End-of-year question meme

[rollplayinghouse]

You know the drill! Ask a question, and I will answer it and ask one back! CR, meta questions, etc., all are good!

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[rollplayinghouse]

MAN EATERRRR

Maki is 110% prepared for Man Eater to be a super important person for her. She would talk to him about everything, have him be emotional support for her, support him in whatever he needs, count on him for anything, etc. HE MAKES THE TOP OF HER "FAMILY(?)" LIST.

However, I say 'prepared' because she is extremely hesitant to actually request/demand/expect any of that from him, because she is not sure he is interested in providing it. Him shutting down when she tried to talk to him about Intensity after her live has stuck with her, as well as the other times he's talked about not being good at or interested in feelings stuff. Intensity called her out one time on not counting Man Eater as someone who could be a companion/partner for her when she was talking about feeling like she didn't have anything like that, and her response was that she'd be happy to have that kind of relationship with Man Eater but she wasn't sure he wanted that.

This came out most recently when they were talking about Intensity/Mokuba and Maki mentioned being glad Intensity explicitly requested Man Eater protect him, and expressed some of her own insecurities about Intensity not trusting her enough to ask her for anything. SHE WOULD ACTUALLY REALLY LOVE TO TALK ABOUT THAT WITH MAN EATER, but that's basically the exact conversation that didn't go well after her live. And like she mentioned, she has been struggling with similar issues for a long time without finding a solution, so she wouldn't expect Man Eater to be able to offer any actual solutions. And while she would still probably find it emotionally helpful to talk through with him, she doesn't want to make Man Eater feel incompetent/inadequate the way that he did the other time. Which is why she didn't talk about it.

On the positive side, Man Eater teasing her about her live being a pure love monologue, kissing her cheek, and teasing her about getting flustered was actually... super important, a lot more than was probably obvious, for a few reasons:

A) Maki very, very rarely uses the word love, and in fact has explicitly avoided using it for the unit even when affirmatively responding to someone else using it. "The unit all loves each other," "Yeah they're very important to me." That kind of thing. And a lot of that is that Maki doesn't feel... validated in her unit feelings? She has strong feelings for ZRAEL, but she is absolutely not confident enough that they match up to what everyone else on the unit feels/considers "love" to use the word in that context. So Man Eater just casually calling it that meant a lot to her.

B) She got flustered by the cheek kiss because she really doesn't get a lot of physical affection like that. DEFINITELY HASN'T GOTTEN IT FROM MAN EATER BEFORE. She was already super touched when Man Eater hugs her. So she was extra touched.

C) He implied that the only reason he hadn't done stuff like that before was because he didn't know what her reaction would be. SPECIFICALLY HE WAS SAYING HE DIDN'T KNOW HE COULD TEASE HER but Maki also reads that as... he wasn't avoiding doing it for any of his own reasons, but just because Maki comes off really stoic/standoffish about that kind of thing. Which is a problem she knows she has and can theoretically solve and doesn't mean Man Eater doesn't want to be there for her.

FOR SIMILAR REASONS she was pretty happy about their mistletoe kiss. Man Eater is the only person Maki had an extended kiss with who she is not in an explicitly acknowledged Kissing Relationship with. And that was comfortable and fun and fine! So she actually feels a lot better about their relationship over the past IC week or so.


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