#but ultimately pronouns are more than just gender they're just the language used to describe someone

[ensemblewives]

I keep accidently refering to Mika with they/them pronouns and then also sometimes when I hear someone talk about him with he/him pronouns I go "HEY HOLD ON A SECOnD" before I realise it's right

[romaritimeharbor]

a platonic writer? thats so awesome!!! for the open kny slots, would it be okay to ask for a reader & giyuu found family troupe? would be nice if reader was in their teens♪ mainly about the dynamic and perhaps post final battle

ELUSIVE CARE. — In which the Water Hashira unwittingly attains a younger sibling.

— trigger & content warnings. none applicable.

— pairings & notes. fluff, found family. tomioka giyuu & teen!reader. reader is gender neutral (they/them pronouns used). 1.1k words.

— author's thoughts. giyuu's so silly. such a guy. very older brother coded tbh <3

✧ FIRST MEETING

giyuu, though a quiet and reserved soul that often believes himself to be inadequate, is certainly not a heartless man nor is he one who cares too little (perhaps it could even be argued that he cares too much). he wouldn't ever let someone die if there was something he could do to prevent it, and maybe it is killing a demon that first leads him to the little teenager that he will one day grow fond of, [name].

his first instinct is, of course, to reunite them with their family if they have any living relatives. if that is not an option, his next instinct is to send them off somewhere he knows they'll be safe—maybe urokodaki needs someone to stay with him, a companion. he's always been a good caretaker even when not training a demon slayer to-be, and surely he gets lonely in his older age..? or maybe those girls at the butterfly estate would take them—shinobu's... nice enough. to young kids, that is. not him, of course, but he doesn't dare deny her kindness towards younger ones. she would probably be more than happy to take them in, or she would be pissed that he would have the audacity to ask something like that of her... but he still believes that she would do it.

ultimately, wherever he does leave them, it's almost guaranteed that he'll encounter them again. teenagers are rarely known for being obedient; as such, he would probably find them actively seeking him out at his estate. to thank him, to simply visit and stay for a while, to bring him gifts... they aren't annoying per se, but giyuu does wonder for how long he will have to endure it before their visits lessen in number.

he did save their life, so maybe he should just accept it.

and perhaps, once the final battle has passed and the greatest threat to the world has been eliminated, he will not be so opposed to having a regular guest. maybe he'll even ask them to stay.

✧ GENERAL DYNAMIC

giyuu is not known for being open and friendly. that said, i do think he would have some kind of a soft spot for a young kid who has suffered the effects of demons roaming the earth.

maybe he sees a little of himself in them. he wasn't always this way, you know? there was a time where he was softer, more open, and had a more positive outlook about the world. so maybe, just maybe, he sees some of that in the little teenager he saved from death.

his kindness shows in weird and hard to understand ways, and he would rarely make it obvious that he was checking up on them; he probably wouldn't visit often. that said, if [name] were to ask around, maybe they would hear about a recent influx of letters from a certain water hashira concerning a certain victim he recently saved.

as he grows closer to them, he would begin to buy them little trinkets. if he sees something he thinks they would like, he would totally pick it up for them and leave it by their room's door at wherever they're staying. he never signs the gifts, but it is nonetheless very clear who is buying them.

he also does what he can to ensure that they're well-cared for—contributing to the cost of caring for them, mainly.

giyuu, to me, seems like a very attentive person. he's a type i would describe as having a quiet love language—someone who does things subtly (more or less). so, while he does not verbally connect with them often, he can offer a listening ear and will always pick up on the small things.

headpats. giyuu is a headpat man. it's a fond gesture that he uses to communicate a number of things—'i'm proud of you,' 'good job,' 'you're alright now,' 'i'm here for you.' it's one way he communicates nonverbally. he's not great at expressing his care with words, but there are plenty of ways such as this one that are more than sufficient without the use of any words at all.

given that his haori is made up of two halves, each from someone he deeply cared for, i think it's safe to say that he has a certain sentimentality about him. any gifts they give to him will be treasured (and if they happen to give him something he can wear without getting in the way of his job, he'll find a way to incorporate it into his uniform).

he's quite fiercely protective of them. if someone is bothering them, giyuu is more than happy to simply stand behind them and give the one annoying them a simple stare, which is more than enough to solve the issue permanently. as a hashira, the lower ranked corps members are already rather scared of him, so he doesn't really have to do much at all to deter anyone from harassing them...

on a similar note, he will put extra care and attention into killing off any demons lingering around the area that they reside in. he's failed so many people before and is not keen on doing so again.

he would very much prefer if they didn't become a demon slayer, especially after his relationship with them has developed a little more. any attempts to ask him about joining would be cut off with a short, firm 'no.' though, with enough insistence... that answer could change.

ultimately, what they do is up to them, but giyuu would prefer that they stay as far out of harm's way as possible. not every victim is meant to, nor do they have to, become a demon slayer—he hopes they know and understand that above all else.

✧ POST-FINAL BATTLE

following the end of the final battle, giyuu would be a little more open with them in quite a few ways.

for one, he's more expressive, offering them something other than his usual stoicism every now and then—a smile. his expression in general softens significantly in their presence once everything is over.

he also grows a little more comfortable expressing himself verbally with them. he's still not exactly... articulate when it comes to expressing his care with words, but it's the thought and effort that counts.

he would also move them into his home at that point!! since he doesn't have to be away constantly now, he feels more comfortable having them stay with him. before, if a demon had showed up to his secluded estate while he was gone, it may have very well ended poorly, had they been staying there. given that this is no longer a concern (and he's also home far more often now), he doesn't mind the company whatsoever.

post-final battle, he would also spend more time around them. it would be then that they would really get to know him. his hobbies, his interests, maybe his past. eventually.

things take time. opening up takes time... and once muzan has been defeated, there is plenty of time for them to get closer with their elusive older brother-like figure.

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[serenasolaris]

Well, might as well inaugurate this blog with something pretentious and philosophical.

Oh, by the way, if I ever misgender Aspen in this post, please do correct me. Although I've been speaking English fluently for years, my framework of reference is a language with no gender neutral pronouns, so I'm used to dumping people into categories. Do inform me and I will correct it ASAP.

MetaWare High School (Demo), and my paradox with mortality.

So let me start this by saying this is sort of a compilation of my thoughts on a game I recently played. If you haven't played MetaWare, I implore you to do so right now. It's definitely not the zenith of fictional media, and there's a load of things about it that I would have done differently, but it's a great game and one that you only really get to experience once. It's one of the most emotional experiences I've had in a while, as much as I hate describing things as "experiences" (or, for that matter and for those who don't know me that well, as "content"), and if you're the kind of person who it hits for, then it probably really really hits.

That being said, the basic premise of the game is that it's an incomplete visual novel in which every single character is aware not only of their own incompleteness, but also of their own fictional reality. They're aware that their existances sort of revolve around the player, and some of them even believe (or rather, are aware) that the arrival of said player will ultimately lead to their demise. The game on a superficial level feels like smiling on the face of an unbelievably bleak prospect, with most of the characters appearing to attempt maintaining a grip on reality, a reality that they cannot comprehend and which may very soon be gone, forever. And that theme in particular is what really stood out to me as my main contextualisation of the game, through the lens of my own life: living in an incomprehensible reality that seems cruel and strange and sometimes manipulative and repetitive, that at the whims of someone else could be cut short at any point in time, and how I've come to reason through it.

MetaWare High School is a game about a lot of things. It's about metafiction, which is frankly is the least appealing of its ideas to me, but which even then still shines among the heaps of worse uses of metafiction all across stories everywhere. It's about existentialism, about how we come to cope with reality, about free will, about how absolutely adorable it would be to feed your homosexual edgelord doomer girlfriend gummy bears. To me, however, to the great SerenaOculis and her history and context and general life, it's a game about the ultimate injustice.

To me, MetaWare is a game about death.

There's one particular thought experiment I'd like those who have played the game to make. If you were to replace "We are aware that we are fictional characters" with "We are roughly aware of the circumstances that will surround our death", would the story of the game really change that much? To me, the answer seems sort of obvious: No. These characters and their ficticiousness just mirror our perishability and absolutely diminute scale in a world that is real. According to the artbook, I've been told, every character is modelled around an "ideology" or concept of some sort. I am not going to discuss the accuracy of these portrayals: it is sort of obvious Nari is much more of a fatalist than a nihilist, and Aspen being associated with anarchy is honestly kind of confusing to me... But examining their points of view from what I can assume the author thought these concepts were like, it does feel like they strongly influence the way each character behaves upon realising the sheer crushing weight of their situation. Isadora freaks out, Aspen attempts to do everything they can, Hope resorts, as always, to looking for pleasure, Chris finds a certain level of redemption and hope in the finality of her position, and Nari does... Nothing. Nari does not care about her life or surroundings anymore. She does not care about her friends, or her world, and if she does she is utterly unable to spare enough energy to show it in any meaningful way, except for moments before her death.

I may be biased against her, mostly due to personal conflicts in ideology. But I believe Nari, and the way she copes with her reality, have failed. However, due to my interactions and experience with people like her and thoughts like hers, I believe she has every right to feel the way she does. Even if the way she's depicted may come across as unnecessarily edgy or trying too hard at times, even then, she still has a right to. Being relegated to a seemingly pointless existence of endings and loops and final death, one I have personally found myself stuck in too, does things to a person. It breaks them. The ultimate unfairness and meaninglessness of absolutely everything is a crushing prospect, and I can't deny that every single one of the best people I've ever met has been completely and utterly ravaged under its weight. Mortality does shit to people. Shit that, and you the reader may disagree with me on this, is completely unfair, gratuitous, and cruel. And while Nari's reaction doesn't help her find some shade to cover herself from this burning, red sunlight, it is absolutely justified.

Every other character encounters solace somewhere else. Chris, on some level, accepts her ultimate purpose as the ability to enrich the player, in some way. Aspen simply accepts things as they come, and finds solace in their own inner peace. Isadora... Well, Isadora doesn't find peace at all. It's kind of sad, actually. She freaks out a lot about everything and gets really jumpy with the prospect of the end. Which is, again, understandable. And Hope, on some level, reaches tranquility, but is still quite scared about the possible outcome or implications of her end. The end scene happens, the characters say their last few lines, and they're gone.

I am still kind of dealing with this ending. I understand that it's a fictional story, and it definitely doesn't hit me as hard as the death of a flesh being, but I still believe I caught a pretty bad case of [S] GAME OVER disease from it. These are characters deliberately designed to be people who deserved better, and my arrival to their world, their inception, also meant their departure from mine. The endless spawn of entropy eating every last part of their world, to dissapear and never be thought of again. On to the next thing. And that's the thing with MetaWare.

Because, this is going to happen to me too.

And if it does while I'm young, I need to accept it.

MetaWare got me introspective about my current measures towards death: it made me study myself to figure out how I really think. And I believe I have found a paradox, or rather, a circle, within my reasoning. An ouroboros of mortality, if you will, except we're not calling it that because Mothlass bullies me enough for constantly referencing whatever mythological concept I found about this week in Wikipedia already.

To me, death is not terror-inducing, in the same way that countless atrocities of history aren't that... Scary. Because it's not scary. It's tragic, and unfair. It's a tragedy so mundane that every reasoning being on this planet spends large portions of their time trying to bullshit themselves into thinking it's fine. Possibly, even beyond this planet. I'd have no way of knowing, though.

However, at the same time, it's not like I'm going to be the one to find the perfect solution to mortality complete with no drawbacks and free ice cream and everything. Much less entropy. It feels like you kind of have to cheat the laws of thermodynamics to fix that one. So, what can I do?

Well, I've come to this solution.

If I was a fictional character, if my words were on a script and my life determined by someone I'll never truly know getting me to act ways I don't truly have a say in?

I'd still do my best, as I always have. Tomorrow will be better only if we make it be, after all, and I can't make anything better if I'm too busy getting pissed about things that I absolutely have a right to be completely wrathful about but which I'm also not going to fix by causing harm to myself. I'd be the best person I can be, going out with the main character or not, having my game uninstalled or not, dying or not, because hope and progress and the betterment of things are what truly brings me joy and tranquility. I'll make things that, even if not indestructible, will still be meaningful to someone for at least a few days after I die, and as long as my memory outlives me, I would have won.

To Chris, Aspen, Izzy, Hope and Nari, to my fictional friends with scripted lines and an unfairly short lapse of time to live, thank you. Thank you for getting me to think about myself. You are not alone in your struggles, and I find myself having to reason through the same things as you. And, most importantly, a whole day has passed ever since I heard your last words. You guys won.

And just like the five of you,

I shall win too.

-SerenaOculis, Eye on the Sky.

P.D.: Shoutouts to the person who got me to play this game. You know who you are. You should also know that you're a really nice person too. :)