I legit have 0 hope canon will see them interacting as in-depth as my interpretation of them happens to be but I like them and want them to be QPT besties 👉👈

I think they’d bounce off each other well and maybe foil Kyoko and Inui in Hiroya’s life :’)))))

Also I think tying Teiyo to Hikari, showcasing how the two care for each other but butt heads on the reality of their situations, adds to the implied bitterness of Teiyo’s words to Hiroya and also works well with my S2 AU depiction I wanna flesh out 🥹

Interestingly enough I actually don’t like the reverse of this - i.e. an adult is helping a kid grow as a person / any childcare story ever

i like the cheesy naivety of a kid chasing the footsteps of someone who they want to try and connect with and seeing that journey play out is so fascinating!!

not sure exactly why this particular type of story appeals to me (maybe it’s because I, too, like admiring cool af people who are kind and wise and want to root for them to sincerely reciprocate the protag’s desire to bond with them? who knows lol) but I’m so goddamn weak for them

This pretty much describes every single goddamn story I’ve gotten hyperfixated on to the point I STILL deem them as my favorite stories from Buddyfight to The Mighty Extra to Infinite Awakening.

So, um, yeah, if you ever want me to get hyperfixated on a story, the above is my recipe to do so lol

* There’s humor that’s character-based and specific to the ‘verse and its shenanigans

* For that matter, the cast feels grounded, zany, and cohesive to the point it sincerely feels like they are part of the worlds they live in psychologically 🤗

* The protags are cheesy but have their own voices: they’re just kids longing for something they have to fight for if they want it to happen

* There’s stakes. Big stakes. Not small insignificant ones but potentially life-ending ones

* There’s consistent themes of found family, finding one’s identity, and the feeling of hiraeth / longing for a home that doesn’t exist or which might never have existed

* any romance showcased is either very limited or strictly used to progress character development and has limited plot focus

* This older person is wise and kind but hides a darker side that threatens the protag’s goals, performing a heel turn betrayal that, while violently cruel to the protagonist, lacks malice

* The setting is always fantasy and involves monsters in some form - i.e. dragons, eldritch entities, etc

Also writing Hiroya react to Inui in this scene, giving them more room to interact in this moment than canon itself gave, sees me trying my best to elicit a feeling of gentle hiraeth that IA as a whole seems to be accidentally built upon

I’m trying to stick to the careful balancing act of showing how morally gray Inui is as a person and if you read between the lines on his actions you should be able to glean A LOT about how I prefer to interpret him in canon’s context

As canon exists right now, they do not feel anywhere near a father-son dynamic (Seseki&Hiroya fit that bill better lol).

But if they’re being domino’d into being father and son, /god does a lot of Hiroya’s emotional dependence towards Inui make so much sense narratively/

I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that, canonically and objectively, they are complete strangers towards each other who are only connected by a small (and increasingly insignificant) event

AND YET

both of them narratively drawn towards each other to the point it’s suspicious why that is

person in his identity - and I’d love to just do a deep, deep, DEEP analysis on how he’s /both/ admirable and condemnable as a character to the point i lovingly face cognitive dissonance towards him and who he truly is 🥺🙏

I literally have too many thoughts on him - from how scummy he is as a person considering it’s implied he would have tried to control the narrative if Hiroya had told him the truth about Teiyo to his sincere love for Kyoko being deeply interesting considering even at her side he was still lost as a-

To me, Inui is a character I both want to justify and defend yet also someone I want to criticize and condemn

He’s cognitive dissonance personified, with my fondness towards his warm kindness in Hiroya’s life at odds with my hostility towards his more sinister (and kind of eerie) moments

this work basically exists to see what IA’s story would look like if it was a slowburn instead of fast-paced but also I love playing in this story’s sandbox and getting to dissect my own takes on characters like Mimimi and Inui while I wait for canon to yeet my S2 takes out the window :Dc

im probably going to greatly fudge with canon events and start setting up my interpretation of S2 from this point on (hi Eden, Seraphim, and Teiyo&Hikari)

But also I wanna flesh out some things like Inui’s contempt towards Seseki or Seseki’s bond with Hiroya because BOI is that shit fascinating 😌