Jay: I finished reading the Y: The Last Man comics.
Me: Ohohohohoho, look at this super old fanfic I wrote for Y back in the day when I finished it. In fact, I used to think a lot about some events not covered by the comics at the end... oh no, I'm thinking about it now...
Me word vomiting at Jay about Y: The Last Man things I thought about a decade ago:
I used to idly to think about how weird it must have been for Allison and Rose to raise the clones. Allison essentially seeing them become what she didn't outside of the shadow of her resentment toward her dad. If Allison's mom helped, Allison would see her analogues get time with her mom. Seeing Rose with them. Rose would probably be weirded out but know it was the right thing to do. I wonder if any of the clones treated Rose oddly as a foreigner. All that Chinese and Japanese spoken over Rose's head.
The youngest's English would end up perfectly Australian accented, pocked with Aussie slang.
And I could always picture one of the older clones catching Rose looking at her, clearly projecting the thought *So this was what Allison was like as a teenager*, and the clone saying, "I'm not onee-san."
Or picture Rose, at the short end of her fuse, venting in private to Allison: Your fucking clones are too fucking smart.
Allison: Yeah, well... *one arched eyebrow*
The eldest would always think of Allison as "onee-san", old enough to remember their dad and realize at the time everything happened in the comics that she was an imitation of Allison, old enough to always carry a little resentment toward the original--because if Ni-go had been enough, there wouldn't have been need for other attempts.
The youngest, Hachi-go, is Rose's favorite not simply because she's the youngest but because she's so young that she ends up feeling most like Rose's own child, the personality she shaped. The youngest refers to Allison interchangeably as "onee-chan" or "older sister" in Chinese because that's how her grandmother refers to Allison and she just absorbed it.
Allison and Rose have a whole conversation about the irony that Allison never wanted kids, that her bastard dad really did do everything in his power to burden her, even this.
Rose: ... Didn't you try to make a clone?
Allison: Yeah.
Rose: *hard cyclops stare*
Allison: What?
Rose: What did you plan to do with the kid?
Allison: I don't know. I didn't really think that far. I was focused on proof of concept.
Rose: Jesus, Allison.
Allison: I think there was a part of me that didn't think it would work.
Rose: ... Jesus, Allison.
Allison: Yeah.
Rose: How the hell are you going to pull this out of your ass?
Allison: I have to. Or we all go extinct.
Rose: ...
Allison: I'm going to figure it out, Rose.
Rose: ... Going extinct with you wouldn't be so bad, either.
Allison: I hate you.
They all feel weird calling the kids #2, #3, #4, #5, etc. in Japanese. Well, Rose doesn't feel weird because the Japanese words don't mean anything to her outside of how she refers to each but Allison and Matsumori are awkwardly aware of what they're calling the girls. At some point they decide it's definitely weird and Allison is like, "Just let them choose their names. I chose mine." *pointed look at her mom* "Even if not everyone recognizes it."
Mommy Matsumori: Hachi-go is two years old. She'll name herself Hat or something.
Allison: She can change it whenever she wants. Besides, she'll probably call herself Monkey because that's what Rose calls her.
Matsumori: That's worse.
Lol that just made me think: Matsumori starts to refer to the girls as animals. Rose only realizes this because Allison makes faces at this and Rose asks about it. Allison translates the terms.
Rose: Why does she call San-go 'Ox'?
Allison: Because San was born in the year of the Ox according to the Chinese zodiac.
Rose: Your mom believes in that?
Allison: I don't know if I'd say believe... but cultural conventions are hard to shrug off.
Rose: Why did she start that?
Allison: Because she thought *you* were doing it.
Rose: What?
Allison: You call Hachi-go "Monkey."
Rose: That's because she tries to climb everything!
Allison: It's also her sign.
Rose: Wow. So does your mom think I know the Chinese zodiac?
Allison: I don't know. Maybe?
Rose: Does that win me points in her book?
Allison: Do you need points?
Rose: It wouldn't hurt.
Allison: Not like a sword through the gut, anyway.
