Books and Berries

Highlights include:

For your first two years (when you were small) you lived in a foster home with people who raised you into a very polite young man. Two is like you plus me, that's what two is.

Some people adopted you before me and they called you Timmy (which is a stupid name) and they returned your ass almost immediately because you were so annoying at that age.

Like think about how annoying you are right now at seven years old, but way worse.

I'm better than them though, I don't call you Timmy and I wore earplugs to bed for three years because you love to scream at bedtime. Earplugs are like when I roll over and go back to sleep even when you are yelling so so so loud.

I got you at a time in my life when I was really sick (being sick is like when I'm up late because I'm throwing up and you are a very handsome good boy who sits with me) and they had to put me asleep for a procedure. A procedure is like what happened to you when they put you asleep and took your balls away.

You have become the protagonist of this anime!

おかえりなさいなの〜きみはどんないちにちだった？ まるまるはね〜

Welcome home~! How was your day? Marumaru’s day went like this~

The first 1-2 pages of All Systems Red, inspired by @nothingiswrongwithyourarmrests's post about how tmbd should have been adapted into a graphic novel.

Version where every tab is readable below the cut, because I spent way too much time on those things for no one to be able to see them

i am not being metaphorical, i work in a garden center, stop buying plants 'to bring in the bees and butterflies' and then immediately poisoning every caterpillar that dares to consume a single leaf

MY GOOD FRIEND HANZAWA MASAKI. very glad to have an excuse to talk about some of my bullshitttttt For example for last year’s hirakagi week that I didn’t end up participating in on account of I’m me. I had an idea for one of the days, and in case I ever return to the idea I’ll be vague. but you won’t be surprised to hear that hanzawa masato is there. also there is an older lady I made up who does chinese medicine. and in this scenario I position masato in The Scenario at Large because he was sent by “his brother, who is friends with doctor lady’s husband’s sister’s coworker,” and I follow that bullet point with this one:

it would be funny if the “brother” was actually masaki this time

the funny thing about masaki is that we see so much less of him than eldest masaomi and incidentally more than youngest masako,

(the masako in question)

and how memorable his brief appearance is. like putting aside the agony the broader context puts me in every time without fail he comes in and really clearly characterizes himself as the kind of guy to genuinely and cheerfully just speak his mind at the drop of a hat and accidentally throw off both of his older brothers and probably alter the trajectory of all their lives in the process. because to be clear as established in the blog post I painstakingly translated last summer masaomi for real went into that dinner with a well-thought out plan for how to proceed if anybody reacted to his coming out poorly and then he got totally blindsided by masaki’s “me too!” and so masaomi ended up staying at home to look after him, because frankly with the way masato bit the I prefer girls bullet and the way their mom was relieved about it I think he realized as much as masato did that acceptance probably wasn’t actually so cut and dry.

but this is of course a bummer. and not specifically about masaki. I think masaki bisexuality would be really funny. I think generally masaki is the kind of person to get along better with people who are older than him. unbelievable thing I only realized this past month was that masaki was in his and masato’s middle school’s shogi club, which is information I could’ve had in my wheelhouse no joke almost three years ago because our dear @sunnnfish translated the hanzawa family relevant pages back then but also I own this book and took photos of those same pages because I am sick in the head.

it’s another case of harusono shou’s handwriting Let’s all collectively thank sunnnfish for doing the actual hard work in like 2023. masako is listed here as having done archery in her final year of elementary school, and you might realize as I did that shogi and archery are both very traditional pastimes. but if we go down this path* again then I won’t be able to finish this ask within even twenty four hours, let alone like. maybe four and a half.

*”this path” it’s the blog post thing again sorry

anyway.

I think the contrast between masaki’s apparent happy-go-lucky personality and his evident practice in a historical strategy game is really striking. and fun and interesting. and not intrinsically contradictory. I definitely like the dimensionality it gives him on principle. but if I were to use this information I could have had last year but didn’t to supplement that Scenario at Large then I would of course see masaki sending his second eldest brother to Place at Time to meet his friend’s coworker’s brother’s wife to drop something off for a purpose greater than simply Make sure masato niichan sees the sun and people he doesn’t work with. who’s to say. there’s another bullet point that long story short draws another piece toss-adjacent line but really We don’t need to get into it right now. we just don’t need to get into it. Okay? just trust me.