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~*~*~*~QUESTION MEME, BUT WITH A TWIST~*~*~*~
For Yasuragi-no-Mikoto/Ardashir and Solomon! You can ask about Mukuro too if you want although I reserve the right to not answer shit, obviously
Ask me a question, OR! Link me a thread and I will break down in detail for you what the fuck kind of mental gymnastics were even happening there on my end! (Except for Mukuro but you know.) Lmk if you are also open to a thread breakdown request in return or otherwise I will just default to firing back with normal questions.
For Yasuragi-no-Mikoto/Ardashir and Solomon! You can ask about Mukuro too if you want although I reserve the right to not answer shit, obviously
Ask me a question, OR! Link me a thread and I will break down in detail for you what the fuck kind of mental gymnastics were even happening there on my end! (Except for Mukuro but you know.) Lmk if you are also open to a thread breakdown request in return or otherwise I will just default to firing back with normal questions.
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this was his newfound complex about other people being mirrored around him showing. which does mean he was thinking about Shuten at the time, especially, like... because he didn't know Phoenix well before? so with Shuten Yasuragi has a lot of anxiety where he's not sure whether a comfortable pattern they built up before is in danger of falling apart now or not - he really doesn't like unpredictability - but on the flip side, with Phoenix there's almost more predictability in knowing he was mirrored than before that happened, because now he can kind of compare to Shuten (and Hiryuu) in his head and sort of understand some of Phoenix's impulses based on that. so him pursuing this topic is sort of a combination of like, poking at his own bruise re: Shuten but also uh. AS TREE SAID, HE LIKES NEEDY. and he likes... traumatized people... so it's also just, an interest.
intermission: Ardashir loves his wife.
the delay here was basically to process what Phoenix just said because he just... is bad at people with poor self-esteem. Ardashir/Yasuragi assumes people will hate him and has a lot of self-doubts and anxieties, but he also ultimately has a pretty strong degree of confidence and ego at the end of the day. He is aware of his own flaws but is just sort of matter-of-fact about them and really doesn't verge much into self-loathing even when he does feel guilty about something. This comes up as a problem with Hiryuu a lot because he ultimately just can't really understand the "I'M THE WORST AND I HATE MYSELF" frame of mind, especially from people who are like, really fucking good people? He doesn't get it. What is wrong with you guys. Why am I fine in your books but you're not when you're like 500x more exceptionally decent of a person than I am. He doesn't really have a bad opinion of it and he does, like, obviously understand that it's there. But he struggles to wrap his head around it.
"Etiquette" is an issue of mostly his second memory (although it's in his first a little too) wherein he did find out that after his family was murdered, he became king, and everyone who hated him still continued to hate him but also played carefully within the rules when it came to like, you know, respecting the king, and also expected him to basically do the same in return. As much as Yasuragi is a really heavily presentation-oriented person to begin with, the context made it pretty stifling and he ultimately felt a lot better airing out grievances on both ends.
This was already sort of a thing in this thread and also frankly in their betrayal encounter, but bouncing off the last point this was definitely a strong moment of feeling like, I can just be my honest scumbag self with this person and he gets it and enjoys me that way. That's REALLY IMPORTANT TO HIM for some reasons that are probably apparent from above (wanting to be genuine rather than caking everything over with what is socially acceptable) but also because he... has... communication problems... and is honestly aware of it. What he valued so much with Samira and what he really craves more than anything in imeeji is mutual trust and understanding. He kind of compulsively covers up his thoughts and feelings and deficiencies and opinions and wants and strengths and weaknesses etc. etc. etc. because he doesn't like people having leverage over him, but at the same time he's pretty self-conscious about the constant possibility that people who like him like a made-up version of him where they filled in the gaps with something a lot more palatable than what they'd actually find there. When he can be a dick and people don't go "wait what the fuck did you just say" but instead are like "oh you" it makes him feel a lot more at ease with them WHICH LEADS INTO ALL THE PROBLEMS THAT THEN ENSUED IN THE REST OF THIS FUCKING THREAD
so then he went back to the mirror shit in his head and the comparisons to Shuten and the bruise poking, which again is also to some degree just within his interest - so he wanted to basically explore how fucked up and needy Phoenix is now, but the fact that he actually voiced it out loud and pursued it is because the exchange just before put him in the space to feel like he really could trust and like and be intimate with this person.
SO NOW WE'RE HERE!! AT THIS TRAINWRECK!!!!!!
so like, ok, here is the thing. here is ultimately the problem with what went down here.
it was moving too fast for him.
HE CAN FUCK ON A THIRD CONVERSATION BUT IF YOU WANT HIM TO ADMIT TO BEING SERIOUS Y'ALL NEED TO GIVE HIM MORE TIME THAN THAT. one of the stupidest parts of this is that Ardashir/Yasuragi is consistently more serious about relationships than he lets on (which was real disappointing for Blank, let me tell you), but it ties back to the "not wanting other people to have leverage over him" thing again - if he starts off on "yes, I'm committed to this relationship and I want to be with you," then that puts himself on the chopping block and serves as a background for everything he says or does for that person from then on. If he fucks up or prioritizes something else or even just finds out he doesn't like something about the other person or the way they treat him, then any of that devalues the commitment he already gave.
The way he's used to approaching relationships is kind of the opposite - no one makes any promises and then you see how much they're willing to do for you even if they're not obligated to do it. Things like sex or the obedience contract with Loki are just (in one case fairly extreme) examples of what he considers the getting-to-know-you phase. You test the waters by throwing each other into that kind of shit with you and then in the end if you work well together then you're basically already in a committed relationship and would do almost anything for each other even without saying anything. He was married to his wife for like 7 years before he told her he loved her! Which is also him being bad at communication, but it was ultimately fine because they both knew anyway? So like, as things stand now, he knows he likes Phoenix, but he doesn't know Phoenix very well and trust is a completely different matter.
He also really doesn't like the idea of one of his relationships being subject to approval by a tangential party tbh, especially when he doesn't know H well at all. H didn't even make a bad first impression or anything but this has probably by proxy soured chances of Yasuragi being inclined to make friends with him (not because he thinks it makes H a bad person, just because it makes him uncomfortable to think about).
the thing he didn't say here was a crack about prostitution, which is why he held his tongue bc that probably would have given off an implication he really wasn't going for
draining his glass was actually kind of meant as a passive aggressive petty revenge in a way. LIKE TO BACKTRACK BECAUSE I FORGOT TO COVER THIS ANYWAY the reason he didn't just turn Phoenix down the moment the conditions came out (because he ABSOLUTELY almost did and felt he should have) was... because... Phoenix just said he really likes him and is interested in him... which was kind of annoying because if he had just said he was taken or feigned disinterest then it would have been WAY easier to actually cut his losses and be like all right, let's just be friends. But knowing that Phoenix IS interested and the possibility IS there and the obstacle is really just on Yasuragi's end makes it way harder for him to be decent about it. In the first place his attraction to people spikes way up if they show interest in him of any kind so if Phoenix actually was disinterested then Yasuragi would also basically be disinterested and it would actually be really easy for him to just go back to talking to him without any real constant undercurrent of wanting to ravage him or anything.
HE WANTS PEOPLE TO LIKE HIM... especially in the way Phoenix does where it doesn't feel caught up in really wrong expectations, as said earlier. So it's very very hard for him to let go of that. So he drained his glass because (even though the real answer would actually have been "I don't know because I'm a paranoid dipshit and haven't jumped you through 17 flaming hoops yet") it does imply that the answer was "yes, I want a serious relationship, but I also refuse to say that to you and am rejecting you anyway." Because that more or less felt to him like a less wordy emotional equivalent to "I like you a lot and you make my heart race so here's a bunch of high demands you have to meet immediately if you want to date," along with the fact that he didn't like that Phoenix phrased it as a question to force his hand and deliberately wanted to flatten that. (the latter also being the reason he then also says he expects to drink more. he's going to start drinking at almost every question now if he can go get another drink)
THAT KINDA COVERED... BOTH THE THREAD AND GENERAL CR... TURNS OUT THIS THREAD HAD THEIR ENTIRE RELATIONSHIP IN IT
REVERSE,
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For a while though he kept holding back on questions because he was still being gentle? Just not as gentle as he would have been with someone he was entirely avoiding questions with.
Like he really wanted to ask about this but asking if it's okay to ask instead was his approach. And since Yasuragi didn't want to talk he was fine with leaving it alone.
Yasuragi's question was hard for him to parse because he knows he's crazy and needy and he's changed a lot but it's hard to compare like, what he was like when he had two weeks of existence and like two memories before the game to 300 years isolation and trauma and doing murder aftermath. But he has changed, a lot and yet not, like he said. He's way needier and way more insecure and way more prone to wanting attention and validation of any kind at all, he's got way less brain to mouth filter so he didn't really need a truth or drink effect to be pretty much 100% truthful in the first place.
However being really fucking truthful doesn't mean he wasn't also absolutely ready to offer shitty answers which he did here because he pretty much understood Yasuragi wanted some gossip on imeeji relationships but he is way better as using truth as a deflection than a lot of people probably notice. Mainly because he hasn't got that much reason to use it most of the time. He wasn't trying to be subtle with Yasuragi though he was deliberately being a bit of a little shit in a friendly way, and he loved the result because he got to learn about how much Yasuragi loves his wife.
Probably close to here he decided to stop being so respectful in his questions and match Yasuragi to be more prying, too. Not out of anger or resentment or even annoyance, just because it seemed like Yasuragi could take more teasing and more direct counter play and it wouldn't really ruin their relationship or any sense of trust if Phoenix was just as direct and prying. Mainly because Yasuragi doesn't seem open enough to trust him in the first place, and trust didn't seem to be a stake in the game after a bit of back and forth.
So despite talking about liking sex and validation and needing to make up lost time obviously Phoenix did not follow why Yasuragi would proposition him because Phoenix is fucking dumb about anyone having interest in him. When he said he hated himself it was 100% honest, he's just got no self-esteem but he's really chill about it, so usually people don't either notice or pry about it. So even when Yasuragi asked about that he was just like "eh" /shrug/ because he doesn't much believe on dwelling on it or angsting over why he's literally undeserving of ever being seen nicely. The flip side is that because people do see him nicely he... He doesn't really internalize those nice views on himself but they do become kind of a barrier of, well, "my friends love me and have expectations of me, so I can't just be sad and self-loathing or I'll let people down and make everyone sad and why would I do that". So being cared about highly negates his baseline of feeling undeserving, even if it doesn't actually erase it. But because it's just still always there it makes it so hard for him to notice attraction or interest in himself.
So actually being told he was being propositioned was like, a huge surprise but really nice? He said exactly what he thought about it.
Watching Yasuragi melt was also super endearing. Again, he's not a dumb person, he's actually pretty intelligent emotionally about a lot of things, but his own innocence and self-esteem color a lot of his perceptions, so usually he'd have dismissed things as Yasuragi moved on. But because Yasuragi melted and reacted just kind of, more than he's used to seeing, he was just way too captivated and also wasn't considering anything like "oh maybe I'm more trouble than he wants to deal with" and was instead thinking "wow he's really cute and I want him if he's into it."
Thus the whole thing.
Yasuragi draining his cup while never breaking eye contact was great because the competitive part of Phoenix was just like YEAH I WIN but you know not meanly just like, he's a bit competitive? And obviously drinking was an answer even without Yasuragi actually answering because he could have just said no if he honestly didn't want to try anything serious with Phoenix so it was kind a double way hindbrain "I got him to drink" and more conscious and definitely more important "he likes me enough to be interested." So he was just really delighted by the pettiness and escape attempt.
And he did almost actually let Yasuragi go because he's generally respectful and he'd still let Yasuragi go if Yasuragi was really upset, probably, but he has kind of a thing about being run away from, at this point. Between H and also the betrayal house and abandonment issues it's really hard for him not to corner people who are trying to leave a conversation with him. He's sane enough to catch and see the impulse for what it is, but it's hard for him not to act on it even a little. So while he'd normally allow Yasuragi to go regroup, probably, the way he is now he couldn't let him go without wanting to keep pushing. And layered on top of the crazy reasons, he just has the idea in his head that Yasuragi is complex and an asshole and thus probably responds a little better to harder pushes than he does to gentle coaxing. Both are things Phoenix can do and both are things he can do genuinely, and while he tends to default to gentle with most people, Yasuragi strikes him as just needing someone more hardheaded to respond to.
His intention in that statement was mainly thinking about just wanting to pry at Yasuragi and get him to open up kind of forcefully. Not without Yasuragi sort of consenting to the treatment obviously, thus the warning, but he's deeply curious now and he's pretty sure Yasuragi could handle both telling him to fuck off or just leaving if he needed to, or if he was being stubborn Phoenix is reasonably confident he could stop before Yasuragi spitefully either made himself too uncomfortable or got alcohol poisoning. Though actually letting Yasuragi get another drink is another debate he's having with himself because Phoenix isn't coercive or forceful in this way except, well, if you run from him but he's really sure you don't want to, actually, like he thinks Yasuragi is doing.
And he's still not the type to force Yasuragi to talk or not to get a drink but he's really tempted to be difficult and nosy.
But then Yasuragi derailed all those thoughts a bit because it was a nice mental image and he had to consider what he would do. But since I mentioned earlier so much of his worth is really just the worth others have in him it's actually pretty easy for him to have confidence in upholding a promise, even when he's aware it could be made really hard for him. Because he doesn't try to complicate things, if he ever did just get too wrapped up in Yasuragi without getting Yasuragi to agree to date him, he figures he'd talk to H about it.
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Bonus talk about his thread with H.
POST PRINCESS MAKER
the funny thing about him admitting to being worried about Samira and not feeling super great overall is that he like... kind of played it up to use as leverage, laughs. look, I talked about my problems, now you HAVE to talk about yours!! Though in a way not so much "leverage to force" as "leverage to give him and opening." It was however still genuinely a source of stress for him that left him feeling kind of hollow at the end so it's not like he was lying outright, but it also is stuff that with even just a little time apart from it he stopped being nearly so anxious and can now look back on the whole game pretty fondly. He just got real into the helicopter parent mindset. Burn the house down so he can spend time with his child,
God He Loves Touching. so Yasun is a very physical and casual touch person so a large part of him was just very comfortable handholding and walking in companionable silence. BUT THIS WAS ALSO PRETTY MUCH THE POINT IN THE THREAD WHERE IT BECAME... TOO COMFORTABLE. he really badly desperately for this whole thread just wanted to help Phoenix feel better but he is also Not A Great Emotional Labor Person and he also was just really into Phoenix personally so his first response for the solution to that kept being, you know, nice trauma wanna fuck
but that was not a valid answer at this time so that is why around this point in the thread he texted H because he was just like ok I cave I'll be serious if it means I can comfort him fully without this weird self-imposed barrier between us because I'm stupid. I GIVE IN FIRST, YOU WIN
anyway the cloth-wrapped object here is the gun Loki gave him. he wasn't really pushy about leaving quicker because of that though so much as "I want to talk and smoke but we can't really do that until we get to the park so let's go ok go go"
anyway just fucking kill him why don't you
Please Stop Hitting On Me I Am Trying So Hard To Be Good feat. caving and hitting on Phoenix after all out of spite and wanting to kiss. spite flirting.
Ah Yes The Hiryuu Problem. HE'S ACTUALLY A LOT MORE SOLID ON HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH HIRYUU NOW than he was at this point in time, but he was not particular solid in his feelings on it at the time because he did feel a lot like he was leading her on somehow and also was just full of anxiety about the whole thing in general. I think I said at the time that "I don't want to hear that from you" was a semi-flopped attempt to smack Phoenix away from the topic and not actually a sincere sentiment but it's worth repeating that it was in fact a totally untrue distraction tactic and not a sincere sentiment. monogamy isn't SUPER common where he's from but it is still actually the starting framework for family structures so everything does still culturally work around a basic husband-and-wife paired concept. so while Yasuragi did not ACTUALLY have the mindset of someone who like got jilted by the person they were actually in love with and settled for being stuck with his second choice forever, culturally speaking it's not like that's a totally foreign idea so he just pulled it out of his ass to be a dipshit. it is absolutely for the best that Phoenix did not remotely understand. but he didn't want to talk about "yeah I'm so happy with Hiryuu and we're so good for each other" because at the time that was not... true... and in particular he had in fact just made a lot of problems for her with Cardigangate, so like. pls. do not compliment him on this.
there are actually large swaths of this thread where he was being pretty much upfront so I have way less to say about them. unbelievable frankly. he DID try his very best to put this into real person words because it's very important to him,,,
[yasuragi voice] WELL, THE JIG IS UP, NO MORE NEED FOR PRETENSES THEn he did literally think this was Phoenix pointing out that that was what he had been doing this entire thread so he was just like well ok we're talking about it for real now then.
this was also something that he felt was really important for him to say and something he had been thinking for like... the whole thing. the whole endgame. IT WAS IMPORTANT FOR PHOENIX TO UNDERSTAND THAT ACTUALLY WHAT HE DID WAS COMPLETELY REASONABLE AND THERE WAS NO REASON TO THINK IT WOULD GO SO FUCKING HORRIBLY anyway then Phoenix veered off into compliments again which is like. it's funny bc Yasun comes off as deflecting them so much but he loves them. he LOVES PRAISE AND APPROVAL but he is so unused to it and doesn't know how to respond except to joke about it which never really sounds, you know, grateful. Phoenix did get to a point of doing it so much and often that it was like vaguely overwhelming like I can't joke ALL of these off but what else do I SAY look now he's accusing me of deflecting,
so in this conversation in his head he was just thinking about his father and sister's funeral procession through the city with everyone sobbing loudly over their deaths (mostly Ahmadi's but you know). that's just the norm for mourning where he's from, it's an expected part of the process, it's showing how important they were and how their loss will be felt, etc. it is not necessarily a healthier way of mourning than being quieter or more private and also Ardashir does not actually personally partake in it at all and people tend to consider him fairly heartless for it but he just cannot really. absolutely hates not looking like an unfeeling statue at all times. but Phoenix doesn't have his hangups and honestly he wouldn't expect anyone else to have them either, so it seemed like actually presenting that as he understands it, the crying as a way of honoring someone, seemed like it might actually help him. GOT IT IN ONE WITH "CRY BECAUSE IT SUCKS AND SHE DESERVES IT AND I'M UPSET," GOOD JOB PHOENIX
I SUCCESSFULLY MADE A GOOD THING HAPPEN, MY ENTIRE LIFE HAS MEANING
so he actually did bring Phoenix out here to tell him he slept out there sometimes in case he needed more "see I said things to you" leverage to get Phoenix to talk about his feelings. it turned out to be unnecessary but he did still kinda feel like he should mention it, but also since it was in fact unnecessary he could not quite, like, slide all the way into home base and actually verbalize like "I have nightmares and claustrophobia and hate waking up or trying to go to sleep with everything dark and quiet,"
but he made an attempt and it wasn't even to emotionally manipulate him that time so listen that counts for something. I THINK THE TALK ABOUT HIM BECOMING A HERMIT WHO DOESN'T RUN LIVES WAS ALSO PRETTY SELF-EXPLANATORY BUT LMK IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER CLARIFICATION ON ANYTHING I GUESS
I will get to the other threads also. soon. someday
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edit: also you can ask me for thread breakdowns no problem
edit2: i wanna thread with you do we wanna belatedly af truth or drink or just, like, idk. something else? also "too dead" is a valid response.
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can we date solomonedit: this is for CR stuff i just thought i'd be cute
i haven't thought of any threads to ask about in particular yet just tell me feelings for now,