#watanuki is so fucking funny

[floorpancakes]

speaking of watanuki one of my favourite pages of xxxholic is watanuki seeing doumeki in his cool swanky check pattern yukata and immediately thinking 'he is SOOOOOOO not cute' because ??;;?:!:?:!:!?????????? like girl we know you work on opposite day logic you are not subtle in the slightest

[nonbinary-watanuki]

watanuki is so funny. i hate your fucking guts and i am going to remind you every time i see you. id die for you. i hate how you ask me to make you food all the time. anyways heres a bento i made with all the food you requested. stop spending time with me. ill go places with you if you ask.

what is WRONG with him

[rosencrantzsguildenstern]

For the character bingo: Prince Hal/Henry V of Shakespeare's plays (If you know him), Natsume from Natsume's Book of Friends, Gaku and Yamato from IDOLiSH7, and Miri from Buddy Daddies

this is great because i only know three out of five of them and one of the characters i do know is 4 years old. i have not actually seen natsume's book of friends. shall answer you nonetheless

natsume:

i only reblog natsume's book of friends posts because of @joelletwo, (who i hope will enjoy this bingo); i think he's cute, i did watch a few episodes of natsuyuu, he's like kimihiro watanuki (one of my characters of all time) if he was less fucked up but also kept trying to get a psychosis diagnosis as a child, which means i like him, and i also like when he's mean to his cat

gaku:

gaku is like . i don't think there's a universe where he's my favorite idolish7 character but i do love him a lot. he's cute and funny and likable and a GOOD MAN w an interesting character backstory and motivations. i also like how he looks. the half check over 'didn't get bullied enough' is just because i think it's funny when he gets bullied. 'if anything happens to them i will cry'.... honestly, gaku being sad hits different. hes willing 2 express emotions and whenever i see him struggle, in canon or in fics, im like... no :"( . it hits harder than a lot of other i7 characters. blorbo by proxy is bc of @nitunio who loves gaku very much

yamato:

i actually really really like yamato's design. the weird smiley face in bastard is that honestly i DON'T think he's a bad person at ALL, but i like when fics give him bitch energy because i think it's funny. he is a petty bitch and he should be appreciated for that. also now im having second thoughts on 'don't get bullied enough' because yuki bullies him so much already but you know what. he can take more. like gaku it's very funny. (i also think pythag should bully him). anyway gah. hes a fun guy. another chara that i don't think would make it into a favorite characters list but like. ill still rotate him

miri:

miri is like. out of all the things i love in buddy daddies her character's probably the thing done least well? she's got all of this interesting backstory, but we never really get serious miri character exploration, and she is pretty annoying; which like, is realistic, and it didn't bother me much on a rewatch, but like. they could have done way more with her. i feel like her family issues should have affected her more and she could have been a bit sharper and aware of things going on around her, at least as a slow realization written with some of the innocence of childhood. (i've seen that done pretty well in fics!)

i do like to think about grown up miri's story, though. she makes a very cute teenager in the ending. and i do like her <3 id kiss her on the forehead and give her a piggyback ride any day.

hal:

i do like him though

[majorbaby]

Friend, "ask me about ot3s I'll never go away"? I'm asking about ot3s 👀

hi! lol we would literally be here all day if i listed every single ot3 of mine and i'm sure there's plenty that wouldn't interest you if they're from fandoms you don't follow, but i'm gonna speak generally with a few examples: ot3s are great because I'm a multishipper and I love threesomes (and the occasional foursome/moresome) lol what can I say. Unless something is a squick for me I can usually find some way to make it square in my head. And I like gay stuff, so an MF is usually further enhanced for me by making it MFF or MMF (although i also like MMM and FFF). Sometimes there's also the appeal of just... weird or inconvenient sex. It's funny, it's experimental, where else can you get this kind of content. i love the vibe between Inu/Kag/Miroku in the early days of Inuyasha before Sango is introduced. i like Miro/Sango too but like, those three clowns might've hooked up pre-Sango days. and i often genuinely can't choose between one ship and another, or i don't want to write out a ship so that i can include another one. i like Ed/Ling from fma but i also love Winry and it's not out of this world to me that she'd be down for a threesome lol. (Actually the problem would be Ed... but I think he could be convinced.) For the other het ships i listed... Bat/Wonder Woman... like why not complete the trifecta and have SuperWonderBat? They are iconic for a reason and they're fun together. Actually this just works really well in general for American comics that have been so long-running each character has a multitude of possible ships, and probably some homoerotic tension with someone at some point? Other times i'm literally not interested unless it's an ot3, like something is missing without it? Tbh this tends to happen with underdeveloped het ships, when there's a rival/bff/villain character right there with whom the hero has plenty of development, but the creator also hasn't totally neglected the canon love interest (usually a female character who has been somewhat sidelined lol). That's your Sasu/Naru/Saku (Naruto), Inu/Kag/Koga (they teased Kag/Koga and I was kinda into it, but I need Inuyasha to also be there for me to get on board) and most of the canonical ships from the Final Fantasy canon. In general, if I'm supposed to be into a couple for ~aesthetic reasons~ or there is a ton of ship tease but no canonical confirmation, as with many rpgs of the 90s and 2000s, then I'm piling on all the aesthetics that appealed to me. If I'm feeling in the mood for something a bit more fucked up, fraught and ultimately doomed threesome is great: Link/Zelda/Ganondorf and Link/Midna/Zelda (Legend of Zelda), Anakin/Obi-Wan/Padme (Star Wars), Jean/Scott/Logan (X-Men) and Shinji/Kaworu/Asuka... even throw Rei in there, whatever (NGE). Finally there are ships for whom it just Makes Sense. Finn/Rey/Poe (Star Wars), Haruka/Michiru/Setsuna (Sailor Moon), Watanuki/Doumeki/Himawari (xxxHolic) just to name a few. Or ships featuring two people who are super horny and flirty in general that I can easily see adding a third (or fourth or many), which describes almost all the horny situations I'm submitting my main fandom (MASH) darlings to inside my brain and sometimes on paper. ftr there are ships for whom I think it truly doesn't work and if it's me saying that then trust me, I've tried. there's a good amount of ships I enjoy without it too, but i think i'm probably in the minority in that whenever i get into a fandom i'm holding three or more swatches up at time trying to figure out what can work.

[enderwalking]

I've been laughing about how all of this must be incomprehensible to everyone else seeing it because all the analysis is buried in us going a bit feral over a convoluted manga that ended back in 2009 (but also, everyone should go read Tsubasa reservoir chronicles. Clamps ability to set up an emotionally devastating reveal by laying the foundation almost solely in comedy is really cool. By which i mean certain reveals still haunt me ten years after i first read them)

Sometimes I think about an actual trc au fic and I'm like. For legibility to readers who don't know trc (even to those who do tbh) and to avoid an early tip off, it would be best to just nameswap cphil and cwil (resulting in cphil being called. Phil.) But. The idea of calling cphil 'wil' and then very clearly describing cphil, no explanation, in a fic is so fucking funny to me for no good reason

You know what really fucks me up about the whole "Sakuras memories getting sacrificed to save her life" thing is that, kurofai and syaosaku are very much paralleled in this "one person sacrifices to save the others life, fundamentally altering something about the person being saved in the process" (Sakuras memories, fai becoming a vampire) and actually there's also a discussion to be had about how both of these situations cause a level of dependence on the person doing the wishing as well that i hadnt previously considered but i am now oh my god? but mostly I think about how, at the end of it all, fai at least is able to get mad about it. He has the full context of what he's gained and lost, he can be pissed about it and he can make that kuroganes problem (i genuinely cant remember the name of the world after acid tokyo because i just call it the divorce arc)

Sakura? The nature of the sacrifice means she can never properly comprehend what was given up. She isn't even given the ability to be mad about what's been taken from her, because the rules of the sacrifice mean she can't even realize what precisely was taken from her! She gets close to the thought that maybe she knew syaoran before, even vaguely, and her body immediately brainfogs and then emergency reboots. It's such a specific kind of horrifying.

Theres something neat about ctubbo and cranboo both mapping so well onto different elements of Sakura. Ctubbo with the questions of agency and self sacrifice, and cranboo with the question of, how much are you still you, with your memories gone? And the answer seeming to be: still you, but the context with which you view the world changes. And there are times when that matters, and times when it doesn't

Oh no I thought about the beginning, more lighthearted worlds and got blindsided by c!Phil and c!ranboo running a cafe together in oto,, promiseduo my promiseduo,,,,

And u know what, I think it would be fun to get to explore ctechno and ctubbo in a world where they don't have all that hurt built up between them, so I'm now on the ctubbo syaoran (but who the hell is watanuki in this set up)

EVERYONE READ TSUBASA RESERVOIR CHRONICLES NEOOWWWOWWWW and god god you're completely right about the dependency aspect of those relationships and like. yeah. Yeah.

omg cpromise running a lil cafe......cfireworks mentorship arc would actually be so sweet too :(((( but the peerpressures of it all AUGH IT'S TOO HARD TO DECIDE and the problem with watanuki is i was just thinking is that HE IS ALSO VERY CRANBOOCORE this is bc cranboo is the specialest guy ever and everything is about him forever obviously!!! ok but genuinely i feel like i can't even begin to approach watanuki in this context because i can't even really decide where i want to put cranboo, also watanuki opens up the whole xxxholic side of things as well which is an entirely different beast and. yeah. god.

[trashexplorer]

BLCD Review: STAR★NYAKS

Title: Takane no Hana wa, Chirasaretai (高嶺の花は、散らされたい)

Author/Artist: Sakyo Aya

Release Date: 2021/02/26

Cast: 

Tadokoro Hinata x Terashima Takuma

Ishiya Haruki

Tada Keita

Watai Kanato

Fushimi Haruka

Watanuki Kaho

Shimano Hana

Nanase Ayaka

Miyake Marie

Nagatsuma Juri

Synopsis: Yukishita Hana, the kind Alpha working at Starnyaks Coffee. Renjaku, the arrogant Alpha who is a regular at said cafe, whose flower studio is located nearby.

At least that’s what the clients perceive, but Yukishita is actually an Omega with a crush on Renjaku. He couldn’t hide his gender anymore when his first heat came unexpectedly…at age 26!

Review Proper

IT’S 2003, FOLKS!!!

Can I just stress that “nyak” means something similar to “ew” in the Filipino language? It’s just so funny to me. They omitted the k in the BLCD, but I will never let it go. It’s STAR★NYAKS to me until the day I die, Sakyo Aya. Also, idk if my memory serves me right, but this, surprisingly, is the healthiest Sakyo Aya pair to date? They’re not exactly that dumb for each other, and I loved how Hana was only in it for the underwear the first few chaps, while Renjaku-san wasn’t overly possessive, unlike most of the Kuroneko Kareshi tops. Hana also wasn’t an annoying tsundere! Hallelujah! Nakamura Shungiku character development when? Renjaku-san turning domestic was such a shocker to me too! The very first time I’ve ever wanted a Sakyo Aya top since Ei. 

Anyway, enough about the plot. This review’s highlight is, of course, the VAs ‘cause this was undoubtedly ROBBED in last year’s awards.

I will never get tired of saying this, but

MY RINTAROU-KUN IS BACCCCKKKKK!!!

I wasn’t too keen at first, as his voice was a little too high for Hana, but he quickly grew on me. You really gotta give it to Shinshokan when it comes to casting. 👏👏👏 Hearing Takuma in a Sakyo Aya was just such a blast to the past, man. I couldn’t ask for more. If y’all wanna hear what old school pron sounds like in a modern setting, look no further. I’m sorry, SatoTaku and Sonna ni Iu, but this is Takuma’s best performance of 2021, and it’s with none other than rookie TADOKORO HINATA!

YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! IT’S BEEN NINE YEARS SINCE WE’VE EVER HAD SOMEONE OF THIS RANGE DEBUT AS A BL SEIYUU!!! The last was Hamano Daiki in 2014, and he’s not even that active outside Yarichin nowadays. 😩 And, I know that I have a bad habit of looking for a rookie’s soundalike senpai, BUT TADOKORO DOESN’T HAVE ANY!!! HE A RARE BREED! A GIFT FROM THE GODS!!! He’s like a deeper TsudaKen with a clear diction like OnoYuu with a side of Suwabe suave~ YA KNOW WHAT I MEAN??? But that’s just diction and range! HE REALLY DOESN’T SOUND LIKE ANYONE I’VE EVER HEARD BEFORE!!! AAAAAAAAAAAA

JUST LISTEN TO THE TRAILER:

I’m just so proud. I’ve been supporting him since his first official supporting role in Memento Scarlet and have always expressed my wish to see him in a lead role in every review since and here we are now. 

And how was his performance in his debut role, you might ask? Fucking perfect ✨ It can’t get any better than that. He really saw that wig and snatched it! Listen, Takuma’s a Gen 2 veteran who has his own rhythm that can swallow you whole if you’re not too careful. Nakajiki fell victim to that back in Hidoku Shinaide, and he was a top there, so it was going to be harder on Tadokoro here ‘cause bottoming was Takuma’s forte! He not only stood his ground, but he owned that Takuma ass so well. 😭 Granted, Tadokoro has some experience in the anime industry, but he’s honestly done better than the recent Takeuchi Ryouta, Matsuda Kenichirou, and Hamada Kenji comebacks when they’re supposed to be more experienced. UGH. SO MUCH POTENTIAL WITH THIS ONE. I DON’T GET WHY HE DIDN’T GET AN AWARD!!! HE WAS ROBBED ISTG!!! He doesn’t have anything lined up for 2022 yet, but I’m gonna eye his profile like a hawk and have a fund ready just for him. He’d do great in a Haji! If they only adapted their works

We have stellar plot execution, AMAZING VOICE WORK AND CHEMISTRY, and overall faithful following of the manga. I read PCB’s scans before this was licensed by SuBLime, and I’m not sure if they used the magazine or tanko raws, but there was a bit of a jumble with the sequencing of the events in the BLCD. I’m leaning towards the former, though, so I highly suggest getting a copy of the SuBLime version if you plan to have a read-along. If you’re a fan of this series, I implore you to listen to this. It’s one of the best adaptations of 2021. Don’t listen to chil-chil. AND TO EVERY TADOKORO, VETERAN, AND WHALE TRASH OUT THERE, GET THIS. GET THIS!!! 

[peacefulrestvalley]

I can't take that scene in the Rou OAV when Doumeki enters the room and Watanuki's all sprawled out with disheveled, half open clothing acting like he just woke up like that. It's so fucking funny because we know he was actually in bed with different clothes in the scene prior to that and only woke up because he knew Doumeki was coming.

[katzkinder]

Sakuya Watanuki Headcanons <3

Happy birthday Sakuson!

The first time Sakuya and Tooru met, it was on the front step of Tooru’s apartment while Sakuya was trying to pick the lock on the door while Mahiru watched because he’d misplaced his key. Sakuya wanted to scream because that was not the impression he’d wanted to make on his best friend’s guardian.

Another of the incidents involving Uncle Tooru’s and Sakuya’s ongoing relationship of one-sided fear on Sakuya’s part involves Tooru walking in on his nephew and his dumbass friends trying to pierce Sakuya and Ryuusei’s ears in his living room of all places with a home kit. The day this boy finally learns Tooru is a C3 top dog is the day his soul leaves his body.

At some point he gets a tongue piercing, and his favorite is a little barbel that says “fuck you”

Somebody says something that annoys him and he just. Sticks his tongue out.

“Nice. Real mature.”

He’s naturally clingy in his sleep. Normally this isn’t a problem as he usually just ends up hugging a pillow, but if it’s something like a school trip where he’s in close proximity to a classmate, he might wake up spooning them and prays nobody saw.

If nothing is available for him to snuggle, he tends to curl up into a tight ball to protect his stomach, arms tucked close and hands positioned in front of his face to block anything aiming for it. It’s a habit he’s mostly lost since going to live with Tsubaki and the others.

Speaking of which, when Tsubaki first brought him home, he was absolutely adorable. Awkwardly knocking on Tsubaki’s door in the middle of the night because he couldn’t sleep and hesitantly asking if he minds kind of thing. No one really... Minds his awful personality? Like they’ll poke the bear about it, but truthfully, it makes them glad. At first, Sakuya was so... Quiet. Meek. Skittish. That he mouths off at them, gets loud and is open about how embarrassing he finds them all... It’s proof of how far he’s come.

Despite his punk appearance, he has a bit of a sweet tooth. Once he and Koyuki went to the school store together to buy something for lunch. The vendor assumed that the savory Yakisoba bread was for Sakuya and the sweet pudding bread was for Koyuki and tried to hand the respective items over to the buyer. They took the bags then immediately traded them, thanked her, and went on their way—

He likes to free run! It’s kind of his way of sticking it to his parents. He likes the feeling of weightlessness, and revels in the fact that even if he falls, he’s able to catch himself.

Since so many of the people in Sakuya's home speak something other than Japanese as their first language, naturally he's picked up a few things here and there. Belkia specifically goes out of his way to teach him various swears and insults in Romanian.

When Sakuya was little, his sister would let him play with her hair, and she kept it long even though it was a pain in the neck to deal with because he liked it so much. That hair of hers was the last thing he saw of her before she died-- Even as the years pass and his memory becomes hazier, the one thing that never gets any fainter, though, that stays as crisp and sharp in his memory as the last day he heard it...

"Sakuya... Big sis loves you. You know that, right?"

Watanuki sis usually walked home with Sakuya everyday from school, but during flower viewing season, they'd take a detour to walk along a path that had cherry blossom trees blooming all along it. Sometimes, if she had enough spare change on her, Watanuki sis would buy a skewer of sanshoku dango for them to share. It was the closest they ever got to a real flower viewing party while she was still alive.

Now, in present time, whenever the melancholies go out to have one during spring, Sakuya will ask for a cup of Amazake (sweet sake with very little alcohol content). He doesn't drink it himself... He sets it aside for his sister.

Jumping off of that... Sakuya’s father was an alcoholic as well as addicted to gambling, so he tries to stay away from both of those things as much as he can. He doesn’t care if other people do them, just don’t try and pressure him into it.

To finish off with something funny, sports festival day comes around and he wants to die. The whole group is there. They made a banner. And boxed lunches. They have noisemakers. And headbands.

"Hey man is that your family??"

"Nope, never seen those people before in my life."

"... They have a poster with your face on it."

"THEY HAVE A WHAT?!"

[the-musical-cc]

 The Anotherholic novel has quite some tidbits of randomness that I sadly haven’t seen anyone commenting so here I go (And keep in mind I don’t know how much you can rely on this one as it was written by someone other than CLAMP? But it seems they were involved.) :

Yuuko mentions ‘English gentlemen are the most honorable ones out there, they’d never be up to anything suspicious’ which is funny considering the one British guy she’s shown to know is precisely the opposite.

She’s also apparently really good at breaking codes- not magically, either. There is also something to how she’s apparently a really fast texter but in ‘Rou’ Watanuki says pressing the keys gets on his nerves, like- it’s funny the senior of them is better with tech than the junior.

She’s CONSTANTLY MAKING PUNS (They’re untranslatable most of the time but still.) much to Watanuki’s chagrin. You don’t understand, Yuuko making silly puns that make Watanuki want to murder is one of my favorite headcanons.

Watanuki can sense when people are having rude thoughts about him. It’s for comedic effect, I think but there ARE some hints to his sealed powers being still present in aspects where they’re there to warn him of things that could be bad for him, so it may be part of that (Which makes the whole thing with Himawari so much more WORSE.) 

Going back to the rude thoughts- he usually pins it on either Yuuko or Doumeki.

Apparently, at one point Watanuki lost all of what he’d fared in Yuuko’s shop thanks to his big mouth- he made a gamble that if shiritori ever saved his life, he’d happily give away what he’d earned thus far.

Yuuko keeps calling him ‘My Watanuki’. (Not sure if it’s a different translation from the ‘Our Watanuki’ used in the manga to imply his ‘Belonging’ to the shop, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t fucking melt.)

She also calls him ‘My adorable Watanuki’ but I’m not sure how serious she’s being there.

The single best exchange between them, hands down: ‘Now you’re starting to scare me.’ ‘I exist to scare you’.

There’s this joke I’m not sure I understand where she says two times in a row that she ‘Won’t give him a raise’, but the second time ‘Raise’ is in italics and my perv ass mind immediately went to the gutter. Looking up the word for ‘Raise’ and whether it had alternate meanings didn’t help much as it apparently has a ton, ranging from ‘To give someone an updo’ to ‘To bear a child’ going through ‘To fry’. In any case it seems like she’s implying something improper. Watanuki’s reaction being that he’s uncomfortable she’s making it sound ‘Real’ makes me lean towards that even more.

Yuuko owns a ten-gallon hat... and wears it indoors. To lay around on her sofa.

Apparently, the reason she smart-mouths him so much is she doesn’t want him to get a big head- which if we consider how powerful he’ll become in the future, is not entirely a bad call.

Another exchange ‘If I am forced to eat something besides flowing somen today, I may well die.’ ‘Glad to hear it.’ Kid. KID. I don’t know if the writer knew back then where this was going but oof those words are gonna haunt you.

Watanuki vowed to himself never to become like her at some point. I can’t tell if it’s more sad or funny.

The ‘Aerosol’ chapter of the novel is where the thing about his dislike of Doumeki on first sight being because the spirits were influencing his mood and keeping him away from the one thing that could help him draw them away came from. I’d seen that mentioned by fans before but wasn’t sure where it had come from. Though in terms of his character and furthermore the ‘Curse’ placed on him by Fei Wong , it made sense for Watanuki to reject someone that might save him and be attracted to someone that might kill him instead, so I accepted it.

There’s also a thing about how his beef with Doumeki is ‘He has what Watanuki wants and doesn’t have what Watanuki doesn’t want.’ but that one sounds like he’s just rationalized the visceral reaction.

‘Had he ever felt that keenly about anyone? He had good friends, and he had a family. He had a girl he liked. But were his feelings for them so powerful that he would make them into ghosts if they died? He might have eyes that could see spirits. But that did not mean they could see who was important to him.’ OK nevermind the writer KNEW.

Add ‘You think I’d be involved in anything GOOD?’ to the golden Yuuko quotes list.

Also apparently Watanuki thinks if he were to stop coming to the shop she’d starve. She does make a comment to that effect earlier on so he’s not entirely being sarcastic.

For a moment there, Watanuki thinks he’s paid enough to be able to stop working for Yuuko and just like in my wildest fanfiction dreams, he’s not happy.  He gets sad that he’s never going to see her again and that he couldn’t even get to thank her, feed her one last time and say goodbye properly and can you tell I’m dead? ‘cause I am. 

In the same instance, he finds he no longer finds Doumeki repellent and getting to know him better sounds like ‘A dandy idea’. Which I guess is because this seems to be timed BEFORE the ghost lady that made him sick and they aren’t really all that close just yet. Otherwise I think he’d try to stick to status quo a bit more.

The fact that he sees spirits bothers and terrifies Watanuki not because of the spirits themselves but because it makes him different from everyone else and he DESPERATELY wants to feel he belongs. Am I crying? Yes.

Around the end, it seems to also be the first instance where Watanuki asks Yuuko if there is any wish he wants him to grant for her. Followed by her asking jokingly (Or not?) if this is his first step in a campaign to take the shop from her?. Um. Ouch.

Also, Yuuko hints at Watanuki’s wish of losing the ability to see spirits ultimately not making him happy if it’s granted. Which we now know is probably right.

[harley-style]

IVE NOTICED SOMETHING

Y'all know how Tsubasa Li is the paradox son of sakura and syaoran, yeah? And that he was raised by them for like roughly about 7 years before going to Clow. (In this Watanuki doesn't count purely because he gave up his memories of them)

And in another post I have with headcanons about Tsubasa Li, I mentioned him taking after BOTH syaoran and Sakura. Bc he is, in fact, their son. Some of their mannerisms must have rubbed onto him.

So funny story: i was reading completeoveranalysis' liveblogs and wanted to see the future chapters he hasnt read yet. Fast forward to the nihon arc, we see tsubasa dreaming. In there he meets watanuki. This is all well and good, we know why these two dorks see each other often, we're FINE.

BUT THERE WAS ANOTHER THING I NOTICED.

THIS DAMNABLE PAGE FROM CHAPTER 168.

"Changing the future is a very hard thing to do. If I speak now, the path to the future will become instable again."

Watanuki says that it was the exact same thing sakura said, albeit rephrased.

I GUESS I WAS TOO FOCUSED ON THE FACT THAT TSUBASA SEEMED SO DAMN SHOCKED THAT WATANUKI MET SAKURA, TO NOTICE THIS DETAIL.

A detail that is very obvious, in hindsight, but went unnoticed BC clamp likes to fuck with us by layering important bits of information together and make us miss crucial points.

because basically: CLAMP WAS DEADASS POINTING OUT THAT SAKURA AND TSUBASA WERE SIMILAR ENOUGH TO HAVE UTTERED THE SAME LINE. If that ain't some serious foreshadowing i dont know what it is.

Clamp was also mean enough to reveal to us this vital piece of information in such a way that went completely OVER our head until the last minute. THEY PLANNED THIS. DEVIOUS WOMEN.

[plounce]

i was talking earlier today about how watanuki & doumeki’s eye trading is symbolic of them changing how the other sees the world/themself etc and hmmm... now im thinking about fai’s eye stuff. clamp uses a lot of eye trauma in their works: it is evocative, it has a real sense of intimate violence, and it has visual motifs that are interesting and intriguing (eyepatches, scars, eye color, etc). moreover it has a lot of symbolic weight and can mean a lot of stuff. i don’t want to talk about tokyo babylon/x1999 because *strangles clamp* but for fai...

when i talk about what went down in tokyo i often use the term “retraumatization” for fai and also kurogane. for kurogane it’s along the lines of “this is meant to deliberately mirror his backstory which helps set up his character arc”, but for fai it’s that a lot of his worldviews that he had slowly been leaving behind were suddenly, violently reinforced. being less afraid to grow close to people (to show affection, to fight for them), using magic, believing himself worthy of love - it was happening very slowly, and honestly without the whole shebang of the middle third of tsubasa he probably would never have gotten to the mental health he had at the end of the series.

but in tokyo he tries to protect his family, and it horrifically backfires. he gets power taken away from him over and over again: he cannot control syaoran’s soul staying in his body (though he knew that was futile, but the important thing is that he tried), kurogane refuses to let him die, he gets turned into a vampire, he is stopped from pursuing sakura into the wastes. it’s his (first) lowest point (first of three: the second is the end of infinity, the third is like. all of celes lol) and it’s a high plummet from the fun family times of piffle (and lecourt i guess, but he’s largely absent from lecourt until the end, because lecourt is about kurogane and syaoran)! it’s a shock to the readers and to the characters. but to fai it is a reminder that he isn’t actually allowed to have good things. that he’s cursed, that his fate is to be a walking ball of misfortune. and despite kurogane and sakura beating at his walls that NO YOU AREN’T WE LOVE YOU!!!!! in their help with saving his life, it doesn’t matter. he has spent all of his long, long life with that misery being hammered into him; his road isn’t over yet.

oh right i was talking about the eyes lol. um anyway. his vision is taken away - he is deliberately seeing less of the love his family has, he is closing himself off from them. one eye is covered up with this huge eyepatch that also covers like a third of his face! he’s visually hiding. and what’s funny here is that he’s actually hiding less than he was before: the eyepatch shows us that we know he is now. this is a sad emo bitch! look at his all black clothes!

also through infinity he gets the Sexy Slit Gold Vampire Eye to hauntingly gaze at kurogane with. he is constantly looking at kurogane with this feral, hungry look - that is also a look of deliberate hatred for being forced to live, and to live dependent on him. it’s such a contradiction!! and it’s this glaring show of “kurogane did this and he’s having to live with all the consequences.” but it’s also honest instinct. fai is being forced to admit that he needs kurogane, needs his loved ones, previosly shown in tokyo by trying to save syaoran, in lecourt by teleporting them outta there, in piffle when kurogane said This Bombshell (which is a bombshell only to fai and to like nobody else lmao)

anyway. fai is backed into a corner, and is also shown that You Can’t Have Nice Things, so he hides. he hides SO hard. and then celes happens and all his dirty laundry is dragged out of him by ashura :( and then he’s manipulated into fighting his dad :( and then he still can’t kill ashura and kurogane helps him out :) and then fwr’s bitchass curses kick in again :( and then kurogane SACRIFICES HIS WHOLE DAMN ARM!!!! HIS WHOLE ARM THAT SYMBOLIZES HIS TRAUMA!! AND HOW SUWA FELL BECAUSE FWR FORCED HIS FAMILY TO FAIL!! IT’S SO GOOD IT’S SOOOOO GOOD LIKE IT’S JUST SO GOOD

then we get to the peace of nihon... fai sacrifices the blue of his remaining eye aka his magic. for his whole life fai has been defined by the extreme power of his magic, used and abused and manipulated for it by like everybody (the valerian nobility, fwr, ashura, cloney). and then he gives up what’s left of it in a willing and careful trade for kurogane’s arm. his eyes are his magic! he has suffered so much because of them! and he gives up that source of suffering, he gives up that core of his misery (which he defined himself by - that misery, that curse), and he gives his loved ones that sweet, knowing smile and ”not anymore” ugh. THE GROWTH!

there’s also a bonus layer of fai “clearing away” something from his vision - he is seeing clearer now in his heart, his life, etc. he is seeing things as they truly are: that he has worth, that it is more than okay if he loves people & people love him, that he can change the fate laid out before him.

AND THEN... c!syaoran gives him back the eye with a bonus package of enough magic to return him to his super powerful state. crazy! i still wonder about the mixup of power-sources between fai and c!syaoran. what was that about? i guess the obvious answer is “r!syaoran fucking everything in the whole multiverse up with his reality warping” but that’s fwr’s fault.

fai gets both eyes back as the universe rights itself and most of the series’ conflicts get resolved. it’s part of c!syaoran’s heel-face turn. it’s also a demonstration of “fai has accepted himself for who he is” - instead of having full magic and refusing to use it, fai can now use his magic to the benefit of himself and his loved ones!

i just realized that a lot of fai’s physical imagery kind of has this... horseshoe thing going on? his eyes and his hair. fai starts out with both eyes, lying and miserable; he loses an eye and then the color all that shows us deeper truths of him (as i said above); he ends the series with his two normal eyes and mental health and a bf. fai starts his life with super long scraggly hellpit hair; he has it cut off when ashura rescues him from the hellpit; he goes through the first part of the series lying with short hair; he grows it out to show us the time passage into and the character change of infinity; he ends the series with that long hair, but happy and healthy. i think at the end of the day it simply shows us that fai has changed and grown and gone through a lot over the course of the series.

anyway that’s all i have to say. i’ll leave you with this vintage rob fai meme

[floorpancakes]

[caminadrummer]

@waynewaynerush tagged me to do the 9 characters u relate to meme (graciassss) and tbh i changed this about a million times and i’m still not convinced lmao. i also can’t believe that there r so many more dudes than women but ???

i’m tagging @hermosx @evilertwin @lyrasilvrtongue @jvwbreaker @s0nnycarisi @perceptivess @cam-saroyan @twistintheplot in case any of y’all wanna do it!!

[radioscientist]

Watanuki's thought process is so funny like??

People who think I'm weird and avoid me? Fine. Guy who's nice to me and literally saves my life? Fucking hate him. Worst enemy.

[kamihoshi]

@watanuki-chihiro replied to your post “It’s fucking funny to me that Yugami & Chihiro’s classmates are all...”

When I first skimmed through the raws without reading, I thought they were trying to get them together as a couple. When I finally got to the chapter summaries, I just kept thinking "???? Guys, do any of you realize what you're doing? Guys?"

It was so Yugami / Sakura Jun style though and that’s the best part.

[clamp-box]

Nihon part 2

- So yeah plot is happening, Syaoran and Watanuki meet in dreams. Syaoran learned the connection between him and watanuki from his parents. Time paradox is ready. 

- Syaoran says he isnt gonna tell Watanuki what the connection is, but he still says stuff like we are more similar than anybody else 

- Yuuko confirmed that FWR did not foresee either Sakura splitting her soul or Kurogane managing to save himself AND fai from celes. Stubborn love certainly is stronger than FWR

- The empress arrives and also approves Kurogane’s character development.

- It makes sense Kurogane didnt really have like any friends, but like wow he has been away forever and only people who want to see him are his 3 lesbian bosses. 

- Empress is like “yeah y’all are going to continue journey” and kurogane and fai seem serious and syaoran alone is like “?????????” poor kid thought he’d have to go alone i guess

- it is so funny Fuuma uses phrase “on the other hand” considering what he is bringing. Fuuma says he has been paid already and Kurogane says he wont give yuuko anything and then he immediately looks at Fai like “WHAT DID YOU DO NOW” 

- oh no Seishiro. 

“as if you had a right to talk about attitude!” Fai PLEASE let Kurogane live XD

- “You are much like your father” seishiro says to Syaoran. HE KNOWS. How does he know about this.

- Kendappa is so cool she stops syaoran vs seishiro fight like “hey dont fuck up my castle” and has Tomoyo to put them in Kekkai

- Tomoyo used to use Kekkai on misbehaving Kurogane XD That is amazing. Also Empress notes how it would be unwise for the one casting kekkai to be caught in it. Yeeeeah tell that to everybody in X

- Fai wants to talk with Tomoyo and we see how they met. It was a good scene. “Never fear, Kurogane will not die”

- In Infinity fai tried to make secret deal with Yuuko to help the others, but tomoyo did it first.

- Fai mentions stuff doesnt really make sense and Tomoyo answers it is because of FWR. It is so clever tho XD reason itself crumbling as a plot point

- Sei-chan and Syaoran manage to rip apart reality and get Sya into dream-land