We are no longer alone, waiting for the night, waiting for Godot, waiting for… waiting. All evening we have struggled, unassisted. Now it’s over. It’s already tomorrow. (Prsk sideblog. Largely Mizurui lol)
My main/art blog is @lemonlumens, this is my Project Sekai sideblog. As you may be able to tell, I like Mizurui a lot and post about them a lot. I find them fascinating, and their relationship is fascinatingly weird as hell. More generally, I'm a Niigo fan before I'm a person and I'm in the process of contracting a case of WxS poisoning. Polyniigo and Polysho are simply true to me.
I’m also insane about Waiting for Godot, the play about waiting that Rui mentions a couple times, and I frequently post about it in relation to Rui and Mizuki. The quote in my blog description is from it, as is any dialogue attributed to Vladimir and Estragon, it’s what I’m referring to with any mention of Godot or waiting or “nothing to be done”.
Organizational tag directory (look here if you want to find a specific kind of thing I post or know what MSMS or Bitter Almonds are referring to):
#rambles - All my textposts
#swagposts - My posts that I particularly like and/or put some effort in.
#parallels - Posts where I draw parallels in the text, screenshots and/or citing my sources.
#asks - Asks.
#my art - My finished art. Everything here can also be found reblogged to my main/art blog.
#doodles - All my art and art-like stuff, including sketches, wips, and edits ~exclusive~ to this blog.
#my comics - Comics and sequentials, any of my art with dialogue basically.
#3d stuff - I dabble in 3d modelling (and needle felting) on occasion.
#notes app excerpts - The closest I get to writing.
#images tag - Textposts that are images and I therefore can't keyword search.
#mizurui playlist - Selected lyrics and justifications, songs I think are perhaps very Mizuki and or Rui. You can find the playlist here (spotify link)
#mizurui - Guess. Also includes reblogs. I don’t tag a lot of my Mizurui posting on account of being insane, though, so you may also want to search “Mizurui” or “Mizuki and Rui” without the hashtag on my blog if you want to see the full picture of my illness.
Specific scenarios:
#transfem rui - Wouldn’t it be awesome if Rui were transfem. I’m ill about her.
#mizurui yuri - Wouldn’t it be awesome if Mizuki and Rui were both trans girls and were deeply involved with each other in a sometimes implicitly-explicitly romantic sense. I’m ill about them.
#nothing sweeter than bitter almonds - College roommates Mizurui where Mizuki blatantly puts almond extract in Rui’s food to make him think she’s poisoning him, Rui’s determined to play dumb and not give her the reaction she wants. Yet another mindgame they play for fun. Here's the main post outlining the scenario with accompanying art.
#middle school manslaughter - AU where Mizuki accidentally kills a guy in middle school and Rui covers it up. The rest of the story proceeds as normal(?). Referred to as MSMS for short. | chronological view if you wanna see how the idea developed.
#reverie’s getaway - Adult Mizurui situationship roadtrip, wherein Mizuki drops by Rui’s apartment occasionally like stray cat, and then they go on a 3ish day roadtrip together somehow.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
âś“ Live Streamingâś“ Interactive Chatâś“ Private Showsâś“ HD Qualityâś“ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Nene Phoenix ss1 so cute, Rui and Nene meeting up early to have Nene record lines for the robo-Phoenix, Rui “accidentally” turning it on and making Nene chase after it so she hears her lines in context and can come to her own conclusion of what’s lacking and find the determination to do even better. Also I like that the robot is very explicitly a girl
Rui - hard carried by having two long term friendships with girls he’s not related to before the story even begins, I do genuinely believe on an interpersonal level that Rui respects and loves and admires women, as equals and peers. However. Structurally it’s men that he actually looks up to, that he seeks the approval and permission and wisdom of. As a boy long denied boyhood for his aberration, the acceptance and friendship and understanding of boys through Tsukasa and the three musketeers means a lot him, but like, this comes with the implication that the acceptance and friendship and understanding of girls didn’t count? Of course different people mean different things to him and that doesn’t make them inherently lesser, but the shown math there doesn’t always hold up. I think Rui could name 100 women easily, wall to wall of actresses and authors and playwrights and inventors and maybe even directors. How many of them would he cite as personally influential? Maybe 3. I think he’s significantly less misogynistic than every other guy in this game and does understand to a working extent the subjugation of women and does think of women as equals (or betters, at times lowkey, interestingly), but there’s a suspect slime of plausible deniability on everything and conspicuous absenses in ideological and professional spheres. He’s a kind teenage boy*, socially aware as result of his marginalization.
Toya - immediately sees himself in Kohane in mainsto and therefore sees Akito’s behaviour as a double standard, but I don’t think he really connected the dots as to what exactly the difference was. Sort of regards everything feminine as alien, but also regards a lot of things like that because of his sheltered upbringing, and he faces and values typically feminine stuff with the utmost earnesty as he would anything else. He’s nice and I’d expect anyone raised in a massively patriarchal and sheltered environment like him to be way way worse, so like, I don’t think he really understands misogyny beyond a surface level or maybe thinks it’s over by now, but I do think at basis he thinks of women as equals. Like doesn’t even think to not think of them as equals. Like instinctively an #Ally but also doesn’t really get it so is prone to unthinkingly perpetuating the systems that be. He’s a kind teenage boy.
Huge gap.
Tsukasa - teenage boy playing a 5y/o’s idea of what a good adult man is. Chivalrous chauvinist.
Akito - teenage boy with an all-consuming inferiority complex leading him to scramble for any morsel of power and superiority he can affect, self-medicating his helplessness with machismo, AKA a typical teenage boy. Genuinely on some boys rule girls drool shit. I think most younger brothers with older sisters are especially evil lowkey.
Sakurako’s in a really interesting position because to my knowledge she’s literally the only female NPC who is a meaningful rival and/or ally to a guy, like obviously she was introduced and set up as a rival of Nene’s in Holy Night, but functionally she’s just as much a counterpart to Tsukasa with her position within the Phoenix Stage and her relevance to WMS and Phoenix. Like I’m pretty sure not a single one of the guys in this game looks up to a woman as a role model or admirable figure outside the Vocaloids. At best you have their moms (or sisters if you really want to get into a losing 3,000 page forum debate about whether they respect them), none of whom are important enough to get designs. Meanwhile 5 fathers are important enough to the girls to get designs, and there’s a good handful of male mentors. Meanwhile the only female mentors mentor girls. So, you know. Pretty cool that Sakurako plays such a key part and is really fucking good at her job in way that leaves all of WxS reeling, and is not just a rival to but handedly better than Tsukasa.
And it’s reaallllllly cool how in the end Tsukasa looks straight past her and at a disembodied guy as his motivation to greatness. Like effectively he uses Sakurako and her words to him as a stepping stone to his greatness rather than someone to aspire to and beat in that moment. Her performance sets the bar for where he needs to be, but he doesn’t think of her as someone to surpass. Tsukasa’s unreachable “Phoenix” in “Towards the Phoenix at the Sky's Edge” isn’t Sakurako, the diva of the Phoenix stage at Phoenix Wonderland playing the Phoenix that Tsukasa’s character can’t reach in the play put on for her Phoenix stage’s 30th anniversary, it’s a disembodied guy. Fucking sure.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
âś“ Live Streamingâś“ Interactive Chatâś“ Private Showsâś“ HD Qualityâś“ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Update on the food I was making while reading Phoenix cause I know you care but I made beavertails and they were soooo good, they’re like if donuts and pizza dough fused into a new delicious springy soft and crispy fried treat, ambiguous enough to be sweet or savoury depending on toppings. I cut one in half and filled it with egg salad and I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever eaten. And I finished reading Phoenix also and I think those last two chapters especially are some pretty compelling stuff that bounces right off me personally. I really fucking love Sakurako.
I wish I knew how to like Tsukasa half as much as the rest of WxS love him. Like I really don’t feel as though I don’t understand him or his good points or what people see in him in or out of universe, it’s just that none of it seems to do anything for me. It’s not like I’m incapable of being moved by any of the constituent parts of his character or narrative, for any given slice of him I can think of other characters or narratives that look just like him that I love. In the first place it’s not like a majority of this game’s cast does all that much for me, sort of the premise of ensemble casts like this where you’re incentivized to pick a few favourites, but it feels worse cause I do quite like WxS as a whole and it’s not like Tsukasa’s any degree extricable from them, the four of them love each other to bits! It’s weird, with him specifically it feels like he’s walking a tightrope between me finding him amusing and actively contemptible, and the apathy that leaves me with feels so pointed. I think he’s funny.
Actively reading Phoenix right now while cooking and it makes me so anxious how little consideration Tsukasa’s giving to his other role that he actually has 100%, like fuck idk man it’s great and all to aspire for the lead and to transcend your limits and imitate the steps of the people you admire and all, but where’s the enthusiasm for playing The Obnoxious Chicken, huh? The implicit lessening of what ensemble roles entail, like they aren’t a huge part of what makes or breaks a production, like being a lead is the end all be all of what makes good actor, but giving his everything to understanding how to play ensemble would benefit him a fuck ton also! What makes the difference between a lead and ensemble performance. Do people only play ensemble roles because they’re not good enough to be the lead? Even if aiming to be the sort of actor who’s always the lead, the stage isn’t for one person alone, and putting himself in the shoes of the people that support him in nearly every single performance he will ever do will only do him good. And it makes me so anxious that he’s spending all this time on something uncertain, unable to give 110% to the shit he has on lock, like what a letdown it’ll be when his Obnoxious Chicken turns out bland because he didn’t respect it, didn’t take this time to find what he has in common with that role! I’m scared!! And like is he just gonna decimate his ego, searching desperately to find his angle of attack to become a different character every single role he ever gets? Uegh!!
And god how he’s not seeing the obvious conclusion of how his feelings about the situation at hand are the answer of what he has in common with Rio, how the immense pressure of the disparity in presence and skill between him and Sakurako is exactly how Rio must feel in the presence of the Phoenix, the helplessness and frustration and determination and shit. It’s been there from day onnnnnne and he’s just stupidddddddd and hasn’t got there yet it’s so hard to watchhhhhh.
The thing about doggirl Rui that I find absolutely funniest is that she’d absolutely do the petplay bit irregardless of actually being a dog. Which is why she acts like a cat, to emphasize the absurdity and artifice of the bit she’s playing along with rather than anything fundamental to her wiring, cause she’s entirely a person and not an actual dog, a human with dog ears and tail not a dog with opposable thumbs and human speech. And the incongruity of appearance and behaviour is fitting to me, I like making the distinction of “this is something she’s choosing to do because it’s funny” rather than anything speaking to an inescapable nature. And dogrui kittyzuki is so cutes.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
âś“ Live Streamingâś“ Interactive Chatâś“ Private Showsâś“ HD Qualityâś“ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Like is it not a little bit insane? A sympathetic character with the power to save a certain someone whose life has been shaped by violence from doom, faced with an ethical dilemma of whether to massively encroach on their autonomy or not and bear the responsibility (of the chance) of killing them either way, seeking the advice of another of the same kind who came to truly connect with others, whose input is sharing his story so that the certain someone can experience what led him to change so thoroughly. Scenery… Cherry blossom petals…
Truly the most insane I ever feel about this game is when I think too hard about parallels between The Two Androids from Curtain Call and Rui’s role in Wounded Hands. Like it feels so on the nose to me it would be fucking miraculous if it were coincidental, but saying that they intentionally foreshadowed Ena5 in in a play in a Rui focus makes me feel crazy. Like what the fuck? But also like yeah that is a place where it would make sense to set stuff that’s relevant to Rui and Mizuki’s relationship up, especially with the other blatant parallels to Mizuki and invoking middle school. But what the hell. Like I think it’s a defensible read that enhances the story told and would be one hell of a coinkydink, I don’t have the insight into the writers minds to know their intentions but as far as I’m concerned with the text in front of me it’s true because it makes a fair amount of sense and is crazy thematically fitting. But also what the fuuuuck. And it’s like, it’s true enough to believe but I wouldn’t say it fits 100%, but like any percent is still insane. I’m scared.
Polyniigo, polysho, the framing of looking at the same moon despite physical distance… Niigo’s set-up from the very start, WxS in the relevant arc facing that looming separation, meaning/love/togetherness/connection transcending distance. And of course Mizuki and Rui providing this framing, the similarities in their perspectives and roles, genre savvy and romanticism, cliches and blurry lines between fiction and reality.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
âś“ Live Streamingâś“ Interactive Chatâś“ Private Showsâś“ HD Qualityâś“ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
The thing about that fucking box Rui makes to make Mizuki smile in their Picnic side stories is that it’s something Rui could not have made alone.
I think it was something that Emu said in Hinamatsuri that prompted the idea for it at all, it was Nene worrying about Rui worrying about Mizuki that gave Rui some of the perspective to understand that Mizuki doesn’t want to be in a position where Rui obviously is worrying about her, it’s Tsukasa’s voice and Emu and Nene’s line suggestions that go into the simple device Rui puts together.
That stupid fucking thing that spits out random funny lines is something that could not exist without WxS in its entirety, without the Rui that has been changed through meeting WxS.
Rui could not be someone that brings levity to Mizuki’s life without them, and even having found those real not-lonely friends, he funnels the care given to him into caring about Mizuki, because caring about her and caring about WxS don’t come at the cost of each other, they’re in conversation, they exist simultaneously, they’re both dear to Rui. And having both only further enables his freedom of movement in either. Mizuki made the costume that symbolizes Rui’s belonging in WxS, of course.
