Certifiedlesbianvampire - You're A Styling Star!

drawing @m4squ3raid ‘s post where he said reki would teach matakara how to skateboard!!

Today's episode dude....

Emu and nene from my fantasy kingdom au (i haven’t thought of a name for it yet .)

Here’s the super ultra cool lore in screenshotted twitter thread format:

first part

second part

third part

fourth part

(SORRY FOR THE WAY ITS WRITTEN 😭 I was yelling at a friend so i didn’t bother checking for spelling errors and all that stuff….)

ALSO i’m doing designs for tsukasa and rui as well i’ll have them ready in um…. sometime (salutes)

COOK, LOVE, AND HOME

Someone has already introduced the topic, but I want to delve deeper and give my vision on the matter.

This is the kind of thing that, when you think about it, is so obvious that you can't help but feel a little silly for not noticing it sooner.

When we talk about cooking, the doors are opened for many interpretations, but we will not go to something as complicated as… analyzing the dishes that appear next to the names of the episodes. It's something much simpler.

Cooking is something that we can associate with independence and maturity. I think this is easily represented by Arajin's mother, who, although she can be somewhat eccentric at times, let's not forget that she is also the owner of her own restaurant, in addition to having to take care of her son practically alone (as far as we know) both being responsibilities that are not exactly easy to carry. We even have Arajin himself, who despite demonstrating questionable behavior throughout the story, we know that he helps his mother, again, a responsibility about which he usually doesn't complain, being one of the few things that probably helped him with his trauma and develop a skill necessary for adult life, or in his particular case, a business that he will most likely inherit.

We can talk about the scene in which Arajin and Matakara cook together, these are already my conjectures, but perhaps it is a way to contrast how each one has tried to cope with their lives, and it's even more revealing if we remember that they were making gyozas ( They are stuffed/external part, internal part), showing us that Arajin (despite what one might think) has had more tools at his disposal (which his mother also provided him) to move forward than Matakara, who has managed to do so, as we can see, with great difficulty.

Akutaro is another one we see cooking in episode 7, but since it's something he's doing more out of obligation (and possibly threat) perhaps it's more to emphasize that HE NEEDS INDEPENDENCE (he depends on Ichiya) and learning to manage with his own resources to mature.

Now let's talk about what really matters, cooking and love. Cooking has an important relationship with love, being very commonly represented as one of the most sincere gestures of affection, both for those who cook and those who eat. Let's remember when Marito is hospitalized and Mahoro visits him, the food that she prepares for him is well… we know… peculiar, but we see that despite this, even if it's not in front of his sister, Marito makes the effort to eat what she prepared for him, making us understand that despite seeming distant, he appreciates her.

On the other hand we see it in Arajin's mother and the effort she puts into preparing his lunches for school.

We also notice it with Matakara while he prepares the party to welcome his brother, where he offers to help Arajin to make the food. Let's remember that the only person with whom we have seen Matakara cook apart from Arajin is his brother, therefore, the two people for whom he feels the most affection. That's why he wants Mitsukini to eat something that he prepared with his own hands.

But here there is something else. We talk about cooking as a sign of maturity and affection for those we love, but there is something else, and you should already imagine what I mean. Cooking as a representation of a home and its warmth. We already see it with all of the above, especially Arajin, who if there is something he doesn't lack is his mother's love and support . Personally, this makes Matakara's situation even sadder, because if we are good observers, we have NEVER seen Matakara eating or cooking with his "relatives." Basically yelling at us that he doesn't feel part of them, which is confirmed when he simply leaves after what happens with his brother.

In contrast, Arajin's house is a place where we know that beyond being also a restaurant, it's a place where cooking is done with love, therefore,it's not just a house, it's a home.

And now that we know about his past, it's just heartbreaking. Deep down, Matakara not only wants strength, he wants someone who won't abandon him, he wants a home and feel its warmth, maybe that's why we see him so happy making gyoza with Arajin, because it had been a long time since he could experience it. In the end, for Matakara, any place where he can be with a person he loves is his home.

Guess I'll just check in, have a redesign I made for Mahoro

she was the start of my downfall, my trojan horse you could say

now I got invested in making an AU/rewrite to suit my tastes mostly because there is a lot of potential but a lot of things fall flat, also some orientalist elements are uuuuuh... so I'm just doing my thing now ig

waiter! waiter! more yuri please!

Do you want to know what’s so truly sickening in this scene? The moment where Matakara removed the jacket + armband and then dumped it into the sea water you can tell by Kenichiro’s expression (even if it remained the same as it is) that he was disappointed in himself, that he failed to live up to Mitsukuni’s promise to him to look after Matakara.

Honestly, even if Ken was pretty forgettable (no thanks to certain story directions btw) as a character, I definitely feel sorry for him.

The most painful part? That jacket belonged to Mitsukuni. So to see Matakara throwing away the last reminder of his brother, the only family that he had left and doing it in front of his brother’s most trusted comrade and leader who did whatever he can to keep Matakara safe is just truly saddening.

Spoilers for Bucchigiri?! Ep 9

Some thoughts about the nature of the majins and their wishes:

In regards to the plot, I'm pretty sure the "wishes" are less about having them granted and more for the majins to know how to connect with their hosts emotionally so they can fully possess them. Senya has the decency to at least ask Arajin in order to establish some pretext of understanding (even though he can't really relate to Arajin's specific wish). On the other hand, Ichiya imposes his own wish/emotions on Matakara, taking advantage of the boy's personal fears and current vulnerability.

Thematically, I can see these wishes being reflections of Arajin and Matakara's insecurities. Arajin's wish is clearly known (and I've talked a little about it's emptiness before). Matakara's is a bit harder to pin down. He's always wanted to be a Honki person, but why? Ichiya twists it into being about raw strength, but we know Matakara also valued the purity aspect his brother told him about. Perhaps he believed that part of the path would protect him from his darker emotional tendencies. This unfortunately did not work out for him, but the friends he made at Minato Kai become something of a support group. They were able to be there for him when he got overwhelmed. Matakara knows he can't wish his fears away, and has somewhat learned to cope with that, but his current mental instability is allowing Ichiya to manipulate him.

Calling it right now, Jasmine is an actual cat and that’s the funny twist in the final episode