Morning☆Glory (Harukawa Maki) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rollplayinghouse) wrote2019-08-02 11:10 pm
rollplayinghouse) wrote2019-08-02 11:10 pm
20K QUESTION MEME
Over 20k comments!! Question meme time!
Over 20k comments!! Question meme time!
Over 20k comments!! Question meme time!
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There are a number of parallels between Yugi and Shuichi (V3's protag boy) - cute, nerdy, needs to build some self-confidence. However it should be noted that while Maki is eventually very close to Shuichi, she doesn't really respond to him much at all for the first third of the game, and then is intensely awkward about it, until they're both hanging out with Kaito as Kaito works on Shuichi's self-confidence and Maki's ability to people, and they both improve enough at their respective things to relate to each other.
SO THAT'S THE BASELINE WE'RE WORKING FROM, and there are some similarities with her relationship with Yugi. He's a nice boy!! But Maki both just doesn't understand what makes a person be nice, and doesn't really know how to deal with someone she doesn't know well just being nice to her. Combine that with Yugi's relative timidity and Maki's tendency to be unintentionally abrasive (which is something she knows about herself), a lot of her early interactions with Yugi were very tense for Maki. Not because of anything he was doing, because he was actually being very kind and helpful, and things like taking her to the amusement park or the cafe date were actually very nice for her and reassured her that not everyone hated her now. But she didn't really know how to respond, and didn't want to do anything to put him off when he'd only been nice to her, but didn't really know how to avoid that either.
The big shift was obviously PPP! Where Yugi tried to defend her when she was helpless and Maki got ordered to kill him. It being Yugi means this was more traumatic than it would have been if it was most anyone else, because as mentioned, he's a nice boy who has only helped her and she doesn't want to hurt him. So she had some level of worry this had just irrevocably ruined the relationship. But then instead of blaming her or being more wary of her, Yugi actually reached out to her and approached it like they were both the victims. Which is obviously true, but she wasn't expecting it from him, especially so soon after. That made her a lot more comfortable with him in the sense that he clearly wasn't just being nice because he wasn't clear on what she was capable of - though she still doesn't really understand why he approaches things the way he does.
But!! She wanted to help him, and here was a clear hurt she could attempt to address. Of course she still wasn't confident in her ability to do anything herself, but that's why she proposed they have a trio outing with King. And she feels like that outing was definitely successful - everyone was cute and had a good time!! And Yugi even invited her to help try to cheer up King later, which was also extremely meaningful for her in terms of a display of trust.
So overall Maki is a lot more comfortable around Yugi now! She doesn't have that same tense wariness that she's going to do something and hurt him/make him turn away from her, because clearly if that was going to happen it would have happened already, or that he's being nice for some weird reason, because he wouldn't invite her to something with him and King if he didn't genuinely think it was a good idea for him to be there.
She still doesn't feel like she understands him very well, though. The closest she got was after the castle game when she was talking to him about wanting to be able to do something, and trying it and just making things worse, because that's definitely a feeling of frustration and distress that she can relate with. But in a more general sense she still doesn't understand what motivates him to be the way he is. (Largely because "he's just a nice person who thinks the best of people and wants to help" is not a motivation that fits in her worldview.) So she wants to work on that because she would like to be closer with him.
Side note, she was talking to King about the King/Yugi/Maki doujin he got, and King offered to let her keep it, and she was like...... wouldn't it be weird for me to keep a sexy doujin with Yugi in it though. We're not involved like that. And King said Yugi keeps a collection of stuff too and he could ask Yugi if it was okay. SHE DECLINED. If someone is going to ask Yugi about that it is going to be her. Otherwise that's weird. I don't know that she would actually do that, but they should talk about their doujin collections sometime regardless.
On the specific topic of King/Yugi/Maki, Maki kind of feels like her life would be easier if she was into Yugi and they could complete the triangle properly (as I have discussed on plurk, Maki likes triads a lot), but she is currently not really. Some of that is the feeling that she still doesn't know him that well, and some of it is that one of the big things Maki is attracted to is the absurd self-confidence that people like Intensity or King have, which she obviously has not seen from Yugi at all. She could end up pushed that way if they get closer and she sees more of him with a sense of conviction, though.
REVERSE!!
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Intensity being angry at her after her live in a way she wasn't sure was fixable made it very obvious how much she is emotionally relying on him now, in sort of the same way him being angry at her when she tried to break things off with him to be exclusive with Joker and A made it more obvious how much she actually liked & cared about him. That is why she said she didn't know what she'd do without him - though as she later mentioned, by that she doesn't mean "I wouldn't be able to go on without you," but literally "I don't know what I'd do." A lot of her wants and plans currently are based around him, and if he was gone, obviously she'd figure something else out (Maki is not a person who ever feels like she couldn't go on). But, she genuinely has no idea what that would be, and she really doesn't want to be in that situation.
That feeling and the fact that he was there for her after PPP despite being that angry at her is a lot of why she finally straight up told him she loved him. On the surface telling Intensity one loves him seems like a bad idea that will not be appreciated or reciprocated, but in a way it's the perfect situation for Maki to do it. She doesn't remotely expect or need him to respond in kind - she knows what he's like and she doesn't have any doubts about his feelings for her after everything he did and said after PPP - if anything, she thinks what he said and did demonstrates his feelings much more strongly than her saying "I love you" does. And the fact that using the word "love" just makes him vaguely uncomfortably change the subject or and tell her to not actually makes it much easier for her to do it than the alternative. If Maki was talking to someone who actually attached value to the word "love" and had opinions on what it meant to them and wanted to hear it, Maki would be way way more self-conscious about whether what she was feeling was actually 'love' and if she could actually feel that the way people expect and so on. But with Intensity she can just be like, "well I feel this really strong feeling of affection and appreciation and desire to be with him forever and I want to express it and that seems like a pretty good situation in which to use the word 'love,' so I'm going to use it, and if he doesn't like it he can suck it up." ROMANCE.
However, things remained tense between them after her live - even having talked through things and worked them out she felt like there was lingering distrust and misunderstanding, which is obviously why she was determined to find a way to prove herself to him. Their argument over King brought that to a head, especially when he talked about how she was still doing the same things she did before - deciding she knows best, trying to force him to confront his feelings - when from her perspective the event in question was her very deliberately trying to do things differently. And even though she feels like she more or less got that across and ended the conversation without him still believing she just wasn't even trying, she still felt like they didn't actually resolve the core issue. Which is, in her opinion, that Intensity wants her to both be able to ignore what he says and do what he actually wants when he says things he doesn't mean, and not ignore what he says when he doesn't want her to, and apparently actually talking about things to clarify is also off the table, so doing both of those things consistently would require her being a mind reader. Which she feels is a pretty unreasonable expectation, but after expressing that to Intensity (more or less), she actually landed on "I'm usually pretty good at guessing, though, I've just made a few really bad calls lately, and I'm not in a position to demand Intensity be reasonable about this at the moment, so I'll just keep trying harder and maybe eventually he'll realize the fundamental difficulty with his expectations."
And she thinks he did realize it a bit in their conversation about her coming to FiN! Possibly since in that scenario the expectation was the other way - her not doing something he wanted vs. doing something he didn't want. He felt it should be obvious she could come to FiN whenever, but she was like, okay but you've said all of these things that were pretty discouraging so I decided to respect your opinions and only come when I was actually invited? And the fact that they landed on "it's fine, now I know" made her feel like he at least saw that part of the difficulty here was misunderstanding extremely ambiguous communication and not just her deciding she didn't care what he thought about things. So that was a big step. (Also now that she's been given explicit permission she is definitely going to take advantage of it to come to FiN a lot more often.)
It was Tanabata where Maki felt like things were really back to being good between them. Thinking about how far they'd come since the first time they'd met and all the good things that came out of their relationship already made her feel happy about things, and then deciding to get Intensity a present felt like the right thing to do (especially as she's been wanting to do things for him!) And then the fact that he immediately identified it as an anniversary present meant that he also was thinking about it like that, and she was basically ecstatic. It was a huge relief to be comfortable in their relationship again and finally lose that tension she'd felt since her live.
And then their plot conversation was also really great for finally drawing out some long-standing issues. Basically, a lot of Maki feeling useless had been Intensity telling her she was useless - since that was what he was saying, from her perspective, when he told her she couldn't help him or that she had to prove herself first. But in addition to not being the sort of person who can't go on, Maki is also not the sort of person who has such low self-esteem she feels useless in general, and when it comes to plot she's actually pretty confident that she's been doing everything she can in the face of obstacles like physically missing out by pure chance, not being included by choice, or just entirely not having any idea what's going on. The only exception is, of course, that she acknowledges it was probably a bad choice to not say anything she was planning aloud - she still thinks it was a sound choice in general, but she also understands it probably isn't a feasible way to go forward when so much of what they can do involves information sharing. So when Intensity straight-up just said she didn't care or wasn't doing anything, she crossed a line where it no longer felt like "I'm useless and can't do anything for Intensity" and more like "Intensity is being an asshole and acting I haven't been doing anything." So she blew up! And she finally shared what she was thinking and they sorted things out a bit. (Side note: It wasn't like Maki was intending to keep things like plans to kill Asmodeus secret at this point, it just... didn't come up. If Intensity or anyone had asked what she was doing, or if it had come up in conversation, she would have mentioned it, but people just... don't really talk to her about plot.)
Anyway! Maki still wants to do something to prove herself to Intensity, but now it's more a matter of wanting to do things for him in general, and less a feeling of... Intensity thinks I never consider his feelings and am incompetent and untrustworthy to work with. He has (kind of) acknowledged she in fact considers his feelings overly much sometimes, and has declared his trust for her judgment both verbally and by his actions (letting her decide what to do in hell jail). So they're in a much better place now, and she hopes they can continue forward that way. Don't die in liar Hell, Intensity.
REVERSE
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He'll never admit to love or most of his feelings. But if anything were to happen to Maki - getting transferred, turned into a Damned, etc. - you can bet that Intensity would be coming for her even if it took his entire lifetime. Maki is just part of his life - end fact. And he'd succeed, too! Because he's a stupid overconfident person like that. And that's what Maki likes about him anyway, so...
So yes, the problem is not caring. It is definitely about trusting Maki. The first seed of doubt was actually planted a while back as they were discussing the rift to Heaven. He was adamant on finding a way to rid people of the corruption regardless of how ludicrous the ideas were (and they were all very ludicrous). And though he might say it's for the benefit of others - the truth of the matter is, he just wants his name back. He knows what the word is! Keeps it in his phone! But because of the results of the trial, it is just a word - something that no longer has any meaning to him. And he feels trapped by the fact that if doesn't regain it - that'll be a huge gap in the connection to his company and his brother. Which he can't really say out loud because of how he tells everyone else their past is stupid. (PLAYED YOURSELF THERE, INTENSITY.) And he was going to share that with Maki, but she was too caught up in the ridiculousness of the methods and how she didn't want to be separated from him for 40 days that he never got to say it. And in the end, didn't want to say it. Seems like something else she would have nitpicked him for. And he didn't want to have (and potentially lose) an argument with Maki about why his real name was important. Sounds like a bad time.
Which then leads to the Balloon game and his breakdown and Maki's Live and then--- the belief that feelings are bad. Relationships are bad. Being vulnerable is bad. And maybe he should just keep to himself and just be a standoff-ish asshole when it came to feelings and push everyone away. Something that is very easy for him to do. It's very comfortable! Many people talked him down from falling too far down that cliff, but still - he was keeping a lot of negativity pent up inside because he didn't know how to fix his hurt.
And then the Castle game happened and their huge blow-out fight afterwards, which was really just Intensity finally letting out how betrayed he felt on multiple levels over multiple things in the worst possible way. He felt betrayed by the Live because he specifically asked her not to do it. And he felt betrayed by her getting close to King because it felt like as soon as he wasn't there, as soon as he needed space, she immediately had to find someone else to replace him. And with his rival, no less! Someone similar enough to him that she picked him in the wedding game based on 4 stupid adjectives. So he has a hard time believing phrases like "I don't know what I'd do without you" after PPP when she so casually says the exact same phrase about King a few days later. It felt like they were interchangeable. And he won't stand for that! But actually - the most hurtful part of all that was - King made a poor choice and got killed. And Maki didn't berate him for his choices like she did to Intensity after the Hunger games, didn't hold a Live threatening all of Imeeji like after the Balloon game. She just took him somewhere and was there for him - which was all that Intensity wanted from Maki in the first place. And to see King get that so effortlessly was just frustrating beyond belief. It seems like in Maki's struggles to become a person, Intensity always gets caught in the cross-fire and then all her future relationships get to enjoy the benefits of lessons learned after screwing up with Intensity.
And he's just tired and frustrated about it. Too tired to even fight back. And let's face it, too emotionally incompetent to still even realize what the root cause of the problem and his anger is.
But since then, things have been slowly mending themselves. Because he sees Maki trying - with information gathering and keeping him up to date. With the anniversary gift. By just seeking out his company. He can definitely see that she is trying to make things work.
So, for the moment, Intensity is trying to just dial things back to the way things were before when the relationship had a lot less expectations. Not the feelings so much, just the expectations. Because that seems to be the problem with relationships - is that people expect a certain level of treatment. And he also fell into that trap in regards to Maki. He just had certain unrealistic expectations about things. Maybe he should fuss more over being called a boyfriend again! Who knows! Either way, it seems to have de-stressed the both of them so they seem to be in a better spot.
Their repairing alignment and trust was also shown by Hell adventures where they ended up doing their own thing, except when they needed advice (on who to call) or back-up (what to do when your arm gets skewered) from each other. Even splitting up at the end is a move in a good direction for them because what they really need to work on is trust. Not feelings - they already have too many feelings. Please spare Intensity more feelings. He'll die.
Tell me a cute date idea that Maki and Intensity should go on when things are not exploding. Perhaps framed in a way where Intensity can trick himself into thinking it's not a date.
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"If you were underwater for 40 days I'd miss you" was also less a real complaint and more an attempt to show him exactly how ridiculous that plan was with a ridiculous complaint about it. The fact that he took it as a genuine statement of what she thought was most important ties into something else she sort of felt in the most recent argument, which is that Intensity thinks she's a lot more focused on strictly emotional things than she actually is. E.g. when she says "I want someone I can work with," she is not (just) being sentimental about wanting a personal connection and feeling like her current ones don't fit the bill, it is a literal, practical statement that she has been attempting to do a lot of things both plot and personal all on her own that it would be really helpful to have someone on her side for, and she has in fact asked people for help explicitly and not gotten it pretty frequently. (As well as obviously offering to team up and having people decline or just go off on their own.) So Intensity talking about how she hadn't ever cared about keeping in the loop on information and cared more about "having a partner" than actually accomplishing things really did sting a lot, and she does have some lingering doubts about if that's how he's been thinking about her the whole time. Does he really think she's that incompetent!! So probably that will come up again at some point.
DATES THOUGH.
Ari was saying that B can loop Maki into his planned fashion show and she can talk Intensity into doing a couple's look with her, and I think that would be super cute. But that's not quite a date. (Though Maki would be into doing further dressup with just the two of them if she could convince Intensity that's not stupid.)
For a Classic Date the first thing that comes to mind is that they should go to the amusement park... she went there with Yugi and rode a couple rides once when she was sad but otherwise amusement parks are completely foreign to her experience. Probably that could come up in a way where he feels the need to prove something to her?
How is Intensity doing at juggling his three big relationships and how does he feel about that?
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The easiest way to summarize Maki's feelings towards Man Eater is to talk about a thing she said to Intensity recently. She was complaining (again) about how much she wants someone she can work together with, who she can support and count on to support her in return, and one of the things Intensity commented on was "when did you decide that Man Eater didn't met your bar?" And Maki's response was that she didn't decide that Man Eater didn't meet her bar, Man Eater decided that Man Eater didn't meet her bar.
Maki has always felt like Man Eater was comfortable to interact with, and easy for her to relate to, especially since some of their first conversations were about him having some of the exact problems that she'd had, with being defined as an efficient assassin vs. having feelings for people, that most people didn't understand very well. Obviously he had a different perspective on it than her and they had some arguments about it, but she didn't feel any particular conflict over it because a) she had the same perspective as him at one point, and b) she reads him a bit like Intensity in that he says he's a murderer and doesn't care about people and will give them up at a drop of a hat but by all available evidence he appears to be just as close to people as she is, so she doesn't especially believe that his words reflect reality. So even when they weren't particularly close, Man Eater has always felt like a bit of a kindred spirit, and he has always been the person on ZRAEL she feels closest to and most similar to.
That said, she never really expected to be able to rely on him for emotional support. (To be fair, Maki wouldn't expect anyone to rely on her for emotional support, due to being bad at emotions, so she just puts Man Eater in the same bucket.) However! After her live where she fought with Intensity, and after she came back to ZRAEL fought with Ashley and Doodle and Req and was sad and drained and unhappy and the rest of the unit all went off to various places with each other, it was Man Eater who actually focused on her and invited her to his room and hugged her an told her Intensity wasn't going to be mad forever. This was both completely unexpected from him and a huge relief when so many of the other people she would have expected to rely on to support wouldn't/didn't support her. And so it was really important to her!
And that was a lot of why she went to talk to him again after she talked to Intensity. And why she expressed her concerns that Intensity was going to do something stupid while he was mad at her. (She did also have the same conversation with King, but King was basically just like "eh you can't really stop Intensity when he's going to do something stupid," so she hoped she'd have better luck with Man Eater.)
Obviously that didn't... go as well. It had genuinely not even occurred to Maki that Man Eater might be jealous of her relationship with Intensity (I think she suspected he might be jealous of the wedding stuff specifically, which is how she learned he was even involved with Intensity, but there's a big gap between "I wish he'd romantically swept me off onto a dragon," which is something Maki would definitely have felt in his position, and "You're the one he cares about I'm just a fun fling," which Maki cannot imagine is true.)
She... knows he's jealous after that conversation, but obviously she figured it out a bit late. Add that to Man Eater basically telling her he was not good enough at feelings to help her with what she was asking, and that's two big obstacles to feeling like she can genuinely get close with and rely on him. She doesn't actually think Man Eater's relationship with Intensity is less important than hers (or vice versa), and she doesn't actually think Man Eater is incompetent at feelings (he's been able to support her and clearly others), but it doesn't matter what she says or thinks if Man Eater thinks those things.
So...! Maki relates very deeply with Man Eater, appreciates him being there for her, and would like to be closer with him, but she feels like she can't, as things currently stand. Which leads to things like telling Intensity to just go with Man Eater after the space game and then sulking about it. From Maki's perspective she would have liked to be with either or both of them!! But clearly Man Eater would not appreciate having her around. So. She is dissatisfied with the situation but doesn't know how to change it.
Tell me about Man Eater's current ZRAEL feelings!!
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There are still some relationships in a bad state (Silk for sure, and she still hasn't really talked to Prim), but also some of her more tumultuous relationships have ceased being problems that can be addressed due to the people involved being transferred (X and Ashley). SHE FEELS A BIT WEIRD ABOUT THAT AND SHE'S NOT LIKE, HAPPY. But it's definitely a weight off her mind to not feel like another shoe is going to drop there at any moment and/or she should be trying to address it somehow. And she is... actually still trying to address some of it anyway, now that there's less pressure. She had unit-feelings conversations with Man Eater, Req and Doodle, is talking to C about X, and talked to Intensity about all of the above. She does feel a lot better about her position on ZRAEL now.
And on the positive side, things are greatly improved with Intensity (see above)! She's even been doing... bbbbetter with Joker. They kissed in the kissing game and it was okay, and while she still doesn't feel any strong desire to resume that relationship as a Relationship, trying to be friends, so it's in a better state than many other things. Mars is gone which she is upset about, but that's also one more "it's complicated" relationship that can't be complicated further when he's not here. And due to not really having anyone she cared about transferred permanently she kind of expects he'll be back at some point. (Ditto X and Ashley)
And obviously she is getting closer with King and Yugi, which she appreciates a lot! She is also developing a tiny crush on Griffin, but she doesn't have any intention of doing anything about it and is pretty sure he's the type who's too oblivious to ever notice, so that's fine. And there are several other people she didn't know / wasn't close with before her live who she is getting to be friends with, so she no longer feels like maybe she ruined things forever.
Tell me about King's sadomasochism feelings