#literally that's why it took so long i kept deleting and rewriting and going 'holy shit how the fuck do i write this'

[kimbapisnotsushi]

you seem to have a good read on HQ and your takes are great, so i have a question...and if you'd rather not go there, please ignore this! but i see oikawa get called "arrogant" quite often and i'm curious, would you say he is? what is it that makes people think that? imo he has a plenty of flaws, but i truly don't think arrogance is one of them. self-centered, sure, but not arrogant i think. i'm open to being wrong, i'm just legit so confused by that particular criticism, it makes me doubting my reading comprehension. i feel like that one post that's like "free my man, he didn't do that. he did a lot of other stuff tho" LOL. if you do answer this, then thanks for your time!

oh, dear anon. this is a very very big question and i'm honored you think i am capable of providing an answer that does it justice!! i don't consider myself an oikawa expert by far, but i'll do my best because he's still very beloved to me, and i hope whatever i say helps!

(but also - maybe take what i say with a grain of salt LMAO)

anyways, to get the main point out of the way: i completely agree that oikawa isn't arrogant! i actually haven't seen any commentary about that myself (bless!!!), so i can't say for sure why some people might think that, but my guess is that they think his pridefulness = arrogance — they think that the confidence he has in himself and seijoh contributes nothing to their actual power and is utterly meaningless if they don't win, especially in the face of ushijima. which, like, come on. what kind of captain would he be if he wasn't confident in himself and his teammates? is he supposed to tell them that they're going to lose??? is he supposed to discourage their hard work and effort???

or maybe it's because oikawa acts like he's all that, but doesn't have anything to show for it. who does he think he is? what does he think his pride is worth? what right does he have to go around making grand declarations when he has nothing to his name?

(which isn't entirely true, either, but we'll get into that, promise.)

now, do i think that he can, occasionally, be flippant, shallow, and/or petty? yeah, sure. he's got one hell of a personality about it. even iwaizumi says as much. oikawa is great at being a little shit. it's one of my favorite things about him!

but is oikawa genuinely arrogant, or self-centered? well . . . i don't think so.

see, here's the thing about oikawa: he knows he's good, but he doesn't think he's good enough. i think it'd be easiest to really explain what that meant if we broke this down into two separate parts, so let's give it a go, shall we?

(buckle up, friends, because it's about to get LONG. also: TIMESKIP SPOILERS!! and there's a tldr at the start of the tags because. WOW.)

so, first things first: if people are calling oikawa arrogant, then i'm like 99% sure that they don't actually know what the word "arrogant" means.

"arrogant" is used to describe someone full of themselves. it's used to describe someone conceited and pompous. it's used to describe someone so assured of and invested in their self-importance that they don't care for other people, and if it seems like they do, then it's usually wildly off the mark and still serves to inflate their own egos.

oikawa has never once been like that. he's been pretty much the exact opposite, in fact.

and yeah, sure, by his third year of high school, he knows he's good at volleyball, and that's fine! it's perfectly all right to claim you're good at something if you have the skills/experience to back it up. confidence is healthy as long as it isn't in overabundance, and we actually see a lot of this throughout the series!

(not to mention that this was where ushijima fell short. he was overflowing with confidence. he did not believe, for even a single second, that hinata shouyou and his meager, scrappy little flock of crows could beat him.

but oikawa? he knew. he knew what it looked like to make something bloom.)

the key to oikawa's confidence that made him better was that he could pinpoint others' strengths and weaknesses just as well as he could with his own. and (bear with me, please, i might get kind of boring here bc it's nothing that hasn't been said in the manga before) i don't mean it in the way we see the coaches or more analytical players do, as observations to be taken advantage of by everyone else; i mean that in the sense of how vital it is to his position as a setter. that was always the biggest difference between oikawa and kageyama: no matter how much more raw talent kageyama had, no matter how much better oikawa believed him to be, kageyama, especially in the beginning, struggled to do what oikawa could with a team. kageyama struggled to bring out the best in each player. and it wasn't because he didn't know how -- oikawa freely admitted that kageyama had the skill for it, that kageyama, once he got his shit together, could win against him -- it was because kageyama didn't have that same confidence in himself.

(not until much later, anyways. but that's another story, for another time.)

so, oikawa's confident. he knows he's good. he can bring out the best in each player. he's got a killer serve (and a killer smile!), a mind for tactics that borders on machievallianism, and cherishes the trust he is given like it's something precious. his coaches let him lead without leaning on them. his team has the utmost respect and admiration for him. he has a reputation. from karasuno to shiratorizawa to the whole of miyagi -- there is not a single character who knows oikawa tooru and would believe that he is, in any way, bad at volleyball.

but it's not enough. despite all of that, oikawa still doesn't think he's good enough. and that, friends, brings us to the second point.

oikawa tooru is nothing if not passionate.

so were the others, of course. kageyama kept going after his grandfather's death. hinata kept going while being a nobody from nowhere with no one to back him up. atsumu kept going while osamu didn't. it's not even about just those who went pro -- kenma, kuroo, noya, and everyone else found things that they were passionate about and kept going with it. the entire story revolves around loving what you do and trying to keep that love alive, and, sometimes, that can be really, really difficult when it seems like it doesn't love you back.

oikawa was so insecure over kageyama to the point where he nearly decked the poor kid. oikawa got crushed by ushijima-- who kept telling him that his team was not good enough, that his choices were not good enough, that there was nothing good enough to be proud of -- for years in a row. oikawa was taught that there would always be someone better than him no matter how skilled he was, but if he let that stop him then he didn't fucking belong on the court in the first place.

oikawa tooru is intimately acquainted with not being good enough, but he keeps trying to be. he keeps going. he tries to keep the love alive even if he's not loved back. he pushes and practices and takes a plane far from home to become even better. even if he doesn't have the skill, even if he doesn't have the talent, even if he doesn't have the love -- he still has his pride. and what does that mean, in the end? how far does that take him?

in the end, oikawa tooru walks across a world stage and sees people who believed in him on the other side and calls it a family reunion. in the end, he gets to play the volleyball that reminds him of why he loves it and how it gives him so much love back. in the end, his pride is unyielding and unbreakable, a product of the forge. he molded it with his own two hands. he will not let it falter so easily.

arrogance would not have taken oikawa tooru this far. i hope this has proven that he is anything but.

remember: instinct is something you polish. talent is something you make bloom. and never, ever let anyone else tell you what your pride is worth.

#tldr: oikawa 's confident in himself but (believing that there will always be someone more talented) is always striving to become better #ANYWAYS #i know this one's a bit different from the itachiyama post where i analyzed each panel but like #that was REALLY hard to do for this one since there were so many good ones i could use!!! #so i ended up just smashing 2-3 panels together that i thought were best representative of each point i wanted to talk about #and then just diving deep into the whole thing #if i had done it the first way we would have been here FOREVER #literally that's why it took so long i kept deleting and rewriting and going 'holy shit how the fuck do i write this' #'how can ANYTHING i possibly say do justice to oikawa tooru' #i hope i did a good job and i hope this helped anon!!! #i genuinely think this is the most insane thing i have ever written so thanks for that i guess #oikawa tooru #haikyuu #haikyuu!! #haikyuu meta #sou says stuff

[beyondthetemples-ooc]

I was going to ramble about which of my stories is my Own Personal Favorite.

But then, after deleting 4 or 5 different paragraphs of mind-changing pre-write, I realized... I really can’t choose just one? Or even three???

** NOTE that all of these can be found on my fanfic profile!  - Raven’s secret-keeper over there! - Two on AO3: Ravens secret-keeper (pseudonymn: StellarSecretKeeper)

~ Dove’s Dark Discovery is the best-written Actually Published story! It has a sub-plot (re: her struggles with her powers as they grow, AND her relationship with Raven being strained throughout the story), it included the other Titans in Important Scenes (Dove and Raven are by far my favorite characters to write about, but the whole reason I write these stories as TEEN TITANS fanfics is the background of the team!), it EXCELS at “rising action” and “building escalation” (it gets concerning, then anxious, then frantic, then downright devastating), and the DESCRIPTIONS. Holy heavens and hells, the mindscape descriptions!! I absolutely LOVE some of those lines! And the goddamn cLIMAX. That scene alone has literally gone through 6 versions (though the kernel of an idea, “Raven vs. Evil!Dove in the Mindscape”, has always remained the same), and while it’s still not as smooth as I’d like it, some of the rhythmic cadence in that scene is pure stylistic GOLD.

~ The Final Journey is so incredible to write! It has long held an especially special place in my heart, because it’s one of the first stories I ever started writing. I can remember where I wrote almost every single scene in the binder. 

~ Even in Death got some High Quality Additions! Though it’s still not As Great as far as verbiage and pacing and the silky-smooth emotional transitions I’ve been teaching myself to use, the headcanon power it runs on (re: Azarath and Raven’s Abilities and Dove’s PTSD) is GREAT. It discusses something that’s really close to my heart, and also really close to both Raven and Dove’s (mental illness, PTSD, loss and grief and healing). It has a lot of Personal Significance too; let’s just say the revision was inspired by an Actual Astral Adventure and I realized how deeply a revelation like that would affect Dove... And that revelation finally gave that oneshot a reason to exist besides just, “I learned there was this one time...” Dove needed that closure. Desperately. And it’s a big step in her healing from that traumatic day.

~ Heart to Heart was so incredibly sweet, adorable, dramatic, AND satisfying! As far as a self-contained oneshot, it’s definitely the best I’ve ever written. (I daresay it’s among the best scenes ever, and certainly among my favorite flashback-containing scenes!) Dove and Srentha deserve a lot more Emotional Heartfelt Moments that really dive into how much they mean to each other, but I’m an emotionally-stunted aro whose sense of romance is basically “tell her i love her once in awhile”. and I don’t really know how to write those Emotionally Intense Moments with a romantic bend yet. ;; The fact that I wrote that entire scene in like, two weeks, was a complete fluke. 

~ Speaking of oneshot flukes, I’m also really proud of Umbrella? I wrote that sucker in a singular fucking HOUR. I didn’t realize “drabble” had a character limit, but  I’m glad I didn’t know, because it grew into an excellent exploration of Dove’s mindset during her first months on Earth, how she experienced the city, how she experienced strangers, and in the end, human kindness.

Also, my favorite fanfic writer for the animated series (and others!) was inspired to headcanon the random man Dove encounters in the city as his very own protagonist OC. Which I delightfully endorsed. And he wrote it into one of his very own stories. So that absolutely blew my entire mind. It’s still blown to this day! (That writer was also kind enough to review the DDD climax when I desperately needed feedback. It should be “three times as long and nine times the punch”, he said. I took it to heart, took it to the words, and I like to think I KILLED it at long last~)

~ Mystery Sickness is probably my favorite in terms of Total Rewrite Growth^tm? But it’s not Finished Yet, so I can’t show you all the Changes! Its original version (visible on fanfic.net) is heavy on the deus ex machina, and Things Happening without anyone really knowing why. Hell, I didn’t know why when I wrote the damn thing! I kind of treated it like “this is just what I see happening so I gotta write it down”. Raven falls ill, figures it has something to do with Dove, never really explain why Dove is Making Her Unwell, then she kind of just gets better? But now: Oh stars, we have a HUGE Reason! (And it’s Dove’s mother’s spells! It took a good long while for me to really Understand what was going on in Dove’s childhood, what with Alerina constantly and desperately doing everything in her power to hide Dove’s existence, including a slew of spells that kept Dove safe from the rest of Azarath AND Trigon.) And now, when I re-publish it, everything’s going to make sense.

Not to mention, I am having FUN with Mumbo in the rewrite.

~ Something Special About Srentha is probably the first story I wrote with Actual Plot, clear in the story from start to finish. It’s definitely one of my most Cohesive Plots, with the most Consistently Relevant scenes. Granted, in the Mindquest trilogy (Missing: Raven, DDD, and TFJ), every plot point plays into how it progresses, but in Something Special it’s really quite obvious and complete. Intruders are in the mystical forest, they investigate, Dove gets kidnapped, they try to save her, fail a couple times, Dove suffers and learns about her kidnappers, Srentha finds out if they don’t save her they’re going to force her into a ritual to become one of them, and then they try Extra Hard to save her. And then the sequel (Something Strange) is all about the Direct Results of the intruders’ magic having an effect on Dove and Srentha. So, you should all know by now how mystical my ass is, and Srentha’s too come to think of it, so writing these stories touches on a lot of Personal Passions for me AND them. Even the personal struggles, for everyone involved, come as a direct result of everything happening in the plot. And it just naturally turned out that way. I don’t think any story had been so entirely Relevant to one plot before, nor have I managed to captures such contiguous storytelling since.

#rhs stories #rhs fanfics #rhs personal writing