#pls use the twitter poll!! it makes it so much more organized for me

[supermacaquecool]

About my Hairy Matters fic.

I'm really proud of the opening paragraph for this one because it gets across really really really well how mad Aoi is at the siblings lol

'Miu, Miu, Miu.' Kaito's voice echoes incessantly. 'I told you to do it before you went out.' 'Ugh, you're so annoying, why don't you ever shut up?' And so on. The Shinonome are back at it again. They fight over everything, even about where they sit at the table. Aoi wishes there were a way to make them stop. Whatever the issue is, it surely doesn't warrant all the yelling, all the name-calling, all the tantrums. Is it that hard to listen to each other and cooperate? Should she get involved? If only Takuma were here… In his absence, she has no choice but to step up to the task.

The way their usual song and dance gets recalled is just so irked up. It's not just that they're fighting but that they fight nonstop and that she finds their behavior unreasonable lol

This one was written because of a twitter poll where I asked who cuts Miu's hair, whether it was Miu herself, Kaito, their parents or a hairdresser lol I'm pretty sure this was because I was thinking on another pair of siblings from the game "World's end game club", where hair-cutting was a significant bonding activity between them (plus the cute fanart with Miu retouching Kaito's root). I got some pretty interesting answers that I felt could evidence their complicated dynamic/household situation. Why write it from Aoi's pov? For one, she's my fav. But another thing is that I wished that the Shinonome making their rocky dynamic everyone's problem was more explored in the game, and Aoi is their leader + the one who is the biggest Harmony proponent, so I thought it could be interesting writing her dealing with them.

When writing Aoi's pov for this fic, I wanted to get across a number of things:

Her hidden anger–I quoted in the notes her wrathful line "Siblings should get along" because it really highlights how much she resented them for being so disruptive without saying a peep. She gets really condescending to Kaito and Miu in her debut as Plutomon, so I wanted to explore some of that.

Her near-constant state of complete anxiety and the causes it stems from. Her lack of self-confidence showing through how little faith she has in her speech. Lots of worries about whether she can do it, whether she can pick the right answer to pacify them and reach harmony, whether they'd hear her (I think this can have a bit of a tenous implication about her worries on whether her authority is respected). These anxieties also show her obsession with doing things right, which adds to her tension (my friend remarked that she's so careful with every aspect of her actions, it made her felt unnerved alongside Aoi lol).

Aoi's constant self-monitoring and self-censoring based on being on high alert about others' reactions at all times.

Her tendency to feel deeply for others still pushing her to empathize with them/want to help them.

I was quite pleased with how, despite the intense anxiety, Aoi still comes across as fairly driven, scanning for the next task to tackle.

The conflict between Miu and Kaito lasts a fairly small portion of the fic, which ends up mostly devoted to Kaito's perspective on it. It was challenging to figure out a way to get him to open up and talk about it in a way that felt organic— channeling his protectiveness over Miu's peculiarities was a really effective way to do it. Overall, it felt a sucessful try at capturing the way arguments get complicated between the clashing perspectives and personalities, and using Dracmon to smooth out the interactions via teasing and cheeky remarks was a blast.

Miu's part is very small, and the unwritten and unposted chapter two to this thing is meant to remedy that... At some point. But I still had fun writing her snapping at Aoi. It basically went like this:

Miu: pls pls pls get kaito off my back.

Aoi, missing the cue: idk how to do this thing you're asking me to.

Miu, alrededy furious bc Kaito is bothering her: UGH

It was a really comedic interaction to me LOL

Other things:

I was pretty proud of how I wrote Aoi's uneasiness to speak on a physical level. Again, my focus on phisicality really comes in handy to show how easily she gets overwhelmed.

I got a good chuckle out of my friend pointing out how stressful living with them sounded bc of the remark of them fighting about their seat at the table LOL She said she could picture Kaito doing it and that it irked her really bad. In my mind, he'd do it because Miu is the only one from the group he's truly close to, no meaning any harm lol But Miu'd be fed up with him breathing over her neck, so...

There's some nice emotional ambiguity with how strongly her emotions come across in the narration yet are never acknowledged nor named directly.

The tittle. Is. Really. Funny LOL I usually half-ass the tittles, so the fact it's a corny joke should be taken as a Win

#babbling #fic talk #I wrote this on the computer so it's formatted nicely #If there's a fic you wanna hear about tell me about it otherwise I'll just pick whatever I feel like next time