Virtual Angel

26yo • 🇧🇷 • the summer Hikaru died is my current main interest • my life is in mokumokuren's hands • you can find me in twitter too @webdivaluigi

[virtual-angelll]

Brief intro 🪽

26yo/brazilian/she-her

I created this blog just to yap about my interests. Most of them are:

• The Trials of Apollo, Inazuma Eleven, Madoka Magica, The Summer Hikaru Died and Pluribus

~

Feel free to interact with me, send me asks. I'm quite socially awkward, but i try my best to be pleasant!

[spoopdeedoop]

i wish i could be what you needed me to be

[virtual-angelll]

TSHD as Madoka Magica where fem!Yoshi is trying his best to prevent fem!Hika from dying but in every timeline Hikaru ends up dying and transforming into "Hikaru". The good ending is Yoshiki accepting that there's no way to bring the OG Hika back and slowly accepting (and later loving) the new "Hikaru" 🥹

You kinda created a happy ending for Madoka Magica even though it's impossible lollll

Goddess Hikaru would slowly transform Yoshiki into one without her realizing it, giving birth to Devil Yoshiki form. Abandoning the human world and going to live in their own dimension

Both would be forgotten by everyone after that ☝️

[virtual-angelll]

In mokumokuren artwork it's really common for Hikaru to be positioned behind Yoshiki 👀

I think it's great visual storytelling. At first it creates a distance between the character and the viewer, giving the character the mysterious aura it deserves... like a living shadow

Also gives the feeling that Yoshiki has blind faith in him. Full trust on this creature he just recently met

Lastly the concept of Hikaru being the support he needs, someone he can lean on, watch his back, protect him

[virtual-angelll]

My greatest pleasure as a fan besides theorizing is shipping... creating all sorts of cute fluffy and suggestive headcanons 😋 then i was thrilled to find out that there were so many like me on twitter lol

BUT everything good has it's downside too. They're so obsessed with top and bottom??? It's a wild war between yoshikaru and hikayoshi: which of these is the best which one makes most sense, there's real heated discussions involving the subject lmaooo

Here in the fandom people are cautious to talk about shipping, while on the other app people are almost declaring war over it 😄

I still enjoy both experiences tho, i find it both amusing and annoying lol it's cool to know the many facets of a fandom

[corvid-newtwork]

I really like the idea of “Hikaru” enjoying (non-romantically) kissing everyone he's personally close with cuz it's fun for him and Yoshiki being very allosexual (a little kinky even) but just doesn't really enjoy kissing all that much

[anoodleyqueer]

the beautiful part about tshd is that nobody is in the same genre as far as they're concerned. "hikaru" is in a romcom. yuki is in a high school yuri and asako is her other lead. asako herself is in dandadan as momo. maki is in a sports anime and just got benched from the big game. tanaka is in the tv show supernatural. and yoshiki. yoshiki is in the summer hikaru died.

[virtual-angelll]

In mokumokuren artwork it's really common for Hikaru to be positioned behind Yoshiki 👀

I think it's great visual storytelling. At first it creates a distance between the character and the viewer, giving the character the mysterious aura it deserves... like a living shadow

Also gives the feeling that Yoshiki has blind faith in him. Full trust on this creature he just recently met

Lastly the concept of Hikaru being the support he needs, someone he can lean on, watch his back, protect him

[anaislikestoart]

infectious

[spoopdeedoop]

was held at gunpoint to post these here

[oghikaru]

i get sad whenever i see people completely deny that original hikaru could have been queer. i was someone’s hikaru when i was younger, i didn’t know i was gay at the time, or really what being gay was at all. like hikaru i was somewhat aware that lgbtq people existed but i never fully grasped the concept until i was about 11 when i had my first actual crush. i heard people around me speak negatively of anything that had to do with being gay which made me resent that part of myself, i thought something terrible would happen if anyone found out. i hid that part of me for years, i lied about having crushes on the opposite gender so no one would ask questions, i tried to be what everyone else thought was normal but in the end it just made me miserable. I’m comfortable in my identity now but it took years to unlearn the hate i was surrounded by all my life. i love hikaru as a character and even if you don’t think he’s queer the idea shouldn’t be completely disregarded. even though he had his moments he is not an awful person, just a product of the system he grew up in. that’s all thank you for coming to my ted talk mwah

[lucanidaze]

I interpreted Hikaru and Yoshiki’s characters to represent different sides of internalized homophobia and how one decides to conform to the social expectations of a small, conservative town. In Yoshiki’s case, he spiraled inwards - staying on the down low about romantic interests of any kind, feeling ashamed about his feelings, and it seemed to me like he was trying to ignore his feelings until he could escape to a safer environment. But for Hikaru, whether it was a defense mechanism or just a result of not understanding what it meant to be queer - he began imitating what he thought it meant to be “straight”. I believe that is why it was explicitly stated that Hikaru was known to be “girl crazy”, but he never really acted on it. He also made a lot of comments to Yoshiki that are essentially like “haha bro that’s so gay bro. what, are you gonna miss me or something? Gross bro haha” and that read as TEXTBOOK projection to me.

However, I feel like the discussion on whether Hikaru had feelings for Yoshiki or not is a whole other thing. Personally I think so, but I think Hikaru didn’t understand those feelings to be romantic. He just felt a really strong connection to Yoshiki. And Yoshiki felt the same way, but he knew what those feelings meant and he was scared of them.

[rainbeaudingo]

Something I love about Project Hail Mary is how fast the respect and gravity of meeting An Alien Species wears off for both of them, and they quickly devolve into (LOVINGLY) calling each other snarky idiots.

Like yeah, we met aliens, but we’re also probably the least qualified to Be Meeting Aliens. Doesn’t matter though cause we’re besties now. Rocky moved in already.

[creator-chaos]

Huh, that's an odd shape for Hikagoo. I wonder what--

Ooh! OOOOOHHH! FUCK! FUCK ME!

[corvid-newtwork]

The Summer Hikaru Died is about disability/neurodiversity as much as it is about queerness/homophobia.

Honestly, the themes of (dis)ability and neurodiversity are so overwhelming to me it's staggering! I might even be so bold to say it is the core of the story. It should be talked about more! And just like with its queerness, it isn't just a metaphor or an allegory, it is actual representation. And it is intersectional with disability and queerness too!

[Spoilers up to Vol. 9/Ch. 46]

I'm just going to piecemeal this character by character and see where it goes. I'll start with an honorable mention: Maki being on the cover of Vol. 6 in an arm sling. That's visibility. Also whatever Kauro’s deal is, I doubt she's neurotypical.

• Asako: Any character with any supernatural abilities or a "sixth sense" is de facto neurodivergent* even if in a fantastical way. Asako is able to hear spirits = neurodivergent. Asako also hides her ability due to fear of stigma (as we see in Ch. 38 when Yoshiki comes out to her). Plus, Asako becomes partially deaf after “Hikaru” ‘touches’ her.

• Tanaka: He's blind so like.... obviously. He needs special sunglasses to see And those sunglasses are only available to him via a morally bankrupt company that he hates. It's a pretty common experience for disabled people where their access to accommodations and support is controlled by ableist institutions that don't really care about them. Plus, he has a service animal!

He also has an "inappropriate" social affect and demeanor—laughing at the wrong time—and says he's “Not great with people.” He has a special song he constantly listens to and sings. Extremely ND coded there. (I love this man, so much. Absolute icon!)

Then there's the fact he's a Majirimono, which we could consider a de facto disability and acquired neurodivergence: Impurities become attracted to them, other people forget about them. Even more so, Tanaka lacks a sixth sense like Kurebayashi Rie, which too can be understood as a disability in his life dealing so much with impurities. He disables himself further for his job, such as by losing his left arm in Vol 7.

• Kurebayashi Rie: Same as Asako, her sixth sense makes her ND. But, like Yoshiki being a character to explore internalized homophobia, Kurebayashi is a character who we can look at to explore internalized ableism. And my girl Rie got it internalized bad, honestly worse than Yoshiki does.

Her investment in living a ‘normal’ life applies to being queer—living outside of the traditional heteronormative family structure—but also to disability/neurodivergence. She feels guilty for what happened to her son, the struggles he has to deal with being a Majirimono. She believes a life with fewer struggles is a better life. But Tanaka doesn't feel the same way, saying he doesn't have regrets about how his life has turned out, that his life is still meaningful and not just tragic—a major theme of disability advocacy, that happiness and disability can coexist.

Worries of being a burden also a big disability theme.

• Yoshiki: In another post I wrote, I argued that Yoshiki has traits similar to moral scrupulosity, which is a subtype of OCD. He has hyper-responsibility, feeling like he has to deal with everything on his own both in terms of dealing with all the supernatural stuff as well as feeling guilty for not being able to fit into normal society while simultaneously feeling guilty for the need to hide himself.

People reducing Yoshiki’s character (and his relationship to “Hikaru” and the story as a whole) just to his internalized homophobia and little else will be the death of me! It's my specific version of people calling TSHD yaoi or BL.

Yoshiki also displays black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking, also called splitting, something common in ND people. He bounces back and forth between wanting to help “Hikaru” and not wanting to impose human values on him as well as thinking “Hikaru” is a dangerous, evil monster who kills people and needs to be dealt with. And then beating himself up for contradicting both of the moral standards he holds himself to. Acceptance of ambiguity is a major theme of TSHD and something Yoshiki struggles with, making it a fitting narrative foil.

Yoshiki is also experiencing grief. Grief, especially in the form of bereavement, can be disabling. There are also a lot of norms for what counts as grieving "properly" or "normally". There is the aspect that Yoshiki can't grieve for Hikaru because no one knows he's dead and he can't mourn his unrequited crush while in the closet. In a way, he masks his grief to appear ‘high functioning’.

At the same time, grief is usually seen as irrational. People don't make good decisions while in mourning and most stories focus on how grief enables poor decision-making. Yoshiki does make poor decisions, but it's notable that Yoshiki is also able to make good decisions as well. A simpler story would have letting “Hikaru” go back to the mountain be the healing catharsis of acceptance after being in denial—the common idea of the stages of grief. But Mokumokuren rejects this script: it wouldn't actually solve anything and Yoshiki recognizes that “Hikaru” isn't Hikaru so he avoids those particular problems. That's part of the intrigue: Despite the fact “Hikaru” is a dangerous monster and Yoshiki is becoming a Majirimono with its own set of problems/limitations, Yoshiki’s unique relationship with “Hikaru” allows him to process his grief and other feelings in an abnormal way that looks horrific but is nonetheless helpful in the long term. This applies both to Yoshiki being in the closet and embracing queerness more as well as embracing the abnormal more generally, including disability. It is not just about coming out of the closet but also learning to live with disability—disability pride.

• “Hikaru”: Apparently there's been some occasional discourse around this scene either being about internalized homophobia or sexual assault:

If you ask me, both of these interpretations fall victim to an over reliance on metaphor, where it starts to obscure the literal events of the story. Interpreting this moment as SA doesn't apply to the rest of the story because the story would become almost incoherent. But only focusing on the internalized homophobia also erases parts of the story. The fact this moment is different from when he willingly stuck his hand inside of “Hikaru’s” chest is important to the story and not just about internalized homophobia. (It is also not like someone with internalized homophobia can't be sexually assaulted. And consent can be withdrawn at any time for any reason including internalized homophobia. Just a reminder. In a realistic context, this scene would factually be assault if we stick to the metaphor.)

What's more, this debate is heavily focused on Yoshiki and less on “Hikaru” as a character. The reason this moment happens is because “Hikaru” loses control of his emotions because he's feeling rejected and not used to experiencing things. “Hikaru” also has an instinct to consume souls, and he is not always in control of that instinct, unknowingly acting on it even when he wouldn't actually want to, regretting it as soon as he regains full awareness. Once again, these traits can be interpreted as disabilities of emotional dysregulation, poor impulse control, or even having dissociative episodes.

Now, it is worth mentioning that the risk of violence for disabled/ND people is usually overstated by ableist rhetoric, which erases how disabled/ND people are more often victims of violence than perpetrators. But it is true that certain disabilities/neurodivergences can involve higher risks of harm to self and others in certain situations. But the question of what that risk means or how to respond to it, are very much open political questions. Ableist institutions respond with violent measures of their own: imprisonment, maltreatment, exclusion. The Neurodiversity Movement is often concerned with finding more ethical ways to respond, of minimizing risk for all people. This is basically the heart of “Hikaru's” arc throughout the story: Finding a way for him to belong while not being a danger to other people, and not excluding him or writing him off as an evil monster. The point of radical neurodiversity is not that difference can be tolerated because there is no harm in being different; it is about acknowledging that difference is a matter of life and death and deserves the utmost respect. Because like “Hikaru” or the impurities, there is no getting rid of difference, only learning to live with it in the most sustainable ways possible. Otherwise people (and monsters) get hurt.

And that is why TSHD should be recognized as not only a great queer story but also a great disability story.

[manga3am]

[virtual-angelll]

In mokumokuren artwork it's really common for Hikaru to be positioned behind Yoshiki 👀

I think it's great visual storytelling. At first it creates a distance between the character and the viewer, giving the character the mysterious aura it deserves... like a living shadow

Also gives the feeling that Yoshiki has blind faith in him. Full trust on this creature he just recently met

Lastly the concept of Hikaru being the support he needs, someone he can lean on, watch his back, protect him

[droodlebug]

dangling tiny clips out for yall so u know i am still working on it (,; ⩌ ;,)