Nil Admirari

Starting with teaching myself how to write her name fluidly enough, I hand wrote the base versions of every letter in This Lullaby. This additional physicality added to me already operating myself under what I considered to be Mother-Achika and put me in a zone. Several of them have been put into sealed envelopes addressed to Tenchi, though I put no actual address on any of them. Heaven forbid someone put a few stamps on this and someone get a really weird letter in the mail.

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One of the big challenges I faced when starting this fic was coming up with the proper timeframes for everything. I had asked in Mumble about some general timeline questions and worked with that skeleton to flesh out as much as I could. In Tenchi Muyo in Love, Washu claims that they had to travel back in time 26 years to reach 1970 on the dot. While I don’t believe their ages are ever explicitly stated, it is believed that in 1970 both Achika and Nobuyuki were 16, the same age as Tenchi during the Universe TV show’s run. If this is the case, assuming Achika’s birthday had already occurred when the events of TMiL1 happened, then Achika’s date of birth is sometime in 1954. Not wholly relevant to our story, but fun math regardless.

Fast forward a bit. Achika is shown to have died on a snowy day in 1984, leaving Tenchi without a mother at the tender age of Five. This places Tenchi’s year of birth at 1979. But what month? I needed to know for the sake of framing Achika’s letter while he was still in the womb. Here’s where my meticulousness came into play.

In the real world Okayama Prefecture circa 1984, the weather charts show absolutely no snowfall at the end of the year. The heaviest snowfall recorded takes place on February 17th, and as seen in Episode 9 of Universe the snowfall is fairly heavy and well accumulated when Nobuyuki returns home to tell his son of his mother’s sudden passing. I felt this the best time to place his mother’s death, so in terms of the canon this story follows, Achika Masaki passed away February 17th, 1984. Her final note, you’ll recall, was written just two days earlier.

This narrowed things down a little in terms of Tenchi’s birth month. He was either born sometime in January or early February, as he had already had his birthday the year his mother had passed. I doubt the crew on Universe had the actual weather patterns in mind when they wrote that scene but it made sense for the purposes of this exercise and fanfiction. Mentally, I’ve placed his birthday in the second week of January. Letters were dated accordingly – birthday mentions in January or February letters, and her first letter being written as she was entering the third trimester in November 1978.

On a related note – Tenchi’s conception would have taken place in April if he were born in January, assuming it occurred later in the month. I weighed a few options for why this would be and decided upon the simplest of explanations. Achika and Nobuyuki’s anniversary took place in April. No better time for sexytimes, right? So that’s where our Anniversary letter’s date came from. I have a note here which claims that 1984 was to be their 10th anniversary but I have no clue where that came from so we’ll assume I wrote that down as an idea and it is not fact.

The only other date of note would be October 15th, 1983. The Akimatsuri festival that takes place at the Achi-jinja Shrine in Okayama always happens on the third weekend of October. As linked above, in 1984 the third Saturday of October was the 15th. The festival celebrates Shinto traditions as well as ushering in a new year of good crop production. A minor detail in the grand scheme of the fic, but one I felt required research regardless.

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Lastly, I did want to address a few things discussed elsewhere. As Shadows notes in his post (Thank you for the kind words!), the rooftop scene was very reminiscent of the one that happens in Daughter of Darkness. I loved the visual poetry and potential behind the scene as it exists in the movie, but have always felt that whenever Ryoko and Tenchi get into a larger than normal fight with one another it tends to get breezed through way too easily for my liking.

While a different canon, in Ep. 10 of the OVA when Ryoko rips Tenchi’s mother’s Kimono and then intentionally defaces it further, he explodes with anger and repeatedly says that he hates her. This is handwaved away less than a few minutes later when Tenchi returns home. He simply states to her that he isn’t angry any more, Ryoko takes this as gospel and goes back to loving him. She may love Tenchi, but nah uh. That wouldn’t be the end of the story for Ryoko.

Similarly, the slap scene from Daughter of Darkness required much more subtlety and time to simmer than it got. I saw this as the ultimate betrayal of trust between Tenchi and Ryoko in any form of their growing relationship. What we got was a very much condensed rooftop conversation that brushed aside the fact that Tenchi physically assaulted her (not to mention how moments after the slap does occur, he changes the subject without a care) in favor of Ryoko doing almost all of the talking and again, a disturbingly quick repair job of the damage that should have occurred.

I borrowed elements from both of these scenes to build tension for where the title for this fiction came from. While I could have gone a little more in-depth with the dialog the two had on the roof, I felt I achieved a much better balance than either scene from the animations mentioned. There’s much more relevant dialog which actually discusses motivations for why the hurtful things occurred and a much more powerful gesture on Tenchi’s behalf to solidify his acceptance of responsibility as well as a beautiful way to further build their relationship. I enjoyed the idea of the rooftop scene from DoD more than its execution, so I took it upon myself to write my own roof scene more to my satisfaction.

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Lastly, since this is bugging me and Who noticed it I feel it must be mentioned. In Act 3 I mention that Ryoko hadn’t felt as lonely since her 700 years of solitude/imprisonment until that moment. This was a factual error on my part as there’s no evidence in Universe that Ryoko ever served 700 years of time. Ayeka simply references her getting a 700 year sentence, which is about where that paper trail begins and ends. In OVA she is imprisoned, but different canons. Don’t be surprised if this line goes missing in the future since it is incorrect. But a part of me could not resist making a reference to One Hundred Years of Solitude.

~.~

I set out to make a fic that gave both fans of Universe and the Tenchi x Ryoko pairing something unique and special to read, and I hope I delivered.

Oh, and for shits and giggles… the promo gif I made after Act 2 went live.