literally nice

if a surgeon says your child has to fast, they have to fast. even if they are rreeeaaaallly hungry. even if they beg for food. even if they cry. even if they throw a tantrum. even if they scream for hours.

the medicine the doctor gives you to make you sleep, called anesthesia, makes you sleep differently than you do at night. Medicine sleep is so deep that the muscle that keeps your stomach closed falls asleep too.

Your stomach and your lungs are connected by your esophagus, which connects to your mouth and brings air to your lungs and food into your stomach.

Because you’ll be laying flat on your back, This means if you have food in your stomach it can come up out of your stomach, and because they’re connected by your esophagus, food or drink that comes out of your stomach can go into your lungs.

Because they aren’t supposed to have stuff other than air in them, having food or drinks in your lungs can make you really sick.

Eagle now get ready for

the Surgeon Sturgeon

-cry

Oh. Cry, I… appreciate your enthusiasm.

But— well, I— it sounds lovely, but I think I’ll pass.

doomsday now please

its gonna be sick as fuck?????

Not in a like, 'the Arcobaleno are evil and have been lying and faking the whole time and have actually been plotting and scheming an evil world domination plan', but more of a 'they are as willful, and inconsiderate, and impetuous as they seem and you've never seen them at the height of that backed with the power that came inherent with being willful, and inconsiderate, and impetuous and powerful'.

Kawahira impaired the lot with the weight of the universe that fed on their will, trapped them in golem bodies that only fed on their will, trapped them in a curse that leached on all the things that made them strong and powerful and whole, and knew that the psychological ramifications of the conditions itself would play its part in the best cage he knew- created from their own power.

(The Arcobaleno stones are simply stones by themselves and it's curse will only ever be as powerful as what it cages.)

(A curse is only a curse from that particular angle.)

And Luce went along with it because she knew that the Arcobaleno curse was the only thing powerful enough to impede them but they were also the only people powerful enough to utilize it to its fullest potential. An Arcobaleno is untouched by time and space after all.

Uni will use all of her will to resurrect the other Arcobaleno. She doesn't have enough to keep herself alive and so, will die in that future-that-never-will.

Luce will be back.

She just has to wait.

And oh, she's had all the practice.

(The flames flickers and wavers and throughout the generations sometimes it rises and fades and oscillates in its intensity, fighting to complete the picture, but never truly manages to satisfy the required power it need to come to life.

Radiant and gleaming and graphic.

A ring of fire.

Feeding into itself.)

Kawahira had just finally conceded the Arcobaleno stones to its rightful owners.

It's a story and a journey that had a fixed ending, no matter who come along, the hands it passes, it was always going to fall on them- a perspective only a seer could see. They were always going to be the last when there's no need for more.

Perhaps unbeknownst to him, perhaps not, but there are just some things that cannot be changed even with all of time and space.

(It is intrinsically what determines the continued existence of reality.

'Maybe they weren't monsters, but they were monstrous.' Love those words.

I think the most interesting interpretation is the dehumanisation inherent to their power.

What does a person, what does a city matter to someone who can fundamentally change or destroy it with a thought?

The Arcobaleno are the only people the Arcobaleno need to care about or factor into their decision-making, because to them they are the only 'real' people, everyone else is functionally a toy or set dressing.

They're all very low empathy by necessity--- they have each other, and they each have a few favourites (Giglio Nero, Varia, CEDEF, Simon etc) for themselves, but generally? They don't GAF. The only reason they look twice at most other mafia members in the story is if they 'belong' to or are associated with another Arco

It's impossible not to become jaded, entitled, bitter, when the world will break itself to give you what you want at a passing thought. Who else, then, to care for then the only people who won't break? Who you don't have to pretend with?

But that's the danger---everything is personal with them. Nothing is personal with them.

And it's easy to look in from the outside and say that their personhood does not outweigh their capacity for destruction, but if you were 14, 22, 36 years old and you were innocent, imperfect, monstrous, would you agree? If you were born like this, if you can't help it, if you tried to control it but you're not the natural disaster, the power within you is?

Wouldn't you fight back?

The arco being chosen... well, not because they deserve it, because i agree no one deserves that kind of fate regardless of what kind of person they are, but because they're the only ones who can bear the curse and have it mean something, have it mean the most, is one of my favorite aspects of the arco curse. It's like, they didn't deserve to be the ones ending up cursed just because they happened to be the strongest of their time, but as a result of them being the strongest of their time, they did deserve to be the ones chosen for it. Undoubtedly earned to be. If both of you know what i mean?? I'm not sure if the nuance i'm going for here actually comes across haha, but yeah.

No one else but them can bear the curse because nobody else but them rose to the kind of heights they achieved. And even if there's of course people who achieved similar heights that could be considered for the role instead, the fact they're still the ones who can make the curse means the most remains, and in that way, it still makes them the only ones who can bear it. And taking it even further, if we say that arguably nobody else but them could rise to the kind of heights they achieved however hard they'd try to, wouldn't that make them monstrous?

Maybe they weren't monsters, but yes, weren't they still monstrous? (< I absolutely love this distinction too btw! I always love so much the way you talk about the arco. <3) I've actually made a post about it once, taking reborn as an example, but all of them beg the question each in their own way. I also have a fic with this exact premise haha!! About how kawahira choosing the people he'll curse and turn into arco is about him putting monsters in leash. (Tho it's not actually about the arco curse or anything, but about them taking byakuran down tyl.) Feeling a little shy linking it because it's one of my earliest works zkldslkf, but also because it's meant to be a kind of fun power fantasy fic, so it doesn't actually so much as touch on the implications of them being monsters in a leash you laid out here op.

But back to them being the only ones who can bear the curse, being the only choice there is to make so the inherent cruelty of the curse won't be any kind of senseless or avoidable, if we say it's truly the case, then naturally, that's also when fate comes into play. That's what makes it fate. Fate and duty, because it's also what makes the arco out to be, in fact, the rightful bearers of the pacifiers. And so of course, kawahira seeing to it they end up cursed does become the right thing of him to do too.

And all of that, the curse being fate and duty and arguably (if not factually altogether) the right thing to do and the lesser evil to choose/surrender to/ensure it'll come to pass; and that not making the arco any less of sacrifices to it, any less of victims to it AND victimisers too, i agree; and that not making the curse any less inherently cruel and unfair and monstrous (how fitting then that only equally monstrous people can bear it and survive it) ARE themes in my writing i love to touch on and explore whenever i get to write arco curse-focused arco fics haha. Thank you for noticing it. <3 (Like, actually, that little shout-out made me more happy than i'd have expected zhskskkd.)

And i especially love to do that through the sky arco, yeah, my dearly beloveds. <3 The fact they can see the future on top of everything else, the fact the curse's done to them too but they also do it to each other through them being mothers and daughters, the fact they also do it to themselves in the sense where they see it'll happen before it does and let it happen just as they saw it would. The fact their foresight gives them a choice in the matter but also makes it inescapably obvious there's only one choice to make.

Because isn't them seeing that the curse will happen irrefutable proof it is fate? That it's meant to be? Isn't it proof that no matter what they might try to do to change it, no matter how hard or desperately they do it, it will still happen exactly as they saw it would? Aren't they able to see it happen before it does because it's already written that the curse will come to pass? And if it has to, if it must come to pass, then surely... it also has to be the right thing to do to let it happen.

I rambled a little, sorry zjzkzkw, it's just all especially heartbreakingly interesting to think about and pick apart when it comes to the sky arco.

I was actually trying to be dramatic and go both ways, if Kawahira didn't seal them and allowed them to grow and grow and grow into their never ending growth, the universe is eventually going to be too small for them.

And also just-

They're the only ones who can bear it =They deserve to bear it.

The pacifiers fit them- the required will, the required role, the required flame- maybe its almost to a point it was tailored for them?

Lmao this all sound very philosophical and like running around in circles which is the point and you're all right.

And yes the Giglio Neros are the perfect perspective for this, and surprisingly commonly dismissed in some discussions I remember into 'they let it happen because they were weak and lazy -and they don't actually deserve the pacifier and to be one of the Arcobaleno because of that' (ugh pet peeve, this is why I stopped reading khr fanfics- although def will take a look at those linked fics).

When I think it's infinitely more interesting to ask what did they see that they are a part of the Arcobaleno, what alternatives were exactly im/possible in that scenario.

Okay to explain this a bit, allow me to be a bit off topic.

I have this headcanon, that none of the Giglio Nero after Sephira, and before Luce, had anything to do with the Arcobaleno Pacifiers. Instead they were solely the Mare ring's guardians. Seers still, yes (it's hereditary like the Hyper Intuition- is where the Hyper Intuition branched off even, maybe, depends). Then young Luce, a promising child of the family, perhaps the future heir, at the time, was handed the Mare ring.

A seer can see to the future. The mare ring can glimpse into the parallel universe. Combine that, and what happens?

Luce goes insane.

For a few years.

(booted off the list of candidates of heirs, spends years making peace with the future death of her family members and eventually hers, and then the curse, the mare rings coincidentally goes missing which every seer in the family knew was bound to happen to maintain the balance considering the pacifiers are heading their way in the near future etc. etc. -ANYWAYS waaay off topic).

Yeah, so less meta and heading towards more solid headcanon.

But the struggle!

Of being the only one to know, of loving someone to love them to damn them to save them to save yourself to save your daughter to save your granddaughter to save yourself.

Lmao. Wouldn't wish on the worst enemy

.

.

.

Also I am a firm believer of that it is inescapable for those seven/eight in particular.

Space (mare rings/parallel worlds)

Time (vongola rings)

-cry

Oh. Cry, I… appreciate your enthusiasm.

But— well, I— it sounds lovely, but I think I’ll pass.

doomsday now please

Can just imagine all the girlies on tiktok going "I know this is a bit controversial but I honestly love using limestone as a gastrolith. Not only can you readily forage it but they are just so pretty when smoothed out after regurgitating them"