#ash discusses

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I absolutely love the hair in that hnk thing, tell me more about it before I commit, please.

of course! houseki no kuni is an action/fantasy seinen about a group of genderless gemstone beings who must fight off attacks by the moon people seeking to abduct them, but the plot intensifies VERY RAPIDLY from this premise to touch on themes of identity, memory, grief, heritage, and how your physical body affects your experience of consciousness. it lures you in with fun slice-of-life shenanigans and the attack-of-the-episode format before diving into one of the most devastating arcs i’ve ever experienced, treating action scenes and quiet moments of heartbreak with the same powerful drama and gravitas,and from the v.a cast list it looks like the anime is going to get there this season.

i assume you’re asking about the anime, but there are currently only 60 or so translated chapters of the manga, so it’s a very quick and very addictive read (and the plot in the current ongoing arc is seriously gearing up)! regardless, here’s a quick, non-spoilery list of the things i personally love about hnk:

starkly evocative art style that lends itself perfectly to both serene, eerie atmosphere and biting humour.

the manga’s use of light/dark is particularly beautiful, and i think the anime’s use of cgi combined with hand-drawn detail is really charming!

the gorgeous shattery gem body horror aesthetic.

a sprawling yet distinct cast with intense, complicated relationships encompassing the full range of friendship, rivalry, mentorship, partnership, admiration, resentment, longing, desperately stubborn love…

so many cool worldbuilding and backstory hints to explore, and you’re constantly reevaluating what you think you know.

the voice acting and the ost in the anime is just superb.

so please give hnk a chance! it really is one of my absolute favourite series. and feel free to ask any more questions if you have them, i could honestly talk for hours about pretty much any aspect of hnk!

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Ahaha this might seem like a stupid question but what made you ship iwaoi and why do you like Seijoh 3rd years so much?! Also do you have any recs for them and do you plan on writing anything new in the future?! Sorry for asking so many questions!!

omg no need to apologise i love chatting!! i talked a little bit about hanaoi/iwaoi on my cc here but more generally, it surprises myself that i love iwaoi so strongly because i am not a friends to lovers fan, let alone a childhood friends to lovers fan.... AND YET!!! there’s just something about the depth of their history, the surface bickering underscored by an intense and perfect trust built up pebble by pebble over the course of a lifetime, the way they function as leader and right hand / captainsetter and ace, everything about aun no kokyuu and you’re a partner i can brag about. even if the team changes, that won’t change. i think i fell for them after reading the kitagawa daiichi flashback where iwaizumi tells oikawa there are six people on the court, stop trying to carry the weight of the entire match by yourself, we’re here too. and iwaizumi has ALWAYS been there. even when oikawa wasn’t on his own side, iwaizumi was.

AND THEN AS IF IT COULDN’T GET ANY BETTER oikawa moves to argentina and suddenly the intimacy they’ve never had to work for because of their sheer constant proximity becomes something precious they have to put effort into maintaining... and they become RIVALS which is much more my typical speed when it comes to ships. constantly thinking of iwaizumi’s gleeful expression standing behind team japan in 402 as their athletic trainer <3 though the exact role they’ve played in each other’s lives has shifted over time, to borrow phee’s metaphor they’re like two trees planted too close together and their roots tangled into a single system even as they grew up and physically apart. 

as for the seijou 3rd years i just really adore their easy dynamic! pre-karasuno match @ spring high moment when they unilaterally decided oikawa was going to buy them ramen if his serve went out is one of my fave haikyuu moments ever. big fan of how ruthlessly they tease oikawa but when it comes down to it they believe in him more than anything. they have his back! and ten years down the track hanamaki and matsukawa are still cheering for their old friend and captain despite the call of patriotism :’) i know this reply is very oikawa-centric but that’s because he’s my onepick so unfortunately i always have my oikawa glasses that only allow me to see oikawa on. it’s very simple i enjoy it when oikawa is loved and cherished. but apart from iwaoi/hanaoi i really like matsuhana and iwahana too!!

i don’t think i’m done with seijou 3rd years just yet, i don’t have any concrete wips in the works rn but i have so many Feelings about iwaoi and the 3rd years it’s bound to result in more fic, so... stay tuned, hopefully? i actually haven’t read fic for a very long time (too busy writing my own haha) so these are all pretty old, but still dear to my heart:

iwaoi

Thirty Years and Change (the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad) - sunsmasher

film reel life - arsenicjay

all of ao3 user masi’s iwaoi fic 

Before Midnight - fathomfive

if you wanna be - [orphaned]

reason to shine - themorninglark

the luck of the universe - themorninglark

seijou

on the anatomy of crushes - carafin (matsuhana)

to find the starlight in your eyes - commovente (hanaoi)

(the learned language of) acquired affections - commovente (hanaoi)

however many worlds away - commovente (hanaoi)

live it up, drink it in - punybastard (matsuhana)

rated m for - [orphaned] (matsuhana)

One Long Pause, Then You Begin - tookumade (seijou 4)

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in defense of everyone's least favourite tower of god protagonist

grumbly, subjective & unpopular rachel opinions under the cut:

the amount of rachel hate in the tower of god tag is... extremely upsetting, to say the least. it's predictable (since when has a female villain ever had a fanbase lmao) but sad nonetheless… i won't deny that she's done terrible things, or that she's selfish and consumed by her ambition and bitterness and the desire for validation, but these are the very traits that make her such an arresting character.

rachel has been the Unchosen One from the start. all her life she's been desperate to reach the top of the tower, to see the stars she's dreamed of, the unbroken expanse of the true sky and the intoxicating promise of absolute freedom that only the tower could offer her. and then she finally finds a way in through baam, and she's rejected. headon tells her that she's stolen baam's place in the tower and that she's a liar and a coward (headon is probably manipulating her so she will be more susceptible to his FUG salesmanship but rachel certainly doesn't know that). at this point she's terrified and guilty and angry. her only chance to have her wish granted has been seemingly destroyed. then she watches baam come in, and from the minute he steps into the tower he's aided by a zahard princess who just coincidentally happens to come in at the right time, bearing an a-grade pocket and a legendary weapon, both of which she bestows upon baam. what does rachel get? nothing. so is it really that surprising that she accepted headon's offer to take her to the top? everything she's ever wanted against a boy she doesn't even like. in FUG her qualities would be admired and utilised; rachel would be needed. rachel is cunning and delusional, which makes her the ideal behind-the-scenes worker for FUG, ascending through the floors while the public attention is on the new slayer, jyu viole grace, a person so apparently talented that he was adopted by the leader of FUG himself. so about as ~chosen as you can get, really. meanwhile rachel is no longer languishing in the shadows but certain in her purpose and ability to climb the tower with FUG's support. 

from rachel's perspective, baam's been given everything she was denied without even wanting it as viciously as she does. he's been specially selected by the tower itself. he has top-class equipment and a group of devoted friends willing to help him and nothing vaguely approaching a wish for the top of the tower. she wants it more, therefore she is more entitled to it than he is. this isn't necessarily true (rachel is rather blinded by the scale of her ambition and isn't particularly bothered with trying to look past her own interests), but it makes for an extremely tragic arc. this is what makes rachel so utterly fascinating - she's the one shunted to the side to make way for baam's heroic trajectory, and she does everything she can to shove him out of the way instead. she isn't ~chosen but she will do anything in her power to push through that regardless and make herself chosen. nothing can stop her in her quest to reach the summit of the tower. 

does she go too far in her methods? yes - things like injuring edin dan's leg out of spite come to mind, but the thing is, rachel is awful in the most human ways. i realise a large part of rachel hate stems from her betrayal of baam, which was obviously Not A Decent Thing To Do, and i'm not saying that i condone everything she's done, or that we should all just unconditionally support rachel in her tumultuous rise through the tower - i just wish people would take the time to understand her motivations. 

(and of course i also want people to stop erasing her importance as baam's first and arguably most influential mentor figure. his whole understanding of the world, his ideals and beliefs (as well as his later understanding of betrayal and the price of climbing the tower) were all shaped by her. rachel quite literally taught baam everything he knew, so attempts to brush over that/deny rachel her narrative significance are laughable and pathetic.)

tl;dr rachel's motives and goals are entirely understandable and even relatable, despite her villainous actions, so simply labelling her as evil!!!111!!!!!!11!!1! is a grossly reductive reading of a brilliantly nuanced character