thecicada replied to your post “i want to participate in the TRC month but man, i don’t know if i have...”
I think this kind of discussion is valuable and I agree that it often comes across as a bit vague or shallow in fandom chitchat (in my own fics etc too, I'm sure). And I think you make a really good point about the teamwork aspect. Fai's struggle isn't a solo arduous journey, it is very much shared with other people, whether he wants it to be or not at times, and that's such a good trope to read... idk, I can't comment as someone with firsthand experience of those levels of trauma but I do understand some smaller aspects of it and basically I really like this post. I like seeing deeper explorations of this story and I think this is really interesting and important...
i think on the one hand clamp didn’t rlly Intend to write a trauma narrative but on the other i just dropkicked all four of em into the trash bc the author is dead bro we construct our own narrative reality B) it took me a long time to get to the ‘fai’s story is traumatic’ realization & ive been rereading the damn thing for going on eight years now so im kinda chill abt not having seen it talked abt i guess.
it’s weird to try & analyze critically for me bc so much of fai’s journey is in that very clamp concept of “connection to other people is critical to good mental health and really any kind of healthy selfhood at all”. fai’s the + to subaru’s - in the sense of positive/negative space, absence and presence, as subaru is a trauma narrative without connections and ends... well. you know. esp with the concept of “kurogane was not traumatized (didn’t end up w trauma disorder) and so his advice to fai is kind of skewy” bc he’s wrong but he’s right a lot of the time?
like kurogane doesnt get the whole “I AM A DESTROYER OF WORLDS I BRING MISFORTUNE WAH” schtick bc he’s like ??? not true my dude. but it kind of... is in fai’s case, not bc of his intrinsic selfness but bc of the things that were unforgivably done to him. so there’s this disconnect, at first. and - to be really honest, the place i am in my recovery is a place where i fixate on that? i havent reread start to finish in years. so i’m like “ugh fuck off kurogane he is CURSED just u wait a couple worlds” while fai’s closing himself off from everyone else bc he dared care abt and be cared abt. objectively I LOVE kurogane dont get me wrong but the traumatized bits of me are all >:U acid tokyo angst is where it’s at bruh which. anyway moving on
but i think, to be fair to both me and kurogane a big part of their relationship is coming to a mutual understanding somewhere in the middle. kurogane is wrong about a lot of fai’s circumstances and the implications thereof but he’s not wrong either about how fai is worth a lot including being loved and cared for and how fai needs to goddamn understand that. kurogane more than anyone else in the entire multiverse helps teach fai this, and fai helps temper his one-track punch it dead method of coping (lmao while kurogane i think doesnt have ptsd he has some fuckt coping mechanisms from trauma) and helps kurogane understand how other different people experience things which makes sense bc kurogane’s arc is fundamentally about empathy i think, as that is so v much tied into “what is true strength” aka his personal quest
kurofai 2kForever, a book by me coming to stores near you next never
