I just realized that Zenny & Emi's parental relationship is rather similar to how I'm setting up Rosa's relationship with her story.
One just has a different kind of bad parenting, Zenny in particular was given the worst hand seeing how their parents got a divorce right around Emi started uni. At this time Zenny would be at a really young age, not baby young but right around the time they're about to start middle school.
Actually that sets up really well as the main reason why Luna and Zenny didn't really saw each other during middle school. Their parents got a divorce and their father somehow won the right over their custody despite being a really horrible person. Backhanded bribery.
Emi's time with their parents wasn't even bad when she was born, same with Zenny. Their parents just started to have a fall out when they had Zenny.
(That reminds me that I need to give this family a last name lol, I'll just call them the Krystals for now)
I want to say that their parents started to have a deep rooted fall out when Emi was in her later highschool years. Their father was strict and wanted Emi to pursue something that would be in the medical field so they could get free medical treatments, even when it was just a joke by him he's persistent about and would try to nudge her in that direction. Not to mention he would be rather stubborn about being wrong, that the moment Emi got bad grades he would punish her rather unfairly. Their mom would be the one that pulls back his harshness but at times his stubbornness would outright prevent her from doing so. Their mom just wants their kids to have a better future than what she had, almost too much. And at times she would be a hypocrite, actually both of them might be hypocrites. Their mom would go on about wanting them to have an easier life than they did only for the next day force them to study despite already finishing midterms, and here would be where their dad come in to sneak them out to get some grub at a cafe and relax at the arcades.
Another reason to their divorce would be because of their father's smoking habit, he smokes when he was dating their mom and he still smokes nowadays. And an alcoholic to boot but so is their mom. The worst that have came out of his smoking addiction was that he smoked in the same room as when their mom had Zenny, and just making the kitchen smell like cigs half of the time.
I know that this next one is very much just piling on the long list of horrible things their father has done but I really want to make sure that both sides are in the wrong.
Zenny wasn't their second kid after all. That one was lost due to a miscarriage after their mother got into a car accident and their father was out drunk while she was mourning in the hospital alone. And instead of using this clear fact to win custody over Zenny, she stayed silent because she wanted them to have a normal childhood. And that ended up putting them through more turmoil than needed with their father getting a lot more verbally and physically abusive. There would even be times where he gets calls from their mom asking to see Zenny but makes them fake sleep and always tell them bitter white lies to keep them from learning the truth. Eventually it would even make Zenny forget their mom's face.
Emi was completely oblivious to all of this because they wouldn't tell her anything, she knows about the dirvorce but knew nothing about the things that was happening with Zenny, they wanted her to focus on her studies after all. She kept in contact with Zenny but because of differing time zones they couldn't really talk that often. Thankfully during this time period was when Zenny was in highschool, which meant that they would hang out with Luna.
Luna and Zenny's time spent together during their highschool years would be the main interlinking point for their relationship. Even when it was somewhat sparse, they were there for each other when it mattered. Especially for Zenny with them dealing with their father.
Emi does eventually find out about everything from a relative from their father's side of the family and dropped everything she was doing to get Zenny out of there.
That's all I can think for now about the massive backstory to why Emi and Zenny are living in the same house before the Hardlight Incident. Debating if I should make their mom dead or not. Maybe it's better if their mom had found a better husband than before and managed to finally get Zenny to live with her only for it to make Zenny rather lonely with how distant they feel about both of their parents and just feels really out of place in this new family.
A lot of complicated emotions really, because I want to make a really gut wrenching arc of Zenny learning to lie the same way their father does to get them out of there only for it to be a hard thing to unlearn leading them to needlessly hide because they don't know what else to do. Living with their mom got them out of an absuive household but it also stripped them away from a family they were familiar with. It wasn't just their father that was taking care of Zenny after the divorce, it was basically most of the relatives from his side of the family that was taking care of them. Especially their aunts and uncles, grandpa and grandma.
Zenny loses their grampa while they were living with their dad, and loses their gramma when they were living with their mom. They couldn't be there for both of them during their final days on the planet. With their grandpa was because they were at school when he passed, with their gramma was because they were living so far away from where she was and because they didn't want to go back to see their dad, they didn't want to go back only to miss the last days of one of the last few people that truely cared about them.
Zenny's losses in general is the main bulk of their trauma. From that loss makes them a lot more reserved. Add that ontop of their learned lying habit to get people to not worry about them. It created a really tough bottleneck for them to break through.
And this isn't even mentioning the massive gender questioning arc they go through that I still need to sit down and brainstorm about.
That's why I want to someday buy a license to use Porter Robinson's music for this project, especially the song "Shelter." Seeing how with this side of the story focuses around giving shelter when people need it.
Emi and Luna giving Zenny the shelter they need to finally breathe.
I just need to draw this out like how advogato9 (I think that's their handle) draws out illustration that tells a powerful wordless story.
Oh yeah and one last thing about Luna's relationship with Zenny. Seeing how Pumpkin fills in the role of not being able to fully express her love for her significant other, Luna would just take too long to confess her love for Zenny.
Oh yeah that would beg the question if she knows about Zenny being trans and if she accepts— ah who am I kidding it's because of that fact that she falls in love with them, it was just really unfortunate timing that she couldn't focus on that and cared more about their well being to acknowledge her love for them until way later when they got their jobs at the research facility and wasn't able to get the feelings out before the Hardlight Incident.
Final note: I'm definitely going to need to rewrite the Hardlight Incident seeing how I want to go back and give all of the elements an ancient temple that leads into the discovery of the light element by Emi. And then from there the first stable Hardlight cube prototype, and then it'll lead into Emi running into issues while testing mechanical compatibility with Hardlight that created the first elemental deadzone in a massive chunk of the ocean. That way it makes more sense for Zenny to be there, and that whole limited budget deal to go without making Emi a criminal outright while still keeping the prejudice in the research facility intact.
Ontop rewriting how Emi discovers the light element through hints of ancient ruins of each elements instead of a weird gem heist. Will probably rework that gem theif thing into a different story.
Oh my god this would also lead into making Hardlight a more common use thing when the events of IdLS starts. Like Hardlight technology would be in day to day use because of the Hardlight incident spearheading development on a better safer version but puts Emi under a lot more stress.
In short, remaking the Hardlight Incident to be a reinvention of the Light Element.
Emi finding out about a shunned away element that has said to be never taught again because the elemental sages agreed that the light elemental was far too dangerous to teach anyone and locked all info on how to learn it and how to counter it away in each of the ancient elemental temples in super cryptic runes.
Oh right that means developing light more about the 5 elemental sages having to kill the light elemental sage because they feared what futher mastery of such element would lead to.
This also leads into redoing the light element again.
Eh I ran out of juice I'll just draw this out later.
