Nukani - Blog Posts
Grandpa: well. uh. *brushes the feather off yakumo's chin* hm. Why... don't we go,. help Grandma now
based on a snippet of this anon's ask
contemplating danoli arranged marriage once more… (the seeds planted by @wet-poodle-nudes of course.)
so, thinking about a timeline where dante’s parents never died and he was just sort of… kept. very bird in a cage. he never underwent the trials of the elemental spirits of fire because his parents feared the strain would kill him.
with his parents’ continued rule, solaria teeters on falling into ruin. it stays afloat mostly through luck. the local public sentiment towards the sun lord (dante’s father) and his consort (dante’s mother) is pretty negative due to their lack of action against those who attack solaria. meanwhile, the other territories view them as frivolous, ditzy nobles; they’re both too nice, too kind for their own good. its quite fanciful that desert rulers would purchase ice sculptures and other luxuries.
dante, in the midst of all this, resents his parents and his position immensely, but he’s self-aware enough to know that he doesn’t exactly have the health to rule and he’s lived an incredibly coddled life. he’s privileged, but he can’t do anything.
as solaria’s position becomes more and more precarious, it becomes evident to dante’s parents that the best move, for solaria and dante, is to marry dante off. it would bring in a strong alliance, wealth, and, if they can send dante off, perhaps they can protect him from the local strife.
enter: olivine.
there were probably a lot of possible suitors dante’s parents looked at for him. but, olivine’s healing ability puts him head and shoulders above the rest. after all, if their son’s survival is paramount, then they want someone who could properly look after his health.
after some intense discussion, the marriage is arranged. there’s a wedding in solaria. and then a wedding in the water territory.
for the wedding in the solaria, dante and olivine meet one day before their wedding to be.
going to solaria a bit of an adventure for olivine; its nice for him to be able to see the world outside of the water and light territory, even if it’s for an event that’s tying him to a stranger. he hopes that maybe the marriage means he can visit again.
meanwhile, dante is so furious about the whole ordeal that he stonewalls olivine’s attempted visits for several days. his parents reassure olivine with soft words and laughter; they invite him to hospitality in dante’s stead. it’s clear to him that dante’s parents are incredibly kind people who love their son dearly. they are very much unlike his own parents whose love is shown through unyielding and weighty responsibility.
on the final day, dante agrees to see olivine. as he arrives to dante’s bedroom (a scandalously intimate place to visit but it seems that dante’s health will allow nothing else), he sees dante’s mother bowed close to dante, cupping his cheek. they exchange whispers, cajoling and reluctant in turns. dante’s mother introduces them while dante remains mute to olivine. his mother says that he wanted to meet with him alone and wishes them both luck as she leaves.
two caged birds left to talk… dante is terse with olivine. in their conversation, it becomes very quickly evident that neither of them particularly desire their marriage. olivine has a gentle, sad smile when dante asks, angrily, ‘don’t you want more?’. dante’s prospects are rather dire, but surely, olivine, a beloved priest, could protest a marriage he didn’t want.
going into more of a broader overview of what the potential dynamics would be: dante goes to live with olivine in the water territory.
olivine is pretty chill with letting dante do what he likes and also helping him do what he wants. its a kind of freedom dante has never known and he uses it to his full ability. though the marriage wasn’t his choice, he’s determined to take control afterwards. he’s also very much an only child and kind of a brat.
in their adventures together, i feel like dante gets very frustrated with how passive olivine is. he sees how olivine’s temple goers ogle and fawn over him. once he’s sure olivine’s kindness isn’t some ploy, he starts to bully olivine into having preferences.
i like to think, at some point, laying in bed together at night like children at a sleepover, they discuss their wishes. they both have many, many wishes they’ve kept close to their heart, for one reason or another. and like… though some of them may be difficult, once their wishes are spoken aloud, they help each other realize how achievable those dreams are.
dante’s straightforward thinking cuts through much of the winding anxiety that strangles olivine’s wishes. he can see all the strength, all the power olivine possesses. he knows olivine is capable. meanwhile, olivine’s experience with helping others overcome their own struggles opens up possibilities that dante didn’t consider because he thought if his wishes did happen, he’d have to muster the strength to complete them on his own.
together, they find that they arent quite as trapped as they thought they were
Checkers
Rei and Dante - for @halfetirosie
(not explicit...... yet.)
"It's just a game," Rei sighs.
"I know that, you--!"
Dante stares at the board like a man coming to terms with a terminal illness. He stares like if he stares hard enough, the whole game will go up in flames, and he'll be spared from any further nonsense.
Rei's played a lot of games with a lot of people, but he's never seen someone take checkers this seriously - and he once played a master naval strategist. There's a vein on Dante's forehead that looks fit to burst as he reaches out and slides his piece forward.
The best part of this experience is that the more confidence Rei exudes, the more anxious the Sun Lord becomes. When propositioned, Dante admitted he'd never played before, but he was certain his skills as a warrior would translate.
He looks... less certain, now.
Rei didn't mean to get good at games like this. But when beating Kuya at cards became his favorite pastime, he learned fast.
When Dante places his fingertip on his piece and starts to move, Rei clears his throat and clicks his tongue. Dante freezes and slides the piece back.
"S-stop distracting me," Dante hisses.
Rei nods his head and hums. "Apologies, Sun Lord."
While chewing his bottom lip - does he know that it's so cutely pathetic? - Dante changes his mind and moves a different piece. He claims one of Rei's and leans back in his chair.
"Hah, got you." The Sun Lord folds his arms and smirks, smug. Poor baby.
Rei reaches out and jumps one of his three remaining pieces over all five of Dante's.
"I win. Wow, Sun Lord; I expected better."
"I-- you--!"
Dante stands up, fists clenched, rattling the table in the process.
"You tricked me into changing my move!" He's shouting, which is exactly what Rei hoped would happen. Rei swallows his smirk and crosses his legs, rolling his eyes.
"I didn't make you do anything," Rei supplies. "Respectable war lords take responsibility for their mistakes, don't they?"
"I--" Dante flounders for words and slows his breathing. He's positively pimple-red and nearly shaking with frustration.
"Deep breaths, Sun Lord," Rei heckles.
To Rei's delight, Dante drops back into his seat like a door slamming shut. He starts resetting the board with fumbling hands.
"Again," he insists.
"Of course." Rei could - and will - watch this all night.
curious about how people think dante and kuya’s eyes are constructed. their eyes are where their gems are located, but ??? is it all gem or is it only the iris? what’s the deal with the eye whites?
also, thoughts on whether their gem eyes can dilate/contract or not?
@sea-arsonist some very rough elaboration on how 'baby need smoko' happened:
like and share to help them carry their load 😔 🫴
breathe deeply, sun lord
I want to remind everyone that at some point in the timeline Huey taught at the Sorcerers Trials. Which is so fucking funny to me because I know he was a horrible professor. That man did not know how to teach.
Imagine the vessel of God’s power giving you an F on your paper. His ass would not extend deadlines or round up your grade. His lectures would have been so awful because his voice is so monotone.
underrated olivine trait is that he's actually incredibly cagey. spent his entire life learning to lie and keep secrets. we don't realize it because he's so desperate for eiden to hear him out and validate him, but then you get events like chimes of darkness or blood key, or hell, the scene in idol fest where he sneaks off alone to read his parents' letter. this bitch got secrets! he's only this open with eiden because he trusts eiden down to the marrow.
Behind bars.
I've been super busy the past weeks, finally got time to add some polish to my doodles! PRR was my very first event to Nu: Carnival! I'll remember this strongly cuz Quincy stole my pulls thrice. ;~;
thinking about the omega priests post and olivine. as you do. but more specifically thinking about olivine going to solaria on official church business and coincidentally the scheduling of the trip means that he's going to go into heat during it. which is fine, kind of. it's going to suck a lot going through a heat alone when he's been so thoroughly spoiled by eiden and the clan, but he's had years of practice.
except solaria is really fucking hot. downright unbearable when in heat, especially when you're used to cooler temperatures like resident white boy olivine. and also dante ISN'T used to being around omegas in heat because he's been so isolated for so long. and dante offered to house olivine at his residence because there's a lot of rooms he's not using and what, is he going to make an acquaintance stay at an inn? do you doubt the sun lord's hospitality??
so they're both slowly going insane in close quarters because. olivine can't make the first move. and dante can't make the first move. and they're slowly roasting in horny fumes
horny purgatory… one of them has to make the first move, but neither of them want to. dante doesn’t want to presume that olivine wants his help. olivine doesn’t want to presume that dante would help him.
and also like. dante is respecting the practices of the church by not questioning olivine’s rather… open scent during his heat.
they both think they can muscle through it (which they probably could!!!), its just. miserable. and they’re both so polite to each other too OTL… they’re friends, but they’re officials first.
so they’re having Intensely Normal and Polite conversation over lunch while olivine is trying to make sure slick doesnt leak through his robes and dante has to meticulously position his shawl so His Holiness cant see his massive boner through his stupid tight pants. dante definitely doesn’t have any feelings about how deeply olivine drinks his water or the flush across his face.
also!!! like!!! olivine wouldn’t even let himself masturbate. he’s a guest at dante’s home; surely, dante would be disgusted if he saw him or heard him being so shameless. he can’t spoil dante’s hospitality to him…
meanwhile, dante has no such reservations about pleasuring himself in his own home, but!!! he thinks jerking it to olivine, an ally who is in vulnerable straits, is weird! it’s not bad, persay. he just!! feels a little weird about it. (he probably does it anyways because, at a certain point, he can’t help himself. he’s strangely stiff with olivine later and olivine thinks dante might have cottoned onto the fact that olivine is having ~thoughts~ about him.)
i think. eventually. there has to be some kind of tipping point. like they keep making horny compromises to themselves. dante jerks off to olivine. olivine likes bathing after dante because he noticed there was cum left on the tile one time and he can allow himself just a taste of shameful intimacy, can’t he? perhaps some laundry stealing, but they’re both such tightly controlled individuals that it’s hard to imagine they’d allow themselves to do that, hehe.
one path to endgame banging is olivine premptively apologizing and confessing his indecency to dante (esp. if he feels like dante caught him and felt disgusted)? like… he’s not usually such a prude about his own instincts, but he can’t help falling back to feelings of shame when he’s acting so improperly. and dante is like (blink blink). because, if dante did catch him, dante definitely just ran away to jerk off shamefully himself.
so dante, reluctantly, drags his own admission out that he’s wouldn’t mind helping olivine and anyways, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about because they’re allies. (and then they fuck and scent each other crazy style.)
thinking about the omega priests post and olivine. as you do. but more specifically thinking about olivine going to solaria on official church business and coincidentally the scheduling of the trip means that he's going to go into heat during it. which is fine, kind of. it's going to suck a lot going through a heat alone when he's been so thoroughly spoiled by eiden and the clan, but he's had years of practice.
except solaria is really fucking hot. downright unbearable when in heat, especially when you're used to cooler temperatures like resident white boy olivine. and also dante ISN'T used to being around omegas in heat because he's been so isolated for so long. and dante offered to house olivine at his residence because there's a lot of rooms he's not using and what, is he going to make an acquaintance stay at an inn? do you doubt the sun lord's hospitality??
so they're both slowly going insane in close quarters because. olivine can't make the first move. and dante can't make the first move. and they're slowly roasting in horny fumes
thinking about the omega priests post and olivine. as you do. but more specifically thinking about olivine going to solaria on official church business and coincidentally the scheduling of the trip means that he's going to go into heat during it. which is fine, kind of. it's going to suck a lot going through a heat alone when he's been so thoroughly spoiled by eiden and the clan, but he's had years of practice.
except solaria is really fucking hot. downright unbearable when in heat, especially when you're used to cooler temperatures like resident white boy olivine. and also dante ISN'T used to being around omegas in heat because he's been so isolated for so long. and dante offered to house olivine at his residence because there's a lot of rooms he's not using and what, is he going to make an acquaintance stay at an inn? do you doubt the sun lord's hospitality??
so they're both slowly going insane in close quarters because. olivine can't make the first move. and dante can't make the first move. and they're slowly roasting in horny fumes
the two-faced god of klein
ao3 link
the parallels between huey and olivine, huh
using the astral duo event and the rainy season event, we can approximate topper's age.
tl;dr, topper is an old man. ദ്ദി૮ • ﻌ • ა ---
to start: in astral duo, we learn that double eclipses occur "once every fifty-four years and one month." [1] later, eiden goes back in time to a period that quincy estimates is "[a]t least... two double eclipses ago". [2] so, that's at least a century ago from the present of the astral duo event. during that time, we see quincy's best friend zaro (love u zaro) and quincy during a past eclipse. then, in the rainy season event, eiden has to go fetch rei and quincy from a memory stream using father and topper's connection to them respectively. [3] it turns out this means eiden entering father and topper's memories of rei and quincy to find them. [4] [5] when eiden enters topper's memory of quincy, there's a funeral going on. after quincy gives a vague answer about who the funeral is for, eiden concludes, "(He must be talking about his friend from the tribe all those years ago...)". [5] the friend is, of course, zaro, because that's the only tribe friend eiden knows about.
topper isn't with young quincy in astral duo, which makes me think he didn't know quincy back then*, but he does seem familiar with quincy by the time of zaro's funeral in rainy season. so that gives us a rough timeline (from oldest event to most recent): >= 108~ years ago: young quincy and zaro do chores during the double eclipse. (they seem like they could be anywhere between their 20s and 30s with the conversation where quincy grouses about being old and preferring a younger tribe member calling him 'big brother' rather than 'uncle'. [2]) ??? years ago: quincy caught topper in a trap and decided to keep him. quincy has his sr sprite here instead of his r sprite (which is used to depict his younger self), so it seems some time has passed. [6] ??? years ago: zaro dies and quincy stands outside the funeral in the rain. topper brings him an umbrella. [5] 0~ years ago: the astral duo event given quincy's general angst and zaro's vibe, we can assume zaro is what you call 'a normal human guy' with a normal human lifespan. (well, actually, based on quincy's 4th astral duo room, he may have been relatively long lived for a human since he outlived everyone else in the tribe quincy was close to.) so, let's say zaro lived to be about 100 years old. that means the timeline looks like this: >= 108~ years ago: young quincy and zaro pal around during the double eclipse. (zaro: 20s or 30s) ??? years ago: quincy and topper meet >= 28-38~ years ago: zaro dies at 100~ years old and quincy attends his funeral. topper gives him an umbrella. 0~ years ago: the astral duo event
we also know topper met quincy after all of topper's siblings died? [7] that doesn't really mean anything because we don't know if all his siblings died when he was a baby, but it does give him the vibe of having 'outlived' his siblings? that seems to suggest that he'd been alive for a while. he definitely seems to be an adult by the time he gets captured by quincy. still, without knowing how his species ages, it's kind of impossible to know how old he was when he met quincy. 28-38 years old is already way longer than a irl stoat lives so.... the real world equivalent isn't very helpful when trying to gauge what age topper became an adult topper.... for the sake of adding some time for 'before he joined quincy' and accounting for toppers existing social life pre-quincy, i'll just say he was like. 5 years old when he met quincy. using all this information, we can (very roughly) gauge that topper is about ~35-45 years old, at least. did we need to know this? no, not really. ╭( ´꒳` )╯♫⋆｡♪ we do know that father is older than topper tho! [7.2] so, this gives us some kind of measuring stick there. this also lets us approximate that quincy is somewhere around ~130-140 years old, which is younger than i thought. (let me know if i'm forgetting some key lore;;;) from there we can determine minimum and maximum ages for the yokai and familiars using the program booklet, which states, "The age of the yokais, familiars are arranged in order: Kuya > Quincy > Rei > Aster > Morvay > Yakumo > Garu." [7.3] of course, this all depends on quincy's approximation during the astral duo event that he and eiden timetravelled back to "[a]t least... two double eclipses ago". [2] so all the ages given here are more like minimums.
sources: 1. astral duo - forest alterations 2. astral duo - time fossil 3. rainy season - without a trace 4. rainy season - to their memories 5. rainy season - parting words 6. rainy season quincy - room 3 7. neon carnival (2nd anniversary) program booklet: 1, 2, 3
also quincy's 4th astral duo room, which i didnt give a number lol *I know Topper isn't always with Quincy, like during the flashback (in Razor's Edge - Just What Is This Place?) when Huey was still alive and Zaro was dead. Topper and Quincy definitely knew each other by that point, but Quincy probably didn't bring Topper because like... it wasn't the vibe. So, there is the distinct possibility that Topper and Quincy did know each other during the period of the Astral Duo event flashback. However, I don't think that's super likely because, in Rainy Season Quincy's room 3, the Quincy who catches Topper uses the SR sprite instead of the R and he talks like our Quincy, i.e. depressed, instead of happy, shounen vibes flashback Quincy.