Headcannon That A Lot Of The Orphanage Staff Were People Displaced From The Great War.

Headcannon that a lot of the Orphanage staff were people displaced from the Great war.

People who weren't originally from Japan who found a place working at the Orphanage because of the Headmaster.

He fought with them and gave them a job, a home.

And maybe that's why they turned a blind eye to his methods, or even why they understood them and followed them.

Anyway, this results in Atsushi being multilingual.

As while the staff taught Japanese, a lot of them would speak in their own native languages.

Especially when they were angry, which they usually were. And so the kids learned to picked up on it fast.

You couldn't use "I didn't understand" as an excuse.

It just meant you were ignoring orders.

A lot of the books were ones the staff had owned as kids.

Given they hadn't had the budget for anything more.

And Atsushi spent hours pouring over pages and figuring out details and words.

Atsushi didn't realise that most people don't know more than one language.

For him it was the norm, a necessity, a means of survival.

Because the staff would change their language like shades on a chameleon, and if you got caught out you'd be punished.

He never bought it up, he hadn't needed to given everyone at the Agency spoke Japanese.

So did he.

Sometimes he listen to music on headphones from other languages.

Because it was werid speaking and listening to one language all the time.

Though Atsushi makes an effort to look more into the languages he's learned.

Because he's afraid of losing another part of himself. Esspecially after everything that happens in Dead Apple.

There are clues here and there.

Like how Atsushi watches soaps in his spare time.

Ones his old matrons would watch when they were supposed to be watching him.

Kyouka finds them intresting and sometimes watches them with him.

She doesn't notice that Atsushi only turns on subtitles when she's watching.

However no one knew until one time Fyodor made a mistake with his Japanese.

(Going off of Wan where he struggles with it.)

Dazai laughed at him, Fyodor cursed at him in Russian. And Atsushi, absolutely done with all this man's bullshit.

Proceeded to swear at him in Russian. Full on, rip this man to shreds, curse out his entire bloodline.

Fyodor was completely speechless, as was everyone else.

Dazai looks at Atsushi with the most devious look in the world. "Soo... Atsushi, mind sharing that with the class?"

Atsushi is confused, realised no one else knows what he said and is so embarrassed.

"You know Russian?!"

"You... Don't?"

Eventually, Atsushi quietly tells Dazai what he said.

Dazai falls onto the ground rolling around laughing his ass off.

"Atsushi I have never been more proud of you than I am now."

This post is bought to you by that one manga panel in chapter 13.

Detective Minoura visits the Agency, spots Kyouka and wonders if she's the assassin they're after.

Atsushi makes up a lie about finding her on a mission... And was doing a cossack dance in a wheat field.

Which 1st off, someone teach Atsushi how to lie plz.

And second of all, Google tells me is known as Hopak and is a dance in both Ukraine and Russia.... Sorry if that's wrong.

And I'm like... What an oddly specific thing to pull out of nowhere?

And how the fuck does Atsushi, I lived in secluded and isolated Orphanage in the middle of nowhere in Japan, know what that is?

Someone had to have taught him that.

addendums: cult classic tv overlaps with early supernatural seasons somewhat, i am aware, just choose based on the cultural context in which you read your first fic.

for weeaboo crew i was thinking of examples like hetalia, black butler, soul eater, etc--popular anime absolutely included but the distinction is that people who were into dragon ball weren't necessarily going to anime club every week and making deviantart stamps about yaoi, but people into ouran high school host club ABSOLUTELY were.

homestuck is in its own category because homestuck changed fandom forever at a critical time which just happened to be when i was growing up in fandom. harry potter, lotr, star wars, and twilight are in their own categories because they were such multimedia juggernauts they had entire archives dedicated solely and only to their fic that spanned multiple franchise reboots (books -> movies -> extended universes). (i acknowledge star trek technically would fit under this but at the time culturally it had more overlap with other cult classic tv fandoms.)

honorable mentions that didn't make it to the list because i had to pick-and-choose with the 12 answer limit: the final fantasy franchise (axed because i am not familiar enough with the fic scene to know if it was as iconic of a gateway drug as, like, naruto or twilight or star wars fic), a general YA lit category (YA lit outside of twilight only went mainstream slightly after this time period), the MCU (i have a hate boner for the MCU), a broader "american superhero comics" category (this would be valid as an option but i don't have the space)

"chuuyas not a good liar!" "chuuya is all brawn and no brain!" Bla bla bla

Chuuya at 15, probably illiterate, tricking the smartest person in the mafia about his knowledge of Arahbaki:

Chuuya at 22 tricking an equally smart man into thinking he's a vampire with some fake teeth and contacts: