i love the scene of adonis noticing that rei was depressed post-crossroads and all the discussions of adonis being particularly clever / observant throughout the story... it really hammers home the adonis and rei parallels. both emotionally intelligent people who feel othered and who are driven by their love for humans and desire to help even strangers to the point of self sacrifice. the major differences between them are caused by adonis' crippling self esteem (which is something he's slowly but surely learning to improve) and rei being treated like a god (something that's also changing as rei allows himself to be fallible)
i'm still thinking about adonis' and rei's conversation in the graveyard. like, it turns our perception of rei/adonis and their emotional intelligence on its head. on the surface, rei is incredibly charismatic and emotionally intelligent, while adonis is awkward and frequently takes people too seriously, but when things get personal, rei backs off while adonis is open and honest about his feelings, which makes adonis excellent at understanding rei. on the other hand, rei makes a faux pas. (cw for brief discussions of racism below the cut)
adonis comments that rei seems down, and rei is surprised that adonis noticed
rei IMMEDIATELY discredits adonis' statement, saying that humans can say they care for and respect someone as much as they want, but they never make a true effort to understand them. when adonis says it's because he's known rei for a while, rei calls him cocky. he's clearly uncomfortable with being understood and tries to steer the conversation away from personal topics, keeping it to light banter
rei then accidentally triggers one of adonis' insecurities by calling him a "killjoy." it's not his fault, but the nickname triggers adonis' insecurities anyway because he hates being associated with violent words like "kill," and it shows that rei is not always aware of the impact his words have on adonis. this leads adonis to show a moment of vulnerability and talk openly about his struggles as an immigrant in japan because he feels as though everyone around him is wary of him and fails to make an effort to understand him, instead judging him as violent from a glance, which is such a deeply heartbreaking sentiment -- it's so clear how ingrained this internalized racism is such that being called a "killjoy" set him off. he talks about how he feels as though he tries to behave as a model minority and be perfect and quiet so no one misunderstands him, but they misunderstand him anyway (and isn't this what rei and his family is doing? trying to be perfect so that he is simply allowed to exist, so people don't see him as a monster?). here is adonis giving tangible proof that both he and rei are misunderstood by others, showing that he does actually understand what rei is going through on a personal level.
adonis tells rei that he was hurt by rei blaming him for being the leader of the vampires, too (it wasn't rei's fault, but adonis doesn't know that). rei replies with "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, okay? I love you" which is exactly what he said humans did in the very beginning -- you can love someone without making a real effort to understand them. rei (in this specific conversation) is refusing to understand adonis because doing so would mean having to acknowledge his own weaknesses
and adonis shows that he was listening to rei and says that it's not about loving or hating someone. it's about understanding someone.
i love the scene of adonis noticing that rei was depressed post-crossroads and all the discussions of adonis being particularly clever / observant throughout the story... it really hammers home the adonis and rei parallels. both emotionally intelligent people who feel othered and who are driven by their love for humans and desire to help even strangers to the point of self sacrifice. the major differences between them are caused by adonis' crippling self esteem (which is something he's slowly but surely learning to improve) and rei being treated like a god (something that's also changing as rei allows himself to be fallible)
have any of you tried ensemble training yet?
Yuzuru: He's been training a lot, such a wonderful app, isn't it?
my immediate thought when seeing mika’s new casual wear was that it reminds me on kintsuji
it’s a japanese pottery technique that fixes ceramics by bringing the broken pieces together with gold. it’s meant to show beauty in imperfections and how broken history can be healed.
i think that kind of symbolism is sweet and really suits mika’s character!!
also i think these colors look very nice on him (very meikyuu denshi kairou) and overall this outfit really suits his sense of style…. kinda ugly but in a way that’s really endearing… i love it a lot waaah
anyways i hope you don’t mind that i use your image for my anime boy analysis, model thinkers dot com
Hello UNDEAD. Thoughts on your climax event? Did you enjoy your AI clones?
Rei: ...Sometimes I can still hear their voice.
”Red skies at night, sailor’s delight. Red skies at morning, sailor take warning.”
Lore
Davy Jones is a popular character in sailor’s yore, especially of the gothic variety. Davy Jones’ Locker, is an idiom for the bottom of the sea: the state of death for drowned sailors. The origins of the name are unclear, and many theories have been put forth, including:
An actual David Jones, who was a pirate on the Indian Ocean in the 1630s.
A pub owner who kidnapped sailors and then dumped them onto any passing ship.
The incompetent Duffer Jones, a myopic sailor who often found himself over-board.
Or that Davy Jones is another name for Satan or “Devil Jonah”, the biblical Jonah who became the “evil angel” of all sailors. Due to this, sailors with the name “Jonah” were bad luck to have abroad.
Upon death, a wicked sailor’s body supposedly went to Davy Jones’ locker (a chest, as lockers were back then), but a pious sailor’s soul went to Fiddler’s Green (in maritime folklore it is a kind of afterlife for sailors who have served at least 50 years at sea).
At Fiddler’s Green, where seamen true When here they’ve done their duty The bowl of grog shall still renew And pledge to love and beauty.
Dolphins and albatrosses were said to be the reincarnated souls of dead sailors; and sailors could not kill either of them.
Mermaids & Mermen
The legend of the mermaid, a creature with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish, has circulated the worlds oceans as far back as 5,000 B.C.
One of the earliest scientific accounts of the mermaid was documented by the great historian Pliny The Elder in 586 A.D. Pliny the Elder was convinced of the existence of mermaids and described them as “rough and scaled all over.” Since that time, and well before, thousands of sailors across the globe have reported seeing mermaids swimming off the bows of their ships. Even the famous Christopher Columbus reported an encounter with a mermaid; in January of 1493 Columbus reported that he saw three mermaids fin the ocean just off Haiti.
Mermaids were often considered lucky, but not universally. In Trinidad and Tobago, sea-dwelling mermen “were known to grant a wish, transform mediocrity into genius and confer wealth and power.” Mermaids appear in British folklore as unlucky omens, both foretelling disaster and provoking it.
Sailors would look for mermaid’s purses (the egg case of a skate, ray or shark; one of the most common objects washed up on the sea) on beaches for signs of mermaids in the area.
Klabautermann
Traditionally, a type of kobold, a Klabautermann, lives aboard ships and helps sailors and fishermen on the Baltic or North Sea in their duties. He is a merry and diligent creature, with an expert understanding of most watercraft, and an unsupressable musical talent. He also rescues sailors washed overboard. The belief in Klabautermanns dates to at least the 1770s.
A carved Klabautermann image, of a small sailor dressed in yellow with a tobacco pipe and wooden sailor’s cap, often wearing a caulking hammer, is attached to the mast as a symbol of good luck.
However, despite the positive attributes, there is one omen associated with his presence: no member of a ship blessed by his presence shall ever set eyes on him; he only ever becomes visible to the crew of a doomed ship.
More recently, the Klabautermann is sometimes described as having more sinister attributes, and blamed for things that go wrong on the ship. This incarnation of the Klabautermann is more demon- or goblin-like, prone to play pranks and, eventually, doom the ship and her crew. This deterioration of image probably stems from sailors, upon returning home, telling stories of their adventures at sea.
Sailor Tattoos
Sailors believed that certain symbols and talismans would help them in when facing certain events in life; they thought that those symbols would attract good luck or bad luck in the worst of the cases:
Sailors, at the constant mercy of the elements, often feel the need for religious images on their bodies to appease the angry powers that caused storms and drowning far from home.
The images of a pig and a hen were good luck; both animals are not capable of swimming, but they believed that God would look down upon a shipwreck and see an animal not capable of swimming and would take them into his hand and place them on land. Sailors had the belief that by wearing the North Star, this symbol would help them to find his or her way home.
The Flying Dutchman
The Flying Dutchman is a legendary ghost ship that can never make port and is doomed to sail the oceans forever. The myth is likely to have originated from 17th-century nautical folklore. The oldest extant version dates to the late 18th century. Sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries reported the ship to be glowing with ghostly light. If hailed by another ship, the crew of the Flying Dutchman will try to send messages to land, or to people long dead. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship is a portent of doom.
Some say that The Flying Dutchman was used for piracy and was loaded with gold and other loot. While travelling with a load of treasure, unspeakable crimes were committed on board the ship, thus making it cursed forever.
“originally a vessel loaded with great wealth, on board of which some horrid act of murder and piracy had been committed” and that the apparition of the ship “is considered by the mariners as the worst of all possible omens.”
Other variations of the legend say that the Captain of The Flying Dutchman refused to go to port in the face of a horrible storm and as a result the entire ship perished. Others claim that the ship was not called The Flying Dutchman - that instead it was the name of the captain of the ship. Eventually, as people passed the legend down through the generations, the story of The Flying Dutchman referred to the ship.
Superstitions
Bad luck:
No bananas on board - At the height of the trading empire between Spain and the Caribbean in the 1700’s, most cases of disappearing ships happened to be carrying a cargo of bananas at the time.
No women on board - Women were said to bring bad luck on board because they distracted the sailors from their sea duties. This kind of behaviour angered the intemperate seas that would take their revenge out on the ship. However, images of naked women were carved onto the bow of the ship because the woman’s bare breasts ”shamed the stormy seas into calm” and her open eyes guided the seamen to safety.
No whistling on board - Mariners have long held the belief that whistling or singing into the wind will “whistle up a storm”.
Deathly lexis - At sea, some words must be strictly avoided to ensure the ship and crew’s safe return. These include obvious ones like “drowned” and “goodbye”. If someone says “good luck” to you, it is sure to bring about bad luck. The only way to reverse the curse is by drawing blood.
Lurking sharks - A shark following the ship is a sign of inevitable death.
Unlucky days: - Fridays: Fridays have long been considered unlucky days, likely because Jesus Christ was crucified on a Friday. - Thursdays: Thursdays are bad sailing days because that is Thor’s day, the god of thunders and storms. - First Monday in April: The first Monday in April is the day Cain slew Abel. - Second Monday in August: The second Monday in August is the day the kingdoms of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. - Superstitious sailor believed that the only good day to sail on was sundays.
Changing the name of the boat - Boats develop a life and mind of their own once they are named and Christened. If you do rename the boat- you absolutely must have a de-naming ceremony. This ceremony can be performed by writing the current boat name on a piece of paper, folding the paper and placing it in a wooden box then burning the box. After, the ashes were scooped up and thrown into the sea.
Red heads - Red heads were thought to bring bad luck to a ship if you happened to encounter one before boarding. However, if you speak to the redhead before they get the chance to speak to you, it is cancelled out.
Good luck:
It is good luck to spit in the ocean before you sail.
Coins thrown into the sea as a boat leaves port is a small toll to Neptune, the sea god, for a safe voyage.
Horseshoes on a ship’s mast will turn away a storm.
Cats brought luck. If a ship’s cat came to a sailor, it meant good luck.
Pouring wine on the deck will bring good luck on a long voyage.
It is often considered lucky to touch the collar of a sailor’s suit.
late upload again www
adonis day!!
update: it sucks
i tried recreating the adonis mocktail from the enstars collaboration cafe without ANY cocktail/mocktail experience so I just muddled some rosemary and thawed frozen pink dragonfruit in a glass (read: mushed it with the back of a spoon) and added club soda and blue curaçao and it is BRIGHT purple. adonis color
every single subreddit for a C list city is just suburbanites in their late 20s early 30s trying to meet up to play d&d, asking what bars are good, and complaining about traffic. it’s a look into america’s future. we’re all going to get further and further away from each other physically and socially while simultaneously trying to claw back some semblance of normal urban life without ever realizing what it is that’s keeping us from living the way we want to live
FIRST REIADO FIC PUBLISHED ON PIXIV IN 2023 WE WON
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Hakaze Kaoru/Oogami Kouga/Otogari Adonis/Sakuma Rei, Hakaze Kaoru & Oogami Kouga & Otogari Adonis & Sakuma Rei, Hakaze Kaoru/Sakuma Rei, Hakaze Kaoru/Oogami Kouga, Hakaze Kaoru/Otogari Adonis, Oogami Kouga/Otogari Adonis, Oogami Kouga/Sakuma Rei, Otogari Adonis/Sakuma Rei Characters: Hakaze Kaoru, Oogami Kouga, Otogari Adonis, Sakuma Rei Additional Tags: Ensemble Stars Rarepair Week, Enstars Rarepair Week, Established Relationship, Fluff, Polyamory, Beaches, Touch-Starved Otogari Adonis Series: Part 6 of enstars rarepair week 2024 Summary:
Day 5: Beach / Family - UNDEAD has fun at the beach!
milk | 22 | she/he | adonis liker and polyundead connoisseur | talk to me about adonis and undead im like a pressure cooker of brainrot | trying to write :)
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