Morning☆Glory (Harukawa Maki) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rollplayinghouse) wrote2019-12-31 04:46 pm
rollplayinghouse) wrote2019-12-31 04:46 pm
End-of-year question meme
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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King has become very important to Maki, and between Betrayal, monster bingo, her sex dream, and associated fallout she feels like she has finally more or less communicated to King that this is the case. It only required being possessed by a crazy love ghost and murdering him, no-air-required underwater makeouts, and more or less explicitly saying "yes I want to have sex with you, let's have sex." Progress!!
Since then, all their recent interactions have made her happy. Him being cute about the fashion show fanmail made her happy. Being willing to stage a dramatic mistletoe kiss made her happy. Christmas presents made her very happy; Maki is very taken by receiving gifts in general and King... may actually be the first person who has gifted her handmade sweets? AND HE WORKED HARD TO LEARN. Even things like reflecting on their wedding makes her extra happy.
She is, in fact, happy enough that she's started to become worried about it, in a way that is coming out a bit in the current thread about C, among other insecurities. THERE ARE TWO MAJOR REASONS FOR WORRY:
1) Maki has not really had great luck with relationships in general. When has she ever had a good relationship with emotional support that made her happy and didn't descend into dysfunctionality and frustration (Joker/A) or that she didn't fuck up maybe-irreparably (she is still not sure she can ever properly make Intensity trust her again). Never. Never once has this happened. So she's a bit subconsciously waiting for the other shoe to drop.
2) Intensity. As she mentioned in their "so let's talk about that sex dream" thread, she doesn't think her having sex with King would change anything with Intensity, but mostly because she thinks Intensity already has pretty high-key resentment/jealousy over her and King, and that he either assumes they've been having sex the whole time or (closer to how Maki approaches things) that the physical act of sex is mostly irrelevant to his feelings about King and Maki being close. This is not a situation that Maki is happy with! And the closer Maki gets with King the more she doesn't like this situation. However Intensity has repeatedly refused to talk about King and/or dismissed attempts at reassurance or trying to figure out what she can do to make him feel better about it. So she doesn't know what to do about it. IN HER IDEAL WORLD they could all be a happy threesome, but that still seems so far off the table it's in another room entirely. But even happy threesome aside, she feels "just ignore it" is not a long-term solution to the tension here, and either they're going to have to come to some resolution or it's going to explode (MORE THAN IT DID ALREADY WITH BETRAYAL). And she also doesn't have a great track record ending up with the non-exploding option.
HOWEVER those are mostly subconscious worries since those are at this point theoretical concerns. When it comes to actual conscious actions, Maki is extremely comfortable with King and feels like their relationship is quite solid, now. Her "I rely on him more than he even notices" and "I'm way more into him than he's into me" insecurities have not been eliminated, but they have been substantially reduced. She's a lot more confident asking him for things and flirting and not feeling like she's going to overstep her bounds at any point.
NEW COMMENT FOR SABRE PENDING
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Maki likes Sabre! And she finds her very easy to deal with. Her feelings are very transparent and understandable to Maki, even if she's trying (not well) to hide them. Maki can explains things in her practical way and Sabre gets it even if she thinks it's dumb. And her... language of affection? appears to be very compatible with Maki's, in that she doesn't appear to want a lot of overt explicit expressions of affection that are hard for Maki, and is satisfied with things like... food, and quiet companionship/understanding. So overall, Maki is comfortable around her and pretty confident that she can support her.
On the flip side though, Sabre is definitely still in "unit baby who I must support" category. Maki wouldn't expect Sabre to understand Maki's feelings, or to like... be someone she can rely on. Maki has some lingering Betrayal feelings herself, because she... also felt very alone in the house, and a bit abandoned. Some of Maki's speech about how you can't just expect the unit to magically work for you was in fact because she feels like Sabre's demands are one-sided in a way that pings on Maki's previous ZRAEL frustrations, where she felt like she was expected to be there to support and accommodate everyone but she couldn't expect any support or accommodation herself.
The unit baby feelings has also cut back some of the other Thing, which is that it's kind of awkward that Maki started liking and wanting to get to know Kohime right before Sabre showed up. They feel like very different people to Maki now so there's less of an awkward feeling about it. But still some.
REVERSE FOR BOTH.
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Yugi occupies a fairly unique position for Maki where she is both completely confident he is a genuinely good person who tries to avoid hurting people, and yet doesn't think he's naive or a hypocrite. Him being clearly nervy but still friendly after she slit his throat in PPP was the big turning point there. Often when "good" people are nice to Maki she feels like it's because they have convinced themselves that she's not actually bad/wouldn't actually kill someone in cold blood/etc, and she just... doesn't want to engage with people on that premise. But Yugi clearly knew what she could do!
At that point she was still mostly engaging with him in relation to King, because that was easier for her, but as they spent more time doing things for King or just doing things, she got a lot more comfortable with him. And as she got more comfortable with him, they got beyond small talk to things that she could actually relate with him on more. Liar Hell was also a big turning point; modelling together was definitely a bonding experience, and she really appreciated the extent to which Yugi was keeping in touch with her and inviting her to plans, as much as he could. She's had such bad experiences with that it was kind of a first! So by that point she trusted and appreciated him a lot and was pretty solidly relating to him on his own terms.
Lingerie modeling and talking about lingerie modeling for King also started the shift into thinking about Yugi and sex in the same space. Like she's mentioned, she deeply appreciates being on the same page with Yugi about things there (the... horny and not particularly jealous page) - she can allude to something and Yugi can pick it up, vs any of her more oblivious friends/boyfriends who can make her feel self-conscious about wanting sex too much. This is why, when C put Yugi on a list of potential one night stands for her, she had to think about it for a minute - Yugi is not her type to be immediately attracted to, but she felt like they were probably interested in some of the same things, and more importantly felt like they could be comfortable with and trusting of each other enough to experiment without it being (too) awkward or weird even if it didn't go well. And then obviously she had her sex dream and it did go well. That particular scenario might have gone less well in real life - Maki being on the receiving end of bondage is touchy, and the fact that it was a dream was soothing her anxiety a lot. But Yugi being capable of being confident/toppy was definitely something she was super into, and overall the level of... desire? Shameless "I want to do this thing because I think it's super hot" tone. Is something she deeply appreciates. (She appreciates this with Intensity also.) And that's something he did when they decided to mess with some bondage in real life too.
So she's into it now. She half-proposed to King that they should have a threesome the other day but is pretty sure she'd have better luck approaching that from Yugi's side. Look. It's fine.
REVERSE!
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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.
REVERSE
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Their mistletoe kiss obviously exacerbated that a bit. But specifically it exacerbated it in the way that most of the time when she thinks about liking Griffin she's thinking about him being cute and fun and how easily he understands and supports her! And not about how much she wants to kiss him. But after cheek kisses she was definitely thinking about how much she wanted to kiss him. (A lot. She wanted to kiss him a lot.)
HOWEVER, as alluded to in that thread, she's also pretty determined for it not to matter how much she wants to kiss him, because after Betrayal kiss she is decisively not going to push for anything from him no matter what. She is now a person with full agency and emotional control, she can stand there and want to kiss him a lot and still not kiss him and instead make casual conversation. Watch her.
Ideally perhaps she would back off on her feelings and not think about kissing him at all, but Maki has always been of the opinion that you can control your actions but controlling your emotions is way harder, and in fact she has not made any headway on having less of a crush on him.
To be fair, even before Betrayal she was in a similar situation where she didn't plan on her crush going anywhere, and that didn't really lessen it. Back then she wasn't planning to ever tell him her feelings because he was clearly a romantic who was still figuring out what he even wanted and she wasn't going to invite him into her romantic disaster web. NOW HE'S KINDA IN HER ROMANTIC DISASTER WEB ANYWAY due to King/D.Va so that reason is... less relevant. Which she is occasionally faintly sad/jealous about. Only very faintly though, because most of her feelings on him being with other people are happiness he's found something that makes him happy and relief she didn't ruin relationships for him forever with her murderkiss.
But yes, overall Maki still likes him a whole lot. He is exactly her type of dumb showoff boy, with added bonus of same hat backstory, with added bonus of having similar romance/family perspectives. Add in the parts where he often he very quickly understands what she's getting at even when it's something she's had a lot of trouble explaining to people, and where he makes insecurities she's had for a long time seem really simple and easy to address, and she's just... she's hopeless. There's no escape.
REVERSE!!
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Which doesn't surprise her. Basically all of her best friends involve them both liking the same guy, both in canon and in Imeeji. Shuichi -> Kaito. A -> Joker. Man Eater and King -> Intensity. Yugi -> King. A COMMON ROMANTIC INTEREST IS A REALLY SOLID COMMON INTEREST TO BUILD A FRIENDSHIP ON, OKAY. Especially when you don't have a lot of hobbies.
There's a range of attitudes in there from "quietly jealous and resentful" to "we have an understanding," though, and Maki is very glad Shrike appears to be on the latter side. She felt a bit weird initially that their literal first conversation went from "hi there I murdered your boyfriend and also have a huge crush on him" to Shrike giving her advice on family/unit dynamics, but Shrike seemed fine with it, and Maki appreciated the conversation with someone who appears to be in a similar position as her, so she was immediately very comfortable with her. Shrike inviting her to spend time at avante was also really meaningful to her and she's very happy/appreciative of it.
She's also not particularly surprised that they appear to have a lot in common, even if Shrike is from a pretty different background overall, because Maki has a lot in common with Griffin and clearly Shrike and Griffin clicked well too! But that's always nice, because Maki doesn't have a lot of people who she feels on the same page with on murder/emotions stuff.
Overall, she's eager to spend more time with Shrike and get to know her better. And she's also happy to give romantic advice where she can, because she can tell Shrike and Griffin are still pretty hesitant/figuring stuff out and she wants them both to be happy and avoid a lot of the pitfalls Maki fell into in her first relationships.
REVERSE!
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Like Griffin, Shrike has a lot of family baggage—her family was present but bad, and now that she has a sense of family with avante, she has a bit of an impulse to pass it on to people who seem like they need it. And, ahaha, Shrike is always so relieved in a weird sort of way when someone else has weird murder & emotions feelings, since otherwise she just sits there hating herself, but she has trouble hating other people, so it weirdly helps her bootstrap into better self-esteem.
I'm looking forward to them hanging out more, and god, please Maki give Shrike love advice, she's all right at the basics but she has such a confidence problem and also a lot of hastily papered-over emotional problems,