I Finished Reading The Event. I Now Understand

alien alien meep moooorp

weird little thang

i hope reis solo song is bossa nova or smooth jazz or smth. we got our Sexy Jazz solo now rei grab your tambourine let’s go record some goddamn hold music (he will proceed to record one of the greatest songs ive ever heard)

Adonis impressions!!

Kaori and Sports Survivors under the cut :D

This is a small doodle-based blog where you can ask questions to fine/UNDEAD and Keito and I'll draw their responses! I'll also reblog a lot of UNDEAD/fine and Keito art!

⟢﹒ Tags:

-askunfine : for responses

-rb : for reblogs

-unfineart: is for random art, for example birthday art

⟢﹒ Rules/BYF:

-I have the right to skip any questions asked if they make me uncomfortable

-The relationship chart will change constantly

-I'm sorry if any characters sound OOC

Let's have fun!

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

mr hasumi!!! I am back!!

with another sillyyy question!!

What do u think about dakimakuras? And... what do you think about dakimakuras of yourself?!?

Keito: I swear it's not mine.

Read this if you haven't already.

trans allegory in mystic fragrance and forbidden rain

aka: the essay no one asked for

Content warnings for: Discussions of homophobia and transphobia, and brief mentions of suicide.

If you guys have any other comments on this topic (especially KnightsPs, I'm an UNDEADP so I'm less familiar with their lore) please comment or rb or drop an ask or anything! I love talking. It's also been a hot minute (3 or 4 years) since I last took an English class so my analysis is a little rusty.

Part 1: UNDEAD's "Monster" and Queerness

Every UNDEAD song (with one exception) has the same premise — the singers are the impure, immoral monsters who are singing to a pure, human audience. There are two genres of UNDEAD song:

“I’m a monster seducing you into the darkness, give into your desires because I know that secretly you want it too” — Immoral World, Savage Love Affair, etc.

“I’m a monster and I’m so badass” — Darkness 4, Nightless World, etc.

Darkness 4 lyrics, translation by Shirayukin on Fandom wiki.

The “monster” in UNDEAD’s music is shorthand for anyone that exists outside of a pure society. By joining the monsters, you become tainted and can't return to society, but that’s the only way you can possibly live as your authentic self. In this way, the "darkness" is a safe space that these monsters have created for themselves.

This is, of course, a reference to Rei and how he feels ostracized from society -- the whole reason why Koga began UNDEAD was as a message to Rei that if Rei felt like a monster, he shouldn't roll over and die, but live with them as an undead. However, the concept of the queer monster is incredibly applicable imo. Historically, lots of villains in horror media were queer-coded as a way of eliciting disgust or a fear response, as a way of making its villain seem strange and, well, queer. (Oh, no! Look at all these horrible people ruining life for the law-abiding families!) The link between queerness and horror has been analyzed to death.

But queer people also love the misunderstood monster who's shunned by "proper" society. The gothic novels that originated the horror genre in the 1800s, like Dracula or the Picture of Dorian Grey, were written by queer authors and/or contained scores of queer themes. Do I need to go into why werewolves, shapeshifters who had to go deep into the woods to hide their wolf form, can be read as queer? Do I need to go into why Frankenstein, someone abandoned by his own creator and shunned by society by the nature of his existence alone (something out of his control), can be read as queer? Do I really need to go into why the modern-day vampire is queer? Vampires? Of course queer people will love these monsters, because they see themselves in the monsters, more so than the victims. (Also, nothing more in line with the queer experience than seeing a monster and going “ngl they're kinda hot actually.”)

In summary: It's very easy to read UNDEAD songs and UNDEAD's conceptualization of the "monster" through a queer lens. The monster is queer, and the monster welcomes you into the darkness and invites you to also give into your desire to live freely.

Immoral World lyrics, translation by Mandy on Fandom wiki.

Also, shout out the love you tried to hide, huh? Show me your truth? Show me your pride?

Dude.

Dude.

Sidenote: The one exception to this “monster” theme is of course the elephant in the room, Sustain Memories. I think it plays well into UNDEAD’s image — at least in !-era, Rei, Adonis, and Koga have always been the monsters, while Kaoru is the human that joined them (see: their Halloween costumes in !-era). So Kaoru doesn’t sing of monsters, he sings of a human love. There's also something to be said about Kaoru being the one member of UNDEAD who tried so desperately to appear cishet and experience a "normal" love in !-era. But also, it's a wedding song because the anime boys look cute when they sing about weddings.

Part 2: What about Forbidden Rain?

Here's the thing about UNDEAD's other monster songs -- they're always proud of being monsters. They're not ashamed, and they want the audience to join them in their freedom.

Forbidden Rain lyrics, translation by @/snaketaper on Twitter.

On the other hand, the singer in Forbidden Rain sees themselves as a "beast" who can never be forgiven, someone who's slowly poisoning their pure lover. They love them so much that they apparently have to let go of them, for their own sake. It's the first song that actually contains references to genuine love (usually UNDEAD is just horny).

The song remains sort of ambiguous about the nature of the relationship between the singer and the audience. It's clear that the audience does actually care for the singer, since they do reach out a "gentle hand" that the singer can't take. But the singer says, "Let's end this thing that never even began" -- are they even together in the first place? Maybe it never began because they were scared of the "beast." Or maybe it never truly began because the relationship was built on a lie. They sing about a beast inside them that they have to hide, and says that their current self -- the one they show to the audience -- is a fake. And this is something that cannot be forgiven.

It's not hard to read this in the context of queerness. Maybe it's about a gay singer who doesn't want to reveal their feelings and tarnish a platonic relationship. Or maybe it's a trans singer who's wracked with guilt at keeping their identity under wraps and hasn't come out to their heterosexual lover, so they want to break off things before they come out and taint their previous relationship.

In Love & Beast, the "source material" behind Forbidden Rain, Inogari (Adonis' character) is soft-spoken, protective, and kind. He saves the main police character in the very first scene. He's an ambassador and a respected enough member of society that he's part of the Sakurayama (Rei's character) social club. He uses "watashi," which is even more polite than Adonis' "ore." He literally faints at the sight of blood. He's the picture of innocence and goodness and all that society approves of. But in a Jekyll and Hyde-like twist, he ends up secretly being the killer Beast. In the end, the Beast is finally caught when Inogari realizes the truth and chains himself to a wall so he can be caught by the police in an act of sacrifice.

Inogari is the picture of propriety, but he keeps the Beast repressed, and eventually this Beast destroys him. Even if you try your best to act as part of proper society, you'll never really fit in.

Silent Oath lyrics, translation by royalquintet on Fandom wiki.

Another note: Forbidden Rain has a lot of the same themes of self-sacrifice, repression, and pure, romantic love that Knights songs do. Knights, in game, is a much more traditional idol unit than UNDEAD is. Forbidden Rain thus attempts to align itself more closely with the socially acceptable Knights, but it's still an UNDEAD song at its core. The monster is inescapable.

Part 3: Mystic Fragrance and Trans Allegory

This thread by @/pretty5P on twitter (https://x.com/pretty5p/status/1625958198623539200?s=46&t=lm_x5Uw5f8pKXHUoLzYksw) is a really cool analysis on the perfume symbolism in the song and how it relates to Arashi's gender identity (go read it!!), but if you don’t want to give Elon Musk ad revenue, the gist of it is this: Odette is her "masculine" initial impression, the impression others have of her, and the impression that fades most quickly. Odile is her lasting "feminine" self and the true self that remains when the top notes fade away.

Over the course of the song, the singer (Odette/Odile) grows more and more tainted, going from a pure white dress to a multicolored rainbow dress to a pitch black dress. The final perfume note is desire, the desire to live as themselves, the desire to be with the person they love.

Mystic Fragrance lyrics, translation by KYM2020 on Fandom wiki.

While the song does focus on a pure romantic love, just like Knight's songs, the symbolism of wanting to be Odile is far more similar to UNDEAD's monster. The idea of a "hidden desire" lying in wait beneath pure feelings is explored in almost every song, as is the symbolism of a dress that gets tainted by desire:

Savage Love Affair lyrics, translation by Nina on Fandom wiki.

And just like UNDEAD songs, the "tainting" of the pure is never presented as a bad thing. Note the references to the moon in both -- it's only in the dead of night, in a midnight ballroom, that one can "spread their wings" and reveal their true self. The darkness, the space of monsters, is a safe space, and in the light of the truth-seeking moon the singer of Mystic Fragrance says that their audience is beautiful.

In the original Swan Lake ballet, Odette is a beautiful woman who falls in love with Prince Siegfried. She's cursed to transform into a swan in the daytime, a curse that can only be broken if someone who has never sworn their love to anyone swears their love to her (in other words, someone untainted). Unfortunately, the evil sorcerer who cursed her turns his daughter into Odile, the black swan who looks identical to Odette, and Siegfried mistakenly confesses his love to her. Knowing that the curse can never be broken, Odette throws herself into the lake rather than live the rest of her life as a swan, and Siegfried joins her.

Mystic Fragrance isn't tragic, however.

Part 4: Living your truth

The endings of Forbidden Rain and Mystic Fragrance are where they differ. Both of their source endings are tragic — Inogari is unable to control the Beast and shackles himself to a wall, waiting to be arrested. Odette and Siegfried leap into a lake and drown themselves, because the only way they can be together is in death. Forbidden Rain ends with the singer holding their loved one close to them one last time in the rain before they leave.

But Arashi rejects her source material because she chooses to embrace the monster. She becomes Odile. She decides to live her truth, and as the top notes and heart notes fade away, all that lingers is her true self. That's why Mystic Fragrance has a happy ending.

There's a lot of symbolism in the Mystic Fragrance music video with respect to the person who loved Arashi during the war era and who killed themselves. She spreads her arms like the wings of an angel and sings in front of a setpiece that looks like the cenotaph. Her outfit contains anemones, symbols of a lost love and grief (and, coincidentally, the flower that Adonis in greek myth turned into when he died). Her greatest regret was that that person couldn't love themselves the way Arashi now tries to love herself. In this way, Mystic Fragrance is like a message to that person -- live your truth.

Sailors & Other Sea Travellers - Superstition & Folklore

 ”Red skies at night, sailor’s delight. Red skies at morning, sailor take warning.”

Lore

Davy Jones is a popular character in sailor’s yore, especially of the gothic variety. Davy Jones’ Locker, is an idiom for the bottom of the sea: the state of death for drowned sailors. The origins of the name are unclear, and many theories have been put forth, including:

An actual David Jones, who was a pirate on the Indian Ocean in the 1630s.

A pub owner who kidnapped sailors and then dumped them onto any passing ship.

The incompetent Duffer Jones, a myopic sailor who often found himself over-board.

Or that Davy Jones is another name for Satan or “Devil Jonah”, the biblical Jonah who became the “evil angel” of all sailors. Due to this, sailors with the name “Jonah” were bad luck to have abroad.

Upon death, a wicked sailor’s body supposedly went to Davy Jones’ locker (a chest, as lockers were back then), but a pious sailor’s soul went to Fiddler’s Green (in maritime folklore it is a kind of afterlife for sailors who have served at least 50 years at sea).

At Fiddler’s Green, where seamen true When here they’ve done their duty The bowl of grog shall still renew And pledge to love and beauty.

Dolphins and albatrosses were said to be the reincarnated souls of dead sailors; and sailors could not kill either of them. 

Mermaids & Mermen

The legend of the mermaid, a creature with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish, has circulated the worlds oceans as far back as 5,000 B.C.

One of the earliest scientific accounts of the mermaid was documented by the great historian Pliny The Elder in 586 A.D. Pliny the Elder was convinced of the existence of mermaids and described them as “rough and scaled all over.” Since that time, and well before, thousands of sailors across the globe have reported seeing mermaids swimming off the bows of their ships. Even the famous Christopher Columbus reported an encounter with a mermaid; in January of 1493 Columbus reported that he saw three mermaids fin the ocean just off Haiti.

Mermaids were often considered lucky, but not universally. In Trinidad and Tobago, sea-dwelling mermen “were known to grant a wish, transform mediocrity into genius and confer wealth and power.” Mermaids appear in British folklore as unlucky omens, both foretelling disaster and provoking it.

Sailors would look for mermaid’s purses (the egg case of a skate, ray or shark; one of the most common objects washed up on the sea) on beaches for signs of mermaids in the area.

Klabautermann 

Traditionally, a type of kobold, a Klabautermann, lives aboard ships and helps sailors and fishermen on the Baltic or North Sea in their duties. He is a merry and diligent creature, with an expert understanding of most watercraft, and an unsupressable musical talent. He also rescues sailors washed overboard. The belief in Klabautermanns dates to at least the 1770s.

A carved Klabautermann image, of a small sailor dressed in yellow with a tobacco pipe and wooden sailor’s cap, often wearing a caulking hammer, is attached to the mast as a symbol of good luck. 

However, despite the positive attributes, there is one omen associated with his presence: no member of a ship blessed by his presence shall ever set eyes on him; he only ever becomes visible to the crew of a doomed ship.

More recently, the Klabautermann is sometimes described as having more sinister attributes, and blamed for things that go wrong on the ship. This incarnation of the Klabautermann is more demon- or goblin-like, prone to play pranks and, eventually, doom the ship and her crew. This deterioration of image probably stems from sailors, upon returning home, telling stories of their adventures at sea.

Sailor Tattoos

Sailors believed that certain symbols and talismans would help them in when facing certain events in life; they thought that those symbols would attract good luck or bad luck in the worst of the cases:

Sailors, at the constant mercy of the elements, often feel the need for religious images on their bodies to appease the angry powers that caused storms and drowning far from home.

The images of a pig and a hen were good luck; both animals are not capable of swimming, but they believed that God would look down upon a shipwreck and see an animal not capable of swimming and would take them into his hand and place them on land. Sailors had the belief that by wearing the North Star, this symbol would help them to find his or her way home.

The Flying Dutchman

The Flying Dutchman is a legendary ghost ship  that can never make port and is doomed to sail the oceans forever. The myth is likely to have originated from 17th-century nautical folklore. The oldest extant version dates to the late 18th century. Sightings in the 19th and 20th centuries reported the ship to be glowing with ghostly light. If hailed by another ship, the crew of the Flying Dutchman will try to send messages to land, or to people long dead. In ocean lore, the sight of this phantom ship is a portent of doom.

 Some say that The Flying Dutchman was used for piracy and was loaded with gold and other loot. While travelling with a load of treasure, unspeakable crimes were committed on board the ship, thus making it cursed forever.

“originally a vessel loaded with great wealth, on board of which some horrid act of murder and piracy had been committed” and that the apparition of the ship “is considered by the mariners as the worst of all possible omens.”

Other variations of the legend say that the Captain of The Flying Dutchman refused to go to port in the face of a horrible storm and as a result the entire ship perished. Others claim that the ship was not called The Flying Dutchman - that instead it was the name of the captain of the ship. Eventually, as people passed the legend down through the generations, the story of The Flying Dutchman referred to the ship.

Superstitions

Bad luck:

No bananas on board -  At the height of the trading empire between Spain and the Caribbean in the 1700’s, most cases of disappearing ships happened to be carrying a cargo of bananas at the time.

No women on board - Women were said to bring bad luck on board because they distracted the sailors from their sea duties. This kind of behaviour angered the intemperate seas that would take their revenge out on the ship. However, images of naked women were carved onto the bow of the ship because the woman’s bare breasts  ”shamed the stormy seas into calm” and her open eyes guided the seamen to safety.

No whistling on board - Mariners have long held the belief that whistling or singing into the wind will “whistle up a storm”.

Deathly lexis - At sea, some words must be strictly avoided to ensure the ship and crew’s safe return. These include obvious ones like “drowned” and “goodbye”. If someone says “good luck” to you, it is sure to bring about bad luck. The only way to reverse the curse is by drawing blood.

Lurking sharks - A shark following the ship is a sign of inevitable death.

Unlucky days: - Fridays: Fridays have long been considered unlucky days, likely because Jesus Christ was crucified on a Friday. - Thursdays: Thursdays are bad sailing days because that is Thor’s day, the god of thunders and storms. - First Monday in April: The first Monday in April is the day Cain slew Abel. - Second Monday in August: The second Monday in August is the day the kingdoms of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. - Superstitious sailor believed that the only good day to sail on was sundays.

Changing the name of the boat - Boats develop a life and mind of their own once they are named and Christened. If you do rename the boat- you absolutely must have a de-naming ceremony. This ceremony can be performed by writing the current boat name on a piece of paper, folding the paper and placing it in a wooden box then burning the box. After, the ashes were scooped up and thrown into the sea.

Red heads - Red heads were thought to bring bad luck to a ship if you happened to encounter one before boarding. However, if you speak to the redhead before they get the chance to speak to you, it is cancelled out.

Good luck:

It is good luck to spit in the ocean before you sail.

Coins thrown into the sea as a boat leaves port is a small toll to Neptune, the sea god, for a safe voyage.

Horseshoes on a ship’s mast will turn away a storm.

Cats brought luck. If a ship’s cat came to a sailor, it meant good luck.

Pouring wine on the deck will bring good luck on a long voyage.

It is often considered lucky to touch the collar of a sailor’s suit.