved “contentment” passage: “There is great gain in godliness with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world; but if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content. . . . For the love of money is the root of all evils.” Jesus said the same thing many times and surprised His disciples then as He surprises us now.

10. The passage of 6:16 reveals two things about God that may be surprising. First, He alone is immortal by nature. (We are immortal not by nature, as Plato thought, but by grace, through the miracle of resurrection.) Second, He “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see.” God is I AM, pure Subject, not the object of our knowing. He is “the I who can never become an It” (Buber). We know Him only because He has revealed Himself (see Jn 1:18).

Second Timothy: A Letter of Encouragement

Paul wrote this second letter to Timothy from prison, awaiting execution. Christianity had become illegal in the Roman Empire since the sadistic and insane Nero had blamed the Christians for the great fire that burned half of Rome in A.D. 64—a fire he probably caused himself. The persecutions and martyrdoms had begun. Paul’s enemies used this opportunity to get him arrested.

When he wrote this letter, Paul had no hope of being rescued (4:6-8, 18). He asked Timothy to visit him before he was killed (4:9-21). He complains that everyone had abandoned him, except for Luke (4:10-11).

The first time Paul had been arrested, it had been only a house arrest. He had hope of release or trial, and he was free to preach to friends who visited him (Acts 28:16-31). Now he had only death to look forward to—or rather, something much better than death, and better than this life (4:6-8).

From his prison Paul writes not complaints but encouragements to Timothy and warns him that he will have to endure hardships and persecutions too, not only from Roman authorities but also from false teachers within the Church. He encourages Timothy to overcome his timidity and youth (1:5-9). Paul’s language is very strong (as I think it would be today if he were writing to certain contemporary bishops who are over-timid and try to be popular): “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead . . . preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season” (4:1-2)—when convenient and inconvenient, when popular and unpopular. “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2:3).

Christianity has always flourished under persecution. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church” because the Cross is the strongest force in the world. Spilt blood has more power than split atoms. The strongest churches today are still found in countries where it costs something to be a Christian.

Timothy’s weapon that guarantees him success is truth, found in God’s Word (see Jn 17:17). Second Timothy 3:14-17 is Scripture’s classic passage about itself.

Other memorable passages include the following:

1. Second Timothy 1:12 is a great expression of Christian confidence and boldness: “I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me.”

2. The passage of 2:15 is the Christian teacher’s job description: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”

3. Second Timothy 3:1-7 sounds like a prophecy of modern moral and intellectual decadence.

4. The passage of 3:12 is a universal promise of persecution: “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” Therefore, if we are not being persecuted, we can deduce what logically follows from that fact.

5. Second Timothy 4:7-8 is Paul’s own self-composed epitaph: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.”

May every reader be able honestly to engrave that on his or her gravestone.

Titus: A Letter of Advice

Like Timothy, Titus was a young pastor with a difficult responsibility: the Church in Crete. The inhabitants of this Mediterranean island were famous for immorality; in fact, Paul quotes Epimenides the Cretan poet who had written six centuries earlier, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons” (1:12). “To act like a Cretan” was a saying in the ancient world that means “to be a liar”.

Titus has to organize the Christian Church in Crete. Paul writes some good advice to him. First, as a bishop himself, Titus should appoint other bishops who are of strong moral character, who practice what they preach. Then Paul advises Titus to exercise his authority firmly (perhaps Titus, like Timothy, tended to be timid), refuting false teachers and forbidding evil deeds. For the Church, as we have seen, needs both orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice), and the two are always connected.

The strong note of authority in Paul, here as in his other letters, should not be misunderstood. It is not sheer power or bullying, but speaking in the name of Christ, who Himself spoke “with authority” (Mt 7:29) and who commissioned His followers to preach in His name and His authority (Mt 28:18-20). It is not might but right, “with firmness in the right”. Paul’s attitude to false teaching and practice is neither “burn the heretics” nor “anything goes”, but “what does Jesus say?”

#understanding the bible

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sage-nebula · 7 years

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uhh keith, alan, lotor?

Keith:

The moment I loved him most:

There are so … so many moments that it’s pretty much impossible to pick just one. But the moments that immediately spring to mind are:

When he successfully helped the team escape from the Garrison in the first episode, complete with grinning as he drove his hoverbike off a cliff and told them to, “shut up and trust [him],” because he knew what he was doing (and he did it goddamn well).

Every single line of trying to get Red to accept him in the same episode. “Let’s get out of here, open up. ... It’s me, Keith. Your buddy. ... It’s meee! KEEIITH! Your---I. AM. YOUR. PALADIN! I’m bonding with you!!!” Just … it makes me laugh every single goddamn time, istg.

When he fought Zarkon one-on-one, both because he wanted to prevent Zarkon from getting his hands on the Black Lion (smart, because Black would have taken him back no questions asked, we all know she would have, consider this a callout for the Black Lion), and because he knew that if he killed Zarkon, it would deliver a massive blow to the Empire. (It also would have gotten us Prince Lotor a whole season earlier, so I mean … damn crying shame he didn’t win.) He was trying to do the Right thing, because that’s who he is, even if he got his ass kicked in the process.

E v e r y t h i n g pertaining to the Trials of Marmora. 2x08 is still probably my favorite episode in the show, though 3x04 comes awfully close. But seriously, from his sheer Determination in the Trials, to the way we see in multiple instances how he is willing to make personal sacrifices for both the greater good and others (he was willing to part with his dad, whom he dearly wanted to spend time with, in order to go help save civilians from the impending Galra invasion; he gave up his knife, which held answers about his past, so that Shiro wouldn’t risk his safety against the Marmorites). So many people have a misconception about Keith being selfish when he’s actually one of the most selfless people on the show, and this, the one of two episodes where he tried to do something for himself for once (the other being 2x07), directly shows exactly how selfless he is. It’s great.

Freeing Acxa in the Weblum, and especially everything pertaining to his partnership with her there. I also love his line to Hunk: “We can’t leave someone to die, even if they are Galra.” It shows where Keith’s morals and priorities lie, as well as (imo) foreshadows his reactions and opinions of characters to come.

“No one’s commanding me. I’m doing it.” Okay, as much as he was backtalking Kolivan here when all Kolivan was trying to do was not get him to sacrifice himself on what was pretty much a suicide mission (it ended up not being one, but the only reason why Keith didn’t die is because Thace was still alive and able to help him escape), it’s still just such a Moment™ for Keith. And need I remind you, no one commands the Black Lion …

His motivational speech to the team at the end of 3x03, right before they’re able to form Voltron (on their second attempt!). “This is our team! We have to believe in ourselves!” Everything about it was masterful. Keith learned from his mistakes and adapted on the spot and it was amazing.

Pretty much every instance of Keith supporting Allura in 3x04, but in particular: “Maybe things aren’t as black and white as she’s making them out to be.” Not only is it goddamn true, but once again, I feel that it foreshadows his reactions, opinions, and potential partnerships with characters to come.

WHEN HE STRAIGHT UP SWERVED VOLTRON OUT OF THE WAY OF ACXA’S BLAST IN 3x06 DESPITE HOW SHIREPLICA HAD BEEN YELLING AT HIM TO JUST “DEAL WITH THE CONSEQUENCES” OF TAKING THE HIT, LIKE WHAT A FUCKING BADASS, YOU GO, KEITH, YOU GO.

H o n e s t l y? His attempted self-sacrifice in 4x06. No, of course I don’t want him to die, but not only did he not die, but he was attempting to do something for the greater good once again. This isn’t new for him; he has always been like this. But it was such a poignant moment, because you see him think about it, you see him consider it, and even though he obviously doesn’t want to die (he cringes), he still chooses to make that dive because he feels that it’s the best shot they have at getting everyone else out alive. One Gryffindor to another, I can respect that.

The moment I hated him most:

I’ve never in my life hated Keith. However, I will say that I was cringing hard through most of 3x03, and that I had to keep pausing the episode several times, because even though I completely understand why he was behaving the way he was, I also knew that it would no doubt make the huge swathes of people in fandom who had been bashing him for months prior to that point and claiming that he could never be a leader feel vindicated, and the last thing I would ever want is for those people to feel validated in any way, shape, or form, particularly since that was abnormal for Keith, as he himself proved once he calmed down and corrected his behavior (and then proceeded to lead the team pretty flawlessly after that). Make no mistake, I by no means hated him, but rather I hated how I knew people were going to react to that episode (and believe me, I wasn’t wrong).

The moment I understood him most:

I mean, it’s a really long list, haha. The reason why I’m able to so easily peg that Keith has C-PTSD is because a lot of his behaviors, personality traits, and reactions to things are very similar to how I act. (The fact that I always score Keith on every “which VLD character are you” test, including the official ones, validates this claim, I feel.) But I think the three things that I understand the most are probably:

Keith is incredibly loyal, to a fault, and I’m not saying “to a fault” merely because it’s a phrase that gets used sometimes, but rather because I feel that this is an actual flaw of his, in the sense that it can, and will, and has hurt him. Keith is not afraid to call out those he cares about when he feels they’re wrong; he’ll stand up to them and voice his opinion, even though he will also step back and let the team proceed as they want when they inevitably dogpile against him and choose to do whatever they were originally planning anyway. However, it should be noted that when Keith speaks up and offers a contrary opinion or viewpoint, it’s pretty much always in relation to the greater plan at large; Keith doesn’t contradict others when they’re making assumptions about him, or when they’re criticizing him on a personal level. At best he’ll look annoyed, but at worst he just takes it, and this is especially true if it’s someone he really, truly cares about, someone that he feels really, truly cares about him in return. Keith’s loyalty doesn’t just extend to “I will go to bat for you in any way that’s necessary,” but also extends to, “I really trust your judgment and opinions, so I’m just going to assume you’re right, even if it makes me feel like garbage.” At most he tries to offer explanations for why he acted the way he did (“I thought I had it under control”), but he doesn’t defend himself beyond that, because he just assumes that this person he cares about is correct. And this is a problem not only because others aren’t always right when they assume the worst of him (actually, they’re usually wrong), but because it could lead to him being seriously hurt or taken advantage of. We would all hope that the people Keith lets be closest to him are people who are kind, supportive, and loving, but that might not always be the case. And speaking from personal experience here, as someone whose loyalty has gotten her used and abused in past relationships (not just by my biological mother—there have been others I won’t get into now), it can really, really fuck you over. Keith’s loyalty is a beautiful thing, but it’s also detrimental to him with the extent that he takes it, particularly when it’s paired with his actually low self-esteem (like, he knows what he’s capable of re: piloting and combat, but just look at how little belief he has in himself as a leader or Paladin). It actually makes him quite vulnerable, and since I have, as mentioned, been the victim of that in the past … yeah, I understand where he’s coming from, but it’s not a good place for him.

On that note: Keith admits in his vlog that he “has some walls up” and that he tends to push people away before they can reject him (as he feels they inevitably will), and oh buddy. Again, the situations that Keith and I have been through are not exactly the same, but we have a lot of the same symptoms for very similar reasons, and that’s one of them, for sure. I’ve noticed that, as far as I’m concerned, it has actually gotten progressively worse as I’ve gotten older. Like, although I was a lot more outwardly stand-offish as a teenager (my shields were a lot more visible when I was younger; I often seemed prickly and angry to people who didn’t know me), I was also more trusting. But, as I’ve gone through relationships with people who used and otherwise mistreated me (and one in particular), I’ve found maintaining relationships to be incredibly difficult, to the point where if things seem like they’re getting too serious, too fast, my brain just switches off without my being able to really control it, and I just start getting … really distant from people, emotionally. It’s an issue and I need to address it, but I don’t know how. I guess the good news is that, like Keith, I at least recognize that it’s an issue … but how to fix it is something I don’t know how to tackle. Either way, it makes forming and maintaining interpersonal relationships pretty much impossible, so … a.) thanks bunches, C-PTSD, and b.) I feel you, Keith. I feel you.

His straight up, hands down, refusal to quit until he sees that persisting past a certain point will put others in danger. Determination is really important to me, and I like to think that it’s because of my determination that I’ve made it as far as I have in life. Others have claimed that I’m stubborn to a fault, and yeah, probably, but I mean … well, let’s just say that I relate to Keith in that respect, too.

This was really long, so the rest are going under a cut.

Alan:

The moment I loved him most:

Every waking moment of my life, as well as every waking moment of his. But if we’re talking about specific instances:

Honestly, every single moment he was precious and affectionate with Lizardon. Literally within the first ten minutes of TSME we see him scratching Lizardon beneath his jaw and smiling, and then we get that flashback to him at the lab where he and Lizardon (a bby charmander at the time) cuddle and laugh together, and just … there are many other moments, of course, but less than ten minutes into TSME 1 I was confused about how anyone could possibly take issue with someone who was this goddamn adorable with his platonic soulmate. ♥

As much as Alan’s and Manon’s relationship is not nearly a favorite of mine anymore, I still laugh whenever they have their sibling spat in TSME 2, because even though Alan is legitimately stressed because Lysandre is there, the exchange is still funny.Alan: “[The Director and I] have something important to talk about. Go somewhere else.”Manon: “Hmph! Fine! Why do you have to treat me like such a little kid all the time—!” [promptly falls down a hill, shrieking, and gets stuck in some roots]Alan: “Every time … ! Hang on!” [goes to help her]Like, I can still hear his “itsumo, itsumo!” in my head, and it’s just hilarious. (As is Manon whining about being treated like a little kid (which she is) as she stomps off in a petulant huff, just like a pain in the ass little kid sister would …)

The way he immediately took charge and told everyone to take cover when Rayquaza attacked in TSME 2, reacting even faster than Steven Stone, current Champion of Hoenn, did.

When Lizardon was struck down by Primal Groudon in TSME 3, and Alan waited all of about .001 seconds before leaping out of the aircraft to go down after him, nearly dying himself in the process.

Each time he passionately expresses how much he loves, trusts, and believes in Lizardon.

When he and Lizardon had their Big Damn Heroes moment during their first meeting with Ash, with the rising dawn as a backdrop.

When he straight up won the Kalos League, just like he deserved to.

When he not only went to confront Lysandre over what was happening during the Flare crisis, but was also able (with some emotional support from Ash) to stand up to him, hell fucking yeah.

When he pulled off that badass back handspring in the Megalith when trying to save Hari-san.

When he confided in Ash at the lab when he was pretty clearly feeling suicidal, and then inwardly thanked Ash for “saving” him (“You’re always saving me …”) when he saw what Ash was getting him to agree to by asking him to battle again someday.

When he was nearly crying he was so happy when Sycamore offered him a place at the lab again.

And probably more that I’m forgetting, honestly. He’s my ultimate fave, I love him no matter what.

The moment I hated him most:

I’ve never in my life hated him and never would. Not only do enough people in this wretched fandom do that for me, but they often do it for reasons that make no sense whatsoever. That said, I do completely disregard everything after XYZ044, as well as the “decisions” that “he” made about what he’s going to do (that contradict his plan to stay at the lab and help out, at that), because it’s nonsensical and was only done because the writers wanted to push a “start from zero” theme. That’s not Alan’s fault and I don’t hold it against him, but god do I hate his ending.

The moment I understood him most:

Pretty much every moment, because I’m not sure there’s a character I identify with more, but in particular …

When he immediately jumped out of the aircraft in TSME 3 to go save Lizardon, and this isn’t even hypothetical. This is not “I would do the same,” but rather, “I have pretty much done the same,” because when I was fifteen Shiloh ran out into the street because she was still pretty young (six years old), and felt like playing tag. Well, unfortunately, being a dog, Shiloh didn’t exactly have awareness of the van that was speeding down the street. I, however, did, and it took all of .001 seconds for me to bolt out into the street after her, causing her to cross the rest of the way over, and causing me to nearly get hit by the van. (The driver had to slam on his brakes, squealing tires and everything.) I don’t regret it, and I’d make the same choice over again if I had to go back in time, and I’d make the same choice over again even if I had gotten hit by the van, but the point stands. I fully understand Alan’s feelings there, because I have pretty much done the same. Sure, the situation was different, but the point stands.

His tendency to keep his problems to himself and the severe difficulty he has with asking others for help, because yeah, I’m pretty much the same way (including the whole “keep this from those you care about so they’re not burdened / in danger” bit because, yeah, I’d make the same damn choice). I like to think I’ve gotten a bit better about this over the years, but it’s still immensely difficult for me to ask for help when I really need it, to the point where I will have to be in the eleventh hour before I will, and even then, it gives me anxiety attacks. My therapist says that this is a result of my C-PTSD, in that I never received help in my formative years, thus it’s hard for me to ask now, etc etc, you get the point. Alan, too, is very, very clearly used to having to take on and shoulder all burdens by himself, and handle everything by himself, and he has to be strong enough to do this, and if he’s too weak to do it then that’s just a sign he needs to train harder to be stronger, and so on and so forth. I get this. I get this so hard. And I understand, too, that he likely feels now more than ever that he has to be stronger to continue protecting this around him, and also to prevent himself from being used and abused by those like Lysandre again. Strength is not a bad thing, it’s not something to be looked down upon, and those of us who want to be stronger after what we went through … this isn’t something to “fix” or “stop pursuing,” though that said … learning how to ask for and receive help is a good thing that we should work on, too. Anyway, I really understand where Alan is coming from on this one. I’m the same way. I get it.

The last one will for sure no doubt get me some hate, so I’m just going to … leave it off, no matter how strongly I feel about it.

Prince Lotor:

The moment I loved him most:

I’m going to be real: I fell in love at first “Throk! You wish to challenge me?” If he had a different voice actor I might feel differently, but honestly, AJ Locascio makes every line Lotor speaks sound like music. He easily has the best voice on the show. He could read a phone book and make it sound like poetry.

But that said:

His entire speech in the arena. The Empire soldiers were not the only ones chanting, “Lotor, Lotor, Lotor!” let me tell you.

That truth bomb he dropped about how Voltron will not always be around to protect the planets they free, and are in fact just leaving so many civilians defenseless and at the mercy of the Empire. (Which, if Lotor is at the helm, they’ll probably be fine … but if Zarkon is on the throne, uh, no, those civilians are dying gruesome deaths for trying to leave the Empire. There’s no getting around it.)

“If Voltron disappears from our world, then we win. If they make it out with the comet, we’ll take it from them. It’s a win either way.” First of all, I looooooooove antagonists who can plan and execute perfect Xanatos Gambits, and second, he honestly had a light sing-song lilt on “it’s a win either way” djsfldsfldshfdsfds I LOVE HIM.

“I understand, Zethrid. You do what you must … and I’ll do what I must.” He then not only proceeds to free himself, but he leaves Zethrid where he knows that Acxa and Ezor will rescue her, and then just leaves them there. If he was so ~zomg evil~ as so many in this fandom like to claim, he would have spun around and atomized Zethrid as he so easily could have done, but he didn’t. He truly cared for his generals (the look of panic and regret on his face when striking down Narti showed that well enough), and he doesn’t want any harm to come to them. He certainly doesn’t want to hurt them himself. They were the closest he ever had to friends—probably the closest he ever had to family—and now he has lost them, but … he still cares. He’s no doubt feeling hurt and betrayed (and perhaps, on some level, angry), but he does still care.

Not only how he just casually listens to the radio transmissions in order to keep an eye (or, well, ear) on what the Empire is doing for his own safety, but also how he just FLEW INTO A SUN in order to avoid capture. If that’s not a move straight out of Keith Kogane’s playbook, I don’t know what is. And speaking of …

SAVING KEITH’S LIFE AT THE END OF 4x06, GODS BLESS.

The moment I hated him most:

I never have, actually. Not only did he actually make the show interesting by being a competent adversary for Team Voltron (something Zarkon could never claim in ten thousand years), but he’s a brilliantly multi-faceted character. I was on board with him from the moment his teaser trailer was announced. The only thing that will make me upset is if they have him hang out with Team Voltron in S5 instead of going over to the Blade of Marmora (and Keith) where he belongs. I love Lotor, but that will make me want to drop kick him down a flight of stairs.

The moment I understood him most:

Honestly, probably his resignation at being betrayed and therefore alone. He just … accepts it. He doesn’t lash out at Zethrid, Acxa, or Ezor, but he also doesn’t try to argue or reason with them. He just accepts it as a foregone conclusion that, well, they’re turning him over to the Empire now. That’s where they currently stand. And when he has left them, and he’s completely alone … you can see how resigned he is to this. He’s not only alone physically, but he’s alone emotionally, and you can see the toll. And that … all of that, it’s something I can get. I really felt him, there.

#character meme #severalbakuras #a blade of storm and fire #my valiant dragon son #and i don't have a special tag for Lotor #hmmm i should fix that at some point

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thetravellingvagrant · 5 years

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Day 1: Glasgow-London - In Which I Ride Three Too Many Buses

I was awake before my ludicrously early alarm even had a chance to punch my ears in all to buggery with its obnoxiously soothing little wake-up ditty. Sam had – rather selfishly I felt – had a flare up of hay fever symptoms in the night and subsequentially had honked both her and myself awake a fairly generous length of time before we were supposed to be.

Desperately trying not to go into a grump before even the Pre-Vagrancy had properly begun, I decided to think of my premature arousal as me having beaten my alarm by a clear twenty minutes (which is actually loads. Step you game up, alarm, you fucking loser) and hoisted myself into a no less bleary eyed but now substantially more vertical mess of hair and unhappiness.

Thanks to Sam's...enthusiasm for over-preparation (which some people more calloused than I might describe as withering anality, but not me, because I'm a good and supportive boyfriend and not one of you has the stones to say otherwise) we left her flat with an unnecessarily long time buffer to play with before our Megabus to London was due to depart at 7:00am. At the very least it did seem that travelling with Sam would be a pretty effective prophylactic against the first-day-curse.

And so, after a quick detour to take some bin-bags out, we were officially ready for adventure

To Adventure! (Not pictured: Peru)

We made the brief journey to Hyndland train station, literally screaming with laughter over how much time we had to spare, though as we began our ascent to the platform, Sam stopped in her tracks. To be honest, I thought she was ironically killing time, because we had so much of it to spare that she felt entirely comfortable making a mockery of it on a conceptual level. I was, however, as the sharper readers out there may already have figured out, wrong about that.

“...I've forgotten my lunch”

I blinked and sighed. I slinked, or blighed- whichever one reads better in text (slinked I think...)- and, without speaking, spun on my heels and headed back flatwards, annoyed to have to backtrack carrying the heavy backpack that I was, but also quietly vindicated that we didn't get up early for no good reason and secretly overjoyed to have not been the first one of us to have fucked up in any sort of significant way.

Sam hopped back up to her flat to collect her food while I sat outside, pretending to be okay with the situation. A few minutes later, she reappeared, visibly distressed.

“I can't find it!”

...It was a bright orange Sainsbury's carrier bag, which- owing to the fact that she had definitely had it in her hands moments before leaving- would presumably have been placed in a very noticeable location. How on earth could she not find it? Slinking again, I stood up to venture inside for a poke around of my own. As I did, however, a thought hit me.

“Did you...” I mused, “Did you, uh...when we took the bins out...” I motioned to the trash can, by which I was sitting. A moment passed. Sam Slinked, except without the sighing part – if only they had a word for that – and without speaking, lifted the huge, perforated, leaking bag of trash from the bin into which she had placed it minutes earlier, rooted around a little and with an almost exactly equal mixture of triumph and defeat, which I have never seen before and venture that I never will again, hoisted her bright orange Sainsbury's bag full of food from its stinking tomb. It seemed that Sam would be instrumental in my avoiding the first day curse, after all. By transferring it all to herself instead. To be honest, I was still fine with that, being the supportive and good boyfriend that I absolutely am.

With one train now missed, but still ample(-ish) time, we boarded the next available one, trash meal in hand (Sam's hand, that is- I want to stress that my food did not go in a bin) and finally, were away, but like, for real this time.

We proceeded to Buchanan bus station with ease, being the seasoned travellers that we both undeniably are- and found ourselves eagerly awaiting out cramped, uncomfortable carriage to London a full 17 minutes before it was due to depart. Smashed it, lad.

It was hot. Even at 7am the heat was unpleasant and irritating. This, compounded by our lack of sleep, heavy bags and our being surrounded by irritating and unpleasant Megabus passengers meant that grumpiness was very much the order of the day.

We waited in as orderly a queue as I think it is possible to do while waiting for a Megabus as our poverty-chariot sat idling for 20 minutes beyond its scheduled departure time. While the rest of us witless dullards waited in what was very clearly the correct (and only) queue, however, a couple, who I can really only describe as fat Nikki Sixx (a phrase I have stolen wholesale, from a friend, but will not be crediting) and his child bride defied this most basic piece of bus-etiquette like the true mavericks they were and began a second, auxiliary queue, slightly round the corner from us, in which they were the premiere members.

The rest of us, being British and therefore spineless in the face of low-level conflict remained quiet and privately seethed over the sheer gall of this undeniably brazen act. Finally, however, we were allowed to board and Fat Nikki Sixx and his jailbait queen were summarily informed by the stout, smelly driver to join the very back of the actual queue. A hero's move and one that was met with an audible cheer from the crowd. Or rather, one person in the crowd. Sam. It was Sam. Boy she hated those people. With that little victory in our pockets, we took the available seats least likely to make Sam vomit into a carrier bag during the journey and were finally London-bound.

Our first bus journey of the day was remarkably uneventful- Aside from a young woman managing to lock herself in the bus toilet and screaming at the top of her lungs “HELP. HELP, I'M TRAPPED IN THE TOILET” before managing to unlock the door for herself, literally seconds later- an episode which I missed due to having headphones in, but am told by Sam, was very funny, not much of any note happened at all. No drunk Scottish person being ejected at Preston despite the fact it was still before 10am, no African woman who had booked a ticket for the wrong day, though still inexplicably expected to be allowed on board. Nothing. I listened to podcasts and watched films for the duration and Sam ate her bag of trash like a little raccoon and that was it.

We soon arrived in London and upon stepping foot of the bus, immediately realised how good its air conditioning had been. It was literally like opening an oven door. While on fire. That bit was a little less literal. It was very hot though; something like 34 degrees, which, if you're interested was actually 3 degrees hotter than the Amazon rain-forest was, that day.

We lugged our shit from Victoria coach station to the nearby Sainsbury's for the evening's rations and a little ice-lolly and back to the station to catch our second bus of the day, to Gatwick Airport. This round-trip took less than twenty minutes, but was enough to reduce me to the most disgusting, sweatiest, unhappiest mess I have ever been (and people who know me will tell you, that is an incredibly low bar for me to have to limbo under). If I had even a little moisture left in my body, I would definitely have been weeping it out.

Pictured: A happy, dry man.

An agonisingly uncomfortable 25 minutes later, though, and we were aboard bus number 2, literally (not literally) flying towards Gatwick. The AC on this bus – and I know this is a boring thing to write about. Write your own sweet travel blog if you don't like it – was truly top notch,. I honestly felt the majority of the journey feeling a little chilly, if anything. I could probably quite comfortably have put a hoodie on. I didn't; that would have been ludicrous, obviously, but I could have. I stress again, start your own travel blog if you don't like this bit.

After a lot longer than you would expect it would take to drive to an airport with the name of the city you are currently in, in its own name, we arrived; tired, bedraggled and in desperate need of dinner and a sleep. We stepped back into the unpleasant idiot-furnace that was the world outside and headed towards our final bus of the day: the airport shuttle to our travelodge.

We (I) found the right stop and waited in the blazing, horrible heat. After a brief interlude in which Sam, who can be...a bit stressy, insisted we get on the wrong bus because it was there and she didn't want to miss it, despite it going to the wrong Travelodge, we boarded the /correct/ bus and undertook the arduous four minute journey which cost us both that many pounds per ticket, which obviously I was utterly thrilled over, because I hate money and always wish I had less of it,

Now, utterly befuckled on a frankly cosmic level, we dragged ourselves through the doors of the lodge, to the horrified gasps of the other guests. Fifteen hours after we had started and around a stone lighter each in sweat, we had arrived. I don't think anyone has ever been as pleased to step foot inside a travelodge as I was at that point and honestly? I don't think anyone ever will be, again. I was so happy that I nearly didn't even care about how much that fucking shuttle bus had cost and everything.

Any notion of pride or class entirely gone, now (a slightly bigger drop for Sam than for me), we did what apparently just comes naturally to vagrants and sat, in bed, in our pants, eating sandwiches in bed , while watching absolute garbage on a woefully underspecced laptop. At least it seemed like that bit would be the same as travelling alone.

#travelling #vagrant #south #america #south america #peru #lima #cusco #iquitos #rain #forest #rainforest #heat #london #sweating #gatwick #bus #unhappy #please god let it end

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callowsermons · 5 years

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Palm Sunday: Hidden

What an absurd spectacle this is. Jesus is getting ready to enter Jerusalem, and decides to do it with some panache. He sends his disciples into town to acquire a colt that has never been ridden. Jesus has been walking all this way and now that he’s a few miles out of town he asks for a colt. He doesn’t want the colt because he’s getting tired, he wants it because he knows it’s symbolic. “Behold, your king is coming to you;” Zechariah prophesies, “righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Zech. 9:9)

Once his disciples bring the colt to him they place their cloaks on the colts back for Jesus to ride. The crowds that have gathered around him take off their cloaks as well to make a makeshift red carpet. As he passes by the Mount of Olives the people begin to shout Psalm 118, a psalm written for the enthronement of a King. Again, this is highly symbolic. Even though Jesus has not yet entered the city of Jerusalem, Zechariah also prophesies concerning the Mount of Olives, “On that day [the day of the Lord] his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east... Living waters shall flow out from Jerusalem, half f them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea. It shall continue in summer as in winter. And the LORD will be king of all the earth. On that day the LORD will be one and his name one.” (Zech. 14:4, 8-9)

With all this prophetic significance going on, and all the ruckus the crowds are causing, it is no wonder the Pharisees plea, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” Stop, because you are causing a scene, stop because you are going to get yourself killed. But Jesus replies, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.” The stones would shout out because this is truly a monumental event. It is an event of apocalyptic significance. Apocalyptic in two senses, apocalyptic in the sense that something is being unveiled, something is being revealed. That’s what the word “apocalyptic” literally means. But also apocalyptic in that what is being revealed is the Lordship of Christ, the coming end, the victory over death, the day of the Lord.

We can look back at this from Luke’s account and from Zechariah’s prophesies, and see very clearly what’s going on. We have the benefit of hindsight. We know that Jesus is not out of his mind. We know that Kings really do ride on donkeys. But what if we were citizens of Jerusalem? Imagine yourself as an artisan, moneylender, or day laborer. Just last year a group of Galileans got their blood mingled with their sacrifices when things got hot. You know that Messiahs come and go, and tend to meet the same end. City dwellers tend to see everything.

But when you hear about this Jesus fellow things seem a little different. Not different in the sense that he is more compelling, or that you think there’s something more about him. But different in his absurdity. The sheer arrogance of the man, claiming to be the messiah, and not a single militia! The idiocy of riding in on a donkey as opposed to a stallion. You’d probably strike a bet with your friends over how long he’d last. A man like that, Jerusalem will eat him alive.

We have the benefit of hindsight, the benefit of the Spirit, and the benefit of Luke’s account to know that Palm Sunday is an unveiling of Jesus’ true Lordship. But revelation does not always appear as power, or strength, or light. Oftentimes revelation comes on a donkey, in the form of a servant, in weakness.

Paul tells us about this character of Jesus, his humility and weakness. We are told that though Jesus was in the form of God, he did not consider equality with God as a thing to be grasped, or exploited. Think of the advantage being equal with God would give Jesus, if he were only to use it! But Jesus does not act on his behalf, but our own. He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in our likeness. And as a slave he was obedient, even to the point of death, even death on a cross. But his weakness, emptiness, slavery, and death was not the end of the story. On account of his weakness, emptiness, slavery, and death that God highly exalts him, vindicates him, and blesses him. He is given the name that is above every name, that every knee would bow and every tongue confess before our Lord Jesus.

Jesus acts in weakness, humility, obedience, emptied of his power, acting in the flesh. He comes to Jerusalem not with the slickness of a celebrity or the charisma of a politician but instead on the back of a donkey. And he will be enthroned not on a silver throne but on a wooden cross, his crown thorns, his herald a Roman centurion who declares “surely this man was the Son of God.”

We are approaching the highest, most sacred time of the year. Here we reflect on the source of our hope. The execution of a criminal, and his reported resurrection. In this world of sin we are led to believe that strength looks like military might, that blessing looks like great wealth. We may be led to believe that when God acts it is always clear, and obvious, and proclaimed with trumpets. Truth be told, God’s revelation is projected on a sinful and corrupted screen. So that when God speaks, it can look like the mangled flesh of the messiah. It can look like a fool riding a donkey. God can speak in fools, God can speak in ordinary ways, and sometimes God speaks through a trumpet just to get our attention.

I’m reminded of one day when I was out seeing a parade. And I was talking to some panhandlers on the street, and one of them told me about some man who would go around town dressed up like Jesus, wearing a rubber crown of thorns, carrying a cross with wheels on the end. The whole thing sounded really silly, and the man told me it was very silly. But as we were talking the Christ figure made his way down the road. And the guys I was talking to stopped talking, they were transfixed by this man who just moments before they were mocking. They mocked him when they didn’t see him, but now they did see him. And I’ll tell you, it was a silly sight. There is something particularly ridiculous about someone dressed up like Jesus who puts what looks like training wheels on the end of his cross. My friends didn’t think it looked ridiculous though. All they could muster was to tell me that now that they see with their own eyes, they knew it was powerful.

So often that’s how God acts, that’s how God speaks, that’s how God reveals himself to us. In a man on a donkey, in a man on a cross, in an empty tomb, in broken bread, in a quiet night, in a mindless drive home, in a hug. This Holy Week, as we prepare to think on the ordinary death of our extraordinary Lord, as we prepare ourselves for Easter Morning, let’s train ourselves to keep an eye to how God may speak to us.

Questions for Reflection

How do you think you’d react to Jesus entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday?

What does Palm Sunday reveal about God?

How has God spoken to you in an ordinary way?

Why does God veil himself in order to reveal himself?

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elarawritingtrash · 6 years

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Fandom: Katekyo Hitman Reborn!

Written in 2018

Summary: A girl from our world is reborn... into Sawada Tsunayoshi. Inexplicably female Sawada Tsunayoshi, even. She deals.

Warnings: Canon-typical violence.

Iemitsu and Nana loved each other. They really did; that was never fake on either of their parts. They had a whirlwind romance; it was only a few short months before he proposed. Only a few more months and they got married. Basking in the thrill of new love, they bought a house together.

Just less than a year after they met, Iemitsu had to leave for work. Nana understood. It was his job and he had to leave, and she wasn't mad about it. Still, understanding didn't stop the ache in her chest where Iemitsu had taken hold of her heart and left with it.

A matter of months after that, Nana realized she was pregnant. After three different types of pregnancy test, the excitement took hold of her and she called Iemitsu in a rush. It wasn't how they usually did things; his schedule was unpredictable and Nana never even knew what time zone he may be in at any given time, and so he was usually the one to call her when he had the time. This, however, Nana felt took precedence.

"What -- Nana? Are you okay? Is something wrong?" Iemitsu said immediately upon answering.

Wherever he was, it was loud; there was a mash of indistinguishable noise audible even over the phone. Nana ignored it.

"I'm fine, dear," she said, and then, before he could interrupt and say he was busy, "I have big news! I couldn't wait to tell you!"

She could practically hear Iemitsu deflate over the phone. The silly man never had been able to deny her. "Is that so? Well, now you've got me all excited!" he said. "Tell me what it is, I'm dying over here, Nana, end my suffering."

There were voices on the other end, too quiet to make out words. Iemitsu ignored them, and so Nana did too.

"Oh, you big goofball," Nana said with a giggle. "Okay, here it is: I'm pregnant!"

Nana waited eagerly for Iemitsu's response. There was silence over the phone, accentuating what sounds like people hammering on wood in the background. Finally, Iemitsu responded, all but babbling in his excitement.

Of course, then there were more voices in the background and Iemitsu excused himself hurriedly, but that was fine. Nana understood that her husband was busy.

Several months later, he was also too busy to be there for the baby's birth. Nana wouldn't lie and say that one was fine, but, well, it's so nice to have any of the time together that they do get, she just wouldn't mention it. It wasn't worth it.

In any case, this one was a little problematic for Nana. She and Iemitsu had, in the intervening months since discovering her pregnancy, discussed names. Iemitsu wanted to follow his family's naming tradition and Nana was fine with that, since it seemed so important to him. However, they'd never actually covered what to do if the baby was a girl. All of the Tokugawa Shoguns were men, for obvious reasons, so how was Nana supposed to name their daughter? At a loss, Nana just went with her preferred choice of Tokugawa names she'd already decided on: Tsunayoshi. It was a boy's name, sure, but it could be cute enough to be a girl's name, too. She could already imagine it. Her daughter, Tsu-chan. That was cute, right?

Sawada Tsunayoshi was just over a year old when she realized that she was doomed. This realization, by sheer coincidence (except not at all) coincided with her first meeting with Sawada Iemitsu.

He was, after all, a little more recognizable than Nana, who for the most part could be a perfectly normal Japanese housewife.

So, yeah. Tsuna, or rather the formerly adult, American woman now inhabiting Tsuna's body, came to a sudden, awful realization and narrowly avoided swearing her head off in English and making everything much worse. Fortunately she did avoid that.

She was Sawada Tsunayoshi and in about twelve years, she was going to be forced into becoming the boss (candidate) of the Vongola Family. Tsuna thought about this. Unlike the canon version of Tsuna, she was not especially adverse to the idea. She was, in fact, rather fond of the idea of doing what Canon!Tsuna had planned to do. The problem, of course, was that she was totally going to die. Canon!Tsuna and co. only survived through sheer dumb luck and the fact that she was here at all likely meant she didn't have any of that.

Tsuna plotted. She had exactly three broad options in life. Number one: somehow manage to save all of Nono's legitimate sons who die before she's fourteen. Number two, flee the country and somehow manage to hide from the Italian Mafia. Three, become so amazingly awesome that she could win at not only life, but Tsuna's life.

Although tempting, number one and number two did seem difficult to achieve. Nigh impossible, really. That left number three.

Tsuna resigned herself to living through the canon storyline. It was pretty much her only real option. It brought up some more questions; how much could she change? How much should she change? The canon storyline actually went really well, all things considered. Except for, like, the emotional suffering of pretty much everybody involved. Still.

From what Tsuna remembered, the Daily Life Arc didn't really have anything important in it. Besides introducing people, anyway, and she probably couldn't change any of that and didn't really care to. She did actually like the characters in Katekyo Hitman Reborn, although it was a little questionable if she'd like them as real people. Well, accepting the weirdos that hung around Canon!Tsuna was part of resigning herself to his life, so whatever. In any case, besides that, she could probably change a lot of the Daily Life arc and not have it matter too much. Which is good, because Tsuna did not remember it well enough to micromanage the entire thing. Whoops.

The first truly important arc was Mukuro's appearance. How could Tsuna even change that if she wanted to? Go after Mukuro earlier than Canon!Tsuna would have? Follow Hibari? Oh, actually, if she changed the Daily Life Arc enough, Hibari wouldn't have Sakura Disease, so that could actually change a lot. Tsuna figured it doesn't matter too much; the Mukuro Arc probably didn't need to go in any specific way. Maybe it wasn't even really important?

If that was the case, then the actual first important arc would be the Varia arc. Which went exactly according to plan down to which Guardians won and lost and in what order. It had always kind of annoyed Tsuna, to be honest. But if it didn't go perfectly, then the Sky Battle probably wouldn't happen? And even if it did, if Tsuna didn't lose the Sky ring to Xanxus, he wouldn't fail the succession test thing and he'd probably never give up on usurping her as Vongola Decimo. But then, he hadn't really in canon anyway, had he? In the Future Arc, the Varia had still been refusing to acknowledge Canon!Tsuna as Decimo.

Oh, and that was the real issue. Arguably the most important and potentially disastrous arc in the series: the Future Arc. If it went wrong, well, there went the entire universe. Literally. Thanks, Byakuran. It would be easy to completely avoid, though. If Tsuna just kept that box of Ten Year Bazooka ammo from falling into Shouichi's hands, the Future Arc probably wouldn't happen at all.

That would be awesome, except. After the Future Arc was the Shimon Arc, and Tsuna and his/her guardians would probably not stand a chance against the Shimon Guardians or Daemon without the whole Vongola Gear thing which was only a thing because of the Future Arc. Plus Byakuran wouldn't have his future memories, so he wouldn't show up to heal Yamamoto. Of course, Tsuna could just keep that from happening, probably, but the point remained that they would most likely get their collective butt kicked in a straight fight if the Future Arc hadn't happened. Even more so than had happened in canon.

Not to mention that after that was the Curse of the Rainbow Arc (Arcobaleno Arc for short). Tsuna was sure the Arcobaleno could find representatives either way, but the end result was trying to beat the Vindice in a direct fight, which. That wasn't going to end well if everybody wasn't as strong as their future selves. The Varia would be weaker, Tsuna and her guardians would be weaker, Byakuran and Yuni might not even be there...? What if it was still Aria as the Sky Arcobaleno with only the Giglio Nero fighting for her? They'd get destroyed. And like, Fran wouldn't be there at all, so the Vindice might actually kill Mukuro or at least destroy his watch...

Thinking about the entire thing gave Tsuna a headache, so she decided to wing it. Or at least figure it out later. Whatever.

It was only potentially the fate of the entire universe on the line, it would probably be fine.

Tsuna's first order of business: keep Iemitsu and Nono from sealing her flames. She wasn't entirely sure why they'd sealed Canon!Tsuna's in the first place, but she figured that the best way was to be completely and utterly unspectacular and also make sure not to use flames around them. Like, obviously.

Her first meeting with Iemitsu was easy enough. She was one years old, he treated her like a newborn baby, and he only hung around for like a week anyway. For most of the week, he and Nana largely ignored Tsuna -- beyond the required caretaking of babies, anyway. Tsuna was already walking and talking, but that week she ardently refused to do either in the hopes of convincing Iemitsu she wasn't an impressive child. Nana did not do anything to hinder this. She didn't even seem to think it was strange.

But then, Nana was a strange woman.

Iemitsu left, and Tsuna started experimenting. The thing was, she really should have known what she was in, because, now that she knew the terminology, it was obvious that she could sense flames. She wasn't sure if that was normally a thing in the Hitman Reborn universe, but she definitely could. Iemitsu just... felt like a Sky. Tsuna couldn't explain it. She wouldn't have recognized it if she didn't know that he was, though, just like she hadn't recognized her own flames for what they were.

Other people felt strange too, gave off an energy of sorts that they never had in her original world. Without a reference point for what each type of flame feels like, though, Tsuna couldn't identify them. Since the only person she'd met that she knew the flame type of was Iemitsu, she could only identify Sky flames. Nana was... not a Sky, and that was as far as Tsuna could tell.

In any case, now that Tsuna knew, she started experimenting with flames. It was a shame that she had Sky flames, since as far as she knew, Mist flame users were the only ones confirmed to be able to use them independently, without a Box Weapon or Dying Will Mode. Still, that wasn't going to stop her from trying. Canon!Tsuna, at least in Hyper Dying Will Mode, was able to light his mitten-gloves on fire. Tsuna wanted to be able to do that too. She wondered if it was possible to will-power one's way to Hyper Dying Will Mode without the bullets or pills? It might be nice to skip the whole almost-naked normal Dying Will Mode phase.

Tsuna went through everything she could remember about using flames from canon (resolve, and whatnot), but saw no results for a long while.

As Tsuna got older, she noticed some odd things. Once, when Tsuna was two, she was coloring in the living room (because coloring can be fun, it's a normal little kid thing to do, and she was using it for the motor control practice it was) while Nana was cooking dinner. Nana wandered out to check on her, leaned over where Tsuna was coloring.

"Wow, Tsu-chan, you're doing so well!" she said.

Tsuna didn't respond, because she knew by now that Nana didn't expect her to, and continued carefully outlining the edge of the cloud in purple. After a moment of watching, Nana settled down on the floor next to Tsuna.

"Doesn't it get kind of boring being so careful?" Nana said.

She didn't question the purple cloud, and though Nana would never be her mother, Tsuna thought she might be able to love her anyway. She shrugged.

"No," she said eventually, because it wasn't. A child might enjoy the chaotic swish of crayon on paper, but she actually liked the precision work better. She'd never been good at drawing.

Nana hummed thoughtfully and stayed there, apparently entranced by the sight of her two year old coloring.

After some time, Tsuna paused in the middle of coloring a field of grass a perfectly normal green, looked up, and thought, the pot is going to boil over. She said as much, and Nana jumped to her feet and rushed into the kitchen. Tsuna blinked, feeling a little off. She listened, and yes, there was the sound of something bubbling from the kitchen, but she hadn't noticed it before, not really. She didn't even know what Nana was making.

That was the first time. Things like that kept happening, but it wasn't until close to a year later, when she warned Nana that somebody was at the door a full two minutes before anybody was actually at the door without any real reason to think so that she realized what it was. Hyper Intuition. Tsuna was a little baffled because she didn't remember Canon!Tsuna having it like this.

She wasn't complaining, though.

The next time, Tsuna told Nana that the mushrooms would go bad if they didn't use them that day (she was really starting to wonder at the Hyper Intuition, what was that), and Nana smiled and nodded like it was perfectly normal for a three year old to say such things.

"You know, Tsu-chan, your eyes turn such a pretty orange sometimes," she said casually, also as though this was perfectly normal.

Tsuna immediately found the nearest reflective surface to check for herself, but her eyes were the same brown as always. Disappointing.

She was still three when she had a breakthrough with flame usage. It was less through careful practice and her own resolve and more through sheer mindless panic. Tsuna woke up in the middle of the night, found a shadow that shouldn't be there next to her bed, and freaked out.

Sucking in a breath ready for screaming, Tsuna bolted upright in bed and, mid flail as her arm gets caught in her blanket, created a line of breathtaking orange fire. The fire lit up the room spectacularly, impacted the fan Nana put in Tsuna's room earlier that day, and fizzled away. Tsuna slowly let out the breath, her heart still trying to beat its way through her ribcage, and felt a little ashamed of overreacting so badly.

But it was definitely soothed by the triumph of making flames. Flames that were definitely Sky flames! And without Dying Will Mode or a Box Weapon or Ring! Tsuna was ecstatic.

She also started practicing harder. Now she had an emotion to focus on. At first, she made the mistake of thinking it was the panic, but it wasn't, not really. It was the knee-jerk refusal to go down without a fight. The instinctive nope to waking up to what she thought was a person at the side of her bed.

Resolve, kind of.

But really it was more like spite.

When Tsuna was four, Iemitsu showed back up for the second time in her life. This time, he came with a jovial old man with a white mustache and brightly colored shirts that he introduced as his boss. Timoteo. Vongola Nono.

Tsuna put the flame practice on hold, played the perfectly normal shy little girl, and spent the majority of her time looking down. She couldn't tell when her eyes turned orange. Though it was usually connected to her Hyper Intuition, she can't always tell when that's going off. This way they hopefully won't notice either.

It fit with her whole shy act, anyway.

Timoteo told Tsuna to call him grandpa, and Tsuna stared at his hands (the Vongola ring), smiled weakly, and obeyed.

Nana got the adults tea on Timoteo's request, set three cups on the coffee table, and sat down on a couch. Tsuna, perched uncomfortably on Iemitsu's lap for a number of reasons, looked at Iemitsu's cup, too-close-to-the-edge-it'll-fall. Iemitsu and Nana didn't seem to have noticed. Just as Tsuna was about to lean forward and push it away from the edge, Timoteo, still evidently engaged in the conversation, nudged it further onto the table without even looking.

Tsuna's heart just about stopped because she forgot Timoteo had the Hyper Intuition as well (it was, after all, Vongola Hyper Intuition). Given that they knew she was part of the line, he almost certainly would have noticed if she'd answered to its call. She didn't give herself away, but she very easily could have. With that, Tsuna resolved to ignore the Hyper Intuition until they leave.

Ten minutes later, Iemitsu got excited about something and leaped up from his seat, picking Tsuna up to avoid sending her flying, and knocked into the table as he did. The cups all rattled around dangerously, but none of them fell off.

Tsuna wondered how Iemitsu apparently managed to not only avoid getting the Vongola Hyper Intuition, but do it so spectacularly.

Despite the fact that both Timoteo and Iemitsu were supposed to be smart people, Tsuna managed to make it the entire two weeks of their stay without giving herself away. Nana, who knew all of Tsuna's secrets and didn't know they were secret, didn't give her away either. Tsuna had noticed something about Nana: she very rarely gave information away. She didn't tend to mention anything unless somebody else mentioned it first.

Tsuna kind of got the feeling that her parents were playing Mafia chicken: who was going to bring up the elephant in the room that was the Mafia first? If that was true, then she was impressed with both of their canon selves for making it until Tsuna was fourteen. And still going, actually.

When Tsuna was five, Nana sent her to kindergarten. This was also the first that she'd really been allowed out of the house save for the backyard and shopping, so she was pretty excited despite the fact that it was, you know, kindergarten. She was sure to be disappointed, but honestly she didn't even care.

Tsuna was not actually disappointed. Not really. Yes, kindergarten was not the greatest time, but neither was being a five year old that wasn't in kindergarten, so things could really only get better.

It was easy to pick out Kyouko and Yamamoto from the horde. Kyouko was an adorably shy five year old, curled in on herself and watching the world with big eyes. Yamamoto, meanwhile, was just as friendly as his future self, but more animated about it.

Hana was there too, and, glaring hatred at the boys in the class, primarily Yamamoto's rowdy group, she attached herself to Kyouko's side apparently without Kyouko's input.

Tsuna had a debate with herself. She didn't actually want to be alone until she was thirteen, but then she also wasn't sure about the ethics of befriending five year olds. Not to mention, Yamamoto seemed more than happy with the friends he effortlessly made and Kyouko and Hana seemed content with just the two of them. And if she waited, they'd probably end up friends anyway by way of the Powers of Canon.

Then again, this was her life now, and she wasn't Canon!Tsuna. Why should she wait until canon when, if they'd get along anyway, they could be friends now? With that decided, Tsuna also decided to try to befriend Kyouko and Hana first. They were... a little less impenetrable than Fort Yamamoto and Friends. It went really well. Being five, Tsuna walked right up to them and asked if she could sit with them.

Kyouko smiled at her and agreed, and Hana didn’t argue. Kyouko did have a nice smile, Tsuna decided, in a totally not-creepy way.

And apparently it was as simple as that. Suddenly they were friends now. Tsuna was allowed to walk over and sit with them without asking and vice-versa. She wasn't sure how to feel about it. Making friends was never this easy in her first life -- although, maybe it was just easier as kids.

Tsuna stuck with Kyouko and Hana for a while, watching Yamamoto for an opening. He had to spend some time not completely surrounded, right? As soon as that happened, she'd pounce. Even if they wouldn't exactly be canon style friends where they seemed to do everything together, she could get started on that friendship a little early. If there was anything she'd like to change about the Daily Life Arc, it was Yamamoto getting to the point of almost committing suicide. Well, there were probably other things, too, but that was the first one to come to mind.

She just couldn't make herself interrupt when he was surrounded by people.

"Um, Hana-chan, Tsuna-chan," Kyouko said, trying to meet their eyes and failing. "Do -- do you want to come over to my house after school tomorrow?"

The next day was Saturday, so they would have a half-day of school.

Hana shrugged. "Yeah, sure," she said. "Not like I want to hang around at home with my brothers. My mom will probably be thrilled, too."

Kyouko's expression brightened into an almost-smile. Her gaze shifted expectantly to Tsuna.

"I'd love to!" Tsuna said. There was really no other possible answer to those hopeful eyes. "I'll ask my mom if I can, but she'll probably say yes."

It wasn't like she had any reason not to, and anyway it was worth it just for Kyouko's sheer happiness.

After school, walking hand-in-hand with Nana to get home, Tsuna asked about it. "Mom, can I go over to Kyouko-chan's house after school tomorrow?"

"Hm? Of course! My little Tsu-chan making friends, Mom is so happy!" Nana said.

And that was the end of that. Nana didn't ask about transport at all, didn't care to ask about contact information, nothing. It was a good thing Tsuna wasn't really five, she reflected.

"Grandma can't make the walk to come pick us up every day," Kyouko explained the next day. "So Big Brother and I walk home together."

"You have a brother, Kyouko-chan?" Hana said, scrunching up her nose.

Kyouko nodded happily. "Yup! He's a year older than me. He should be getting out of class soon. You have brothers too, right Hana-chan?"

"Ugh." Hana's disgusted expression worsened. "Three older brothers and a younger brother, and they're all awful."

Tsuna was maybe starting to see why Canon!Hana held such dislike for the 'monkey' boys in her class.

"They can't be that bad," Tsuna said with a giggle.

"They are!" Hana said. "They're loud and messy and in-- inco-- rude!"

Kyouko laughed. When Hana gave her a betrayed look, she patted her on the shoulder. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said.

Hana frowned, almost pouting. "Anyway, have you guys seen the newest episode of Sailor Moon?" she said, obviously changing the subject.

Kyouko and Tsuna went with it. About ten minutes later, there was a shout. "Kyouko!"

A young boy rushed up to the gate where they were waiting, hardly slowing at all before practically tackling Kyouko in a hug. Kyouko seemed to be used to this treatment, and hardly reacted to almost being bowled over.

"I'm EXTREMELY sorry for being late, Kyouko!" the boy bellowed, evidently at top volume.

Kyouko just smiled. "It's okay, Big Brother," she said.

At this point in time, Kyouko was only five years old, but Tsuna could kind of see Canon!Tsuna's appreciation for her smile. It was sweet, but as bright as the Sun flames she shared with Ryohei.

"Big Brother, these are my friends, Kurokawa Hana and Sawada Tsunayoshi," Kyouko said, wiggling carefully out of his hold. She fumbled a little over the names, but not much. "Hana-chan, Tsuna-chan, this is my brother, Sasagawa Ryohei!"

Ryohei turned to them, and Tsuna got a strangely ominous feeling. "Kyouko's friends, huh? Well, any friend of Kyouko is a friend of mine!" he declared at only slightly less than the top volume he'd been speaking in before. "You can call me Ryohei, okay?"

It was phrased as a question, but Tsuna got the feeling it wasn't a question.

"You can call me Tsuna, then," she said. "It's nice to meet you, Ryohei-san!"

Hana turned to look at her aghast. After a glance at Kyouko's beaming smile, however, she swallowed down whatever she'd wanted to say. "It's nice to meet you... Ryohei-san," she said reluctantly.

"ALL RIGHT!" Ryohei said. Several nearby people flinched. "Let's go home, then!"

He pumped his fists, then held one hand out to Kyouko. She put her hand in his automatically. "Everybody hold hands so nobody gets lost," Ryohei said. It sounded like he was reciting somebody else's words.

Smiling, Kyouko held out her hand, and Tsuna obediently grabbed hold, then offered her other hand to Hana, who gave them both a pained look. Still, after a moment of Ryohei staring expectantly while Tsuna faced away from him and tried not to laugh, she grabbed Tsuna's hand.

Finally, they were off. Ryohei led them carefully through Namimori. His forehead was furrowed in concentration, and he watched the three of them as well as strangers carefully. Tsuna wondered if it was normal to have a six year old and three five year olds walk home from school together. It seemed like a lot of responsibility and danger.

But then, given what Kyouko said, they didn't have much choice. Their grandmother couldn't pick them up -- so their parents probably weren't in the picture? It kind of explained why Ryohei ended up so protective of Kyouko, Tsuna supposed.

A couple of weeks later, an Opportunity to befriend Yamamoto appeared. Kind of.

All of the students had been sent outside for recess, and as they usually did, Tsuna, Kyouko, and Hana were sitting at the edge of the asphalt playground area talking. A shadow fell over them, and Tsuna looked up to find Yamamoto standing in front of them. There was a small crowd of boys behind him.

"Hi!" he said once he had their attention. "We're playing a game, but we don't have enough people. Do you want to play?"

One of the other boys stepped closer to Yamamoto. "But they're girls," he hissed in what he probably thought was an undertone.

"So?" Yamamoto said with an uncomprehending look.

Faced with having to explain exactly why them being girls was a problem, the other boy faltered.

Tsuna, Kyouko, and Hana exchanged looks. Tsuna, having been trying to get an in with Yamamoto anyway, was instantly and totally on board regardless of boys being stupid. Kyouko, who was a friendly and generally open-minded person, was curious about it. Hana, who didn't like boys or rowdy people or sports, wasn't particularly interested.

After a moment, Hana visibly relented. Tsuna turned back to Yamamoto, already getting to her feet.

"Sure, I'll play," she said readily.

Kyouko hesitated, looking uncertainly at Hana, who nudged her.

"Ah, me too," Kyouko said eventually.

"I'd rather not," Hana said, then waved Tsuna and Kyouko off. "It's fine, I'll just watch."

Yamamoto flashed a blinding, 100 watt grin. "Okay!" he said.

The game turned out to be some strange kickball thing, where it basically followed the rules of baseball but with a soccer ball and kicking instead of a baseball and bat. Tsuna wasn't sure why she was surprised about that, honestly.

The teams ended up with Yamamoto, Tsuna, and Kyouko on one against the other three boys Yamamoto had been with on the other.

Tsuna had never had much experience with baseball or kickball in either of her lives, and so honestly her grasp of the rules was extremely shaky. Kyouko, probably, was in a similar boat. Yamamoto, of course, was pretty much the king of the game, far outstripping the rest of them. He wasn't very good at explaining the rules to Tsuna and Kyouko, but he was patient about it.

Their team won against the boys, in the end, and Tsuna was vindictively pleased. Even if it was because Yamamoto carried them, they hadn't completely ruined his chances or anything.

Because children were apparently like that, after that Tsuna, along with Kyouko, was kind of friends with Yamamoto. The other boys seemed to disapprove of her or at least dislike her, but Yamamoto himself always seemed perfectly friendly even if she interrupted while he was with several of the other boys.

Still, it wasn't like Tsuna had usurped his other friendships. Yamamoto still spent most of his time with those other boys. It was just that now Tsuna was part of the In-Crowd who was allowed to approach him.

Tsuna still spent most of her time with Kyouko and Hana, anyway, so it was fair.

Regardless of Tsuna's intentions, her being more proactive did not cause canon to start early, so overall, very little happened for a long time. They finished kindergarten, started first grade, and eventually moved into second grade.

Whenever Tsuna wasn't actively spending time with any of her friends, she studied. Not the blade, since that was Yamomoto's thing (or it would be, anyway), but specifically she studied Japanese. Tsuna wanted to have an adult's reading level, but man. Japanese was hard. So she studied a lot.

It was also in second grade, at the age of seven, that Tsuna met Hibari for the first time. Tsuna was alone for lunch, for various reasons, and eating on one of the roofs which people weren't technically supposed to go up to.

Really, it was practically asking to run into Hibari. That definitely wasn't why she did it in the first place.

So, Tsuna was eating her lunch innocently, and suddenly Hibari, at the approximate age of eight, came swanning up out of nowhere and whacked her over the head with a tonfa.

Tsuna flinched away. "Ow! What was that for?" she complained, rolling away to remove herself from tonfa range.

"You are trespassing," Hibari said remorselessly. "Leave, or I will bite you to death."

There were two things about this that Tsuna noted immediately. First, the fact that he actually gave an option for mercy. She was about ninety percent sure that Canon!Hibari went looking for excuses to beat people up, and so would never give up a perfect opportunity. Second, he was already using his strange, strange phrase by eight.

And then she actually thought about the ultimatum he'd just given her. She had achieved what she wanted by hanging out on the roof, which was running into Hibari himself, and there were plenty of other places she could eat lunch. On the other hand, she was there first and Hibari wasn't actually allowed on the roof any more than Tsuna herself was. He was being a hypocrite, likely because he wanted to nap in peace, if Canon!Hibari was any indication.

So, because apparently she was suicidal, Tsuna frowned, got to her feet, and said, "You're not allowed up here either."

Something she knew would absolutely start a fight. With Hibari, there were very few other ways for an encounter to go, anyway.

Hibari's eyes narrowed. That was all the warning Tsuna got before Hibari was suddenly right back in her face, first tonfa already halfway to her head.

The thing was, Tsuna was not experienced at fighting. She had never done any form of martial arts in her first life, not even self-defense, and obviously this time around she was seven. And, apparently, Hibari was monstrously strong at all ages.

However, Tsuna had the Vongola Hyper Intuition and an adult brain capable of reading its urges and reacting to them.

As far as Tsuna would recall later, the fight went something like this: duck the tonfa, wait there's another tonfa, step back to dodge a strange upper-cut-like move, dodge roll to the left, get back to her feet fast, wait no back down to avoid the tonfa again, kick out at Hibari's legs, miss because he dodged backwards, back to her feet again, Hibari was approaching again, step back, WAIT watch out for the rock. Tsuna glanced down to find that yes, there was a rock where she'd been going to step which she would have tripped over. Then, having taken her eyes off Hibari, she was surprised when he got her square in the face.

From there, it was a mess, really. In the end, with a few achy new bruises, Tsuna was forced to flee the roof.

Tsuna wasn't ashamed, exactly. She was pretty sure it was a fact of the universe that Hibari Kyouya would always be able to beat Sawada Tsunayoshi -- although they'd never fought directly in canon after Canon!Tsuna really started getting strong. Still, she didn't think that losing was embarrassing.

It was just annoying.

The petty, contrary part of her was furious that Hibari had successfully chased her away. He was stronger than her, and he'd used that to get what he wanted. That was fair, but it didn't stop Tsuna from being irritated by it.

Thinking wistfully of her abandoned lunch, Tsuna decided then that she wouldn't let it go so easily. Hibari may be stronger than her, but she wasn't going to give up. Most days, she ate lunch with her friends, but after that, she took one day a week to go up to that roof, vindictively, just to annoy him. She would never allow him to nap in peace.

It was odd, though. Tsuna had gone up to the roof before and Hibari hadn't shown those times, which probably meant he didn't always nap up there during lunchtime. After that first encounter, though, he was there on the roof every time Tsuna was.

(Tsuna still got beat up and fled most of the time, and the bruises got hard to explain, but she wouldn't give up.)

The next year, Tsuna decided that her Japanese had gotten good enough to branch out a bit, and started working on Chinese. Going right for Italian seemed too on-the-nose, and she didn't want to be obvious about knowing about Iemitsu's job, and Chinese was cool. Plus, almost all of the Italians in series spoke Japanese, while I-pin, the Chinese speaker, did not speak Japanese very well, so Chinese would, ironically, be more useful.

"Is that a beginner's Chinese book?" Hana said dubiously when she noticed.

"Yup," Tsuna said.

"Ooh, you're so smart, Tsuna-chan!" Kyouko said.

Hana made a face. "But why? Isn't English enough?" she complained.

Both of them knew full well that Tsuna aced all of their English tests. Tsuna was pleased that neither of them bothered to mention it.

"I guess. I just like languages," Tsuna said.

It was actually true. She did like languages; otherwise she probably wouldn't have willingly subjected herself to a third one. Canon!Tsuna hadn't had to learn any extra languages for the storyline, after all. Still, Tsuna was pretty sure that if she was going to take over as the boss of an Italian mafia, she would need to know Italian at least. So really, she was subjecting herself to a fourth language in learning Chinese.

She found she didn't really care.

When Tsuna was eight, and Yamamoto was nine because his birthday was earlier than hers, he disappeared from school for several days. The gossip and rumor mills being what they were, the news of why got to the school before Yamamoto even returned.

His mother had died.

It was a little unclear exactly what had happened, and Tsuna didn't put any extra effort into figuring that out. That was none of her business. Even if she was dying of curiosity.

The point was, Yamamoto's mom died. Tsuna knew, intellectually, that that happened. She'd been dead for canon, after all. It didn't make it less sad, though.

Yamamoto was missing from school for the rest of that week, and reappeared on the next Monday. Given the crowd he'd drawn in the canon storyline when he was threatening to jump off the roof, Tsuna half expected that everybody would crowd around him. Offering condolences, maybe, or asking graceless questions about it.

That didn't happen at all.

Almost ghostly for the lack of color in his cheeks even now, Yamamoto slipped around like a specter. When confronted, he forced a smile onto his face and replied with horribly forced cheer, but he didn't initiate anything or speak without prompting.

As a result, or perhaps entirely unrelated to Yamamoto's behavior and simply because of awkwardness about his mother's death, the class, including Yamamoto's usual friends tip-toed around him, talking in undertones and going quiet if he approached. Overall, it was very much leaving him out, suddenly.

Tsuna wondered if none of them had ever dealt with a person who'd lost someone. She wasn't entirely sure how to go about it either, but this, she felt, was totally wrong. In a way, she thought, she was currently seeing why and when Yamamoto became emotionally distanced from his friends as he was in canon. She could even understand it: if they weren't willing to stick with him when he was grieving, if they didn't want to talk to him if he wasn't carrying the conversation, what was really the value in their 'friendship'?

It wasn't comparable at all, Tsuna knew. Yet she looked at Yamamoto, at the face of a nine year old whose mother had died and who felt like their entire world was falling apart, and she saw herself. Her parents in her first life had died, too, and she still vividly remembered the stabbing pain of the loss, but that wasn't what she thought of. She hadn't been a child when either of her parents died, after all. Rather, she thought of her own death and being thrown, screaming, into an entirely different universe. She wondered if that was what he felt like. Did life look different now? Was everything strange and off and wrong?

From the look on his face, she'd bet that was how he felt.

So Tsuna sucked up the awkwardness and the uncertainty about bothering Yamamoto while he was grieving, gave an apologetic look to Hana and Kyouko, and barged into his bubble of fellow-student-observed privacy.

"Hi, Yamamoto-kun!" she said, trying too hard for a cheerful tone.

Yamamoto looked up, surprise and something almost like dismay on his face for a split second before he gathered himself and started forming that fake, fake smile.

Tsuna just kept going, talking before he could even try. "So I noticed you were out of school for a couple of days and I was thinking I could catch you up on what's happened!" she said. "Not school work, I mean, the teachers probably helped with that, but like, did anyone tell you about the fight between Aosa-kun and Sarue-chan?"

Yamamoto blinked. "No, not yet," he said slowly.

"It was amazing. Or horrible. Depending on how you look at it," Tsuna said, sitting next to him now that he'd encouraged her even the littlest bit.

"Oh yeah? Which side are you on?" Yamamoto said, a hint of a real smile on his face.

Tsuna beamed. "Amazing, of course," she said, and without prompting, continued, "Okay, so, you know how Sarue-chan accused Aosa-kun of cheating, right? We~ll, it turned out that he was. Technically. I mean, he had his older sister helping him, so I think that counts as cheating. Sarue-chan obviously thought so too..."

Tsuna kept talking almost solid throughout the rest of their break, with only minimal input from Yamamoto. She considered it a success when, halfway through, Yamamoto laughed for the first time since he'd returned to school.

The next day, Kyouko and Hana, giving Tsuna extremely similar understanding looks, although tinged with different shades of emotion (approval in Kyouko's case and exasperation in Hana's), joined the two of them. Between the three of them, it was easy to keep a conversation going, though Tsuna was careful to make sure that Yamamoto was included in it. Hana had an impressive dry wit, and offered a different, yet still funny, perspective of things from Tsuna's version, while Kyouko found the both of them hilarious, and her laughter was infectious. To Tsuna's joy, within a couple of weeks, almost all of Yamamoto's smiles were real.

And, although once they considered it 'safe', Yamamoto's usual friends returned and he went back to spending time with them, he still spent a large majority of his time with Tsuna, and Kyouko, and Hana, when any or all of them were around. (After a while of this, Yamamoto slung his arm around Tsuna's shoulders and outright called her 'Tsuna' with no honorific instead of the 'Sawada' it had been before, so Tsuna looked back, raised her eyebrows, and called him 'Takeshi'.)

Even when Tsuna was doing her weekly lunch with Hibari, the three of them often spent it together without her, and Tsuna found that she was actually delighted by this turn of events. It was surprisingly cool that she'd managed to get them to become friends with each other, and not solely when they separately wanted to spend time with her.

So yeah, Tsuna was pretty pleased.

Through her weekly lunches (aka fights) with Hibari, Tsuna was slowly but steadily getting better at fighting. Their fights also steadily got longer and longer before the inevitable conclusion of Tsuna getting tired of getting new bruises and fleeing. Finally, halfway through third grade, the usual format changed.

Tsuna was keeping up surprisingly well, although she had a new bruise on one forearm, the other shoulder, and one of her shins. She was getting tired, though, and the new injuries hurt, making it harder and harder to keep up with him. Since it was practically all she could do to dodge, Hibari only had one Tsuna-inflicted injury, which she doubted was even a proper bruise; she'd just barely gotten him in the stomach with a kick, and he'd been dodging backwards at the time anyway.

So things were not going in her favor at all, and Tsuna was just about ready to call it and make a run for the stairs.

Then Hibari abruptly backed off, a thunderous scowl on his face. A second later, during which Tsuna could do nothing but gape, because Hibari didn't just stop, the warning bell went off. Lunch was almost over.

Hibari glared at Tsuna briefly, though it seemed different from usual, then spun around sharply and stalked over to the far side, where he settled on the floor and appeared to go to sleep. Tsuna stared for a moment. She knew he usually napped up there, or at least she'd assumed so, but didn't he care about class? Eventually, Tsuna just shrugged it off and left to go to her own class. Honestly, it wouldn't even surprise her if Hibari was planning to skip class just to get his nap in.

After that, Tsuna was surprised to discover that she had, evidently, earned Hibari's respect. That was not to say he stopped attacking her, because that was most definitely not the case. He did, however, stop fighting after thirty minutes and allow her to spend the rest of lunch on the roof while he napped (or appear to, anyway). Tsuna figured it was his way of conceding, even if only so that he still got some nap time before classes started again.

And of course she stayed on the roof once he'd given up; it was her hard-earned right to eat lunch on that roof, okay. It had taken her more than a year of getting beaten up by Hibari and then, each day, thirty minutes of narrowly avoiding being subjected to that fate yet again, to secure her right to eat on the roof. Tsuna was absolutely going to take advantage of it.

Several awful, wintery months later, they made it to February (an awful month to be true, yet the end of winter was in sight), and Valentine's Day reared its ugly head.

Tsuna debated with herself for a week and a half before deciding to try to make homemade chocolates for her male friends. All two of them, and that was reaching to count Ryohei. On a whim, Tsuna decided to (try to) make some for Hibari as well. Bribery was absolutely Tsuna's jam and she wanted him to like her even if only for her acceptable chocolates.

Because really, she doubted anyone else had the guts to give him chocolates regardless of his pretty face.

So, about three days before Valentine's Day, Tsuna asked Nana (who is a masterful chef in her own right) to teach her how to make chocolates. If it were what Tsuna still considered 'modern day', meaning the mid-to-late 2010s, she would have googled it. As it was, the year 2000 and without even a computer much less a smart phone, Tsuna could not do that.

Fortunately, Nana both knew how and was absolutely delighted to teach her.

"Aah, my little Tsu-chan, growing up and making chocolate for boys!" she squealed.

Tsuna knew it wouldn't affect anything if she tried to point out that the chocolates weren't romantic, so she didn't bother.

"So, do you want to customize them?" Nana asked. "You know, do something special for each boy!"

Tsuna blinked. Specialized chocolate? "Like how?"

"Well, you know, your dad really loves caramel, so I'd put caramel centers in his!" Nana said. "Do you know anything like that?"

"Uh..." Tsuna thought about it. She knew nothing about Hibari's preferences for obvious reasons. Takeshi, she was pretty sure, liked vanilla because he was that kind of person. Ryohei, in his on-going existence as being as extreme as possible, liked spicy foods.

She told Nana as much, who beamed. It turned out that there was a way to make spicy chocolate, and to put vanilla (but not like, pure vanilla flavoring) inside chocolates. And, because Tsuna didn't have anything to say for Hibari's, Nana decided on her own to give them caramel centers and refused to be dissuaded. Tsuna had obviously inadvertently caused her to feel nostalgic.

The first batch was almost entirely made by Nana, while Tsuna just watched, so naturally they came out perfect. Tsuna wanted to make the chocolates herself, though, or she would have just gotten store-bought ones.

So, she tried on her own, with Nana watching over her shoulder and giving her pointers. Still, even with the help, batch number one came out.... mushy.

Tsuna didn't even know that was possible.

Batch two came out crunchy.

Batch three was too salty, and it was a very good thing that the Sawada family, thanks to Iemitsu's illegal career, was rich, and Nana was a very understanding person.

Batch four didn't have enough salt.

Batch five was edible, but less like proper, balled chocolate and more like chocolate chips.

Batch six, finally, was both edible and even remotely correctly shaped. They weren't pretty, still, but Tsuna decided it was good enough. Her friends would just have to deal.

Honestly, Tsuna wasn't even sure why she bothered when, in the end, they went out to the store to get 'proper' boxes to put the chocolates in anyway. Nana gave her the choice of what colors to get, so, because Tsuna thought she was extremely funny even if nobody else would get the joke, she decided on a blue box with black ribbon for Takeshi, a yellow box with white ribbon for Ryohei, and a purple box with black ribbon for Hibari.

She was hilarious, obviously.

Valentine's Day itself came around. Tsuna gave her chocolates to Takeshi first thing in the morning, before class.

"Appreciation chocolates," she made sure to clarify.

Takeshi laughed. "Hey, thanks, Tsuna! I appreciate you too!" he said cheerfully and tucked the chocolates away carefully.

Tsuna shrugged. "Try the chocolates before you thank me," she said. "I tried to make them myself, but they didn't come out so well."

"Oh, Tsuna-chan, you know how to make chocolates?" Kyouko said. "That's so cool!"

"Well, I asked my mom to teach me, she's like this amazing cook. I swear she knows how to make everything," Tsuna said.

They were interrupted by a small group of girls walking up in a huddle to offer several boxes of chocolate to Takeshi. They weren't quite to the age, yet, where girls went crazy giving chocolates to popular boys, but apparently, they were old enough. Takeshi accepted the chocolates gracefully, and the girls walked away with heavy blushes.

By the time lunch came around, Takeshi had a small pile of boxes of chocolates.

"Somebody's popular," Tsuna said dryly. "Maybe I should take my chocolates back?"

"Aw, no way," Takeshi said with one of his usual grins. "I appreciate your chocolates the most."

Tsuna figured most of the girls who'd given him chocolate would have swooned at that, but. She wasn't really feeling it.

During lunch, Tsuna excused herself from eating with her friends.

"Huh? Why?" Kyouko said.

"There's somebody else I want to give appreciation chocolates to, but he's not in our class, so I don't know when else to find him," Tsuna explained.

"Somebody else?" Hana said with a wrinkle in her nose. "Who? ...Why?"

Tsuna laughed. "I just feel like it," she said.

"Nooo, Tsuna-chan, you can't say something like that and leave!" Kyouko said. "You have to tell us who it is!"

"I don't know if you'd know him," Tsuna said, but shrugged. They'd find out eventually either way. "His name is Hibari Kyouya."

To Tsuna's surprise, all three of them paled a little. All of them started talking at the same time.

"The demon?" Hana said.

Takeshi frowned. "Are you sure that's okay?"

"Huh? Isn't he super scary?" Kyouko said.

"I don't know, we've been hanging out --" technically, "-- at lunch once a week for a while now. I think it's fine."

And then Tsuna fled before they could refuse to let her go. Honestly.

She went up to the roof to wait. She wasn't entirely sure Hibari would show up, actually; it wasn't their usual scheduled fight-day. After a few minutes, though, he stalked through the door onto the roof.

Tsuna was impressed. He either had a sixth-sense for these things, did actually nap on the roof all the time now, or had the roof under surveillance.

"I don't want to fight," she said hurriedly before he could attack her.

Hibari's eyes narrowed. Tsuna dug the box of chocolates out of her bag.

"I just wanted to give you these," she said, offering the box. "Then I'll be leaving."

After a moment of staring at the box with something like suspicion, Hibari snatched it from Tsuna's hand.

"Fine. Leave, herbivore," he said, striding over to his usual spot and laying down.

Tsuna rolled her eyes, supposed she should count herself lucky he'd decided not to 'bite her to death' regardless, and skedaddled.

Later that day, she accosted Ryohei as he was picking Kyouko up so they could walk home together and gave him his box of chocolates. Ryohei accepted it with great enthusiasm and also a rib-cracking hug, so Tsuna figured that made up for Hibari's ungrateful attitude.

(Even later, Ryohei and Takeshi would both say that Tsuna's chocolates had been awesome. On her next fight-day with Hibari, after they'd finished the fight, he looked at her for a bit longer than usual and said that he didn't like the caramel, and then went to lay down. Tsuna was somewhat insulted but mostly just took it as a challenge to find something he did like.)

Truth be told, Tsuna hadn't even considered the existence of White Day when she gave her friends chocolate. She managed to all but completely forget it existed.

So, it came as a surprise, when, March 14th, Takeshi greeted her before class with a store-bought box of white chocolate. Tsuna stared for a long moment.

Takeshi, evidently unbothered, laughed. "I tried to make homemade white chocolate, but it didn't turn out that well, so! Here," he said.

It was then, after approximately thirty seconds, that Tsuna remembered that White Day was a thing. The day boys who had received chocolate on Valentine's Day were supposed to return the gift with white chocolate or jewelry or something.

"Thank you," Tsuna said on instinct as she took the box.

Takeshi laughed at her again.

Later that day, during the two entire seconds Tsuna was alone, Hibari appeared like an apparition.

"Herbivore," he said to get her attention. "It is White Day."

With that, he held out a modest-sized cake covered in white frosting and dropped it without waiting for Tsuna to reach out first, causing her to have to jerk forward to catch it. Tsuna examined the cake suspiciously. It wasn't especially large, definitely a one-person cake, but it was beautifully decorated with white frosting.

It looked really expensive. Much more than three times the worth of the chocolate Tsuna had given him.

But, when Tsuna looked up, Hibari was halfway down the hall, evidently making his escape while she was distracted, so she couldn't say anything about it. Tsuna stared after him for a moment.

Then she decided to redouble her Valentine's Day efforts the next year. Clearly, Hibari was the kind of person who had to win in all things, including giving gifts. Tsuna wasn't sure why she was surprised. But she was also not going to lose.

Later, finishing off the near-perfect mirror of how Tsuna had handed out her chocolates, Ryohei found her just after school to give her yet another return gift. Ryohei's turned out to be what seemed to Tsuna to be a party-sized platter of cookies. However, due to the sheer enthusiasm of his giving them to her, Tsuna did not have an opportunity to refuse them.

Tsuna stared down at the package of probably ninety cookies and found herself making Hansel and Gretel jokes. There was no way she was going to be able to finish off that many cookies before they went stale.

(She ended up sharing them with Kyouko, Hana, and Takeshi.)

Tsuna had managed, so far, to skate by unnoticed by most people; the bullies left her alone, and despite being friends with the Two Most Popular Kids in Class(tm), people didn't really seem to consider her popular.

She liked to consider it a result of a healthy dose of minding her own business. It was, she reflected, almost a miracle considering how pitifully Canon!Tsuna did not manage the same thing. Maybe there was something more to it, but if so, Tsuna wasn't doing it on purpose, so she was at a loss.

Anyway, Tsuna didn't usually bother with the other students of her elementary school except for her usual five. Since she had such a small group of friends, she tended to notice when something was different.

Such as, for example, Kyouko not being there at the gate after class as she usually was, waiting for her brother.

Hana shrugged it off and left, which was fair because her mother generally got mad at her if she didn't report in for babysitting duty without warning. Takeshi was occupied with baseball as per usual.

So, it was just Tsuna.

She had a bad feeling about it. Given that she had little way of telling the difference between a 'my-schedule-has-been-interrupted-and-I'm-upset' bad feeling and a 'my-creepy-Hyper-Intuition-is-going-off' bad feeling, she listened to it and went looking for Kyouko. First she went back to their classroom, which was empty, and then checked the bathroom with the same results.

At a loss, Tsuna checked on Ryohei, who was in the boxing club even at this young age. The club was still going, and so she didn't interrupt, but as far as she could tell, Kyouko wasn't there either.

The bad feeling redoubled. Kyouko never left without her brother.

Tsuna went around checking the school grounds, but found nothing. Finally, she made her way back to find Ryohei, where the boxing club was now just finishing up. Tsuna slipped into the room, hurrying over to him.

“Oh, Tsuna! What's up?" Ryohei said.

"Do you know where Kyouko is?" Tsuna asked. "She wasn't at the gate where she usually waits."

Ryohei blinked. "No, I--" he froze. "NO! THOSE JERKS!"

He rushed off without an explanation. Tsuna sighed, but ran after him anyway. Unfortunately, given that Ryohei was the kind of madman who jogged every morning and Tsuna was not, he outpaced her pretty easily, but fortunately, he was easy to follow.

All she had to do was follow the cries of Kyouko's name.

Eventually, she caught up to him in an alleyway near Namimori High School. Ryohei was already embroiled in a fight with three boys wearing the high school uniform, while a fourth was standing to the side, holding onto Kyouko, who looked terrified but uninjured.

Well. Tsuna figured the proper course of action was obvious.

She flung herself at the boy holding Kyouko. Without jumping, Tsuna managed to reach just high enough to clip him in the jaw with a punch, and he released Kyouko and stumbled away with a surprisingly high-pitched yelp.

"Tsuna-chan!" Kyouko said.

Tsuna kicked one of his legs out from under them and then turned, hearing him fall to the ground behind her. Kyouko, the smart girl, had backed away to the mouth of the alleyway, out of danger. The boy Tsuna had knocked over wouldn't stay out of the fight, she knew, but she took the brief time it would take him to get back up and charged into Ryohei's one vs three battle.

They'd noticed her, unfortunately, and so she couldn't get a sneak attack, but she ducked past one's attempts to grab her and threw her weight into slamming elbow-first into his midsection, and he doubled over with a wheeze. While he was distracted, Tsuna raised her leg and kicked him where the sun don't shine. He whimpered, fell to the ground, curled up in the fetal position, and didn't move again.

The other boys converged on her, but Ryohei punched one in the side from behind, earning a shout, and they turned back. Tsuna turned just in time to dodge away from the fourth (now third) boy before he could grab her by the hair.

"You little brat," he said.

"You big bully," Tsuna said, and launched herself at his face.

The boy threw his arms up to protect the face with a shriek. Tsuna grabbed handfuls of his school vest and leveraged herself to knee him in the stomach, then, as she fell back down, inadvertently pulled him down with her. She landed on her feet, released her holds on his vest, and dodged out of the way as he faceplanted.

After jumping on his back just to hear him yelp again, Tsuna made her way back over to Ryohei, where he'd managed to get one of the boys to stay down. Tsuna flung herself onto the remaining high school student's back, grabbing him around the neck. He yelled and grabbed her arms, trying to pry her off. In doing so, he left himself open and Ryohei nailed him in the kidney.

The high school student crumpled with a whimper suspiciously similar to his friend's.

Breathing hard, Ryohei glanced around at the boys as if daring them to get back up. None of them did. Finally, he turned away and made his way over to Kyouko, who let out a sob and flung herself into his arms.

Tsuna followed out of range of the high school students, then shuffled and looked away awkwardly.

"Big Brother!" Kyouko sobbed out.

"Kyouko! I'm so sorry. Are you okay?" Ryohei said.

She shook her head. "I'm okay, but Big Brother, you're hurt!"

Ryohei had a bit of drying blood coming from his nose and some trailing from his mouth, as well as what was probably going to be a beautiful black eye.

"What, this? This is nothing! I'm fine!" he laughed.

Kyouko looked doubtful, but then she apparently remembered Tsuna's existence and turned to her. "Oh! Tsuna-chan, are you okay? That was so scary when you jumped in!"

"I'm okay. They didn't even hit me," Tsuna said. None of those boys were even close to Hibari's level. "I'm glad both of you are okay."

"That was AWESOME, Tsuna! YOU WERE EXTREMELY COOL!" Ryohei said at top volume. Then, somewhat quieter, "I'm sorry you had to get involved!"

Tsuna shrugged. "Thanks, Ryohei-san. I don't really mind, though," she said.

Ryohei released Kyouko to loom over Tsuna, grabbing her by the shoulders. Tsuna looked at his hands, a little put out that he was getting blood on her.

"Tsuna! I want you to call me 'Big Brother' from now on!" Ryohei declared. "BECAUSE YOU'RE LIKE A SISTER TO ME!"

Tsuna blinked. "Um." She looked to Kyouko for help, who, much calmer now, just giggled. "I don't... think that's appropriate," Tsuna tried.

"CALL ME BIG BROTHER!" Ryohei said again.

Tsuna gave up. "Okay."

She was pretty sure Canon!Ryohei had done almost exactly the same thing to Canon!Tsuna. Maybe that was just one of those things that couldn't be changed? It wasn't like it really mattered, Tsuna supposed.

Tsuna was a pretty light sleeper. She hadn't always been, she knew; in her first life she'd sot of grown into it after being a sleep-like-the-dead sleeper as a child. In her second life, she'd somewhat learned how to sleep through things again as a baby and young child, and, again, grown out of it.

So she woke up when the front door slammed. As Tsuna was lying there wondering why the door would slam at a time like this (1:43 in the morning), she heard The Sound. Laughter. It wasn't such a strange thing, of course, except for the fact that ghostly laughter at 2am was pretty creepy. This wasn't creepy, though; she recognized it as her mother's laugh. Specifically, it was the way Nana laughed when Iemitsu was home.

This thought was worrying enough to have Tsuna slipping out of her room, to the top of the stairs. She stayed just around the corner out of sight of anyone looking up and listened.

Sure enough, there was Nana's voice, speaking in a contained murmur. Then a deeper baritone, recognizable as Iemitsu purely because it could be no one else. She certainly didn't recognize it because she heard it so often.

Tsuna huffed silently and made her way back to her room, flinging herself into bed, and tried not to sulk. It wasn't that she had anything against Iemitsu... Okay, that was a lie. She really didn't like him; she hadn't even liked him much as a character in her first life. Being in a world where he was a real person, and also a real absentee dad? She really didn't like him. And she hadn't even seen canon behavior like being drunk half the time he was home, yet.

Iemitsu just made it so easy.

The next morning, Tsuna dreaded going downstairs, knowing with certainty what she'd find. Nana would be glowing with happiness, dancing around the kitchen making breakfast while Iemitsu either waited patiently or distracted her repeatedly with literal dancing or any other variety of safe-to-have-the-nine-year-old-walk-in-on behavior. They would have a normal Japanese breakfast today for lack of ingredients, but later Nana would go shopping to get more exotic things to make breakfast from whichever country Iemitsu decided to claim he'd been in.

Tsuna was pretty sure that was part of their ongoing game of chicken, honestly, but she was so not going to get involved in it.

Whenever Tsuna relented and went downstairs, Iemitsu would greet her eagerly and expect her to reciprocate. Nana would quietly expect the same; she loved Iemitsu regardless of his absences, and it seemed she genuinely could not understand that Tsuna didn't feel the same way.

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