Snowflake Challenge 2026-2: Pets Of Fandom
Jan. 3rd, 2026 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stardust_rifleBecause I don’t have any pets personally (on one hand I love cats, but I also love being able to display things on my bottom shelves,) I will be talking about pets from some works I enjoy that I feel like talking about.
Latte and Bakin- Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
I had to talk about a Jojo dog, given my fandoms, and while I could discuss all of them, I chose to focus my attention on two Spin-Off Dogs which I personally feel like don’t get nearly as much love as they should.
Bakin is the pet dog of mangaka Kishibe Rohan, appearing in the Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan spin-off manga and adaptations thereof, and is either a Lab or Golden Retriever depending on whether we’re talking about the manga or the live-action adaptation. In the typical fashion of those breeds, he seems to have the personality of an Absolute Angel, though in typical Jojo fashion, his first appearance involves him suffering horrific torment at the hands of an antagonist, though happily he survives and grows to adulthood and has escaped Spin-Off Jail (he briefly appears in the Jojolands, proving once and for all that Rohan is the only universal constant). Good for him, even if his adult proportions are a little jank. (Or perhaps he’s getting too many table scraps from Rohan…)
Now, even if you’re a hardcore Jojo fan, this might be the first time you’ve heard about Latte. Their* first (and so far, most likely only) appearance is in the short story Cioccolata Adotta un Cane (Cioccolata Adopts A Dog), where they, a German Shepard and former police dog, are adopted by the serial-torturer-killer-experiementer duo of Cioccolata and Secco after Cioccolata kills their owner. Cioccolata fucking loves Latte, but Secco is jealous that his position as Favorite Pet may be stolen. Eventually, Latte and Secco bond after Latte reveals that they can sniff out drugs, resulting in a fucking hilarious scene where Secco is petting Latte and Cioccolata is petting Secco.
While reading the summary, I was like “Latte is totally going to die, aren’t they? The authors have to explain why this dog never shows up in canon and this is Jojo. Dogs aren’t allowed to live in Jojo.” But nope! The story ends with Latte sitting and waiting for Cioccolata and Secco to come back from the fight where they canonically died, which might be even worse! I am now headcanoning that Giorno and Mista searched Cioccolata and Secco’s house and found Latte, and Mista adopted them. He seems like a good Dog Dad.
*The wiki calls Latte a he, the summary I read calls Latte a she, as someone with no access to the Japanese text I will just assume that Latte has no established gender in the text.
The Catcakes*- Honkai Star Rail
Now, these guys. I can not say anything intelligent or meaningful about them other than that they are cute and adorable and precious and I would die for them in a heartbeat. Introduced in the Critter Pick event as creations of Ruan Mei, The Best Character, they are weird little creatures that jiggle like Jello while looking cute and begging for their mother to not abandon them, which is futile as Ruan Mei graduated from the Victor Frankenstein School Of Science Parenting and gives zero shits about them, but that just leaves them up to be adopted by other characters in-universe and eventually take over the entire world.
*Canonically, they’re known as “critters”, but the whole fandom calls them catcakes because “critters” is stupid generic and “catcakes” is descriptive.
Latte and Bakin- Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
I had to talk about a Jojo dog, given my fandoms, and while I could discuss all of them, I chose to focus my attention on two Spin-Off Dogs which I personally feel like don’t get nearly as much love as they should.
Bakin is the pet dog of mangaka Kishibe Rohan, appearing in the Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan spin-off manga and adaptations thereof, and is either a Lab or Golden Retriever depending on whether we’re talking about the manga or the live-action adaptation. In the typical fashion of those breeds, he seems to have the personality of an Absolute Angel, though in typical Jojo fashion, his first appearance involves him suffering horrific torment at the hands of an antagonist, though happily he survives and grows to adulthood and has escaped Spin-Off Jail (he briefly appears in the Jojolands, proving once and for all that Rohan is the only universal constant). Good for him, even if his adult proportions are a little jank. (Or perhaps he’s getting too many table scraps from Rohan…)
Now, even if you’re a hardcore Jojo fan, this might be the first time you’ve heard about Latte. Their* first (and so far, most likely only) appearance is in the short story Cioccolata Adotta un Cane (Cioccolata Adopts A Dog), where they, a German Shepard and former police dog, are adopted by the serial-torturer-killer-experiementer duo of Cioccolata and Secco after Cioccolata kills their owner. Cioccolata fucking loves Latte, but Secco is jealous that his position as Favorite Pet may be stolen. Eventually, Latte and Secco bond after Latte reveals that they can sniff out drugs, resulting in a fucking hilarious scene where Secco is petting Latte and Cioccolata is petting Secco.
While reading the summary, I was like “Latte is totally going to die, aren’t they? The authors have to explain why this dog never shows up in canon and this is Jojo. Dogs aren’t allowed to live in Jojo.” But nope! The story ends with Latte sitting and waiting for Cioccolata and Secco to come back from the fight where they canonically died, which might be even worse! I am now headcanoning that Giorno and Mista searched Cioccolata and Secco’s house and found Latte, and Mista adopted them. He seems like a good Dog Dad.
*The wiki calls Latte a he, the summary I read calls Latte a she, as someone with no access to the Japanese text I will just assume that Latte has no established gender in the text.
The Catcakes*- Honkai Star Rail
Now, these guys. I can not say anything intelligent or meaningful about them other than that they are cute and adorable and precious and I would die for them in a heartbeat. Introduced in the Critter Pick event as creations of Ruan Mei, The Best Character, they are weird little creatures that jiggle like Jello while looking cute and begging for their mother to not abandon them, which is futile as Ruan Mei graduated from the Victor Frankenstein School Of Science Parenting and gives zero shits about them, but that just leaves them up to be adopted by other characters in-universe and eventually take over the entire world.
*Canonically, they’re known as “critters”, but the whole fandom calls them catcakes because “critters” is stupid generic and “catcakes” is descriptive.
no subject
Date: 2026-01-04 12:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-01-04 05:07 pm (UTC)it's just so delightfully fanfic-y
Date: 2026-01-05 01:36 am (UTC)(the wiki has a fairly good summary here if you would like to laugh your ass off)
no subject
Date: 2026-01-05 01:09 am (UTC)Latteeeeee (╥﹏╥)
no subject
Date: 2026-01-05 01:33 am (UTC)