hey guys. tumblr user thawthebeez back at it again with yet another haikyuu essay B) the topic of today is one that i see NOBODY talking about which is crazy because this motif is (in my opinion) one of the main foundations of the kagehina community.
now may someone please explain to me why the HELL nobody ever talks about how whenever Tobio expresses an insecurity of ANY KIND, Hinata is ALWAYS the first one to swoop in and tell him not to worry about it?
yes, we've all established that Hinata Shouyou is the #1 Kageyama Tobio understander. we get that. BUT THIS IS ONE OF THE MAIN DISPLAYS OF THAT AND I'VE SEEN LITERALLY NOBODY SPEAK OF IT EVER.
i'm pretty sure there's an instance of it in season 2 (either that or my brain just made it up) when Tobio is a little worried about his and Hinata's quick attack not really working out but Hinata tells him "nah you'll figure it out eventually" or something along those lines. i'm not going to lose my shit over it because i can't find it but if you know YOU KNOW.
a part that i COULD find from season 2, however, was this:
here we have Tobio explaining how talented of a setter Oikawa is- how he's so much better than him- and it's clear that this is something he's insecure about given his facial expression.
THEN we have Hinata's INSTANT response:
and it blows Tobio away because WHAT
because, to paraphrase a little, Tobio basically just said "yeah oikawa can make any spiker look good no matter what team he's on" to which Hinata replied "yeah but that team wouldn't be Karasuno" which is essentially "Karasuno is strong enough as it is" BUT- if ur crazy- " dw he wouldn't take your spot babe" (<- which probably isn't how it's meant to be interpreted because they just finished talking about The Team That's Stronger As Six thing so like... context clues. it's probably not the insane interpretation).
ANYWAYS boom there it is. Tobio expresses insecurity, Shouyou swoops in and goes "Ermmmm Actuallyyyyy🤓" WHICH IS SO FUCKING ENDEARING ON IT'S OWN BUT THE FACT THAT IT HAPPENS MORE THAN ONCE AND AT SUCH A CRITICAL POINT TOO
the critical point in question being:
(context: Tobio just came back from his training camp in Tokyo and is a little frustrated because he's gotten so used to playing with other prodigies like himself so to go back to talented-but-not-prodigious players is a bit of a switch for him. don't get him wrong tho he loves this team to DEATH it's just a little different that's all. hashtag number one Tobio apologist right here)
SO THERE'S THIS! and it goes without saying that Tobio is DEEPLY insecure about his late middle-school days and being referred to as a king. Tsukishima adds a little salt to the wound and while I didn't take a screenshot of it Tobio makes this look of absolute HORROR after he says what he says
(which, side note, shows a lot of a character development within Tobio. especially since I've been flipping between season 2 and 4 a lot looking for these clips. Tobio didn't even notice when he was acting kingly before but he realizes it INSTANTLY now which is so so so good for him yayyyy character development!)
this also leads fantastically into my next tangent which is
TOBIO FUCKING APOLOGIZES!
now, admittedly this isn't entirely related to my thesis but i absolutely ADORE talking about this scene and i genuinely think it is one of the most prevalent displays of character development within Tobio because i feel like he tends to get overshadowed by all the other characters (especially Hinata, which i'm not upset about in the slightest like it makes perfect sense and if Tobio got all the attention all the time the show would be soooo unbalanced)
but I feel like a lot of people skip over Tobio's overall development over the course of the show. I mean compare s1 Tobio to s4 Tobio THAT IS NOT SAME PERSON ANYMORE. he grows so much over such a short period of time (which is another essay I could write. something along the lines of "Explaining Why Tobio And Shouyou Need To Be On Separate Teams Actually Because Character Development Purposes" because the amount of people i've seen on tiktok complaining about kghn being on separate teams and how they should just be on the same team forever makes my blood boil violently) and it's so refreshing to see Tobio's growth especially as a big Tobio enjoyer.
ANYWAYS back to the main thesis.
So Hinata steps in IMMEDIATELY here. literally cuts Tobio's apology off because HE HAS NOTHING TO APOLOGIZE FOR. he was expressing his thoughts whatever that's fine he could have done it in a nicer way SURE but listen the guy still has a LOOOONNNGGGG way to go but still, nothing to apologize for. it's just growing pains, y'know?
now the quote "What's wrong with him being the King again?" appearing here isn't the first time we're seeing this. Hinata has ALWAYS been confused as to why calling Tobio a "King" is a bad thing. literally from day fucking one Hinata was like "nah dude I think that title is cool" WHICH, AGAIN, TOBIO BEING INSECURE ABOUT SOMETHING AND SHOUYOU REASSURING HIM THAT IT'S TOTALLY CHILL HELLO?????
LITERALLY FROM DAY ONE SHOUYOU HAS BEEN DOING THIS. THAT MAN MAY THINK TOBIO'S AN ASSHOLE SOMETIMES (and he kinda is) BUT NEVER WILL HINATA INHERENTLY HATE A PART OF HIM. and i don't think they realize it here nor do i think the realization comes soon after but at some point there will be the realization that they love each other. every single part. fucking Tobio probably realized it way back in junior high but that's a tangent for another time.
now this line.... this one right here...... oh my god i can be SO NORMAL ABOUT IT.
the main reason why Tobio had this look of HORROR on his face after he yelled at everyone was BECAUSE HE KNEW THE ENDING. he knew that yelling at them would have consequences (if it weren't for Hinata stepping in thank god). HE'S SEEN IT ALL BEFORE. in his final year of junior high he yelled at his teammates to run faster and jump higher and be better AND THEY LEFT HIM!!!
so Tobio yelling like this instantly makes him afraid that he's just ruined the entire balance of the team. he thinks he's going to be left behind again because he yelled and everyone is going to leave him BUT!!!!!
BUT SHOUYOU IMMEDIATELY JUMPS IN AND SAYS "idc what u say honestly if i don't like i'm just not gonna listen" OR, TO TRANSLATE "i'm not going anywhere regardless of what you say"
Tobio's biggest fear is losing this team. I literally do not need to explain why. that man would fucking DIE for this team (if you really need an explanation just to go the end of the Kamomedai match when Tobio admits that he's upset they lost because he wanted to play with that specific team more).
and for Hinata to essentially say "you could literally be as kingly as u want and i simply would not care, pal, i promise you i am NOT going ANYWHERE!!!" which has got to be SO FUCKING RELIEVING FOR TOBIO.
(also something something "nobody was there" / "i'm here" something something "doesn't matter what kind of toss goes up if you send it my way i'm hitting it" something something they're soulmates or whatever they are literally bound together by the universe they were destined to be together and it's a crime that universe kept them apart for so long and now that they're together they will always BE together two peas in a pod literally inseparable they are hot glued and duct taped together.)
and then there's this. i mean at this point you already know what i'm going to say like you get it by now but again IT MUST BE SO RELIEVING TO TOBIO to know that shouyou thinks his biggest insecurity is cool. that shouyou thinks that it's not something to be concerned about. that no matter what, no matter how much a King he is, they're not going anywhere.
SOMETHING SOMETHING "you drew stars around my scars" IF YOU EVEN CARE
and just the fact that it's always ALWAYS shouyou to do this. the fact that there was dead silence before shouyou spoke up. the fact that it's ALWAYS HIM there to understand Tobio (someone who has been misunderstood for as long as he can remember) GOD THEY DRIVE ME INSANE.
anyways thank you for being a witness to this madness👍
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oooooo please tell me (who knows nothing on the subject) about orv swap au
hehehe. hehehehehehe. hehehehehehehhehehehhheheheh <- guy who is so normal
the premise of orv swap au (name has yet to be finalized) is this: what if kdj and yjh swapped narrative positions (reader <-> character) but very little else? what if a video game player enters a time loop to save his favorite character from dying over and over again and also to end the apocalypse?
admittedly it's not super fleshed out yet (a lot of the changes this premise would introduce are still not hammered out yet) but here are some points under the cut (novel spoilers ahead!)
orv swap au starts with pro gamer yjh who feels :/ abt his job, but hey, it pays the bills. despite (or maybe because of) his relative popularity as a pro gamer and networking with the agency/sponsors/people to impress, he's kind of isolated in a way that's detrimental, a facade of someone he's not whenever he's on camera
something to play around with is the idea of agency? maybe this yjh doesn't feel like he has any and has his hands tied between the lifestyle and being under public scrutiny and not having enough of a support system to leave everything behind. maybe he doesn't know what else he would even do. maybe he's aimless and drifting with nothing to hold on to.
his favorite video game is what i've been thinking of as World's Hardest To Play Indie Game (not based on difficulty but just on the experience of consuming it) a boring, exposition heavy, player-hostile, poorly designed, slightly buggy mess of a barely-playable game: twsa, a game that was not finished upon release and experiences with sporadic updates every now and then.
the ending tree to this game is so convoluted its insane. also theres no save states so if you die (very likely) u restart babeyyy.
twsa (video game) does have multiple endings, all of which happen when kdj, your main character, dies. some are farther into the apocolypse than others, some paths require meta knowledge of future events or character actions or items or whatever. the "true ending" is either analogous to the original 1863: kdj makes it to the end at the cost of everyone he loves, or hsy's modified 1863: kdj makes himself enemy of the scenario to secure a way out for the kimcom remnants.
there's branches on the choices tree where everyone dies and everything sucks and is bad forever and theres choices to make where kdj gets to make a family and they don't really get to settle down but they can get pretty close to it among the ruins of the apocalypse. through all his testing, yjh finds that these endings are nice but peter out - to get to the end of the apocalypse yjh has to claw his way there inch by painful inch, through betrayal and sacrifice, and he still cant fully get past it
i originally wanted to finagle a yoohankim 3 way swap but i couldn't figure it out. swap aus are a lot easier to work with when they're even numbers, at least to me, so this au features a ysa who is a video game company employee by day and by night she really has become god this time (and also a terrible indie dev). and this is how jungdoksang can still win !!!!
also yjh's coworker from Real Life hsy :) i haven't decided if she's like an employee for the same agency, or if she's someone else in the gaming circles that yjh interacts with sometimes (in my heart theyre in like some sort of discord server together), or something like that but she's around. whatever she does she is twitter cancelled for something. to me.
the only other character swaps are lsk and yma. yma is yjh's estranged sister (in broad strokes there's a vague bad parent situation going on here) (they used to be close until they drifted apart and slowly started hating each other [there is an abyss between them that neither of them can bridge]) (he feels that she betrayed him and threw him under the bus so he left [maybe he gets kicked out]) (she feels that he abandoned her to whatever situation they have going on [he didn't even try to take her with him]) and he has to find her when the apocalypse starts. yjh older sibling to yma gives us a whole different little dynamic to explore from kdj ysk (there's different levels of responsibility and guilt and blame when you're talking siblings that are soooooo interesting to me. sorry that i see any set of siblings and immediately try to figure out how to make them worse)
lsk is kdj's mom who appeared into existence at some point with kdj and they were both just adults. that's weird isn't it. oh well. i guess she can become a transcendent later too for funsies
everyone else stays in the same configuration of Real Person vs Character to me this is a very important aspect
this point has no precedent with the swap, nothing particular that would change to cause this, but it would be so funny if lgy was a little gamer boy who is an avid yjh hater. hates that guy. shows up to competitions to boo him. tunes into yjh's silent no-mic speedrunning streams to mald in chat but yjh +mods don't ban him bc its kinda funny.
anyways the apocalypse starts when yjh and his coworker/fellow gamer hsy are on a train to twitchcon and lgy is also there (also headed to twitchcon) and he brings bugs because he likes them but also to sabotage yjh specifically. its just funny if this happened. you understand
instead of having reader-related skills and abilities, yjh's skills are video game player based! he gets flavor text insight on people, location, and items, things like that. notably, he has the ability to reset, to bring himself back to the beginning of the apocalypse
orv swap proper follows yjh as the Player of the Game (Consumer of the Narrative) who lives hundred of lifetimes in this ruined-world-become-reality "replaying" [read: time looping through] the game to reshape it to save his fave character from self implosion (kdj with no dissociation is very prone to dying. all the time.). to revisit the idea of playing with yjh and the idea of agency, of creation, the only way to get past the apocalypse is to go off the beaten path, to choose options that weren't even there in the game. when in space, at his darkest point, yjh becomes a writer. in this story, at his darkest point, he has to become a creator too
please do not ask me how the epilogues go i dont know how the epilogues go (i don't want to throw yjh back into a train for milennia after he Just went through a thousand resets so i'm sending kdj for that but i havent fully planned how or why)
anyways, hope that helps!!! :)
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For some reason I often forget to share with Tumblr that I do, in fact, write things more frequently than I post them here, so here's a piece I still like! A oneshot for Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (and some of the rest of the LoZ series).
time immemorial, remembered - (2k)
If he is a hero of anything, it's of a grown-over wild, a land where grasses spring up in fallen garrisons and every breath of wind carries the scent of old rains and new flowers and ancient wisps of forgotten memories.
He doesn't want to remember others. He doesn't want to recall lives that aren't his own.
(It's strange, when he remembers the wrong things.)
Set post-BotW - feat. friendly adventuring, a little bit of Link/Zelda fluff, and Link just wishing he could remember the pieces to his own puzzle. Written before TotK, so no spoilers for it. Enjoy!
AO3 link here!
—
It's strange, when he remembers the wrong things.
He knows he doesn't remember everything. He knows that, Zelda knows that (unfortunately—he tried, he's still trying; she deserves a knight who truly remembers her), Impa and Purah and Robbie know that, and the spirits of the King and Champions know that. He's working hard to regain his memories, and they all know that's the most he can do.
Still, it's hard not to wish his mind would do more when his sense of déjà vu doesn't always work correctly.
They're at the curl of the beach where Akkala overlooks the ocean, and while Zelda is gushing about her Sheikah Slate picture of a new rhino beetle, he's looking at the sand. Something stirs in his head, as he looks at the waves and the palm trees and thinks—you've been here.
The feeling is bittersweet but painful, like a memory of an odd dream. Yet it was clear—he'd woken up on the beach once and cleared caves for kind people and had walked a strange black dog on a chain. A big dog with big teeth.
"When did I shipwreck at sea?" he asks Zelda, because it doesn't quite fit with what he knows of his life in the past. Perhaps his father had taught him to sail—perhaps he'd gotten a small boat himself. Zelda has a clearer picture of his life than he does at this point.
Yet, she stares at him uncertainly, blinking once or twice.
"When did you... pardon?"
A wave of embarrassment rushes over him, because Zelda usually understands him perfectly, and—sheesh, maybe he hadn't spoken clearly. His voice catches in his throat sometimes. He tries not to look so ashamed as he restates his question. "...Didn't I shipwreck at sea, once?"
Zelda blinks at him, thoughts whirring through her eyes, and then she looks out at the beach and the palm trees and the ocean.
"...Not that I'm aware of," she says carefully, and Link reminds himself that they hadn't truly known each other until they were sixteen. "Perhaps it happened when you were young?"
He doesn't know. Something about it doesn't feel quite right, like it doesn't fit. It's a puzzle piece to the wrong puzzle.
So he shrugs and dismisses it, at least for now, though the images don't leave his mind.
It happens again when they're up at Shatterback Point, just in time for the sunset. The Zora reservoir glistens like molten sapphire below, and the mountain peaks all around them have a golden-purple sheen in the late afternoon light.
It's not that, though—it's the way it feels to have the world so far below, and to see wing feathers as eagles make lofty circles in the sky, and he has the silly thought of how maybe this is Hyrule, and everything else so far below is really just Lorule.
It doesn't really hit him until Zelda has found an excuse to poke fun at him, in a playful, friendly way that ends with her smirking at him and his back to the open air, stuck in the few inches between a princess and a freefall that would last ages.
He can't lean forward for balance because she's right there, and he certainly is not leaning backward, so there's really no other option than to cling to balance and try to stand rigidly.
His heart skips a beat, because he suddenly remembers this—staring nervously into the face of a blonde princess who has far too much fun spending time with him, and he knows what will happen. She's going to push him off, like she did when they were in the sky kingdom and he liked wearing tan and she looked a bit different.
But she doesn't push him. Zelda shrinks back a little and laughs in embarrassment at her actions—she was more sure of herself a hundred years ago in the sky, wasn't she? Or was it a hundred thousand?—and allows him to step away from the edge and toward the danger: high dive at your own risk! sign a safer distance from the open air.
(He thinks—and this is really him, the normal him—that if it didn't take so long to get back up here from the water far below, he would show her a swan dive.)
(Maybe they could both—no, no. It isn't called Shatterback Point for nothing. He somehow doubts that she shares his ideas of entertainment out here, anyway.)
"I apologize," this Zelda says in embarrassment, looking away so that he can only see the tips of her ears turning pink. "I don't know what came over me."
His brain is too bewildered by all the déjà vu to mind. He tells her it's fine, because it is—some part of him thinks it feels nice to recognize that they have something friendly and familiar. Even if it is a bit teasing, and even if it does make adrenaline shoot through his veins and his heart pump hard enough to ready him for a freefall.
It happens again at twilight, late after a long day in Hyrule Field. The sky is tinted purple, and flecks of grass and dust float by in the strong breeze.
A wolf is there, in a place Link doesn't usually see any. It's on the next hillside, and it stares at him, eyes reflecting yellow in the dim light of the receding day.
Link's limbs twitch as it turns and leaves, as if reenacting the gait of the wolf—as if feeling the sensation of controlling a wolf's movement, with four limbs pacing and a head turning to and fro. With a sturdy gait and mind set fast on a goal.
When Zelda mutters something nearly irritable at the cooking pot, he half expects to turn his head and see someone who's not Zelda.
It is Zelda, though; of course. He doesn't think he knows anyone else who talks half to him, half to herself. She looks quite frustrated with whatever she's trying to do to improve their meal, and by her muttering, you'd think she was trying to blame him for what he'd put in as the necessary base ingredients.
Well, excuuuse me, Princess, he almost teases to throw her sarcasm back at her, but his mind is suddenly giving him a wildly different case of déjà vu and he vows never to think of saying that again.
They're at a stable, and one of the travelers who loiter by the cooking-fire pulls a little round instrument out of his pack and begins to play a flutelike tune. Something in Link's chest jolts a bit, as if he's only just awoken suddenly, even though the melody doesn't quite feel right. Is it strange that the sound of the little wind instrument feels as though it sends him back to another time?
He tries to ignore the fact that all these nagging lapses in memories ever occur—but they happen again, and again, and again. Always with something strange, something he feels connected to, something he's sure he's never seen before.
He sees things like the Hyrule Forest—a towering, vast area of woods that he knows, even though he's barely been there before. He knows it well enough, at least, to sense that the path isn't the same anymore. Right, left, right, left, forward, left, right—
(He sees the view of Saria's Lake from a patch of grey land hidden deep in a dark forest, shrouded with mist and drained of all color. The lack of pleasant sound here seems stark and wrong to him, and amidst the gaping maws of dying trees, he wonders what's missing from the hollow space that's suddenly prominent in his own chest.)
He sees Zelda sitting cross-legged next to Impa, learning from her, and thinks about how this mentorship feels like something that's been in place for a long time.
He looks at the massive skeleton of a creature called leviathan, and his mind says Jabú-Jabú and Wind Fish and wait—did they die?
He loves the Zora people. He only remembers so much, but it's enough to know he grew up thinking of them like a second family—with King Dorephan as almost a non-Hylian grandfather, and all the young ones as his cousins and friends.
Yet still, when those same Zoras pop out of the river with wide grins to surprise him, there's moments where his heart skips a beat and he's drawn his sword and shield, ready to deflect their attacks.
Enemies! his instincts shout at him—and it hurts, because his heart and mind say friends.
Koroks are strange to him, somehow, and not because they're little plant creatures who can vanish into the wind with ease. He just really feels like one of them should have a fiddle. Hestu's maracas don't quite carry the same emotion in their tune. He finds himself looking twice at the smaller, rounder ones, but none of them quite look right.
(He finds himself standing on a tiny lump of land his slate calls Mekar Island, staring at the piles of bones and the lone dead tree in the middle and wondering why it gives him a vague sense of dread.)
He half expects Beedle to set up shop on a boat in Laurelin, for some reason. Melody comes to mind in Rito Village, when Kass's daughters all come together to sing. (Except melody doesn't sound quite right. Perhaps he's trying to think of something similar?) When he's helping Zelda organize the old library, he can't help but get an odd mental picture when he rereads the chancellor's recipe for monster cake—of a tiny castle official with two horns like a monster. (But how would he hide them while working at the castle? By wearing two hats? Wouldn't that look too silly?)
Except when Zelda is there to study, he avoids the castle's archives like a plague, somehow wary of what he might find there if he gives in and looks for answers to his blurry memories. Perhaps the old rumors of the heroes being the first one reincarnate are true. Or perhaps the physical rigor of fighting through so much malice has messed with his mind. He isn't sure which would be worse.
His memories are... muddled, still; at least where they're not as clear as daylight or so fuzzy they feel nonexistent. The Princess knows this. She tries to help jog his mind, holding the same hope he does that perhaps some of these things will be like a well-placed kick to Robbie's machinery, jostling something back into place that will return it to working order.
But she's left it to him, lately, seeming to perceive that the things returning to him are leaving him uncertain and unsettled. Or at least, she's tried to. Her inquisitive nature seems to eat at her for a week before she finally gives in, looking to him in clear interest.
"Have you remembered much more?" Zelda asks, the curiosity in her bright eyes shadowed only by a faint hint of apology.
Are her eyes blue? Or brown? Were they ever blue or brown? Her emerald-green gaze is making him hesitate, because no, of course they were never another color. The idea is absurd, and he doesn't like that it lingers in his mind for so long.
He doesn't want a wrong sense of déjà vu with her. This is Zelda, the Zelda of now, the princess of a broken Hyrule and the survivor of a calamity. This is a Zelda long removed from the days of Hylia and the first hero. If he is a hero of anything, it's of a grown-over wild, a land where grasses spring up in fallen garrisons and every breath of wind carries the scent of old rains and new flowers and ancient wisps of forgotten memories.
He doesn't want to remember others. He doesn't want to recall lives that aren't his own. The Zelda here is her own, and he is his own—their world may be old, but to them it is something new, and he wants desperately to see it through the eyes of someone who has never lived before.
He can't really answer her question. So he gives her a thin smile, and hopes she can see the look in his eyes and understand.
Perhaps he's clinging too fast to hope, but she seems to.
When he hands her the cooking ladle and the long-awaited meal he's prepared after a long and hungry day, a funny little smile crosses her face, like she's remembering something, too.
"Thanks, Link," she says, and her voice is only a little bit teasing. His heart tugs oddly in his chest, but somehow, he can tell that she feels it too. "You are the hero of Hyrule."
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