umaphilemon

"Stan," both his hands were being squeezed in his friend's, and Xeno's constellation-like gaze had risen to stare at him once more. Their faces were so close, it would take very little for their foreheads to touch.

"Stan," he repeated, voice dripping with the same joy Stanley felt, "you're the most interesting person I've met in my life: I want to learn everything about you, like I want to learn everything about magic; let's be friends for a long time!"

It has never not been okay! I encourage it. I have always encouraged it!

Anyway.

I did see this last night, but it was after I had settled into bed for the night, which means I have had some time to think about something to write.

I think I have, uh, decided on their family life and their reactions to it. Hope you're here for that.

I think we can all agree that their family was abusive. Like, fuck Ryusui's dad. Can we just leave him a rock for a good long while? Maybe his rock is broken, you never know. Don't tell Stan where it is. He won't even feel bad about it. He did nothing.

I think this is part of Ryusui's attachment and insistence on Sai. They seem to have other half siblings, but Ryusui is not insisting they're his older brother or chasing after them to be his brother. Because...well...they aren't. Sai is the one he grew up with, isolated from the rest of the family, and Sai is the only one who understands The Way Their Family Is.

But what I actually think I decided I wanted to talk about is the way they reacted to that abuse, because while the abuse was quite similar, their reactions were not.

Basically: their family took things they wanted and loved away from both of them to control them.

I think Sai's reaction is what we think of as more...typical. Sai lost his video games, lost all of his coding work, and kind of shut down, and then ran away as soon as he could. He tried to make himself as useless as possible in order to be ignored as much as possible, and while it wasn't quite freedom, it was likely as close as he could imagine.

But that's not what Ryusui did and I still think Ryusui's reaction was trauma-based.

Because it's not actually a typical reaction upon hearing about the way your family is treating your brother and go, essentially, "Take them for all they're worth, then." He really went (somewhat paraphrased), "They want to take things away from you. Don't let them. Do everything. Even take the corporation."

What.

I think a lot of people look at that, including Sai, and think, oh, well, he just doesn't understand. But Ryusui does understand. Way back when, we saw this, when the Nanamis didn't like his behavior so they cut his allowance to try to get him in line. But instead of doing that, like Sai sort of did, he found a way to have what he wanted anyway.

Obviously his advice wasn't that useful to Sai because they reacted so differently, but it didn't come from a place of not understaning.

Ryusui has always seen things he wanted and followed his heart. But he is very determined to have the things he wants and works extremely hard to get those things, and I don't know that I would call it clingy, but from someone who had things taken away from him as a form of control, being so incredibly insistent and loud about have your own things your own way is. Well. He's made it his entire ethos to have exactly what he wants.

That's not. Normal.

This is like. Hyper-vigilant resource-guarding. On behalf of himself and everyone around him.

So, yeah, he found his own protection from his family's abuse. It just looks a lot different than Sai's.

Do I think Inagaki intended this? Not really, because it feels very clear that Sai and Ryusui's family was largely invented off the cuff when Sai arrived.

Inspired by the haikyuu cute chibi drawing I saw on Pinterest (practicing art)