"Hold your fire, now. We'll chase them as soon as we get a clear shot."
Welcome!
If you're here, you've found my main blog. I mainly post about writing- be that ideas I have but don't feel like writing out, or shorter fics I don't think I could post elsewhere, or general woes! Maybe ask for ideas when inspiration seems to escape me...
I have a few ongoing projects, but I'm mainly a fanfic writer. I have some OCs I love dearly and all that too, but I probably will not discuss them too much!
My name is Venus, I'm a 19 year old fanfic writer and self-proclaimed vampire! I have a boyfriend who I love very very dearly who may sometimes pop up... I participate in oshikatsu and on occasion will dress up in full jirai coords. I'm a mild fashion and character design enthusiast and sometimes have a lot of opinions on stories. Sometimes I subject others to listening about them.
Currently I'm posting mostly about ZENO Remake (and the rest of the media around it), but you'll likely also start to spot Fragaria Memories, Monster High, and other marutoku titles floating around as well.
This is not a spoiler-free blog, but I will usually put spoilers after a cut with a warning for longer analysis posts or newer releases.
Please give me asks about any of the above I want excuses to talk abt them please please please please-
Thank you for reading~! Tags list can be found below!
garden's reflection : general posts, basically whatever the writer seems to currently be thinking.
daydreams in the water : headcanons, ideas, prompts and scenarios anything writing adjacent that isn't quite a full fic!
reflections in moonlight : more analysis-heavy or opinion-based posts.
dreams of a lotus flower : actual fics! either links to ones over on ao3, or short fics posted to the site itself!
letters from my beloved : asks specifically from my boyfriend !
murmurs from the rain : asks from. well. everyone who is not my boyfriend!
i don't know why people are so mad that midokoto didn't end up confirmed ? i mean , okay . mikoto's rep was shit , but can we focus on the demonization and harmful stereotypes enforced onto him as a system first ? please ?? a system doesn't need to have many members to be nuanced or good rep . i was really hoping for him to be good few - headcounted DID system representarion , even as a system with many alters .
I think what a lot of people who think Mikoto is good DID rep are forgetting is that he's a fictional character. If there was a real person in his situation and offhandedly mentioned that his parents got divorced assuming that has to do with how he developed DID.
However, fictional characters do not work the same way. With a fictional character you need to expand upon that trauma,how it was,how it made them feel, whatever. A fictional character only has the multitudes they show
i've been looking into the mikoto discussions on here after my previous post, and i just quickly want to clarify:
if you're making the conversation about syscourse and not about the continued gross mishandling of systems in media and how it reinforces negative stereotypes about us systems then, system or not, i genuinely think you're a piece of shit who is hijacking the actual conversation for your own goals.
i haven't really been big on discussing MILGRAM here, because im not a fan of making posts tearing a thing apart, and i haven't been a fan of trial three as a whole (besides Amane, who i do like their handling of).
but wow
requiem and the attached voice drama was almost IMPRESSIVELY bad, wasn't it?
im gonna preface this post with two pieces of information:
one, this account is run by a DID system. i can speak from my own knowledge and experiences, but i do NOT speak for systems as a whole. experiences do differ, and im not the spokesperson for all systems ever.
two, while we ARE a system, i am not a medical professional by any means. take any information i state regarding the medical side of this disorder with a grain of salt.
Mikoto's case has been one I've been... cautious about. I'm not going to say "having a violent alter is bad and stereotypical", because admittedly, WE fall into that stereotype. That being said, there's ways to handle situations like that- trial two made me optimistic in that John was very "humanized". He was portrayed sympathetically, less like the "insane, psychopathic alter" and more like someone doing his best to protect himself and Mikoto in a bad situation.
Trial 3 then proceeds to inform us that his victims were all innocent bystanders, including a 17 year old girl and a single mother, not the actual causes of Mikoto's stress.
Ignoring the inconsistencies between what the MV and audio drama describe vs the actual known logistics of the disorder, this makes ANY defense fall flat. A version of the case where the victims were people who had hurt or wronged Mikoto makes it a case that would be debatable even without the DID twist, with the usage of the disorder serving the role of obfuscating the crime's details rather than being what the entire question of its morality is based on.
This version is, yet again, a stereotypical "insane" alter who is a serial killer. He was "born" 48 hours ago, and immediately jumped to killing random people on the street.
That's another thing that's irked me about this case, something which is hard to put into words. The constant "babying" of John- constantly throwing around terms of him being a "newborn", of crying like one, literal babying of the guy. While the voice drama does its part in having Mikoto acknowledge it was still his body and thus he needs to take the accountability for what happened, the report and Es almost overly talk about John like he's... literally a child.
What an interesting way to talk about him?
...Positives! Positive things! The MV's framing is actually probably the only positive. I think the music video is framed and done extremely well as a DID depiction, it's such a shame it's attached to the song and the context of... this. This entire story.
I don't like that the entire story hinges on basically whether or not you'd be willing to accept DID as an explanation for an insanity plea. I don't like the babying of the system and it's members. I don't like the insistence Mikoto has not been deemed guilty by MILGRAM itself. I don't like that this is a stereotype played entirely straight with no room for the discussions that made Mikoto's case interesting to begin with.
I don't like that trial three contradicts previous information- John was certainly not protecting them by killing innocent people. I don't like that the story truly treats Mikoto as "cured", John existed for 48 hours plus the time in MILGRAM and is gone. I don't like that it doesn't seem to take the effort to portray any of what makes a dissociative disorder a DISSOCIATIVE disorder besides the existence of John.
I don't like that, for all intents and purposes, you could say Mikoto had some sort of breakdown and forgot after and the story remains exactly the same.
It feels like the DID angle was added purely for the shot of John punching the warden back in trial one. Otherwise... this is just a story that villainizes very real illness. There's ways to go about violent alters. They DO exist. This is unfortunately not an attempt to discuss that reality, and is just used for a "moral dilemma" that adds nothing to any conversation and has been done many times over.
The concept is still as disgustingly ableist as it was 10 years ago, by the way!
i did go into this knowing i'd almost definitely like it. surprise surprise, i really liked it! it's the first game up on a backlog of mrtk games i want to play (either for the first time, or play again), so i'll likely be posting sporadically about them.
i'm not sure whether i want to post my (analysis) thoughts about this game now, or wait for after i go through Rakudo yo Ori e (its sister game) to talk about it. from what i understand, the games are ultimately different takes on the same characters and setting- so i'm inclined to post about both on their own and discuss them together later.
as for personal, non-analysis related, opinions, i didn't expect to grow so attached to the duo. i knew i'd like Ren (...literally EVERYONE i knew joked that he's exactly my taste in characters), but Takumi grew on me extremely quickly. Rakudo wasn't initially on my backlog list, but ive added it specifically because i really want to see more of these two. i got attached to them THAT strongly over the course of the game.
i also didnt expect the fandom to have so much discourse in it, but that's probably what i get for looking at the english tags on twitter before checking anywhere else ^^'
in addition to work on the idol fuyuaka fic, i have....
two other zeno wips ive been chipping away at with a third (incredibly silly) one shot idea thats been brewing between me and bestie
a fragmem lost kitty arc part two general post since i have a lot of thoughts on it
an actual fragmem fic that i need to lock in on writing one of these days despite it being for a rarepair only ONE entire person will understand
a proper maeno aki analysis post (my entire personality is literally being maeno aki's number one fan and i'm not maeno aki posting on here??? what is WRONG with me why is the maeno aki fan not maeno aki posting)
an oc project i've also been chipping away at. slowly.
probably another zeno character analysis post that i want to write but don't know how to word. i have a lot of those actually.
...this is why i literally never get anything done istg
holy fuck is venus... is venus posting an actual fic? venus can do that?? they can post actual fics instead of just analysis posting for five million hours a day????
https://archiveofourown.org/works/85318136
they sure can! chapter one of the fuyuaka idol au issss up! i hope anyone who reads it enjoys ^^
so the 10th anni badges id ordered (for now) finally came in. which means. another kuroaka ita bag!
im really so happy with it! the pins are decently high quality, better than id honestly expected compared to other badges ive bought (official merch or otherwise)
more thoughts and info abt the experience buying them + future merch buying plans under the cut, as well as some more photos!
if you're eyeing the 10th anni merch, it is made to order until next year. it took about 2 weeks from the order being placed (as it is on booth, you can use buyee through the merch site itself as a proxy) to being shipped, and another 5 days to be shipped from the manufacturer to the buyee warehouse to me. PLEASE do your research into expected shipping prices! making an ita bag was not a cheap endeavor even knowing exactly how many pins id need. the shipping for these guys was 80 dollars. do not underestimate shipping costs
i bought them basically as soon as they went up for sale.... aha........ im normal........
i plan on making another bag later this year with all 4, and i will be purchasing all 4 standees! im still very happy with this, and its my first zeno bag consisting of official merch!
i also will be attempting to purchase the artbook when it goes on sale next month! everyone i know knows ive been basically going insane for that thing from the moment mazu posted the cover art. im normal. im sane. im normal im sane im normal im-
anyways, more photos from my process putting the bag together!
if this fic takes forever it's because i'm having far too much fun expanding on this au like ive spent more time thinking on this silly little universe than i should be spending
i might post smth of all of the unused ideas that don't make the cut + other silly details of the au purely because if i add every single little thing i WANT to add this fic is never getting finished. like. ever
tenth anniversary pins ordered! i'll be ordering the standees on another day... ita bags are expensive, and i want to be at least a little prepared for this shipping cost.....
i really need people who write fangans to take a step back and seriously examine how they write their poc and disabled cast members because at a certain point yes i can say those decisions were rooted in a bias and the execution of those decisions doesn't change it
the post ive honestly been workshopping for far too long. aka ushirono fuyu and escaping the cycle of abuse (wow i got this done faster than i thought-)
(do i need to say the obvious? spoilers mainly centered around the original game and daily life)
ramblings for a bit...
Have I talked about my tendency to really like narratives that deal with being a part of the cycle of abuse and the struggles of breaking it? It comes up a normal amount of times as a thing I think about a lot. Let's see... Kieran Valentine (Monster High), The House of the Hearth (Genshin Impact), the Oak Twins (Honkai Star Rail), the Mockingbird duo (Zenless Zone Zero), all of Canto 8/8.5 (Limbus Company), Book One (Twisted Wonderland), the entire game of Hundred Line... I don't think I need to really continue the list, honestly...
That led me to, naturally, want to make a post along these lines eventually. I think the things ZENO has to say about it are interesting, and you can look at my brief thoughts (brief, because I honestly could talk more on it) on one of the other ways it tackles this subject in my 4.01 Endings 4 + 5 analysis. But if you've kept up with those, you'll note that I don't bring up Fuyu much (at least, as his own character rather than a tool for the narrative's themes), which is less because there's nothing to say and more because talking about 4.01 Fuyu involves first taking a really good look at the things he's missing there.
He's a very... contradictory sort of character, which isn't a bad thing. It's more to say that I think a lot of opinions of him are based on what parts of him that leave the "strongest impression" on the player, given just how much can really change between endings, then even more based on what you take away from Daily Life. Fortunately, I'm very fond of stories like that!
the cycle of abuse (and where a lot of narratives about it fail)
I think it's probably good to start with what I like most about how ZENO tackles the subject, breaking the cycle of abuse is extremely difficult in ways that not every story wants to tackle.
ZENO has never been scared to make it's characters downright horrible people at their worst. It's one of the nice things about it to me, it trusts you to look at these characters at their absolute worst and still come out of it wanting better for them. The cycle of abuse is a very insidious thing, but it isn't just about not replicating the abuse that is done to you, but dismantling every bias in your head about what's proper treatment of others, what does and doesn't hurt. It's easy to fall into the trap of just because the way you're treating people doesn't mirror your exact abuse, it means you've freed yourself from it, when it's entirely possible those biases are still in effect and harming your loved ones.
This is where I think Fuyu becomes a very interesting take on the concept. The way he has hurt people is very different from the way Kanrai has, his lines from his time in the facility are deeply angry in a way Kanrai's lines in Daily Life don't read as. Kanrai might justify his actions in the sense of "improving the world", but Fuyu hardly disguises his as much more than his own drive for revenge (even when he expresses his disgust towards the patients as a whole, it's not exactly difficult to put together just why he thinks that...).
The thing that might most resemble Kanrai is his role in the facility's shutdown to begin with, really. Even then, his actions after that point are all deeply personal. It's not that he's incapable of causing harm in a callous manner (it's been specified by Mazu he treated patients as little more than disposable test subjects), but he is shown to have an interest in making the harm he does to others rather deeply personal and intentional. This is in line with his motivations, of course- Fuyu's goals are extremely personal compared to Kanrai's rather broad end goal.
Even the parts that most resemble his father are haunted by the knowledge his father had pushed it to be like this from the very beginning, though.
Fuyu is very, very far from a "perfect" victim of anything. It's further from it than the image of an abuse victim that Tsugino presents, I'd dare say. Regardless of how much you want to attribute his actions to ZENO's influence, you still have to grapple with his treatment of the patients and our main duo being intended, explicitly, to cause as much hurt to them as possible. I think that's nice, because plenty a discussion about the cycle of abuse does not want to present the one breaking from it as a bad person for very long.
Referencing my previous examples, Limbus Company's Jia Xichun was never a bad person, and Family Hierarchs before her... quite literally had their minds and memories adjusted, even if we do get to see just how awful they became. The House of the Hearth trio largely get their crimes waved away when it comes time to sell them to the player, and their "Father" has her treatment of her children ultimately framed as justified and kind.
You really do have to spend the entire game sitting with what Fuyu has done, knowing he's put our main duo through this entire situation, and the game still expects you to come to the conclusion he deserves to become a better person. That's a sort of trust I like when a story has in its viewers.
You look at the story from his perspective, but it isn't like Tsugino where his victims remain largely nameless and faceless (and even then, you have to dig into extra material for the one that does get a face and... an alias!). And yeah, everything we see about him just serves to put just how miserable his life is into perspective. It's still something interesting to me. It feels a bit like your playthroughs are all about the process of forgiveness, of learning about these three and understanding them and forgiving them regardless.
I think that viewing your playthrough like that just hits the hardest with Fuyu, who remains so antagonistic and his goals unclear up until you finally begin to really uncover the truth.
healing is the least linear process possible
Daily Life is a piece of media I really like as a sequel. If ZENO Remake is about coming to the conclusion that even people who've done horrible things deserve the chance to become better people, then ZENO Daily Life is about what "healing" actually looks like and what being a part of a support system involves, both as the one supported and the one supporting others.
It expands on the Ushirono family enough that it leaves plenty of room for thought on what might have eventually become of Fuyu (and Natsu, should she have made it to adulthood) and how their family operates. ZENO Remake might not frame Fuyu's actions as a direct result of a cycle, but ZENO Daily Life is what makes it rather abundantly clear.
Fuyu doesn't make a complete 180, but you still can tell that there's healing. He's not so destructive to others and himself, but the game still shows a rather healthy dose of his own unique brand of recklessness. He still doesn't bring himself to forgive Maeno, even if that's a decision that seems to hurt him more than anything. We know plenty well from ZENO Remake's endings F and G that holding on to his inability to forgive him isn't necessarily what he actually wants. It's treated more of an obligation, he can't forgive him or it's disrespecting the memory of Natsu.
Daily Life doesn't make him forgive, it's more about reframing this mindset to not be so destructive to everyone and himself. He might not forgive Maeno, but that doesn't have to lead him to mistreating patients. He doesn't have to hurt him, and can even still be there to help. Short stories show that he still spends time with him outside of a work setting.
Basically, it's the process of working through the very thing I said should be at the core of any story about breaking this cycle- dismantling the biases he holds to become better.
His dialogue doesn't become nice, but it shows a lot of care towards the duo that shows progression from what we see up until the ending, where you still feel a sense of tension or distance. It shows rather nicely his own role in this support system the three have built, even if it's not always perfect. He doesn't mince words or phrase things nicely, but that doesn't mean you can't tell just how much he actually cares, and the game is all about how far the three are willing to go for each other and people that they see are going through similar pain.
"Nothing exists in this world other than things that might one day disappear right before your eyes. But, you do realize you yourself are included in that, right? There's no way to know when someone other than ourselves might vanish. But you're included in the list of people who might vanish without a trace one day."
I don't often quote dialogue directly, because I assume people who read these are familiar with the game. But this sequence has stuck with me since I first played Daily Life, and I think it best shows exactly what I mean when I talk about how much I like Fuyu's development.
Yes, it foreshadows one of the endings. But it also connects rather deeply into his own experience with loss. Daily Life isn't haunted by Natsu's presence in the way the main game is, but you still very much feel the traces of it here. It really shows the difference in perspective, that "loss" has become a motivation to help others. The conversation is framed as an observation about Maeno, but it's hardly a mistake that Fuyu is the one delivering it. If you need the evidence that these words apply just as much to his own behavior, then you just have to look at Ending 4 (or to some extent, Ending 1).
"Loss" and "grief" become a motivation to prevent it from ever happening again.
"Maeno protected you because he doesn't want you to disappear. That's all. His feelings about protecting you are so strong, he doesn't look after himself. So that's why... Think about it. One day, we'll all disappear. We'll all die. That time may come at any moment. Just remember that."
the part of this i actually wanted to write about at first
Remember when I said I wanted to talk about the short story with him and Kochi?
Right? Right guys...?
This whole post stemmed from that. Granted, because most of it has been shoved into other sections, it's shorter than it would've been originally... aha...
Anyways, the conclusion to the game involving him becoming Kochi's guardian is actually a really neat way to end this arc. It makes me really wish we could see more of this dynamic, but I think it's fine to have been left like this...
Fuyu stepping into that role is a very direct way of showing how he's improved from his time in the facility. You have to trust he's... well, a better person. The game momentarily questions in Ending 4 if he's really the right fit with it through Maeno, and it pretty immediately affirms he's fine.
The short story shows it still isn't necessarily simple, mind you. Kochi is still rather... himself, and it talks about how Fuyu has to deal with that. It cements that he's managed to break through this cycle of hurt, but it doesn't make the problems go away necessarily, either.
Natsu still haunts him, even if it's differently, and he has to have more productive ways of acknowledging that than lashing out. He doesn't seem to want to just project her onto Kochi, or even involve him in that aspect of his past at all. It's still all rather sweet, and I like it a lot. I'm so normal about these narratives. I'm so-
final ramblings thoughts and things
I think it's always fun to talk about Fuyu more on his own, because I think plenty of analysis exists out there that focuses on his connection to Maeno... Well, the nature of ZENO makes it basically impossible to talk about any of these characters without the others. These fuckers are so doomed and their stories are so connected you can't really just remove any one of them. But I don't like falling into the trap of only ever analyzing a character through certain relationships, so this post came into being.
That, and I maintain that his other dynamics with the cast need to be talked about more. Discussion of the main three as the most barely functional support system to exist is important to me specifically. Fuck them and their extremely codependent tendencies. I hate them. They need to explode.
this post took... a while... a really long while... i thought it'd take longer, but it still took so long... i really do like analysis posting about zeno, but it does sometimes take a lot of energy out of me to cover these sorts of topics. i think i should make my next post something silly. headcanon posting or a nice little drabble thats just sweet and nice (i don't know how to write fluff this is not happening /lh) or something.
that being said... i promised a 4.01 post about the siblings, i eventually want to make a natsu centered post, i want to talk about the other april fools games, i want to!! talk about so much!!! and i have no time ever
but i do hope anyone who reads this little mini-essay enjoyed it!!!
i've been mildly hinting at the post i've wanted to make discussing how zeno tackles the idea of breaking the cycle of abuse and how difficult it is to actually do in practice (aka the ushirono fuyu analysis) but it's in fact. very difficult to discuss everything i want to without touching on other aspects of the character that i do not have time to tackle in one post...
usually if it gets to this point i consider making it the basis of a character study instead (even if i don't always post those) but i have other works that need my attention more (not a single zeno fic from me yet in about a year... i reallyyyy need to fix that...)
if i dont post for like 3 weeks i blame this specific post because writing analysis is in fact extremely difficult sometimes AND i need to really lock in on those other projects
This is more of a personal grievance post than a like... serious analysis, but I think one of the things that's caused my Monster High hyperfixation to fade is just how obsessed the fans get sometimes with making Val look better than he was.
I don't mean this in the like... I think he needs to suffer more for what he did, sense. I think he's paid the price and learned his lesson, and he won't be doing that all again. I sometimes saw people floating around the criticism of Val that the narrative didn't punish him enough, and I do truly think that's wrong. I think there's no reason to punish him more for his past at this point, and I like the comics narratives of instead dealing with his inexperience with genuine relationships.
I mean it more like... some people really like downplaying or reframing what I affectionately label "Heartbreaker Era" Val's actions to make him more palatable, and I don't like that at all.
I think it's a mix of things, from most of Val's victims being nameless background characters, to knowing his past, to everything else. And while a lot of what we know about him points to a very "breaking the cycle of abuse" type of narrative, I feel like some takes I see on the character really like glossing over the part where he... y'know, did continue the cycle for a good bit.
Val isn't a "perfect victim" and we'll probably never truly get to see him make amends with most of the people he's hurt (Draculaura is only one out of many, so I think it's a tad disingenuous to act like her opinion is the only one that matters), and I think that's fine! Really! I think it's very interesting, it's just less so when it feels like I see posts downplaying what he did or attempting to reframe it to make him more sympathetic.
In part, it feels a bit like not actually liking the character's narrative, and I don't really know how to feel about that. As much as there's talk about how Val's story in the original special was changed, at the end of the day we don't know how that version of the story would've been executed- so it always feels like a tad hollow of an excuse. The version of Val's story we have is unambiguously a redemption, and dare I say it's probably better executed in this longer format with the diary + multiple comics dedicated to it rather than what would likely have been shoved into the last 30 seconds of the special (even though I think the loss in potential representation at the time is an absolute shame that we should NOT downplay).
I don't know. I'm very much a fan of these sorts of narratives (glances at my various ZENO 4.01 posts... sorry to the people who recognized my Spellentine work and followed me expecting more of that). Maybe it's just that affecting how I view most posts about Val, especially given most conversations about him are after WDGFIL and after "I Only Have Eye For You"/Pride 2024, but I vividly remember posts that really do downplay what he actually was/did, and that's... not really fun to see. In the sense of downplaying the harm he did cause, fully changing his mindset (which we have a whole diary about how he changed!), and just... generally feeling like a less interesting take on the character.
I don't really know what I'm on about, again this isn't much of a serious analysis post as it is just... me examining what made the character so special to me and why I feel like that doesn't carry over much in fan works/posts.
i found the perfect itabag for the tenth anniversary pins, but it'll have to wait until it's been officially put together to be shown~ it was so perfect i couldn't ignore it, and i wanted to know exactly how many pins ill need... so i picked one up.....
but here's the other photos i took of the standee while out- not pictured is also my first kuroaka ita bag, which i take with me everywhere (literally everywhere, i keep forgetting to get a photo of it, it's become that ingrained into my life...). i love oshikatsu in public spaces, i love little photos :>
