#story notes

So Airplane has always been a deity just prone to go a wandering when the mood strikes him. Thus limiting his powers and even memories.

He made the PIDW world long before he wrote it as a webnovel and ended up playing starving artist with it. He has other worlds but this one is one of his favorites as it is a bit of a dumping ground for ideas and seeing how they breed over time or with other factors at play.

He often takes a moment during his long existence to take in a mortal form and just be a part of the story his idea dump world is making. The last time he did was what we'll call OG PIDW not the webnovel written by Airplane's other mortal lifetime but the story he somewhat recalled.

In the OG story he was an An Ding disciple. No one knows where he came from nor his name. He doesn't give a name when asked either (not that many find themselves asking for it anyway). He was ignored as a mere outer disciple for years until he was the only one to survive a demon attack. Which was so strange for An Ding he got promoted on the spot by the Peak Lord because obviously this pretty piece of jade somehow got tossed with the rabble

Once he is an inner disciple, well the horse is out of the fence. He's smart, talented, hard working, and sneaky. He doesn't have to even sabotage most of his competition as they find themselves outclassed with ease. (There's sabotage against him, but his peers are fuming as he just works around it or spins it in his favor instead.)

The Lord of An Ding loves this kid. He's carefully hiding this treasure from his martial siblings lest they try to steal him.

Really the fact it took two years (which for immortals is barely a blink) for this nameless disciple to become head disciple was because the lord was giving push back. Otherwise it would have been under a year.

And everyone else of An Ding (besides the lord) fears this guy.

Really his new name feels like a mock even though it's due to the lord being overjoyed with his successor.

Shang Qinghua "Yet Clearly Splendid"

It's Tim's 21st B-day!

Steph and Jason took him down to the sleaziest bar they knew, and then got called away for vigilante business he was forbidden to participate in, on the grounds that it was his birthday.

Bruce and Damian were working together on a case that was incredibly time sensitive and could not step away from it.

Duke was too young for the bar and had spent the day with Tim instead.

Dick was off-planet.

So Tim was alone, in a bar, kinda bored.

Until the door slams open, and in stumbles some black-haired man hanging off of the shoulders of a scraggly, sickly looking man in a leather jacket. A sickly looking woman in fishnet stockings trails in behind them, looking exasperated, and Tim just knows that it's the liquor that's making it look like that man's shadow is alive and moving around.

Story Notes (That I copied and pasted from a Word doc)

Prologue:

How Polites and Triton met

Polites saved him from a fishing net

Help with injury

They meet again some years later

Polities is apprentice healer

Maybe help triton w an injury?

Triton went to him cause Poseidon is an overprotective parent

Just before they leave for Aulis

At Aulis

They hangout/go on dates

They have fun

Triton gives Polites his headband, its blessed/enchanted to keep him safe from harm.

After war

Triton shows up with a kid who is apparently his and Polities’

Will I explain how this happened? Probably not.

End prologue with the kid joining the crew as they leave.

Arc 1:

Cyclops saga obviously

Polities survives Polyphemus

The headband breaks tho, it won’t be protecting him anymore

Triton senses this but can’t really do anything cause of reasons

What reasons? IDK

Dude ends up either really sick or in a coma or something

He’s below decks for a majority of the storm saga lol.

The kid looks after him, so they don’t really know what’s happening either

Cause Triton is the god of calm seas; the kid can calm the waves down a little bit during the storm but not much. Just enough that things don’t go totally crashing around. And also cause they don’t want their dad’s illness/coma to get worse with seasickness.

Time skip: Ruthlessness

Kid is below deck most of the time. But then comes up to ask their ‘uncles’ what’s going on.

Cue walking in on Poseidon/Ody standoff.

Eury tries to get them to go back below or at least hide.

Does not work. Posy spots this random kid and is #confused

Like, why is there a kid coming back from the war, was there a child in the camps the whole time? Dude does not know what to think.

Kid also kind of looks like his kid. Not Poly, his other one.

Posy stops stand off to stare at kid, kid stares back

Polities shows up (Maybe? Might just keep him and Triton haunting the narrative)

Posy realizes the kid looks like this dude and his son.

Maybe the kid has one half of the broken headband while Polities has the other, and Posy can sense the remnant enchantments?

POSY GETS A GRANDBABY HE'S SO HAPPY (Option 1)

Realizes that’s why the storm wasn’t as bad as it should have been.

Poseidon does not realize that’s a grandbaby and gets mad cause he realizes that this might be why the storm wasn’t as bad as it should have been (Option 2)

cw; This writing depicts implications of child abduction and abuse.

To summarize for people unfamiliar with the term, the Kakure Kirishtan, also called the hidden Christians, are a group of Christians in Japan who converted to Christianity after making contact with Portugese missionaries. Then, when Christianity was banned in the 17th century, they would practice it in secret.

Though, what I find most interesting is how much about this gets mentioned in Tatsumi's Idol Story 2. In this story, Tatsumi talks about a very important part of the Kakure Kirishtan faith (after identifying himself explicitly as a member of the community), which is the incorporation of Shintoism. The are three reasons for this: firstly, missionaries mixed Shintoist beliefs and Christianity in their preaching to make it more appealing to locals; secondly, during the time of the ban, hiding Christian rituals behind Shintoist (and Buddhist) imagery would help avoid detection; and lastly, because of the ban on Christianity, there were no external sources to consult with regarding Christianity, so the Kakure Kirishtan would defer to more familiar places like Shintoism to develop their religious understanding. As a result, the Kakure Kirishtan faith would become distinct from other Christian sects because of its relation with Shintoism. (Also, because of this integration of Shintoism, there has been some debate as to whether or not Kakure Kirishtans should be officially recognized as a Christian denomination). To be honest, I wasn't actually expecting Enstars to mention any of this at all, so it was an honest surprise to come across it when re-reading Tatsumi's Idol Story 2 - especially since this is one of the parts about Tatsumi's connection with religion that doesn't get discussed often.

Another thing addressed in this story is the specific development of Tatsumi's family's church. After the ban on Christianity was lifted and Japanese Christians resumed contact with the rest of the Christian world, there were two notable ways in which Kakure Kirishtans proceeded (for those who stuck to Christianity): some would join the Catholic denomination, while others would continue with their current practice (a practice that has been noted to slowly die out in recent times). In Idol Story 2, Tatsumi mentions that his family's church had previously been registered as a Shinto shrine, but was now an official church. That being said, Tatsumi does mention elsewhere that his family still prefers to hide themselves, so it doesn't seem like his community has completely done away with its past. (Though, given how Tatsumi made his grand entrance in the Main Story while quoting from the Bible (among other instances), it does seem like his education extends beyond the Kakure Kirishtan sect). This outlines an important part of Tatsumi's practice of religion, which is how he and his family in the present deal with the reintroduction of Christianity to Japan.

Lastly, a more well-known fact about Tatsumi mentioned in "Reminiscence * Iridescent Obbligato" is that his bedroom walls are stained with the blood of the persecuted. Enstars is not exaggerating the brutal experiences that the Kakure Kirishtans faced, as there are a number of stories of cruel punishments inflicted upon those identified as Christians during the time of the ban. In mentioning this, Enstars paints an explicit link between Tatsumi's feelings as a member of a historically persecuted minority, specifically his own desire to become an idol to make his community seem less unfamiliar and threatening to others, to the long history of Kakure Kirishtan suffering.

All in all, there's surprisingly a lot established about Tatsumi's faith. While not all of these details are strongly explored in his narrative, they show a good understanding of how the specific experiences of the Kakure Kirishtan community would play out in Tatsumi's life, which I'm quite happy that Enstars did since I don't think it's something most fans would consider.