Morning☆Glory (Harukawa Maki) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rollplayinghouse) wrote2018-12-21 02:50 pm
rollplayinghouse) wrote2018-12-21 02:50 pm
Question meme
I wanted to do a question meme and apparently Maki has broken 10k comments somehow.
You know the drill.
You know the drill.
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C first. Things are hard with C and Maki never really knows where she stands with him. The fact that he hasn't taken any memories doesn't help, because everything she knows is her perspective. And, spoilers, Maki and Ouma did not get along very well in canon. She has not actually remembered the worst of it, but she has remembered Ouma calling her a worse liar than he is and holding him by his neck as he reveals she's actually an assassin in front of everyone, so... she gets the impression things aren't great.
In Imeeji things have been back and forth though! They started off okay, and then Maki immediately got angry at him for the original thing with A (calling him out on his feelings for Boss on a vid) - Maki didn't even really know A that well at that point, but they had just had a discussion about needing time to work out their feelings, so C forcing the issue so deliberately and publicly put her off a lot. Since then she's actually gotten the impression that he's generally well-meaning, though, and just... takes the worst possible approach to things, and refuses to own up to have been trying to help. She actually called him out a bunch on that in a cute thread where they mutually said things they knew about each other angrily. He also helped her pretend to be a Phantom Thief! But he also... keeps arguing with her that memories are pointless (obviously he's not the only one who does that, but it strikes her worse when it's literally the only person she could count on for camaraderie/understanding of her past). And A now thinks C is an unrepentant psychopath, so even though Maki still doesn't actually agree with that, she's still a bit annoyed with him because she thinks his suicide stunt was deeply stupid.
X!! God. She still doesn't know what to feel about him. They're closer now because he mainlined like 6 memories when she was gray to try to find one with her in it, and eventually did get a cute friends one where Maki confides her backstory. Then later on when she had her memories back, she confessed that she really wanted someone she could connect with about memories, and she didn't want to force him, but--! He of course accepted because X is overenthusiastic about everything.
On the romantic side, for all everyone calls him her boyfriend... she does remember having a crush on him, but she has not gotten the impression it was requited. Which is awkward. And as things are now she still honestly feels like she doesn't know him that well, so she's in this strange place where she has all these feelings that aren't quite connected to things, and they barely know each other, and also she is clearly a much different person than he remembers already, and has like three boyfriends? Since their whole canon relationship was based on Kaito dragging Maki out of self-imposed isolation into friendship, him showing up to her being stable and popular(???) very much makes it hard to know how to relate to him. THEY'RE... WORKING ON IT.
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So as established before, Intensity has at least admitted to himself that he likes Maki. YAY progress. And he has also decided he was going to take a gamble on trusting Maki - aka telling her about his off-game death and letting her stay with him while he was having nightmares. So pre-gray madness, Maki had been promoted to the inner circle. Which means when bad shit goes down, Intensity checks on these people (usually via text) to see if they are doing okay.
And that kind of shed some very interesting light on how Maki and her other boyfriends interact. You see, Intensity had always assumed that it was just a lovey dovey cuddle pile self-pity party after ever single traumatic event. But when he contacted her, she was just alone by herself in Taisho which was very ??? to Intensity, so of course he invited her over because even he is emotionally competent enough to realize that was bad for her. Very bad. But he knew that he would suck at the cuddle pile comfort stuff, so he asked her to send for A. But then A didn't come. And then Joker came but he seemed to be equally interested in snarking with Intensity as in taking care of his girlfriend and once again Intensity was very ??? Are you sure this is how this is supposed to go? This doesn't seem like how this is supposed to go? (As a side note, she also punched Joker on his behalf which was very nice. If they were SIM characters, Intensity would have had a '++' over his head for that because it's just very rare that people openly go to bat for him like that. And in a way that doesn't make he seem like he can't defend himself because he was doing fine). And then she had her crying breakdown and Intensity had a lot of emotions and reactions that he hasn't had before. Like he was upset that she was upset. And he was upset that he was being asked to used empathy and comfort muscles which he has maybe use twice in his life before that moment. And all in all, the whole experience was weird but not necessarily bad. And he walked away with less understanding of what "boyfriend" means than ever before.
He still doesn't want the title. Now more than ever.
Also, because of that whole disaster, Intensity has noticed two things about Maki. (1) She needs to have a lot of people in her life. And by a lot, I mean, more than Intensity needs in his life which is an unfair standard, it's true. But Maki does seem to need multiples of different types of people - boyfriends, friends, and a unit that serves as a family. And Intensity just doesn't get it. But luckily, he already went through a similar thing with Angel when FiN was down to three members: Intensity, Angel, and Three (who Intensity had kicked out for being a non-contributing zero). And he was very excited to have a FiN that was just him and Angel, but Angel was really sad. And she didn't cheer up until the arrival of Shogun, Bell, and Infinity. So Intensity sees Maki as having the same issue. She just needs to be involved and approved by a community of people, and while he doesn't get, he can work with it. Unfortunately, Maki doesn't have the same type of relationship that Angel and Intensity have where they have both told each that they are each other's favorites, so the multiple boyfriend things still bothers him a lot. Not because he is insecure, but because if he's ever going to really go for it, he's going to need to compete and play hard until Maki confirms his #1 position. Probably not going to be a pretty sight if that ever happens...
(2) Maki's actual self does not match what she wants others to perceive her as. This came out a lot during her grey period and then after the trial. There was a specific point in time where Maki was like "people called me cold-hearted and selfish" and a couple other adjectives to which Intensity was internally thinking, "Yes, dear. You are all those things. Oh wait... you want me to say they're wrong. Hmmmm." Which he really couldn't because she is all those things. And some of those things is why Intensity likes her. So he's not quite sure why she's upset about it. Or what kind of person she actually wants to be. Because, to be quite honest, a Maki without those negative qualities just seems... boring and not engaging. But that's a landmine he's not willing to trigger yet (or ever), so he's just going to let her figure herself out on that one. Best of luck. (But no, just embrace your negative traits and let people call you want they want. When Intensity calls her cold-hearted, it's supposed to be endearing. Really.)
And since you brought up Maki's opinions on love and trust, let me do the reverse for Intensity. As a shock to no one, Intensity doesn't like the word "love". In fact, he doesn't even like the word "like". There's just a certain point where his emotions and mindset put you in a certain bucket and he treats you accordingly. He doesn't know why there needs to be certain words that are exchanged or a promotion to certain feelings statuses. That means talking about feelings! Gross. That being said, he is capable of love. He loves Blue Eyes and his little brother shamelessly. But for romantic interests, he leans towards more "obsession" first than what would be the standard definition of love. And he's not obsessed with Maki - there are a lot of limiting factors that prevent that from happening at this time like his utter preoccupation with work and her multiple boyfriend situation. By Maki does rank really high in his important people in Imeeji. And if she throws around words like "like" and "love", he's going to fuss but ultimately not put too much effort into a fight because Maki has shown she's going to think what she wants to think. And everyone is entitled to their wrong opinion. So he wasn't even phased when she said the word love. Because he's the type of person who can denounce that they love someone, and then in the next breath say that they will travel to a deeper level of Hell and back to bring them back. In his mind, those two concepts are completely unrelated.
Regarding trust, Intensity really only trusts Maki to do what she thinks is right. So as long as his and her interests align, he doesn't really see them as having too much conflict. Obviously, the big trust issue he has with Maki stems from the Last Supper, and while she says she won't do that again, Intensity's not going to believe it until she actually has to make that choice. And in most choices, Intensity v. Joe Schmoe, he's pretty confident that Maki will choose to protect Intensity and his interests! He is less confident if it was a choice between the three boyfriends, though. Because A has self-esteem issues and Boss has victim issues, he can easily see himself getting hurt/offed whatever just because he would be the least troublesome to deal with in the aftermath, not that Maki thinks of him as a lesser or anything. But there does have to be some actionable proof that he is not "the expendable boyfriend" as he dubbed himself. Otherwise his trust levels will continue at decent levels, but not able to bridge that gap in order to trust her completely.
That was a lot of early morning rambling so I hope it made sense. And I'm off to catch a plane so I'll get to canonmates later.
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Early morning ramblings only included the complexity of the relationship and none of the dere. Here's the dere part:
Intensity is insanely attracted to Maki because she is a beautiful assassin badass who doesn't let anyone push her around and that kind of confidence (while annoying when they clash) is damn hot when they are in unison. And he likes her and wants her to be happy even if his only contribution to that is being a logical sounding board - which he will take the time to do because he does care. He still is very confused about the whole staying with him when he had nightmares because he doesn't really know how he's supposed to feel about that. On one hand, he does appreciate her a lot and it felt warm and reassuring to be able to sleep knowing she would watch out for him, but also it just still feels like a weakness. And he doesn't know how to reconcile that feeling positively.
And based from this kissing game, it's fairly obvious who Intensity respects and cares for because his attitude shifts from powerplay to trying to figure out what they would want and then trying to push the absolute limits of that. So I am also excited to see where this current thread goes because he really is trying to give Maki an experience and while he gets to enjoy being the dominant one, that's just a side benefit to seeing if he can pull this off successfully. Because he's not trying to hurt her but also he's Intensity so it's not going to be a gentle intro to being submissive.
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CANONMATES
Nine-Nine: Out of everyone in Imeeji, Intensity is pretty sure Nine-Nine understands him the best and he feels really comfortable in his understanding of Nine-Nine because they are so similar. Defeating the producers overshadows everything. Whatever it takes to do that, they are willing to do. Even the bullshit stuff like info gathering and sharing that they are both really really bad at. And he can talk to Nine-Nine about these things and their weaknesses regarding them v. the producers without feeling vulnerable. They also are really good about pointing out when one of them is going off the rails. Not how to solve the problem but things like "that last game fucked you up. Please fix that so we can get back to work." It's a really good thing they have going and if push came to shove, Intensity would burn a lot of bridges in order to keep this one because Nine-Nine is very important to him and his goals.
Anubis: Like Nine-Nine, Intensity trusts Anubis a lot because he also helps out a lot with work and generally has a good head on his shoulders. He's been very supportive and helpful to Intensity and his information gathering. And he also has the leash on Nine-Nine, which is very important since they both know Nine-Nine is going to try to destroy everything one day. It's fine. They're ready for it. He also is an expert on angels and demons which is invaluable to them. But Anubis is soft-er so can get overwhelmed. So Intensity is actually pretty protective of Anubis and his sanity. Enough that after Lucifel's stunt at the trial, Intensity went to try and figure out what the fuck happened there because he doesn't want this shit to fall on SensitIV but especially Anubis. Still working through that fallout at the moment... so stayed tuned.
Corona/Yugi: The relationship with Yugi and Intensity is a hot mess right now after that kissing game because ... wow. So when Intensity first met Yugi, he pretty much lived up to 'the kid at school you want to bully' image. He was sweet and kind and soft and somewhat unsure of himself. After the trial, he came up to Intensity a bit distraught about everything that happened in his first few days, and Intensity just pawned him off on his own unit to take care of him. Fast forward to beating Intensity at a game of Go Fish and one kissing contest later and oh my. Rival material. Also Intensity may have a very serious throw down with him at some point. In the kissing game, first it just was a game of tag to try and pin Yugi down with his super speed to get the fucking kiss. But then Yugi brought in the pep!pep! zapping powers and all bets were off. And it eventually boiled down to Yugi attempting to zap Blue Eyes and Intensity getting "intense" enough that Yugi eventually yielded because Yugi is a good person with common sense and Intensity is not. But hmmmm. Not sure what to think of Yugi at the moment because that was a sure an abrupt change in opinion. We'll see what happens post kissing game.
King: Saving this for last because, whew. WHEW. King. They are intensely murder-romance rivals. Obviously Intensity is attracted to him and his stupid smug confidence, and their default is to just snark and rival at each other. But there is also a reason that when King was high on Angel fumes and ran into Intensity, the first instinct was to mindfuck him. And then when Intensity purposefully and repeatedly pushed his buttons, then he just mindfucked him harder. That's just how they are. This is not a CR breaking event. Intensity is less mad about the mindfuck and more mad that there was no challenge he could win - it was just a punishment game without the proceeding game. When civil, they are actually on the same page and a fairly effective team. But their different views on everything make them butt heads a lot and they apologetically are awful to each other while somehow respecting each other. So King brings out the worst and best in Intensity and it's complicated. The fact that they escalated the kissing game from kisses to sleeping together is not going to help make things less complicated.
Spoilers for Yu-Gi-Oh! ahead: Canonly, Kaiba is unhealthily obsessed with Atem. To the point that after he passed on to the afterlife, Kaiba spent 6 months and billions of dollars in order to revive him which included, but was not limited to - a private space station, a space elevator to get to said space station, a lifelike AI of Atem complete with personality programmed in, and the invention of a cloud computing that you hook your brain up to in order to increase processing power. So it's bad. It's real bad. And when Intensity realizes King is the "Pharaoh sleeping in the puzzle" from his memories, he's going to have an emotional meltdown. Sorry in advance... (though I am looking forward to playing out Intensity v. his memories because he hates the idea of them so much).
Question: What does Maki think of the persona world? (Since this is a fun question that you asked on my question meme which I still plan on getting back to this week hopefully)
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She's also actually pretty distressed about how A has described his and Joker's powers in specific, in terms of being able to manipulate people's minds at will. I've said it a few times, but, partially due to not having a lot of agency over much else in her life, Maki is very deeply attached to the integrity of her own mind and her own decisions. This is also why monochrome disease freaked her out so much. So the idea that someone, without her knowledge, could come into the cognitive world of her mind and just change her somehow makes her DEEPLY uncomfortable. (Hilarious jokes about her own canon go here.) She got out of that conversation with A by assuring him that of course she definitely trusts him with it, but the fact that that appears to have been what both he and Joker were habitually doing, in different ways, still makes her Unsure.
What Plans does Intensity currently have going on?