Aww, Tsukuyo is trying so hard! It can be really hard, when you’re self-taught, to teach someone else. Especially if that person you care a lot about and don’t want to let down. At least Gin is willing to help, even if he’s not a great tutor either. But he’s tutoring her too! I love it.

oh, woah, no thank YOU for writing this beautiful piece. your writing style is gorgeous and i adore it, it has this elegance in its simplicity, and the natural imagery you use just heightens this whole experience. "a whole dawn in a winter sky", "a wellspring of gentleness", god, your words just speak to my heart. and i haven't even gotten to your characterisation, and the wonderful thoughtfulness with which you interpret the relationships in gintama. i've always loved the family relationships in gintama, how they are so complex and yet so simple; no one can be fully set into the role of "parent" or "sibling" or "grandparent" or "friend" or "coworker" or "MADAO", and you've fully grasped this complexity in relationships and summarised it neatly in one word: family. you've created such an emotional, touching picture of tsukuyo and seita's relationship, where tsukuyo wishes she could be a mother to seita, and seita thinks of her both as a sister and a mother, and they both just love each other and at first are not sure how to approach each other.

and i absolutely adore gintoki's role in this fic, and the little bits of yorozuya antics woven throughout. this feels so warm and lovely, and that part where "he is supremely confident in his role as family" i think i nearly imploded with feels. and then "mothers are fierce", gosh you don't see as many mothers as you do fathers in gintama but the mothers you do meet (otose, kouka, saigou, that mum from the mother arc really early on in the series, hinowa and tsukuyo and the entire hyakka) you bet they're fierce, and that's so rarely brought up in fic. and then a classic gintoki speech. good old gintoki telling people to appreciate what they have. this feels as if it was lifted from canon, just a soft, thoughtful oneshot, and then slightly embellished to remove some of the gorilla jokes. not all of them since there are definitely some gorillas in here, but some.

thank you so much for writing this. also you picked such a wonderful, evocative quote at the beginning and i think it really sets the tone for the rest of this brilliant fic 3 3 3

this was because, thank you