What's this? Sterling having brief thoughts (whatever THAT word count is going to look like) on Ishigami Village? A topic they're WELL known among friends for having A LOT of thoughts on? Well, you're in luck! This is a new weekly challenge in the server (which is 18+) and our first prompt was "Ishigami Village" which is interesting enough by itself, but I'll be addressing some follow-up questions related to the prompt! So sit down, buckle up, and get ready for a 'brief thought' to surpass 5k! (Please keep my joints in your thoughts, there's a reason I'm a retired meta writer LOL)
(update: it was 1.4k!)
Follow-up Questions
who’s your favourite ishigami villager?
what customs do you think ishigami village has?
what changes do you think happened to their culture when senku came along?
what cultural aspects of their group are you drawn to?
any headcanons about the village?
I know, very strange to list the follow-up questions at the beginning, but this is going to give us structure and remind me to not go overboard.
Who is your favorite villager? Any Headcanons about the village?
The first one is pretty easy for me as it's a 3-way tie with Kohaku, Ruri, and Suika. They almost feel representative of different aspects of the same person (and is very heavily implied that Lillian is a direct ancestor so my HC is they're three of Lillian's "faces" if you will. Her diligence and hardworking attitude, her willingness to fight/protective nature (hers looks different than Kohaku's, it's not a physical manifestation, but a mental one), and her loyalty and sense of duty.
I do have a fair number of headcanons especially one related to the Grand Bout that seems to have gained some popularity as a way to explain how the headstone was brought over. (The Grand Bout being a way to determine who would go on the voyage. You can read more about my addition here)
Additionally, it is also important to remember that smaller groups of people, generally speaking, mean that everyone is in everyone's business. People who come from or live in close-knit communities would know that it just feels like everyone is your aunt/uncle, your grandparent, parent, and so on and so forth. I am not even getting into the headache that is the fact that everyone is literally cousins, though I do theorize that since it is possible for people to break out of stone from mental fortitude alone it is an issue, but they aren't dying from 3,718 years of 6 people intermarrying.
Senku did the math and confirmed that it seemed as though the brain being active+nitric acid helped to speed the process. There is an implication that, say, someone with racing thoughts could have awoken from the stone possibly earlier if in an acidic environment... and Japan does have acidic soil where as Sacramento does not generally have acidic soil... I need to write meta on that.) This is naturally going to have a HUGE impact on dynamics and politics in a group. (But also kind of makes the existing worldbuilding fall apart, it's okay, we'll just fix it with duct tape later.)
BUT I DIGRESS, This is supposed to be BRIEF.
What Changes do you Think Happened When Senku Came Along?
I am AAAAAAAAA, I could write a whole meta on this topic alone. Senku is not exactly the best person, we've established this. Even in the series itself he has mentioned he's not a saint when it comes to his emotions (which he does have... SO MANY). You can be an overall genuine person and have good intentions (which he does) but still not be a good person. He's an incredibly messy character who does view the villagers as people, yes, but as a means to an end. It's an additional benefit for him to make sure they're happy and bribe them to help but there was a HUGE cultural shift that's going to deal irreparable damage when you suddenly introduce things such as the Agricultural Revolution Pt. 2 to society. Generally speaking it didn't end well for women. And considering Japan doesn't have large animals that live there (and would be okay there for almost 4,000 years) it's very likely that the gathering and farming (reliance also on a single crop... which totally doesn't have a history of ever going wrong) would have slowly phased out women from the table. Not to mention things such as processing textiles, hides (from what I have found, plant materials was more common to use in Japan throughout history), dyeing, spinning and weaving were all typically done by women and men. However dyeing with natural plants is anything but an exact science and often times those dye recipes are passed down from one generation to the next. That would likely be one of the areas that Senku would "improve" with synthetic dyes (not all natural dyes are toxic, a lot of times they're just not colorfast or lightfast, lightfastness is a main one because of sunlight. But you can get a wide breadth of colors from just plants and metals (be careful, because that part CAN be toxic, don't just pour copper water down the drain!)
It seemed from the beginning when Senku first joined it was more egalitarian. There were gender roles, but no one really thought twice about Kohaku being a warrior, they were more irritated that she caused trouble and caused her father more worry when he already had one child dying of an unknown illness, the same one that killed his wife. Even Jasper himself mentioned that Senku came and made a mockery of their traditions because Senku is ~15-16 years old, he's still of the mindset of "I have a problem, I need to fix it" and just sort of blunders through life as teenagers are wont to do. For him, his problem is he needs to save humanity so he can find Byakuya, he's not thinking of the implications of destroying thousands of years of cultural traditions. Often times, I've read papers about the invisible elderly or how in archeology it is easy to gloss over the contributions of older folks in society due to older bones not exactly preserving well. This tends to be the reason behind the incorrect assumption that everyone lived to 35-40. In Senku's mind the "best" way is unchecked progress without considering the other areas due to his general lack of wisdom.
After Senku has taken over the village through a marriage and divorce (which I have in my Kos Meta and will include in citation below, but divorce is not a new topic for the villagers, they were just shocked over his audacity and his overall lack of respect for their culture). There is a shift for more men taking active roles. Ruri, it is implied, holds a lot of power as the priestess, but her role and Kohaku's role as what appears to be leader of the village guard, are overlooked for Chrome who was technically banished from the village for "Sorcery". It was meant to show that Senku did it all without one of his generals being a fighter, HOWEVER, it also sends a pretty clear message when ALL of the antagonist factions have women in positions of authority except for the KoS. (Kirisame, Charlotte, Minami, and technically Kohaku in the beginning since it's uncertain if the village will be on Senku's side at first.)
In order to understand how the other groups in the series may view the KoS we have to look at it from their perspective. Starting with the Ishigami villagers. From their perspective they are having some random man come into their village, make a mockery of their traditions which are then voided because outside help (remember he doped everyone so technically the bout was void from the start and he was able to divorce Ruri so easily because he legally didn't win), and then saved the priestess' life.
-The Perception, Ishigami Village
From these changes we can now make deductions for some of how Ishigami village was BEFORE Senku (remember, he's likely considered a god in the religion) showed up.
Customs of Ishigami Village
From how it seems, there's a variety of customs with Ishigami Village, such as the Grand Bout (which may no longer continue after Senku's arrival). Fish is a main protein staple, though it would make sense for the village of that size to move around every so often so they don't exhaust their resources. They likely did practice a form of agriculture, but also supplemented with gathering and hunting. Everyone knows how to sew (not that big of a surprise, sewing is an incredibly useful skill that everyone should know) so it wouldn't surprise me if there were customs around making new ships, I would also not be surprised if there were coming of age ceremonies and ceremonies for early childhood (once you pass through childhood, you are in the clear for living a relatively normal life). I tend to have Kohaku a little more "eh" about privacy as a Kohaku thing, but I generally feel like the village being small with possibly multigenerational houses means that everyone's once again, aware of everyone else's business. Kohaku is just Kohaku.
What Cultural Aspects of the Group are you Drawn to?
All of it. Just. All of it.
Thank you for coming to my brief.... only 1.4k word meta talk with sources on Ishigami Village! Very brief! Under 5k! It was a lot of fun and I had to really hold myself back from doing a deep dive (which I will absolutely do in server omg)
Long post incoming. TL;DR: fuck fandom bullying. Full stop.
Fellow BSDers,
I have been writing for the BSD fandom since August 2021, where I started to write my way out of my big traumas. Somehow, with one image in my head, I started the CAU with A Drop of Black Coffee in the Pot. I'm not entirely sure if that makes me a "big name" in the fandom or whether that gives what I'm about to say more "clout," but hey... it's worth a shot, yeah? Because maybe people will listen.
Maybe.
Since coming into this fandom, I've made a lot of friends through Discord, and I have had a blast creating for, with, and among them. Through Discord, I became a rare pair aficionado and gained a soft spot for Chuuatsu, ChuuRan, and others. The conversations I had with fans, in short, brought me more than peace from my traumas. I found myself among a community who, through shared interests in pretty anime characters based on historical authors, held me up as I faced more traumas, enjoyed more successes, and just... lived.
HOWEVER (emphasis), in the last year or so, three of who I would consider my closest Discord friends--three people I care deeply about--have been bullied out of the fandom for their unconventional ships or portrayal of characters or preference for dead dove content, and two more have been targets of cyberbullying.
In one case, I was also targeted by Dazai Anon (one of the cyberbullies mentioned above). My response to this is always simple: I laugh at the death threats because I'm already dead inside, I delete the comments, I block the posts, and I keep writing what brings me joy. Sometimes, that's ChuuAtsu. Sometimes, that's a more popular ship. And in all cases, that's totally fine.
But that's me. And not everyone is like me.
I've written this post a dozen times in my head. I contemplated, as the "adult" in the room, putting everyone in timeout or putting on my disappointed parent face. But instead, I settled on this.
BSD fandom, respectfully, what the actual fuck?
Let me be perfectly clear: there is no good reason to ever bully anyone, but ships, tropes, character preferences and readings? These are among the worst. And don't even get me started on what's "canon."
What I guess I'm really trying to say is this: the three people I know who stopped making BSD content did because certain members of the community took their fun away. And that's never okay. There is room in the fandom for the main ships and the rarepairs. There's room for the fluffmongers, angst fiends, and dead dove aficionados. In fact, many of the friends I mention write content I personally don't, nor do they tend to write fluff and explicit consent the way I tend to, but guess what? We appreciate each other's art. We share ideas. We hold each other up. And, most of all, we're friends, anyway.
So if I'm in any place to ask this fandom for anything, it's to keep your own space as a writer/creator without taking someone else's space away. It's to have fun creating content SKK, but stop taking fun away from the people who create DaRan or DazAtsu or KuniDazai or Kouyou x Dazai or whatever ship. Most important, be kind to one another, regardless of what characters, tropes, or ships we love because at the end of the day, we're not just pseuds or creators; behind the screen, we're human.
As people, I don't think we have anything to lose in this. We can still work around tags and tropes and ships and characters we don't enjoy. Plus, who knows? You might make a new friend, gain new perspective on a character dynamic you never thought about, exchange ideas and share excitement about the newest manga chapter... and that might bring joy to both of you.
I really hope this letter to be the start of something bigger, maybe something that will move through boundaries between fan communities. I've thought about events, challenges, movements... but my limited resources as a creator with 99 mental health issues mean that for now, those ideas will have to wait. This letter, inadequate as it feels, still says most of what I want it to say.
I often say I appreciate people taking the time to read my fics. I mean that for this letter, too. So thank you, truly.
There're a lot of hb arts already, I don't think anyone will draw this moment so...
Anyway I'm very late, so it shouldn't spoil the happy mood, I hope😅
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