#so i have to ask the girl next to me for her hotspot thingy so i can message my mom

[tfshouldidohere]

i have never felt that anxious in my entire life

[talkthattae]

Levels to Eternity: Chapter Two

Genre: Horror, Romance, Vampires

Warnings: cursing, mentions of blood, violence

Edited

Summary:Your whole life your parents protected you from the dangerous world of vampire’s but one day your boyfriend kidnaps you and you wake up in an abandoned building with a thirst for blood. You are now exposed to the new world of levels, blood, new friendships, new romance, and new danger. You start out as a level 1 vampire but will you protect the ones you love and become the next level 4?

Word Count: 1706

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You drove back to your house. You knew you would be safe there. Your dad’s car was gone but your mom was home. Your siblings were probably home as well. You sighed in relief as you walked towards the front door. You opened the door and tried to walk through but for some reason you couldn’t, almost as if a force field was keeping you from entering your own home. You yelled out for your mom and she came to the front door.

“I know this sounds crazy” you started to explain “but i can't come in the house”.

“Y/N, stop goofing off and just come in already. What happened to your shirt?” she replied.

You tried to walk through again but couldn’t and this time your mom knew what you meant. Tears started welling in her eyes as she slowly stumbled from the doorway. The look in her eyes was one you had never seen before. She looked afraid of you.

“Mom!” you shouted.

She ran away into the house to grab her phone and called your dad.

“Somebody turned her” you could hear her softly speak into the phone.

You kept trying so hard to get into the house but nothing worked. No matter how you tried to step in, nothing worked.  You eventually wore yourself out trying to push your way into the doorway. You sat on your front steps, defeated as your Dad’s car flew into the driveway.

“You need to leave now and never come back” He said sternly getting out of his car.

“What? Wait why-. Dad, what’s happening?” you cried as you walked towards him.

“Y/N, don’t come any closer. I’m serious. You need to leave.”

“Why can’t I just come inside? please” you cried.

“I made it so your kind can never enter our house. I can’t have you around your siblings. Your unpredictable and I can’t trust you. Leave” he said before he step foot into the house and shut the door.

You can't ever remember a time where your dad acted like that.You were so incredibly confused but most of all, heartbroken. In the span of one day, you lost everything. You wiped the tears that fell down your face and got back onto the bike. It was still a saturday, you had drank all the bags of blood you took from the factory, and you needed to let loose. You decided that clubbing could take your mind off things.

You hopped back on the motorcycle and went to go find the hotspot of the night. You found a club that looked super busy. You were so thirsty. You had never fed on an actual human before so you weren’t even sure how to do it but you were determined to find your first victim. You walked into the nightclub, music bumping loud and bodies grinding against each other. You immediately walked out to the middle of the dance floor. You were desperate for blood. You started to sway your hips to the beat of the music and soon enough somebody else's body found yours. You both started to sway to the music together. Your back pressed against his front. His strong arms found their way around the side of your body, hanging onto your hips. You turned your body around to meet his face with yours. You smiled as you looked at his face. He was hot but you didn't care. All that was on your mind was blood. You started to stare at his neck. His veins basically jumping out of his skin, begging you to sink your teeth into them. You made your way towards his neck but before you could bite, he shoved you away and pinned you against the wall.

“Don’t you know you can't feed on other vampires?” He whispered into your ear tauntingly.

“Hobi, stop that’s her!” you heard a familiar voice shout.

You turned your head to see Taehyung running after you. You broke free from Hoseok’s strong hold on your body and ran towards Taehyung. You hugged him.

“Taehyung, I’m so sorry i left you. I thought Namjoon would have killed you! How did you get out?” you asked him.

“He just let me go. He told me that if I wanted to live I had to come find you and bring you back to the factory and blah blah blah.”

You started to panic “No tae, I’m not going back-”.

He cut you off “Of course, neither of us are going back. I was just trying to save my life. I’d tell him anything he wanted if it meant i could get out of that hell hole” He said with a smile.

You took a deep breath in relief.

“Do you have a place to stay? I’m staying with a few other vampires at this sanctuary thingy. Hoseok can tell you more” Taehyung said.

“Its ran by my friend Jin, He’s a level 3.” Hoseok said to you.

“Level 3?” You questioned.

“She’s new isn’t she?” Hoseok said as you walked out with him and Taehyung.

Once you got to the street hoseok turned around to face you.

“You’re thirsty aren't you?” he asked.

You nodded your head vigorously.

“We need to take her to Yoongi first. He can show her how to feed” He told Taehyung.

Taehyung nodded in agreeance. Hoseok and Taehyung got into a car and you followed them on your motorcycle to a house kind of away from the city. You followed the two boys into the house. It was a beautiful house. You would have never guessed a bunch of vampires lived here. You walked into the living room to be greeted by two more boys.

“Hello, I’m Jin” one spoke as he held out his hand for you to shake.

His eyes were bright blue, just how Namjoon’s eyes had been before his turned red. You shook his hand and replied

“I’m Y/N”.

You looked over at the other boy. He was staring at you with wide eyes. He had the most gorgeous set of gold eyes you had seen. His lips were full and he looked at you like he couldn’t believe who he was seeing.

“Guys it-it’s her. She’s the next level 4” he spoke.

Jin looked at him with wide eyes.

“Jimin, are you positive?” he questioned.

“Yes, i could never forget her face. It’s her i swear. She is exactly who i saw in my vision” Jimin said.

“What do you mean? What are the levels? And visions? What is going on?” You asked confused out of your mind.

The room started to go dizzy. You felt yourself start to fall but Jimin caught you and sat you down on the couch.

“Tae, go grab her some blood from the fridge. She is probably starving” Jimin said.

Jimin held your body upright on the couch while Tae ran to the fridge and back with a ton of blood bags. You downed 3 bags in seconds.

“Okay, you all have some explaining to do” You said looking at all the boys as they all stared at you.

“Hoseok go get Yoongi, he is in his room” Jin asked Hoseok.

Hoseok left and Jin sat down on the couch beside you, opposite side of Jimin.

“You are a level one vampire. Your eyes are the same color as they have always been and all you can think about is feeding. Taehyung is also a level one. He was changed a day before you were. Hoseok, Jimin, and Yoongi are all level two’s. They have bright gold eyes and they have their powers. Hoseok is incredibly strong and is super fast. Yoongi can bring people back to life and Jimin can see the future. I’m a level 3, the highest you can be without being level 4 but we will get to that. My eyes are blue. I can’t read minds or anything but i can sense how people feel or what they are about to do. It’s really helped me since I’m kind of like a mentor for everyone here. You can always tell what level a vampire is by their eyes but its very hard to spot you level ones because your eyes haven't changed yet.” Jin explained to you.

“How did you get to level 3?” you asked him.

“In order go up in a level you have to kill a vampire of the level you want to be, but you can't skip levels, you have to climb your way up. I didn’t want to be a level 3 but strange things happen when your a vampire.” he said with a laugh at the end.

“Do you want to be a level 4?” you asked him.

“Oh no no, i can’t be one. Only certain vampires can be level 4’s. You can tell when you first change somebody, when they wake up their eyes will be red but then return back to their normal color. Level 4’s have red eyes. Their can only be one level 4 alive at a time. There can never be two. That’s probably why you were so thirsty. You are going to make a very powerful level 4” Jin said.

“Well then who is the level 4 right now?” You asked.

“A vampire named Namjoon. He’s the one that changed you. He started his own underground vampire army. He is rapidly changing people into vampires to find the ones that can be level 4’s, then he kills them.”.

“That must be why he wanted me to bring you to him” Taehyung added in, "He knows you can be a level 4.”.

Hoseok walked in with a new boy who you assumed was the Yoongi they were talking about.

“Before we go talking about helping her become the level 4, how about we teach this girl to feed first?” Yoongi said.

Jimin smiled and said “Yeah, she’s probably already thirsty again.”

Please let me know how you are liking the story so far! I can’t wait for everyone to read what I have planned! If you have any questions about the story just ask!

[murasaki-murasame]

Monogatari Series Rewatch Part 4: Bakemonogatari [Nadeko Snake]

I’m doing it, I’m finally getting around to this, aah. Here we go.

Who else is ready for two episodes of ‘if only you could understand how much drama and pain your superficial understanding of Nadeko’s emotional problems is gonna cause you down the line, Araragi’, cause I sure am.

Thoughts under the cut.

[This got way longer than expected. Can you tell that I really love Nadeko as a character, and love talking about her?]

PART ONE:

-I haven’t talked a whole lot about any art-related things in a while [since I never know how to phrase my praise for this sorta thing without being kinda repetitive and aimless], but I really love the plain colour/gradient effect used for stuff like the bamboo forest. It’s definitely a cost-cutting measure, but for some reason I really like it. I guess, in a weird way, I really like the simple backgrounds that draw more focus to the characters, and make the show feel like even more of a stage play where everything other than the characters themselves are just props.

-It still gives me the warm fuzzies, that Araragi and Kanbaru immediately got back to being friends after the last arc. Their friendship is a wonderful part of the series.

-And here she is! Snake girl! Hoo boy, this is where we get into the start of some of the extended story elements. Though from what I remember, you tend to leave this arc for the first time not thinking that there’s anything deeper to her character and that she won’t show up again. LOLNOPE.

-Just to get it said right off the bat, Nadeko is honestly one of my favourite characters in the entire show, at least from my vague memories of my first time watching the series. I found myself relating to her and understanding her issues way more than I thought I would. I think it wasn’t until Otori that I paid much attention to her, but I feel like that goes for everyone. I totally get why she’s such a divisive character, though. I respect that.

-And here we have one of the single most iconic and memorable anime OPs of all time. Holy shit this song used to be EVERYWHERE. So many parodies and mash-ups and remixes. It’s weird to look back at the original. Especially since there’s so many little elements to it, mostly in the lyrics, that really bluntly hint at her various issues, and the direction her story takes. One of the very first lines in the OP is, more or less, ‘if words will destroy our relationship, then silence is fine’. Though it’s hard not to see this entire OP as being really meaningful when it’s so connected in my head to the Nadeko Medusa OP. I still adore how Renai Circulation is basically Nadeko’s idealized view of herself and her unrequited crush on Araragi, while Mousou Express is a more objective look at how obsessive her feelings actually are. I love it so much. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

-Also, as a side note, I think this OP was my first exposure to the series before I actually sat down and watched it about three or so years ago, and for the longest damn time I seriously thought that Nadeko had green hair. It took me a while to get used to her normal hair colour.

-Oh yeah, this is the first time we see the shrine, as well as the talisman thingy. Huh. I at least thought that the talisman didn’t appear until as far as Nise or SS. Weird. It makes me remember how sorta surprising it was to see the shrine become such a recurring setting, and such a big element of the overall story. But it really does just keep popping up. It’s probably one of the things I have the least of a grasp of, though, especially with how the various goings-on with it fit into the timeline. But I at least remember that the whole deal with the shrine is that it’s like the spiritual hotspot of the town, and that everyone wants to use it for their own purposes, mostly in terms of using it to maintain ‘balance’ in the town.

-Senjougahara continues to be utterly savage even when she’s not part of the scene. NICE.

-Huh, I genuinely forgot that apparently Kanbaru’s arm is gonna heal over the next five years or so. Huh. That’s a pretty major thing to forget. I feel like they never bring it up after this point, though. So that’s probably why. I guess it slightly lessens the whole tragedy of what happened to her, but I guess it was probably a bit too fucked up of a concept for her to be stuck with a monkey arm for the rest of her life.

-For some reason I thought that the shrine was intact by this point in time and just got destroyed in a later arc. Guess not. [[If it’s not clear already I have a surprisingly shit memory of a lot of specific story details with this show. Especially in the early arcs like this. Since I haven’t watched them in several years. Also I’ve only read the LN versions of the first three Bake arcs, and have been procrastinating about the rest, so this is the start of where I truly haven’t really experienced the story in years]]

-Obviously this is a bigger aspect of later arcs, and I’ll discuss it more then, but holy shit does Araragi have the WORST memory possible. It’s almost hilarious how many issues in his life are caused by it. I can’t exactly blame him for not remembering one of his little sisters’ school friends who he hasn’t seen in six years but still. This is just a hint of what’s to come, I guess. And really his issue with Nadeko is less him forgetting her, and more him just not paying that much attention to her or trying to investigate her issues. Which, again, I can’t blame him for. Most of the things Araragi does like this are completely realistic and understandable even if we as the audience can see the dramatic irony involved.

-[Oh man, now that I’m remembering more of Nadeko’s story, it’s just now dawning on me for the first time how similar a lot of her story is to that one character from Umineko who I won’t name because of spoilers. They’re very different characters in general, but wow there’s at least some pretty overt superficial comparisons to be made. Huh. I need to remember to make a post about that character once I’m properly done with Umineko]

-Oh yeah, by this point in the story Nadeko was already going off into the mountains to ritualistically murder small animals. Yep. This sure is a thing that’s already happening. I forget the exact context of this, but yeah in hindsight this is a pretty clear indicator that she has some serious issues. Even if I can at least remember enough to know that she was trying to take the snake curse off herself. Still, stabbing hordes of snakes to a tree is messed up.

-I love all of Hanekawa’s shifty/squinty expressions during the whole scene here at the bookstore. She really does have a way of coming across as really composed, even though you can always tell, especially in hindsight, that she’s not as composed as she might let on.

-It’s still interesting to me how Nadeko’s hat makes her look a bit like a snake. Even her loose jacket kinda reminds me of shed snake skin. I know that basically all of the main girls have elements of their oddities incorporated into their designs, but I feel like Nadeko is probably the most subtle about it. Other than maybe Hanekawa. Either way, I really love this outfit of hers. I sometimes feel like wearing a jacket like that, but it always feels a little silly and pointless, and I’d probably worry about it not sitting still properly.

-I just got reminded by this one particular shot where he looks really nice, but, I really do think that Araragi is pretty dang attractive. I only really notice it with certain scenes, though. But when it’s there, it’s there. Obviously I’m sorta alone in feeling this way, lol.

-I appreciate Hanekawa taking the time to try and explain to Araragi that he’s way too wishy washy with his feelings, and way too nice and open with girls in a way that can come across as a lack of faithfulness to his actual girlfriend. It’s a lesson that he really needs to learn, as do many such protagonists. You can really get why Senjougahara is so clingy and distrustful in her own way. [Although I also do feel like Kanbaru is a weird character to use to set up this topic considering that she’s, you know, a lesbian. Oh well. Hanekawa’s point still stands]

-Huh, they’re already bringing up her intentions to travel the world once she graduates. Huh. I thought that only got bought up around Neko:Shiro. It’s also making me even more antsy about waiting for the eventual adaptation of Off Season because I REALLY wanna see that one arc that’s apparently about her travels.

-Oh boy, all these not so subtle hints about Hanekawa’s home life. My heart is not ready for when we actually focus on that.

-I seriously love every scene in this show that has red/orange lighting like this. It looks so fantastic. It really sets the mood.

-Of course the first thing Kanbaru does upon entering Araragi’s room for the first time is to loudly search for his porn while taunting him about how much she’s aware of his kinks and fetishes. Isn’t she the best?

-Yeah this whole scene is just as creepy as ever. Christ. Although I still cannot fucking believe that they reference that one goddamn meme during this scene as well. It’s surreal. Though not quite as surreal as Attack on Titan referencing it for a recent magazine cover spread. I’m still reeling from that one.

-I’m pretty sure that Nadeko is still only like two or three years younger than him, but this whole thing is still . . . iffy. But obviously it’s meant to be iffy and weird.

-Especially in hindsight, it’s really sad seeing Nadeko talk about hating her body, and wanting to be saved by the person she has a crush on. Damn. Though the whole idea of her actively asking to be saved really sets up the big issue with this arc [so to say] and how it sets up Otori. I just feel bad for everyone involved.

PART TWO:

-I’m loving the shadow puppet hands going on that look like snakes. It really adds to the creepy atmosphere. Same with the really stark contrast between the dark shadows and the bright bluish-white lighting. Also, I dunno if I’ve mentioned it yet, but I love how Oshino is just the master of setting up school desks and chairs in increasingly elaborate ways, and sitting on them in increasingly implausible ways. In general I just love the use of props, staging, framing, and body language to construct a scene, in addition to the dialogue that makes up the meat of it. Obviously this is where Shaft’s influence shines through the most, since this is exactly the sort of stuff that’s fundamentally not part of the LNs. It’s really interesting to me how they took something like the basic descriptions of Oshino sleeping on a makeshift bed made of desks and blankets and whatnot, and went completely wild with the imagery of it.

-This is just a matter of the version of the subs I’m reading, but man is it throwing me off how the dialogue subtitles translate certain terms differently than the on-screen text subtitles do. Especially since I can also obviously hear the Japanese term being used and I have a vague idea of it’s inherent meaning, so I wind up with like three separate terms for the same thing being thrown at me at once and it’s sorta disorienting. 

-[On the note of subs, I probably should have mentioned this before but it’s so weird to me seeing Hanekawa’s catchphrase translated any way other than ‘I don’t know everything. I just know what I know’. Anything else feels kinda blasphemous, even though it’s by far the most petty issue I could have translation-wise. I at least feel like any translation of that line should be consistent, to get across the fact that it’s the same line being repeated. I feel like the subs I’m using have translated it inconsistently once or twice, and it bugs me.]

-OK I guess this is another sub note, but I must have glazed over the line of ‘Living without words, no, dying, huh?’ in the OP the first time round. Huh. It comes across slightly mangled in English even though it’s a kinda neat pun in Japanese [it’s basically using ‘shi nuki’ vs ‘shinu ki’. I’d use the actual kanji they use if I knew what they were, but yeah that gets it across well enough]. Either way, it’s one of the various lines in this OP that really bluntly hint at how much of an issue it is for Nadeko to hide her true feelings behind a mask of cuteness and silence. I like how, via puns, it manages to effectively equate silence with death, which is pretty accurate and foreboding, considering that her repressed issues turn into murderous violence.

-It’s one of those things that makes me seriously wonder how much of Nadeko’s character arc Nisioisin had planned from the start. I know that he kinda plays it off as ‘haha, her voice actress wants to play an evil character, let’s make Nadeko into the final boss lol’, but I’d be surprised if it was anything so spontaneous and unplanned. So much of this arc really blatantly hints at how disturbed and unhealthy Nadeko is, and her issues are left so blatantly unresolved in this arc in a way that feels almost counter to the entire theme of the story [which is exactly why it comes back to bite everyone later]. I at least like to think that he was planning it all from the start, and was kinda messing around with stereotypes to try and make both Araragi and the reader glaze over all of Nadeko’s problems, and the logical consequences of this arc, while just seeing her as a cute girl. I dunno. Maybe I’m giving him too much credit. I know that it sometimes bothers me how much the series really, unironically plays up the ‘look what a [superficially] cute and innocent and naive little girl she is! So moe!’ angle at times, even though pretty much the entire idea of her character is how damaging it is to ignore and glaze over a person’s depth and their problems by valuing them solely for their cuteness or youth or purity or whatever, so . . . eh.

-It’s definitely interesting how it looks like Oshino never even sees Nadeko for himself in this arc, and just hears about her problem from Araragi. Given how good he tends to be at noticing when a person isn’t a pure, innocent victim in their whole story. I wonder how things might have gone if he’d seen her up close. I could at least see him noticing the thing she does where she hides behind her hair.

-I just thought after seeing the scene describing the invisible snake that’s constricting her body and about to kill her, but there’s a lot of parts of the story that are interesting to examine if you want to interpret the oddities as mostly just being reflective metaphors for emotional problems. Obviously in the context of the story they’re literally real, but still, I think it’s valid to interpret things this way if only as a way to understand what role each oddity plays, and what they show about each character. [And it seems relevant to bring up with Nadeko in particular, since the entire twist of Otori is that the oddity in that was literally just a reflection of her emotional issues and not even a ‘real supernatural thing’]. It’s interesting to look at how, at least thus far [I forget what else we learn about the snake curse incident later in this episode since I have it paused partway at the moment so I’m probably gonna feel real dumb in a few minutes lol], we’re dealing with a case of Nadeko being bitterly hated by one of her classmates for simply turning down a guy that the other girl liked, and now she’s off in the mountains killing small animals to try and lessen this horrible, constricting pain that makes her feel like she’s about to die, which is making her hate her body, and just want somebody to save her. I mean, I know I’m just literally describing what’s going on at this point, but it’s definitely easy to not quite consider the extent of what’s going on here if you get caught up in the snake curse concept. It’s a bit too easy to get the order of events wrong and assume that this magical curse is the sole cause of her problems and her negative feelings, and that it’ll be totally fine to just exorcise it. And it’s kinda sad how even Nadeko, understandably, sees it that way too. It’s pretty obvious that she doesn’t want to examine her feelings and their root causes and how they affect her life and how she thinks, and as a young, sheltered girl she might not even have any real idea HOW to do that sort of introspection. It’s pretty depressing, really.

-They even point out that ‘the curse’ was mostly caused by Nadeko’s whole ‘killing small animals’ thing, but Araragi of course thinks it’d be totally fine if Nadeko just did the animal-killing in a different place. In terms of the in-universe logic at hand, yes it might have prevented the supernatural curse placed upon her by it, but even with that in mind, we’re still dealing with someone who’s ritualistically killing animals to try and alleviate their psychological pain and the self-loathing tied in with that. The story even implicitly spells out the fact that Nadeko’s actions weren’t caused by the supernatural cause, but by her own emotional pain, when it talks about how the animal-killing caused her curse. So the blindingly obvious issue at hand here really has barely anything to do with the curse itself. The curse isn’t really the cause of anything, it’s the RESULT of everything else. It’s almost physically painful to see Araragi saying all this and obviously not even considering that there’s issues at hand that will persist even after this exorcism. But again, it’s the sort of thing where it’s just dramatically ironic that he isn’t noticing something that we can more easily see as outside readers. Still doesn’t make it any less painful to watch, though.

-I seriously cannot even state enough that the story is really openly talking about how Nadeko was *ritualistically killing small animals* before any sort of a life-threatening snake curse was involved. Again, it’s super hard not to think that the author was totally aware of all this, and was planning her arc out from the start. I mean, the big thing with each arc, especially in Bake, tends to be about Araragi being mistaken about the order of events involved in a case, and/or not letting himself notice something about the girl in question that should be obvious to anyone else. But in each arc he’s usually told about the things he’s about about, and he figures out the truth in the end. So it’s super obvious how in this arc that point just . . . never quite connects. Araragi gets his moment of pointing out that the curse came after the snake-killing, but nobody steps in to push him to consider what that actually MEANS. And honestly I know that I give him a lot of slack for not really trying to get deeper into her problems, but at the same time it feels like you should really look into getting someone actual, non-supernatural help when they start killing animals to cope with their emotions. JUST SAYING.

-And yeah here’s a big reason why I find Araragi’s role in this to be kinda tragically realistic and understandable. He DOES, in his own way, start to consider Nadeko’s own emotional pain and her unhealthy way of repressing her emotions, and he DOES tell her that she doesn’t need to do that, and that she can open up to him if she wants. I think he handles the situation much better than a lot of people might. So I can’t really blame him much. Really, the major issue is just that even after hearing all this, Nadeko still doesn’t really follow his advice. Which is realistic and understandable and tragic in it’s own way. She clearly appreciates his kindness and dependability, but it doesn’t change the fact that she probably barely even knows how to comprehend and vocalize her feelings, and it doesn’t change the fact that she presumably doesn’t want to do anything more to violate her cute-girl image. She probably doesn’t want Araragi hating her, or being grossed out by her, or anything. Which just reminds me how much it also hurt me when she literally started crying when Araragi admitted that he felt kinda dirty seeing her mostly naked body. Like damn. I didn’t really talk about it at the time, but it’s honestly kinda just sad to watch how even when she was at her most exposed and vulnerable, even when she was literally begging Araragi to save her from her pain and self-loathing and how much her body feels constricted and stifling, his and Kanbaru’s reaction was mostly just to talk about Nadeko’s bloomer shorts and whatnot. Again, not really casting any blame here, but . . . damn. I don’t really know if I would have reacted any differently if I was in her shoes.

-On a different topic, I love the shot of the winding path and the river looking like two intersecting black and white snakes when seem from above. It’s a really neat image.

-’I don’t really remember that much from my childhood. My memory’s not that great’. I’m just gonna sit here and keep laughing at this whenever it gets bought up in the story. This is seriously the root of like 50% of his problems in life. It’s hilarious.

-But on a more serious note, we get yet another moment where he makes a vague yet sincere attempt at learning more about her and understanding her situation more accurately, but she doesn’t really tell him the whole truth [since he doesn’t really remember her and it’d just make things awkward if she discussed it openly] and so he obviously doesn’t really have a chance to understand the true overall situation. He clearly just ends up seeing it as something he can forget about and not dig too deeply into because ‘it doesn’t concern him’, but HOO BOY is that so not the case. It’s seriously painful how accurate and relatable it is for Nadeko to be hiding the exact truth from him, though, even if it’s unhealthy. It’s obviously worth pointing out that, just like Araragi, she also isn’t exactly aware how bad things will get for her and how much her own lack of action and communication will mess with her. And so she just continues to be evasive and quiet, while letting herself be happy that Araragi is at least being nice to her, and talking to her, and trying to understand her.

-I can just imagine Nadeko as a little girl, being pretty much alone, and envying the idea of having an older brother. Aww :C Especially when, as we learn way later in Koi, she’s pretty emotionally distant with her parents as well, and they also just mostly see her as being their cute daughter [I’m getting WAY ahead of myself and will discuss this more when we get to Koi itself, but I still vividly remember the moment of Kaiki trying to ask Nadeko’s parents to actually describe her as a person and they just . . . can’t.]

-Along the lines of what I said about the scene at the end of part one, it’s seriously uncomfortable and awkward how Nadeko gets put in a school swimsuit for this whole scene. Seeing her severe self-esteem issues and whatnot be framed through a lens of sexualization is . . . kinda disturbing. Even the fact that, even though she’s clearly not entirely comfortable with the entire situation, she still wants Araragi to look at her is kinda sad.

-Why you gotta twist the knife in my heart with all these flashbacks, anime? :C My heart just hurts so much for Nadeko on so many levels. I can perfectly understand how she so quickly and obsessively developed these feelings of romantic love and a broader desire to be seen and understood and cared for. [[Also this is a really nice instrumental remix of Renai Circulation]]

-Part of me wonders what’s going on in Nadeko’s head while she’s sitting there, praying to have her pain taken away. Part of me thinks it might just make me feel even worse if I knew.

-Oh yeah, right, this ends with them just . . . throwing the snake away and being like ‘eeeeh it’s not our issue anymore’, doesn’t it? And then lo and behold, the snake goes back to it’s sender who then gets manipulated by Ougi into attacking Kaiki. WELP. Like seriously so much of this arc is just ‘well this surely won’t come back to bite us, right???’ it’s hilarious. In a sad way. Also, I forget, but wasn’t the person who attacked Kaiki a boy, implying that the sender of the curse was the guy who confessed to Nadeko and not her friend? I can’t remember, and I forget if it’s ever even discussed. I guess it doesn’t matter that much.

-And then literally thirty seconds after I resume watching the episode, Araragi literally spells out that the guy did indeed send at least one of the snakes. Welp. I sure feel awkward now, lol. I guess I was kinda right, though, even though I forgot that BOTH of the other people sent her curses.

-Yeah this entire scene is just so goddamn uncomfortable to watch. Urgh. Seeing her writhing in pain like that is just disturbing.

-It’s still kinda surprising to me how this series manages to be more graphically violent and bloody than a good amount of anime out there. You really wouldn’t expect it. I always feel so bad for Araragi in these moments where he just gets the ever-loving shit beaten out of him.

-Oh yeah I forgot that Araragi is totally aware that it’s a really bad idea to let the snake go but he has to do it or else it’ll kill him. Huh. I guess it’s yet another thing where Araragi isn’t necessarily stupid about everything going on and the consequences of certain things, but they still turn out in such a dramatically ironic and tragic way. Welp. Though I do also like how it furthers the recurring deal with how the answer is pretty much never for Araragi to just physically beat down or tear away an oddity and solve the problem that way.

-Also, mad props for my girl Kanbaru for stepping in to stop him from getting murdered. He seriously needs people like her around or else his hero complex would have gotten him killed a thousand times over.

-It really is pretty messed up that they’re forced to perpetuate this cycle of curses and pain in order to save themselves and Nadeko. But it’s perfectly fitting for the pretty damn tragic nature of this arc and how the consequences of it play out for all involved.

-So I guess we’re meant to think that the snake sent by the other girl got successfully exorcised, and it was just the snake from the guy that was still around?

-Oh boy, and here we get into Araragi’s own issues with self-loathing. It really is sad seeing him feel undeserving of Nadeko’s gratitude because of how he had basically tried to protect the dude that placed a curse on her, and had almost died in the process. And of course it gets into his issues with being not fully human and how that messes with his self-image/worth. But at the same time I also get why Nadeko is sincerely grateful to him for saving her.

-Of course, this also leads to a really awkward yet understandable scenario where the story just . . . ends here, with Araragi clearly too defeated and depressed to even think about whether or not this actually fixed Nadeko’s root problems. Again, he’s pretty much always entirely understandable and realistic with how he never quite figures out her issues in time or succeeds in getting her to completely open up to him. He doesn’t really have the time or energy to think that he might have stopped short of the truth, so to say. And Nadeko is obviously unwilling to talk about her deeper issues, and wants to just express her genuine gratitude to him for having ‘saved her’, even if it’s pretty much only a temporary measure, as we get oh so brutally shown down the track.

-So that’s it for this arc. Now onto Tsubasa Cat. No idea how long it’ll take me to get around to it at this rate. I’m probably going to split it into two posts, focusing on parts one and two, and then three, four, and five. I’m not about to try and attempt five entire episodes at once, with this sort of set-up.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:

Inaction and miscommunication are pretty horrible, toxic things, but they’re still fundamental parts of human nature that will probably never go away. People will always have things about themselves that they don’t want to share. They’ll always have a constricting pain that’s too much to put into words. A person’s body can become something that they hate, even if it’s only so they can have something to direct their inexpressible, vague frustration and agitation and pain at. Especially when communicating and connecting with others on a deep level can be so painful. When it can lead you to just hurting them and burdening them with your feelings. When it can lead to them not properly understanding you [even if it’s partially because you don’t let yourself be properly understood]. It can be so much easier to wrap yourself in comfortable, romanticized, unchanging silence, even though a life without words is the same as dying. I’ll get more into the topic of Nadeko’s self-image and the concept of ‘being a cute girl’ later on when it becomes a bit more relevant.

This arc is an interesting one, especially in hindsight. But even the first time around, it’s still surprisingly dark and disturbing and uncomfortable to watch in a way that you’d never quite expect from how incredibly fluffy and upbeat of an OP it has [at least on the surface]. I’ve been on the outskirts of the fandom for a few years now, and it’s pretty obvious that this is among people’s most commonly disliked arcs, along with ones like Neko:Kuro and Tsuki. Though I’ve also seen people have issues with some of the pacing/exposition elements of Oni and the second half of Owari S1. But back onto this arc, I totally get why a lot of people dislike this arc. Especially when viewed on it’s own. Considering that it’s mostly interesting to examine as the first section of the overall Nadeko story arc. And obviously it’s not exactly clear to the viewer that there even IS an actual wider story arc for her until we get to about a third of the way into SS. It also doesn’t help that the TV version of this arc was apparently godawful, but I can’t really talk about that since I’ve only ever watched the BD version.

Personally I find this arc to be a fascinating start for Nadeko’s character, even if I probably didn’t like it much the first time around. But in a sense, I like it in hindsight for the same reasons I disliked it at first. Like how it seems to subtly but noticeably go against the structure of the show by having Nadeko’s issues not get truly solved. Especially if we look at it in terms of Nadeko’s perspective of events and where she’s at by the time things end. I imagine I probably also felt that the whole idea of Nadeko killing snakes felt sorta pointless, and that nobody in the story really cared about it. But that’s what makes it so tragic, I guess. It’s another way in which it goes against the grain of how the past arcs worked in a way that feels really subtly dissonant. Even when the characters acknowledge that Nadeko was doing these fucked up, violent things BEFORE she even had a curse placed on her, they don’t really stop to think ‘what exactly would lead to someone doing that?’ or ‘will those sorts of feelings and thoughts truly go away if we just get rid of this curse?’. You can’t really blame Araragi or Kanbaru for not properly understanding, for not realizing how much is going on in Nadeko’s head, and how much is festering in there and waiting to burst out in the most unhealthy way possible. She only lets people see a certain, relatively superficial side of her. And so this arc ends with the true issue not even being solved, and with only a temporary bandage put over it. And even then, the curse plaguing Nadeko just ends up stuck on it’s sender, so even that’s barely solved or gotten rid of. And obviously we end specifically on the note of Araragi being depressed and unable to accept any praise for what genuine good he did, and Nadeko being genuinely grateful for what he did, while not even fully understanding for herself what’s in store.

So basically this arc doesn’t resolve anything, it simply introduces Nadeko and her problems, and sets the stage for how these issues become so much more serious and lethal later on. And in that sense it’s pretty fascinating, even if it’s divisive.

Nadeko is one of my favourite characters in the show and I’m really happy to have a chance to talk about her. Even if I worry that I might end up repeating myself a lot when the story gets back to her, since I covered so much here already.