Sonic wanting to help Knuckles so badly but not at all understanding why he can't just chill out and entertain himself has me going feral.
As if I'm not insane enough about them forming a bond while being two child victims of a war that wiped out each others' families??? but I digress.
The way their last interactions with their parental figures played out speaks such volumes about who they eventually became.
Sonic's final instruction from Long Claw was to stay hidden and to never stop running. Eventually, Long Claw changed her tune in the message she left on the map to the master emerald, but until then she had made it abundantly clear that she wanted nothing more than for Sonic to just live his own life far from danger.
Sonic took this to heart. He never stopped running, physically and emotionally. He's all about fun and self-distraction, and while he eventually overcame that pressure to stay hidden in order to take on a more heroic role, he does what he can to live up to Long Claw's expectations: live his own life and be himself.
On the opposite end of things is Knuckles.
He said he was "trained since birth in all forms of lethal combat." Knuckles was set up to go to war from the moment he hatched, and the last thing that his father said to him was an assurance that he would one day bring honor to their tribe.
So that became his main goal from then on. He fought his way to the ends of the world until he was renowned as the most dangerous warrior in the galaxy. He spent every waking moment trying to track Sonic down so he could fulfill his destiny and reclaim the master emerald.
He, like Sonic, lived a life of isolation, dedicated to honoring the memory of a dead parental figure, but while Sonic never stopped being his own person, Knuckles never quite started being his own person.
He remains with the Wachowskis to honor a vow he made to Sonic and Tails. He tears the living room apart so that the household pet can face his "greatest enemy." He goes on a road trip with Wade to help him train after he gets kicked off his bowling team.
How can he just step back and entertain himself when all "himself" has ever been is what he can be for his tribe? Old and new?
How is he supposed to relax when he has probably, no exaggeration, never relaxed a single day of his life?
How can he take a break from being a warrior when being a warrior is all he has ever known?
He literally didn't know the definition of the word fun until Sonic taught him how to play "base of ball."
What has been Sonic's coping mechanisms his entire life are, to Knuckles, completely counterintuitive and alien.
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When it comes to OG!Cale ships I like both OG!AlCale and OG!ChoiHan but it really depends on the scenario
For example, I like OG!AlCale in both regression aus and TBoaH adjacent timeline things because I think a huge thing I like in their dynamic is how mysterious they both are to the other party. The fun of their dynamic is them discovering more about each other and the various miscommunications they have cause of their own personalities, and I think that works very well no matter the universe.
But with OG!ChoiCale, I feel like I can really only enjoy it in TBoaH adjacent things or if they both have the memories of the first life.
To me, a big thing about OG!ChoiCale is about the life they lived together, how they hated eachother, how they both didn’t know eachother for years, how they could have spent time together during the war due to unfortunate circumstances(there not being enough people left)
Like, I think OG!ChoiCale can be such a cool dynamic, such a sad, but comforting one at the same time. It’s a little bitter how the man you thought you would hate forever became a close companion, how he’s more similar to you than your younger self woild have ever thought, but do you really hate it?
Can you really hate having a person who understands you, when so many people have died? When so many are gone?
Something about the sadness of it all, how it was tragedy that brought them against each other at first, but now it brings them together. How they could only ever grow to understand eachother because of the pain they face, the pain that they shared. At some point, can you really hate him, even until the end? After all those years? After coming to understand him? No, you cannot.
Like, it adds in extra layers when they both care about each other at some point mid-way through the war, but they still can’t really talk to eachother properly. They care, but they frustrate one another, anger each other. Choi Han doing increasingly more risky and self sacrificial things because ‘I’m a hero’ ‘I have to do it.’ ‘It is justice to save people’, despite the fact that it’s at the expense of himself
And Cale’s frustration at Choi Han’s attitude. He can never wrap his head around the fact that Choi Han destroys himself for the sake of other people, and believes it’s heroic(He knows Choi Han doesnt, he know Choi Han hates it too, but he doesn’t know what else to say to himself other than the fact that ‘it’s for the greater good’, because he will go crazy if he doesn’t)
He’s mad, but there’s some twisted sense of understanding in there too. Cale understands, because he became trash for his family, he became trash to protect them, he had to do it.
But that’s only what he thought.
He was older now, he had lost them all, and he had seen how his trash act hadn’t done anything to protect them. It only distanced him from them, and now they were gone, and he could never see them again, he could never make amends.
Cale is mad at Choi Han for sacrificing himself because while Choi Han is hurting himself, the people who he loves, and the people who love him, watch him do it over and over again and he doesn’t listen to their worried cries.
He’s mad, but he understands. It was frustrating to be on the other side, watching someone destroy themselves for the sake of others when the people who cared about them wanted the exact opposite. The only difference between him and Choi Han was that Choi Han was never a good liar, he could never hide how much pain he went through.
In a way, Cale thought it was better that way.
At some point, there is love that is there. Love that follows them, and it’s so painful because they both know the tragedy edy to it that is how they are doomed, how they can never be happy in the first time line where they knew each other.
Because as Cale and Choi Han, they can’t be happy. Not when so much has been lost, not when the world is falling apart, they may love each other, but loving each other as they are means being in a world where everything else they love is gone.
It is a cruel kind of love.
Like let’s say they do pursue these feelings, even though knowing those two I don’t think they’d ever say anything in that scenario. If they did it would probably be Cale going like:
“Choi Han, do you love me?”
Choi Han doesn’t say anything, but his silence in place of adamant refusal is enough of an answer.
“Do you love me, Cale?”
Cale doesn’t say anything either, only smiling at Choi Han with his signature, cynical and bitter smile.
He didn’t deny it either.
It was a confirmation of feelings, but unlike the confessions from romance novels and stories, the main character and lead do not end up together and live happily ever after.
They stay together, but the world around them is not happy, not at all. They are together, but not as partners or as lovers, but two people who live in their suffering because all they can do is live.
I feel like anything they do together would always have an air of melancholy to it. Maybe they kiss, once, and no more, because there is no point in making it a regular thing. Not when everything in their world will end, even if they keep on fighting for it to not be that way.
They kiss, and it’s short, but in that short moment, the world is nothing but Cale and Choi Han.
Isn’t that selfish? If it’s like this, then they could ignore how everything has gone so badly. But that is exactly why they cannot be together, there is no ignoring the reality of their situation, no matter how sweet it would be to live in a false dream and never wake up.
I like my OG!ChoiCale a little doomed.
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I don't know, I think its weird that so many people are trying to blame soukoku shippers for imaginary problems and acting like skk shippers have a gun to their head forcing them to do things.
Like I dont understand how Hoshikawa drawing 15 is a bad thing just because the same artist made beast just because YOU made up some headcanon in your head. I dont understand why any exploration of Dazai and Chuuya's dynamic in the past gets written off as Asagiri being forced to pander to the "yaoi loving fetishizing" skk shippers as if those two aren't major parts of each other's past and don't have a complex and deep bond. I get being overwhelmed by too much skk content when you dont like it. But to actively make up lies so it can justify your hateful narrative against a bunch of people just trying to enjoy content through made up non existent scenarios is weird as hell to me.
And it just rubs me really weird that skk shippers get written off as yaoi fangirls like many of us aren't queer people interacting with a queer ship. Or is yaoi fetishizing only limited to skk or other popular ships and not whatever ship the anti fixates on?
The number of times I have seen the mildest interaction between skk be written off as cheap fanservice and pandering to the skk shippers is insane. Chuuya appears and doesn't talk about Dazai? Cheap fanservice. Chuuya shows up for a plot relevant role? Cheap pandering. Dazai has a nice moment with any other character? Character development. Dazai is nice to Chuuya? Cheap fanservice. And the moment we got light novels and side manga adaptations of said novels for skk everyone just started raging at and bashing skk shippers and Chuuya stans like we were personally offending people that Asagiri decided that 1 of his many bsd pet projects happened to be about the past of a character who is a major part of Dazai, one of the main character's past. As if stormbringer, fifteen, dead apple and the dragon head prologue parts didn't add anything to Dazai's established character.
I am so tired of skk haters acting like they are the victims of neglect by Asagiri or acting like Asagiri, Hoshikawa and Harukawa are sobbing in a locked room and only getting slices of dry bread when they pledge allegiance to skk nation or some shit.
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I'm finding it difficult to reconcile the fact that what I've always wanted and envisioned for Nikolai and his relationship with Fyodor based on fanworks and the very very little canon information we've had to go off of so far, will very likely be very different from what we actually get.
While I understand the appeal of Fyodor taking over Nikolai's body via his blood ability, and the inherent, romantic, ironic tragedy of that — for Nikolai, the person who yearned for freedom, to meet an end by having his soul eternally trapped in the body of the person he loved the most, while Fyodor lives on in his body, never truly knowing how much he was adored by him — I would just hate the idea of that happening now? It just feels far, far too soon for Nikolai to be dead, for his character to no longer have a role or a purpose; his mind and behavior is so utterly fascinating in all its bizarre contradictions, there's so much more to explore and discover with him, he's one of BSD's most complex characters, or at least he's set up to be, and I really hope Asagiri wouldn't throw him away this soon without doing anything more with him.
I never really thought that Nikolai would be the one to end Fyodor for good, way down the line (that can only ever be Dazai's job, to me, since he's his foil), but I always imagined he'd at least have some kind of role in attempting to kill him, since that's his ultimate wish. I imagined that it would be ugly, frenzied, unhinged, desperate, Nikolai finally being forced to acknowledge the horrible truth that's always been buried within his subconscious but he's never wanted to accept: that going against all human reason and killing someone he cares so deeply for will not, in fact, simply make those feelings go away, and will instead make them unable to ignore in his despair. The realization that he'll always be chained to human emotions, to love, no matter how much he thinks he can be free of them. And then, the ensuing breakdown from that. Yes, it's extremely fanficky lmao, but that kind of drama makes sense to me for him and them. It's interesting.
There was also the angst angle of Fyodor being immortal, and Nikolai's agenda perhaps stemming from wanting to save him from that, and being able to finally free him from it in the same way he himself wants to be freed. Killing being the ultimate expression of love, not too dissimilar to Mushitarou killing Yokomizo, both putting on an act of being hateful/vengeful/hostile towards the other in order to cope with the fact that deep down they can't bear the thought of them being gone.
But then we got Fyodor's "death" here, and Nikolai's reaction to it was so unbelievably underwhelming and calm that it made me question everything I thought I knew about Asagiri's writing skills him, and what the story is going for with him. And combined with this revelation now that Fyodor is (unsurprisingly!) immortal, but specifically in the way that he can be killed but supposedly resurrects endlessly (which I really like in of itself, don't get me wrong)... it makes me question what exactly Nikolai knows, or will know, and it somewhat destroys the potential angst we could get with them in the end, or at least drastically changes it.
If Nikolai already knows Fyodor can't be killed, that means we'll never get a moment where he tries to kill him and then has to face the fact that he did the deed and it didn't make him feel freed, and he instantly regrets it. It also means we'd never get a moment where he tries to kill him and then discovers he can't truly die, and the ensuing insanity that would occur from that. It also makes me even question the legitimacy of his reaction to Fyodor's "death" here... was it so damn apathetic and lukewarm because he already knows it wasn't permanent? I mean, I'd like an explanation for it feeling so ooc, it would make me feel better about that, but I can't deny that it would be disappointing to have yet another part of this arc that was just an act and not genuine feelings....
Now, that isn't to say that it's impossible to do anything interesting with Nikolai already knowing the truth. He could be wishing to try to attain free will through the illogical pursuit of an impossible task: in this case, killing Fyodor. There's a beautiful, tragic paradox in him wishing to attempt something to gain his freedom that he and we know is impossible, especially if subconsciously he takes solace in the fact that he'd be able to kill Fyodor without actually losing him for good. If Nikolai doesn't already know, assuming he's not dead he's likely going to find out the truth soon when he next sees Fyodor alive and kicking — I can't imagine a way he wouldn't find out. In that case, we wouldn't get the aforementioned scenario where he tries to kill him and discovers it's futile, which is the most juicy to me I won't lie, but I am still fascinated by the idea of how Nikolai will respond just seeing him suddenly alive again and having to process this after having just mourned him. It's interesting to imagine how he might respond to and treat Fyodor after at last knowing how it truly felt to lose him, and realizing how much he didn't want that, and then suddenly having him back. It might cause him to finally understand that his desire for freedom is unobtainable, and cause him to spiral, and fundamentally change their relationship going forward. An eventual tragic end for him such as Fyodor taking over his body would not feel out of place to me in that case, perhaps, but still not until we've had more time to see Nikolai reflect and see his possible change in perspectives.
I don't know, I'm just rambling at this point lmao. I know very well that so much of my expectations and desires for Nikolai and Fyolai are built up from fan content over the years just because there's been nothing else to work with, and that it's unfair to judge what Asagiri decides to do with him/them based on preconceived notions. Whatever he does could still be interesting in the end, even if it's not what I initially wanted or expected, and being open to being surprised is always a good thing. At the end of the day we still know barely anything about Nikolai, so it's not completely fair for me to judge something as ooc for a character we still know so little about.
But... it's because we know so little about him and have gotten so little of him, that at the very least, I'm gonna be really upset if he does die here from being possessed by Fyodor like people are worrying about. I really don't think he will, because I'm pretty confident the helicopter pilot is the one Fyodor swapped with/resurrected in the body of as per soup's theory, and again I'm not saying it wouldn't be fitting eventually... but I really don't want it to happen now. :/ I just think Nikolai still has so much potential as a character and so much more we need to see of him before his likely inevitable and tragic demise (however it happens), so whatever Asagiri decides to do with him I just really, really hope we don't lose him so prematurely; it would honestly be such a tremendous waste imo.
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