August 2012
73 posts
some thoughts about haruka, michiru and ELEGANCE and GRACE
seeing as it’s part of their standard intro speech every time they show up, those things must be a pretty big deal to them! and while i couldn’t possibly tell you what the difference between the two is, i do think there’s a difference in the way they manifest in haruka and michiru. i will now proceed to talk about that for several paragraphs, as i am prone to do whenever lesbians are involved. anyway.
they were both probably raised in extremely proper, well-to-do households (one word: helicopters), and so likely had those ideals hammered into their head all throughout childhood. michiru, who is naturally the quieter, more delicate type, grew right into it — it fit her personality well and she does enjoy most aspects of her prim-and-proper lifestyle, i think, like playing the violin and painting and being a classy lass all around. at the same time, though, since she never really had a choice in the matter (she’s not the type to pursue freedom for herself, and her parents certainly never pushed her towards it), it led to her developing an extremely restrained personality and the habit of keeping her feelings bottled up inside more often than not.
i think she’s resentful of that part of her, a little, and wishes she could be different in that regard— like the way she sees haruka, who is ‘independent and always honest with her feelings’. the funny part, other than haruka being totally emotionally stilted, is that they’re both extremely independent and capable girls (i see them both as living on their own since they were young, so even before the whole ‘resign from normal life in favor of saving the world’ thing, they were pretty damn impressive), but michiru only sees haruka as such because haruka lives in a way that is true to herself— well, on the surface, anyway. michiru never breaches the walls of the box into which she was raised, and she realizes that, and it makes her feel like she’s still a child who depends on her parents’ ideals and way of life.
i imagine that haruka, growing up, was much harder to control. her parents wanted her to grow up to be a fine young lady, as is appropriate, but haruka would rather climb trees and roll around in dirt and play pretend-dinosaurs with the boys (she’d always be a pterodactyl and chastise everyone with death from above). so in response they’d try to hammer manners and grace into her three times as hard, seating her by the piano since she was five, policing her posture, etc, etc.
haruka took to the piano rather well, and had her own brand of elegance that she carried herself with, but sadly that did not cause her to give even a single flying fuck about her parents’ idea of what was proper and continued running around in shorts and beating up boys. after enough time her parents just threw their head back, sighed ‘god, whatever’ at the heavens and let her do whatever she pleased, because even at seven years old haruka tenoh did not take shit from anyone.
being surrounded by proper and elegant things, haruka still adopted a sense of aesthetic and gracefulness, but it’s something that’s become ingrained into her personality on her own terms. so unlike michiru, whose every move is dictated by grace and finesse in a way that’s been forced upon her until it became natural, haruka acts the way that’s been natural to her from the start. it’s still important to her to make an impression, but it’s the impression she wants to create, which is quite probably the exact opposite of the way her family wanted for her to present herself. she saunters; she digs her hands into her pockets; she props her feet up on inappropriate surfaces, and she looks smooth as hell doing it because she’s haruka fucking tenoh. that’s her definition of elegance.
because she cares about being true to herself more than anything, i think that with haruka, the more time you spend with her, the more she loosens up around you. i see her as a pretty expressive person, actually, who uses quite a bit of body language when she’s comfortable enough with a person, hand gestures, shrugging, what have you. in contrast, michiru retains a body language made up entirely of meaningful gazes, subtle tilts of the head and sassy hairflipping, no matter how deep a bond you share with her. her walls don’t go down, they’re kind of built in.
but it’s funny, because when feelings are involved, they’re just the other way around… haruka is more open and often says what’s on her mind, but she completely sucks at expressing her feelings, mainly because she sucks at working them out for herself! on the other hand, michiru, the very picture of self-restraint, keeps her feelings locked up inside, and that’s probably exactly why she’s so good at working them out! you stew in them long enough, making sense of them becomes a piece of cake. so on those few rare occasions where she does express what she feels, it is almost startlingly meaningful and genuine.
wow that got long…. i’m sorry, this has become a harumichi rambleblog and i don’t even have any caps of them looking pretty to go with it
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