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bungobble-my-balls · 7 months

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What's the deal with the Tanizaki siblings?

(Very long headcanon on what I think is actually up with the Tanizaki's, which at this point might be more of an AU than a headcanon)

So the Tanizaki's have been a point of debate in the fandom for years now, mainly on the fact that we have no idea what their deal is outside of the 'incest joke', and because of that joke and the lack of anything else to them they unfortunately get shoved to the back pretty often (mainly in Naomi's case).

That being said, it's still clear that we'll get a backstory on them at some point and that there's more to them than what they're letting on.

The questions we have on them are:

Why does Juunichiro see Naomi as a God?

Why is Juunichiro so ruthless and why does he pretend he's not?

Is Juunichiro a reliable narrator?

Are they actually siblings?

What led these two to join the agency?

Why do they stick together so much?

And most importantly

Why do they act like that? (and can they please stop)

Idk when we'll get a backstory for them, but I know people already have their theories like how Naomi is one of Juunichiro's hallucinations based on a real girl he knew that died, which were mostly sparked by certain official arts of the two.

I think based on the art I can definitely see why people have that theory, but I don't think it's true and I personally don't want it to be true because I want Naomi to be a real person.

I don't exactly have a theory on what their deal is, but I do have a headcanon. So before the Tanizaki backstory comes out in however many years, I'm putting my shots in now for me to see in the future if I got anything right or close.

My Tanizaki's headcanon

So when it comes to these two obviously most of the fandom wants to ignore the incest joke, so we usually headcanon them as just being normal siblings and take out the weird stuff.

When it comes to canon though, I think it's the other way around. Despite what they say and how they refer to eachother, I genuinely don't think they're siblings or related at all. I'm not the first to think this either, as other people have pointed out that the real Juunichiro had a story on two lovers who pretended to be cousins so they could live together. That, and how in their introduction it started with Atsushi questioning if they were related, and Naomi both insisting they were and acting weird about it enough so that the others tried to ignore them. Having Atsushi even question if they're related already made me suspicious enough that the question will be bought up again when the two start to get put in the spotlight again.

Going into more headcanon/fanfiction territory now, here's how I see their backstory:

Naomi had rich parents, and was an only child. She would get bored easily, and her parents were never the attentive type, so she'd wander off through the streets pretty often.

Juunichiro was a street rat, that Naomi saw and decided she found interesting.

Juunichiro was hostile to Naomi at first, but when she kept bugging him he made plans to get close to her only to trick her and steal from her wealthy family. Unfortunately for him, Naomi herself was both clever and also verbally ruthless. She was having none of his attitude and seemed to have fun talking back to him, which surprised him since he'd always been the most ruthless kid on the streets. She wasn't scared at all. He kept to his plan, but found himself getting meeker around Naomi and following what she said more often than the other way around.

At some point Naomi wanders too far and gets into trouble, until Juunichiro comes to save her and deals with the threats.

Naomi's parents find out, and decide that this boy who seems willing to use violence to protect their daughter could be useful. So they 'adopt' him to be Naomi's bodyguard.

Having a purpose and a home made him not want to lose it at any costs, which also made him obsessive over protecting Naomi who was his purpose. That, and the fact that Naomi was the sole reason he now had a home, food, and a family, made him see her as his saviour. He devoted himself to her, and Naomi enjoyed now having the constant company that her parents wouldn't give her, and being able to boss someone around.

Throughout their time together, mingled in with their co-dependency and obsession, the two of them developed feelings for eachother.

However, now that Juunichiro, lived in the same home as Naomi, he was also able to see what happened behind closed doors. He'd discovered that despite their neglect, Naomi's parents were still perfectionists and they would often punish or physically abuse her if she did something wrong or not up to their standards.

Despite his gratitude to the parents for giving him a home and him initially seeing them as family, his loyalties and devotion stayed with Naomi. His purpose was to protect her. So, him and Naomi staged a plan, for them to runaway together.

Juunichiro doesn't feel like just running away is enough. The parents hurt Naomi, and anyone who hurts Naomi needs to be punished. He doesn't act on this though until the parents find out and their plan, and he attacks them both for revenge for Naomi and to prevent them from stopping them from leaving. His intention was to hurt them, but he hadn't realised until after that he'd also killed them. Despite his brutality, he'd never actually killed someone before. He's in shock and doesn't move, until Naomi urges him to run before anyone finds out and they get into big trouble.

Between the two of them, surprisingly Naomi is the more stable one right now. She's clear headed and ordering Juunichiro to follow her and what to do as they grab their few belongings and act on their runaway plan with more urgency than they initially expected. He just follows along to whatever she says, clinging to her directions as his current only form of stability.

The high energy calms down a bit when they finally make it onto a train, one that'll take them to another city far away from the one they grew up in and now never planned to come back to.

Naomi is both surprised and not to realise that she doesn't feel much grief from her parents' death. Not even at the gruesomes of it caused by the same boy that she's now comforting in her arms while he stays confused and dazed, and maybe even a little horrified at himself.

At this point, Naomi fake sighs and tells Juunichiro that without her parents, she's more alone, and can't rely on them anymore. So as punishment for killing her parents, he has to stick by her side forever and do whatever she says until they both die.

That was her weird way of comforting him. She could tell he felt like he needed to be punished in some way, and he needed something stable to rely on right now. And she wanted someone she could rely on too, to give her the life she wants and never leave her. So she would be there for him, and he would be there for her. It's not exactly a healthy relationship, and it's definitely co-dependant, but they've gone through enough now that would make seperation unbearable for either of them.

They make it to a new city with their belongings and as much money as they could grab from their old house. Unfortunately, they're still teenagers and unwed, so the only way they can live together without drawing attention is to pretend to be siblings. They plan to marry as soon as possible, and even already consider themselves life partners, but until then they stick with a cover story.

They both work different jobs in order to live a decent life and they both save up with the intention of buying a place for themselves one day. They'd like to save up for a nice wedding too, but they'd have no one to invite anyway.

Unfortunately for the two, they're still always on edge. They're wanted murder suspects to high class citizens, and have been unable to have a stable home due to constant moving to avoid detection. They'd stick close together often and barely go anywhere alone, so that they could cover using Juunichiro's ability and could both be sure the other is OK.

(This part gets a little weird, but this headcanon is more about me trying to find ways to make their dynamic more interesting and less weird while not ignoring what happens in canon so that it could be a plausible headcanon)

So unfortunately because I'm trying to make this fit into canon, their incest joke still exists, but here's how it works in this au/headcanon where they're not actually siblings

Naomi and Juunichiro are still pretending to be siblings. They're the Tanizaki's, which to them is a sign of their marriage. Naomi abandoned her family name, and Juunichiro doesn't know what his originally was, so they decided on one together. To everyone else, for the sake of avoiding attention as legally-unwed teens living together, that's their blood family name. The neighbours are unfortunately chatty and nosy, and despite the two rehearsing their cover stories it's still hard to constantly try to come up with and stick to fake details as people pry more in 'polite conversation'. At one point, the two are out in public, in a neighbourhood were people know them as siblings. Naomi without realising people are watching them, gets a little too close to Juunichiro. When she realises she goes to back away, until she notices that everyone seems to be trying VERY hard to ignore the two. So she gets curious, and doubles down a little, getting more uncomfortably close to him. Naomi has picked up that people are very nosy, but it seems that when they're seeing something that makes them uncomfortable it's as if they're trying to pretend the two of them don't even exist. So, the sibling sthick takes a new turn.

She notes that It's important to still be upstanding or useful members of the community despite this, since that will make people more willing to just ignore your faults to keep your benefits, rather than wanting to kick you out for being degenerates.

So they work to be helpful and hardworking members of every new community they end up in, and whenever people start asking questions or prying to much, Naomi gets weird until they're uncomfortable enough to drop the subject.

Juunichiro still feels awkward with this plan, but it's worked for them and he trusts that Naomi knows what she's doing. He doesn't like that people probably see him as weird freak at times, but since he's basically accepted this plan he also doesn't entirely hate the attention from Naomi. It still makes him feel embarrassed though both at the weird assumptions people have of him from this and from Naomi being so forward in public.

At some point Naomi just enjoys getting an excuse to be able to tease Juunichiro in public too.

So yeah in the headcanon that these two are actually lovers pretending to be siblings, the only way I can see the 'incest joke' being written off as anything but a weird fetish is if Naomi is purposely trying to get people to ignore them by making them WANT to ignore them. Then in a weird way, less attention is focused on them and people are questioning their relationship and their past less because they're trying not to think about them.

Like, you know how Dazai will use comedy and acting like a clown sometimes so people underestimate him and don't focus on the fact that he grew up as a genius ex mafia leader or that he's depressed? That's kind of how I see it with Naomi and Juunichiro. Naomi is cunning, and the more forward one between them when it comes to this trope. It's possible that she's purposely encouraging people to not want to ask them questions or think about them by being weird and making them uncomfortable.

Like how after Atsushi questions if they're siblings, Naomi gets weird and then Kunikida tells Atsushi immediately after that it's best to ignore them. If that was the plan, then it's clearly working and people are being encouraged to not think to hard about 'what their deal is'.

It's still weird, very weird, but the joke is still unfortunately canon. So I'd much rather prefer this outcome than for it to be a fetish or for them to be actual siblings.

Anyway back onto other stuff, now with the ADA:

I still don't exactly have an idea of how they'd join the ADA, but at some point they join.

Naomi was homeschooled in their old life, and after a lot of encouragement and reassurance that he can take care of things and is fine to work more for her, Juunichiro encourages Naomi to enroll into an actual school now that they have a place they can stay at for a long time. Naomi refuses to not work as well, staying as a secretary with the ADA, but she is swayed into the idea of attending school alongside her job. It's not so much that she needed the education, but she enjoys the experience of feeling like a normal teenager that she never had before. Naomi is actually just a year younger than Juunichiro in this au, so she fakes her age and joins school just for the final year, then she'll consider college.

Part of their dynamic after just having run away was Juunichiro being the physical strength between the two and Naomi being the mental strength. She made their plans and kept Juunichiro distracted from bad thoughts by getting him to do stuff for her like tidy around the apartment, cooking, shopping errands, etc.

With the ADA, Juunichiro has basically locked the memories of their life before running away into the back of his brain. He's essentially gaslighting himself into believing that most of their cover story backstories are true. That he really is just an average person and that his biggest secret is just him and Naomi being lovers and not siblings. Naomi instead keeps the memories, and makes sure for Juunichiro's sake that he doesn't have to deal with them.

Naomi notes Ranpo as their biggest threat in the ADA, since with his deduction he's likely already figured out a lot about the two of them. She was nervous around him early on, but now she understands that it's not hard to stay on his good side. She feels more comfortable around him since she knows there's no point in hiding things from him, but at the same time she never admits to him or let's on that she's lying, and he never let's on that he knows. But they both know anyway. Like with every member of the agency, Ranpo has an unspoken agreement to not bring up anyone's past that he figures out, unless it directly endangers the agency or affects him. Ranpo does however, know from this that Naomi is smarter than people think she is, so she appreciates having someone that doesn't underestimate her. Ranpo noting this about her also helps her get a good position as one of the president's main secretaries, as she assists him in meetings and advices him on minor things.

She doesn't, however, expect Dazai. Dazai hadn't figured everything out, but he had picked up on the fact that Naomi was using a similar 'distraction' method that he uses and got curious on what she was deflecting on. He didn't dig too deep, but found enough to know that the Tanizaki's had moved pretty frequently over the last few years, and seemed to have different names in each place. Obviously this throws her off guard, and she's thinking of the quickest methods and whether they should ditch for another town, deflect again, or try to get rid of Dazai before he blabs or uses his knowledge against them. Dazai instead, gives Naomi advice on how to better cover her and Juunichiro's tracks. This then becomes a regular thing, where Dazai will teach Naomi a bit more on solid strategies and some combat too so she can fend for herself more when Juunichiro's not there. Dazai could see that Naomi was smart, and she clearly knew this, and there was definitely something that she was trying to hide and had succeeded at so far. She doesn't seem like a bad person, and neither does Juunichiro, so whatever they were covering up Dazai decides could stay covered for now. But as of now Naomi was overestimating her strategies and it could be unraveled easily by someone dedicated enough, so Dazai decided to help a fellow runaway out by building up her mental defences and showing her the right tricks.

So there's my headcanon for the Tanizaki's. I think I'd honestly prefer for them to be fake siblings and actual lovers even with the weirdness because their dynamic is a lot more interesting to explore from that angle. Those two definitely give me the vibe that they're hiding things and this is just a possibility I made up from what we know about them rn.

Even if you remove the incest jokes, Juunichiro's obsession with Naomi and him seeing her as a God still feels too weird as a sibling dynamic for me. I personally am not a fan of the 'older brother obsessed with and protective/possessive of his younger sister' trope.

Even if they do end up being canonically related or actual siblings in any way in the future, I think I'm just gonna ignore it cause:

1) Ew

2) I like my version better and I'm more interested in this version of them.

I still like the fanon version of 'normal siblings Tanizaki's' too though, I just think it's unfortunately too far from canon to happen like that.

#bsd #tanizaki junichirou #naomi tanizaki #like a 'co-dependant runaways with an unhealthy obsession and a love strengthened by shared trauma #just seems really interesting to think about #like if it wasn't for that one line with Atsushi pointing out that they don't look alike and Naomi deflecting it immediately #and THEN someone bringing up the 'fake cousins' lovers plot in one of irl Tanizaki's books I probably would never have thought they weren't #- siblings #bungou stray dogs #plus naomi lore #I think I'm just really hoping characters I like aren't actually incestuous too 😭#I'd rather have 'lovers that pretend to be siblings' than 'siblings with that are way too uncomfortably close and likely fuck'. Both weird-#- but one considerably less so #that and most official art and mayoi cards of them together have them looking like a couple is just..... yeah. I'm really hoping for the-#-'fake siblings' reveal 🙏#Also can you tell that Naomi is one of my favorite underappreciated characters to explore can you?#Naomi #Juunichiro #Tanizaki's

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