#hosr

In college Dad Vails was our “championship.” Everything we did, we did with Philly in mind. In January, 1250 meters into a 2k erg test, coach would start describing the grandstand upstream of 3 angels. I grew up as a rower on stories of Vesper and Olympic training camps.

3 years ago I didn’t know how I was going to get myself back on the water. Philly was so impossible, it doesn’t even count as a pipe dream. Yet here I am, watching singles launch from Boathouse Row while I wait for the rest of the team to arrive. The river is calling and finally I get to answer it.

To Robert (Faker), marriage is an antiquated concept that upholds outdated tax laws. Ironically, Heartland DOES have tax benefits for married couples. However, these benefits also apply to common-law marriages (i.e present day Faker and Luna). If it was up to him, Robert would have never married anyone and instead, if he was the type, philandered around. Not that he’s one to particularly philander. Hypothetically, he’d make sure Heartland’s social systems would have taken care of any of his kids from those relationships.

Kaito doesn’t share the same stance on marriage. Kaito never considered it for himself, given how unhappy it made his mother. It was just something that existed in the background after she died. Once the marriage proposal from the Arclights arise, Kaito is forced to confront the past. To him, this marriage with Christopher is a prison sentence, a collar and a chain. Marriage…it doesn’t bring anything good, doesn’t it?

On the periphery, he’s seen stories, films, etc of happy marriages. He’s never witnessed a happy marriage himself, so he doubts the validity of a happy marriage. His father and Luna seem to be doing just fine without a marriage.

This was mentioned in a deleted scene, but, Faker is considering marrying Luna for Haruto. The main thing preventing him from proposing is Kaito. Faker feels bad for him, especially after the hell he put his son through. Making Luna an "official" part of the family while Kaito is around would be too cruel. That’s why, in the deleted scene, Faker plans to marry Luna after Kaito is out of the family and living with the Arclights. Yikes.

Marleen and Robert’s marriage was a shotgun marriage. Marleen refused to give up Kaito, and, pressured by Byron, Robert eventually proposed. The first few years were good. Kaito has very fond memories of this period. His parents taking him to the lab, long walks in the woods alongside his mother and father…Lots of laughter. For Robert, it felt like marriage wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

Like Kaito, Marleen had never considered marriage for herself. Her agreement to the marriage was a bit of a "natural order of events" decision, as she and Robert had been intimate for a year or so. They had known each other for a few years before that.

Things started going awry when photon poisoning began to grab ahold of Marleen. As her health declined, Faker’s attention drifted. He had loved her for her mind and intellect. When she became too ill to contribute to his work, he no longer thought of her. But Luna had always been there, quietly assisting with his work. Hell, she even took a bullet for him at the ill-fated Resurrection conference.

Did Marleen ever know that there was another woman while she was dying? I think she did, deep down. But she put up a cheerful front for Kaito, unaware that Kaito had known for a while now. Mother and son, both refusing to voice the ugly secret between them.

This story’s bones were written by a long-dead version of myself. Because of this, the House of Scattered Roses has become a relic. It’s a horseshoe crab in the midst of the bizarre ecosystem of my current-day writings. It was made by a kinder, more sane, yet idealistic version of myself. With each rewrite, it gets more polish, gains some, loses some, but at its heart, I think it’s one of the most kindest works to ever come from me.

Although that version of me is dead, this work lives on like a lingering kiss from my past self. However, I’m not sorry that version of myself is dead. We leave behind the corpses of our past selves in order to grow. However, sometimes I miss how kind I was as a writer.

Christopher is written in a rather charitable manner. He’s not a deranged amount of awful. He’s the most human and at his most kindest in this story. He is doing his best, even if it means staying silent and having to do something terrible. This is the world he was raised in and this is all he knows. At its heart, HOSR is a coming of age story. You cannot live someone else’s life for them forever. One day, you’ll have to decide who you are, whether by force or by your own faculties.

This was a Christopher before I twisted him into the worst version of himself out of a need to amuse myself. Over the years, I have grown bored. It is a very conscious choice that I choose to misinterpret canon and caricaturize my favorite characters. Please do not take my blog or its "humorous" works seriously. Please watch the original source material with an open mind and then make your own conclusions and choices. The things I do now are borne out of a need for amusement, crass as it is.

The House of Scattered Roses is different. It was a story written by someone who loved the original source material with an unclouded heart. This was a story where I obeyed the laws of canon not out of a begrudging reluctance, but out of genuine love. Back then, the world of post-Zexal was still an open world to me.

It’s the work where I try to remain the most faithful to the source content because it was originally written with the belief that it was the true sequel to Zexal. The bones of this mindset still remain. With each decision I make in HOSR, I try my best to think it out and try and connect it to the original source material. I write HOSR with the knowledge that I am a guest on lands that are not my own and that I must obey my host’s rules.

It is not possible for me to write another House of Scattered Roses without it becoming stifling to me. I have become so accustomed to running wild. Nowadays, I approach writing with the same mindset that my original mid 2000s Vocaloid fandom did. "There are no rules. They will be made up as we go for all Mikus are canon." From my observations, this mindset is not very welcome anymore in various fandom spaces (not just here!). Things have become very rigid now. If one goes too off-model and out of canon, they are told to go and create their own worlds.

I write for myself. People are welcome to disagree with my portrayals. I think my death as a fandom writer begins when I become preoccupied with what the nebulous public wants instead of my own wants. Fanfiction at its heart is for the writer. Their hopes, dreams and needs are poured into their works. Why should I dilute my dreams for someone else’s?