Hello! Here For Me? I Humbly Request That You Observe The Following Guidelines.
Greetings, all. I am a humble fanfiction author who does the collection Crouching Jonkler Hidden Zonkler on AO3, which is centered around the ship between Jabber Wonger and Zanka Nijiku from the shounen manga & anime Gachiakuta. Kind commenters have named me Crouch.
I made this Tumblr because it became apparent to me that the Janka community is full of kind and funny people I want to talk to. Below are some guidelines for how best to interact with me, as well as my Post Directory, explaining the personal tags I use to organize this blog.
Guidelines
This is an adult space.
Unfortunately, because of the nature of my work and because I am an adult myself, I don't want to interact with minors on this blog. If you send me a message, please be above the age of majority wherever you are from in the world.
There's no need to be shy.
Are you awkward? Great, me too! I do not have experience with being "online" as it were, and this is all very new to me. Perhaps naively, I'm just hoping to have fun and make friends.
Also, I have no idea how to use social media. If I do something incomprehensible, it's probably because I also don't understand what's going on.
I do accept constructive criticism.
Is something I wrote bothering you? Did I forget an important detail, make something super confusing, neglect to tag something upsetting, or other things of that nature? Feel free to let me know.
Do you want to talk to me, but feel unsure what to say?
What is one moment you've liked in the show so far? If you were a Giver, what would your Vital Instrument be? And, if I may be so bold as to ask, what is your favorite moment from my body of work? Send your answers to any of these questions into my ask box!
Do you have a writing prompt or a scenario idea for me? It is highly unlikely I will ever write it, but I encourage you to propose them regardless. Who knows, you might get me. Or you might get someone else!
If you are an author yourself and wish to request feedback on your own work, please do. Unless you specifically request constructive criticism, I will only tell you what I liked about it. Positive feedback is also very important to one's writing development!
Through it all, please allow some grace for me.
I'm currently recovering from a godawful case of burnout. I do appear to be getting better, which is why I'm able to write at all, but the fact remains that I have a very limited amount of energy that can be quite unpredictable. I have big aspirations and a great quantity of ideas, but whether or not they will come to fruition... that is somewhat up to the wind. I am very protective of my mental health, and if I feel that I'm starting to become unduly stressed by my Internet activities, I will pull back and preserve myself. Unfortunately, this means chapters may go unwritten and your messages may go unanswered. Sorry! I appreciate you regardless.
Post Directory
#crouch thought: My musings and opinions, as well as my headcanons.
#crouch complaint: I love to complain.
#crouch writes: Things I post while writing, as well as any short pieces of writing I may do. Some overlap with #crouch complaint.
#crouch answer: Responses to asks I receive.
#crouch question: Polls I put out, or posts in which I request your opinions.
#crouch update: New works I post.
Well, hopefully that's everything. I am going to go reblog dozens of Janka fan art images now.
It's summer in my hemisphere, so please imagine Jabber at the beach, out in the sun, wearing one of those sunscreen lotions with the coppery mica that shimmers so nicely when he basks in the light.
And because there is no earthly way Jabber Wonger would ever put sunscreen on himself, please imagine the three-hour-long Looney Tunes chase sequence that preceded this beautiful moment, wherein everyone on this beach trip who cares about this person joined forces to pin him down so that Zanka Nijiku could slather SPF 50 all over his squirming body. To the tune of great protest.
Initially Zanka tried to do this on his own, but the thing about sunscreen is, it's slippery.
this is the funniest thing to ever imagine op,thank you for this.
adding onto this,imagine zanka admiring him for the smallest moment,thinking maybe. MAYBE the hard work really paid off if he gets to bask in this view.
only for jabber to ruin it by doing some fuck shit like rolling around in the sand and getting sand EVERYWHERE
So the beach they’re at has pretty decent-size waves breaking over the first sandbar. Jabber, when he’s done basking, decides to swim across the trough and go play there.
Today, though, the swells are a little bigger than normal, and hardly anybody else is out there. People are mostly floating in the trough or sticking close to shore. Zanka suddenly gets a bad feeling. He puts his drink down and heads into the water…
…just in time to see Jabber get picked up by a massive shorebreak and slammed under the water.
He pops up twenty feet down from where he first went under, laughing like a maniac, glowing in the sun. He turns back and starts calling out to Zanka, but they’re too far away to really hear each other.
“BEHIND YOU!” yells Zanka, pointing.
“WHAT?” yells Jabber, mock-cupping his ear. He’s pretty sure Zanka is just yelling at him for being careless.
“DIVE!” yells Zanka.
Ooh, Zanka’s mad. Maybe if Jabber ignores him, he’ll come all the way over and play. Jabber sticks out his tongue, turns around, and catches a direct faceful of the even bigger wave that had been building up behind him.
Thank goodness Zanka knows how to perform a water rescue. Jabber, totally disoriented from getting slammed into the packed sand and dragged across the ocean floor, just lets it happen. He spends the rest of the afternoon coughing up saltwater and trying to put his wet hands on Zanka’s book.
It takes hours to get all the sand out of his hair.
How many times do you think Jabber has woken up, immediately eaten the spiciest thing in the world for breakfast, and walked around all day with horrible intestinal cramps?
It's summer in my hemisphere, so please imagine Jabber at the beach, out in the sun, wearing one of those sunscreen lotions with the coppery mica that shimmers so nicely when he basks in the light.
And because there is no earthly way Jabber Wonger would ever put sunscreen on himself, please imagine the three-hour-long Looney Tunes chase sequence that preceded this beautiful moment, wherein everyone on this beach trip who cares about this person joined forces to pin him down so that Zanka Nijiku could slather SPF 50 all over his squirming body. To the tune of great protest.
Initially Zanka tried to do this on his own, but the thing about sunscreen is, it's slippery.
Not janka related but i wanted to maybe open this discussion, esp since you’re rereading the manga. Ever since urana stated the main trio dont really hang out with each other like that in their free time (outside of team dinners mandated by enjin) ive noticed they kinda dont have any chemistry with each other?¿ or no, they do have chemistry but it’s very. Weird. For a shounen trio they’re interlocked in a way thats very awkward to me
Like i understand in fics and fan comics/art we want deeper relationships between the characters because thats the nature of fanwork but in canon i do not think zanka and riyo are best friends. Like maybe they are friends but they moreso feel like the dynamic you have with your favorite, most reliable coworker. But also if you asked riyo who her favorite coworker is i dont know if zanka would be her 2nd answer.
Theres a feeling of distance between the three. Especially riyo who keeps everybody at arms length. Rudo seems like the one who could possibly break through and actually connect with riyo but hes still an autistic kid who just started learning how reach out and connect to others. Plus he has like. Gods to kill i guess. And then of course theres zanka’s upward comparison issues and resentment at his own perceived inadequacy as he watches rudo get better and better but at the same time hes also supposed to be his mentor. Its also SO funny seeing zanka push rudo to connect with others (remlin) when he himself is not doing that at all
So it all cumulates into a kinda awkward trio dynamic. At least to me. Typically there is the “glue” character in a shounen trio but thats not really present here. Atm the glue is enjin, which is different for a shounen but i think its good and makes total sense
Interesting topic of discussion! I’m eager to see what my community thinks. My own take below:
So, disclaimer: I usually take a pretty “Death of the Author” approach to analysis. I’m not always sure how to fit meta-commentary made by the author about actual story details into my perspective, and I’m also lazy, so I kind of just go, “eh, whatever.” And I probably get everything Urana-sensei says way out of context anyway, since I only hear it secondhand. Thus, I usually ignore all of that and just go off of the text.
That being said, I find this an intriguing statement, because you’d ordinarily think that it would mean they aren’t really each other’s true friends, and that they have other people in their lives, right? But here, I doubt that’s the case. I think they don’t really hang out with each other like that because two of them don’t hang out with anyone at all.
Riyo has been shown to have no close relationships with anyone outside of maybe Enjin. She seems to have some interest in Rudo as a person, but shares nothing about herself with him. We also don’t see too much of her relationship with Zanka. I noticed that she was the one he came up to during Rudo’s welcome party. I also liked their back-to-back moment during the Doll Festival arc; I thought it showed how they genuinely trusted each other and moved as partners. Nor does Zanka mask his pain to her at the arc’s conclusion; granted, he might have just not been able to, or he figured that she already knew everything anyway — but that second thing in itself is also closeness, for weird, emotionally isolated people like them. However, it’s not particularly reciprocated. Riyo doesn’t show anything of herself to Zanka at all, not that we’ve seen.
I would argue, though, that she does feel quite some personal loyalty toward him. She did shoot Jabber a bunch of times. And she lugged his stupid ass back with her, even though no one would have known if she’d just left him. As I recall, her dialogue in the Noerde fight makes a lot of references to her motivations being wanting to help her friends. It’ll be interesting to see what that means to her in the arc I desperately need her to get, oh my god. It makes me wonder how much she values herself.
As for Zanka himself, I think it’s safe to say he’d never had a real friend in his life. Riyo seems to have cared deeply for someone at some point in the past; that may have been reciprocated. But Zanka had never had the experience of caring about a peer by choice. I don’t think he knows how to do it. He’s so weird around Rudo — much like how Rudo can’t smile, Zanka can’t do genuine peer-to-peer connection. It always has to be either fake (like we see in his introduction) or weird and stunted (like we see in the scene where he advises Rudo to talk to Remlin <-and totally talks out of his ass, just like you said. Zanka, you don’t have friends). He loves Enjin, but Enjin is not his peer! He puts that man on a pedestal probably because it is the only way he knows how to have a positive relationship with somebody like that in his life. He’s Rudo’s mentor probably because he couldn’t handle being around the kid without a power structure like that in place.
Thus, for Zanka and Riyo, I think the situation is that Zanka does not know how to be friends, and Riyo either won’t or can’t. The implication is that she suffered a terrible loss, and that she blames herself. During her Amo hallucination, I think she said something like, “I’ll protect you this time.” Now she’s in a new place with new rules, more powerful but with less access to her tried-and-true skillset, and… you want her to have another friend? Of course she won’t.
But that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t be devastated if Zanka died on her watch. Not only because it would be a repetition of her past mistakes, but also because… they are well-suited for each other. Both strange, both withdrawn, both lacking experience with normal relationships… Strong enough to stand back-to-back with each other, but not strong enough to cry on each other’s shoulders. Lonely together.
Meanwhile, Rudo actually is hanging out with other people. Despite being naturally the worst at it, the way he was raised and the effort he puts in have made him the best at it! His heart is open. He doesn’t have the same peer-to-peer hangups, and because of his past inexperience, every situation is new. He can learn and grow without having to un-learn. For this reason, if anyone is going to be the “glue,” it’ll probably eventually be him. He’ll grow into the role as he matures. Gachiakuta seems to want to be about human connection, and as a shounen, its main character should be the avatar of that theme. It’ll be interesting to see how everyone develops going forward.
Anyway, in fanon, I’ve kind of extrapolated off my read of Zanka and Riyo to give them the kind of friendship where they’re just really comfortable with one another. I think they sit in a lot of rooms together and don’t talk.
I loved your analysis of zankas fighting style in this post! You mentioned some things about jabber there as well - would you care to elaborate on his fight with hii? Your thoughts are precious and so well-rounded <33
AT LONG LAST, I have had some time to go back and properly re-read the Jabber-Hii fight. Disclaimer: I am actually really bad at reading manga. I think I have some kind of image-dyslexia thing -- it is often genuinely difficult for me to tell what is going on in pictures, so I may misread some details. Let me know if I get something wrong.
Observation notes:
HAHAHAHAHA. Y'know, I've always thought it would actually be easier to fight Jabber with Mankira fully activated. Her big claw form reduces his speed advantage and turns him into a medium-long range fighter, while also reducing his reach in the short range (smaller claws on his hands).
He's making more big, sweeping motions, and I notice they kind of leave his arms extended out to the sides, with his glove-claws flexed outward. He's less able to just get you with them, like he can with Mankira's small form. This means, if you can get inside his guard (and he leaves himself wide open every time he needs to make a big swing), he basically can't do shit for the split second you'd need to, say, break his arm. Like Hii does.
It's probably more difficult for Zanka to take advantage of this opening because Lovely is also a medium-range weapon. I don't know how he would get inside of Jabber's guard with her. But Hii can do it because he's such a short-range fighter.
But all this totally supports the point I made in my previous post. Zanka fights too defensively against Jabber. In order to win, he needs to press!
I also think this fight does suggest that Zanka really is holding back, in one respect. Hii knocks Jabber out by slamming him into the ground once with just the force from his arms. I kind of have trouble believing that Zanka Nijiku, who has a whole-ass polearm and is strong enough to knock away an entire kaiju, can't summon enough force to knock Jabber into the floor like that. I dunno. Maybe it's just shounen logic at play, but... Zanka... hit him harder, okay? He can take it.
Finally, I'd like to say that Jabber and Riyo look like a pretty even match. Mankira's big form V.S. the Ripper was fun to see. They're both medium-range weapons with an AoE sweep, perfectly able to counter each other... In the end, they'd probably draw. (Barring any gun-related incidents.) I would guess that the Ripper has a speed and mobility advantage over Big Mankira, but it also has the same problem as Lovely -- too medium-range to take advantage of Big Mankira's short-range tradeoffs.
Thank you for this ask! It was a lot of fun to go back and look at the fight again.
Was rereading your series on Ao3 and I gotta say, the way I fell in love AGAIN with the way you write their dynamic in each installment is something I adore!
And also, do YOU have a favourite of yours? If not thematically then just in general?
Thank you so much!! I’ve had so much fun writing this collection. I hope to explore more variations on their relationship and uncover new unique and bizarre angles of approach.
Of my own work, my favorite child is the Toxicology series. I feel it has some of my best-considered concepts, and I really hope I can finish it.
I really need to figure out how to write shorter pieces again. Something in the 5k range. I’m about to be eye-bleedingly busy for the next couple weeks at least, probably the whole month of August if I’m being realistic… I really want to finish a draft (any draft) before then, just so I can scratch my writing itch one last time before I won’t be able to do it for a while.
Unfortunately, I’m already in a bit of a fallow period, just because of the natural wax and wane of creative energy, and also — most frustratingly — MY CRITICAL DISCERNMENT HAS ADVANCED PAST MY WRITING ABILITY. AGH. This is also a normal part of creative life, but ohhhhh my godddddd. And of course the only cure is to KEEP writing, until your skill catches up with your reading. For these reasons, and because of time constraints, I’ve decided to let my current major WIPs rest.
Please wish me luck in my personal endeavors! I’m excited; if I do well over the coming weeks, my life may change for the better. And feel free to pitch short (SHORT.) oneshot ideas at me. It is, as usual, very unlikely that I will write them… but who knows, we might both get lucky!
People who write: do you ever feel like there’s definitely a much better way to do what you’re trying to do with a scene or a section, but you just can’t see it? ‘Cause that’s where I’m at right now.
Well, what I'm really hoping for in terms of yuri is for the manga to give me a really good ship for Riyo or Semiu. I'm eagerly waiting for Riyo's backstory, and I actually started watching Gachiakuta because I saw that clip of Semiu obliterating those bandits. I'm really hoping the story will focus more on her at some point.
But it is possible that I might write Janka yuri if I land on a concept that deeply appeals to me. For no particular reason at all, I just don't tend to gender-bend characters much. I also kind of interpret Zanka as the cis-est boy alive. However, if I think of something that would work really well if they were women, I'm certainly not opposed to it.
