sufferu

[sufferu]

For some reason, I really want to see how subaru would interact with vincent. Just imagine the emperor of Vollachia himself just show up at your doorstep lmaoo. Subaru would be so confused and terrified.

Their interactions are very funny because Vincent remembers a VERY different Subaru. By the time this man shows up, Subaru is desperately trying to right his wrong from the Royal Selection Ceremony by acting like a good and proper citizen, and as such tries very hard to be properly cordial to this Emperor of Vollachia that shows up one day. Vincent, meanwhile, remembers the time Subaru fucking BIT him and will not admit how disappointed he is that that version of Subaru…doesn’t seem to be here.

Subaru: What did I do this time?? I swear I thought I was doing everything right! I was proper, I used his title, I bowed my head, I-I even tried to do that thing Julius does with his hands across his chest whenever he’s talking to one of the Candidates… Why do I mess everything up?

Vincent, glowering: I’m not mad that I don’t have that stupid nickname stuck to me anymore. I’m not mad that he didn’t insult me on impulse. I’m not mad that Subaru BOWED to me. I’m NOT.

[sufferu]

Think you could give a little more insight into Subaru's "condition" starting off in III without delving too far into spoiler territory? If Felix is having a hard time healing him how bad off is he? Is he in chronic pain? Is he in a wheelchair?

Completely bedridden. He can’t eat or drink on his own, or move all that well, and he needs help to so much as sit up. There are some major injuries, some of which are incredibly complicated (and some of which have some symbolic relevance), but he’s also severely emaciated to the point where he needs to be put on a liquid diet and worked up to solid foods again. Chronic pain is an issue, though they’re trying to mitigate it. There’s a 24/7 guard posted in his room, and only a handful of individuals are allowed to sign up for it: if someone were to decide to take advantage of his condition and injure him, there would be pretty much nothing he could do about it. They don’t want to voice this scary thought for fear of upsetting him further, but Subaru understands it perfectly well regardless.

Subaru’s mental state is somehow even more alarming, however, because he really HAS just given up. Even without taking RBD into consideration, he appears to have been reduced to a living corpse. He doesn’t trust any of them, but he understands that he has no choice but to rely on them regardless, and that’s a horrible position to be in. They can’t even send him away to recuperate on a relaxing vacation far away from all of them — probably their usual treatment for depressive disorders among nobility — because his physical condition is so horrible. They’re trying their best but DAMN.

[sufferu]

In Back to Zero If, what are subaru's friends in Vollachia thoughts of him and his experiences?

Terror, outrage, anguish. Natchuki Subawu is everything they absolutely cannot let happen this time around. Even the Vollachians are on board with that. — Perhaps ESPECIALLY the Vollachians, even, because that was a little TOO personal as far as they’re concerned. (Vincent was going through a character arc about how Dying For Your Goals Is A Bad Thing at THAT SAME TIME Subaru was doing all that bullshit, like WHAT THE FUCK???)

[sufferu]

Yo. Really like how you view the series. Since the cast isn’t gonna be seeing past arc 4, I wanted to ask; Do you think the cast would be uncomfortable with Subarus declaration of love for…damn near everyone in arc 6-8? Regardless of yes or no how do you think they’d see it?

That entire sequence in the 10 Seconds Of Death Loop when he declared over and over that he loved everyone while also imagining them telling him to go and use Return By Death to make sure everyone — him, Spica, Yorna — all got out okay would probably leave all of them shaken to their cores just on its own. Natchuki Subawu would make so many of them shit themselves with just how FREAKY he is. Arc 6 — might not be that bad, in comparison. Really doesn’t hold a candle to the Vollachia Saga.

[sufferu]

A bit silly but Im imagining Reinhard going through Dogshow and No Refunds like

Reinhard: Can I get Divine Protection of Jar Breaking? Od Laguna: No Reinhard: What bout Divine Protection of Remembering Timelines? Od Laguna: No Reinhard: Divine Protection of "Teleport when Subaru is in Danger"? Od Laguna: No Reinhard: Why not Od Laguna: Because You and Lil Bro are doomed by the narrative :D Reinhard: .... Reinhard: Divine Protection of Undoomed Narrative? Od Laguna: NO

Ultimately He just gets the Divine Protection of Paperwork to fillout all of the Adoption Papers, getting Subaru in the Astrea Family

HA. Od Laguna does NOT want to help Natsuki Subaru. Hated by the world indeed.

[sufferu]

Do you think that if Subaru was born into an omegaverse setting, Natsumi Schwartz would be the opposite of his secondary gender?

That is actually a pretty fascinating idea lol. …Maybe?

I guess it depends on what Natsumi Schwartz is supposed to be. She is explicitly Subaru’s ideal self, so how does he see his ideal self? Does he see his ideal self as an alpha or an omega? He tries to put on a mask as an alpha for ages in the early arcs of the Omegaverse IF, but his authentic self IS an omega, he’s not really in the same position as Crusch’s nontraditional omega-hood. That might mean that the Natsumi he envisions is an alpha early on, though it wouldn’t really fit with how she’s currently being framed as an authentic part of his identity that he is currently attempting to repress. Meanwhile, if Natsumi is his way of expressing everything that he represses about himself due to the trauma of his school debut, then she would have to be an omega — but does that mean that he would actually make the choice to depict her as an omega, especially early on? Maybe, but maybe not.

I guess it could really go either way. Maybe he specifically keeps Natsumi’s gender amibiguous so that he doesn’t have to think about it, even. That could also work.

[sufferu]

i. Think they forget that taking his knighthood away just reverts him to roswaals servant roswaal could easily get clind to get him

And Subaru would go along with it

Not necessarily. Like — if you’re fired from your post, that doesn’t mean you’re automatically re-hired into your previous position. Roswaal might try to pull this but basically nobody would let him lmao, not even Emilia.

[sufferu]

Uh, quick question. Was Louis part of the viewing? Or was she returned to the past without her memories? BTZ

Nope, lol. Louis is just like every other Archbishop: completely excluded from this entire situation. She doesn’t remember anything.

[sufferu]

After arc 2, will you show Subaru’s pov from the side story “the world Petra saw?” I think it would be good one due to it showing his innate kindness without the murkiness of RBD.

Noted. Have not read that yet lol but I will put it on my list and see how it goes

[sufferu]

Holy heck PLEASE tell me if Subaru’s insecurities are blinding him at LEAST a little bit

There’s NO WAY the others are messing up this BADLY, tell me a lie if you have to there’s no way they’re messing this up so much

How bad are they messing up? 😭😭 Surely not that bad right??? Right???

(This is about BTZ btw)

I DID tag that fic as “Unreliable Narrator” for a reason lol. The misunderstandings that the story hinges on are very much due in part to everyone else just — constantly rolling critical fails, but they’re also due to a whole spell of bad luck that means everything just has the worst possible timing, and also due to Subaru being both incredibly insecure and completely unwilling to let on to the fact that he’s actually feeling very hurt right now.

But — for some examples about how badly this disconnect is going…

Julius: Julius is fully under the impression that he and Subaru are buds. He did try to apologize at first, and pull back a bit, and when Wilhelm roped him into training as a way to try and scare Subaru away from the idea of being a swordsman he immediately protested out of concern for Subaru’s mental well-being — but then Subaru insisted on fighting him and that he totally wasn’t emotionally affected and also Julius is ugly and stupid and he’s totally gonna win this time. Julius genuinely came away from this interaction thinking that 1) Subaru just wants to move on already and trying to be apologetic about it would just be insulting, and 2) Subaru is not just unafraid, but is actively looking to roughhouse with him — an impression that completely falls in line with his memory of old-timeline!Subaru having been a massive masochist.

From here on, Julius feels that he’s constantly being encouraged to be rougher and rougher with Subaru due to Subaru not just never backing down, but also actively escalating situations in an effort to prove just how not-scared he is. He’s genuinely just following Subaru’s lead. But because Subaru is lying about his true feelings and what he actually wants, this arrangement is actively making Subaru’s mental health worse.

Things Julius does in service of this massive miscommunication:

Teases him almost constantly. It’s a lot meaner than he would be with anyone else, but this is SUBARU. He remembers damn well how disappointed and sulky Subaru would get in the old timeline if he didn’t bait him a little now and then. And this current Subaru gets riled up in much the same way, so it must be the same scenario.

Spars with him regularly. He’s terrible at losing on purpose, and also he’s a total show-off who likes taking Subaru by surprise — ie. bring out his spirits for a flashy new move in an eager desire to see Subaru’s reaction to something he has legitimately never witnessed before in his life. He thinks this is all in good fun and that Subaru is having just as good a time as he is (or even that Subaru is having even MORE fun than Julius, because a large part of why Julius likes this is specifically because he believes he is showing Subaru a good time).

Sneaks up behind him after a long shift patrolling in the cold and announces his presence by pressing his freezing hand against the back of his neck to make him scream.

Tries to instruct Subaru about good etiquette in the midst of “lighthearted banter.” He doesn’t realize that Subaru thinks he’s threatening him.

Sits on him at one point. See the Sparring Practice ficlet.

(The BTZ III reveal that Subaru was legitimately terrified of him this entire time HURTS, because it recontextualizes everything that the knight believed had been his way of showing Subaru affection and camaraderie. Julius never, ever wanted to make him feel this bad.)

Wilhelm: Subaru is now Wilhelm’s grandson. Wilhelm forgot to tell Subaru about this. —Well, it’s more accurate to say that he’s trying to prove his worth as a potential grandfather first by eliminating the Witch Cult, but because of this Subaru has no fucking clue that Wilhelm sees him as anything more than an unwelcome pest. This means that a lot of Wilhelm’s attempts to bond with him outside of dueling practice are interpreted…differently.

Wilhelm and Subaru go out for tea at a high-end establishment. Wilhelm spends so much time getting Subaru dressed properly in a suit and tries to use the opportunity as a way to teach him how to conduct himself in formal settings in an environment that is low-stakes and ultimately very much just for fun. Subaru does not understand what is happening and is so caught up in his impression of “Wilhelm hates me” that he interprets all of this in the most hostile light imaginable.

(Did not help that Wilhelm initially suggested that Subaru wear a dress. Wilhelm was just trying to coax out that interest in crossdressing that he already knows is a genuine part of Subaru’s identity. Subaru thought it was an insult about how badly he was failing as a prospective knight.)

He’s not the only one in charge of this, but Wilhelm spends a lot of time teaching Subaru how to read. He tries to be more lax and friendly here than he is during those swordsmanship lessons he wishes Subaru would stop insisting on. Subaru either does not notice or is so on-edge that he thinks Wilhelm is just being subtler, now that he doesn’t have a ready-made excuse to whack him over the head.

Wilhelm initially asked Julius to spar with Subaru in his stead in yet another attempt to scare Subaru off from the sport, but this quickly turned into him ALLOWING them to spar together because he thought Subaru genuinely liked sparring with Julius and caved at the idea of Subaru being able to actually play with a trusted knight in a controlled environment. Subaru interprets his motivations VERY differently here.

Wilhelm is gonna learn that Subaru thinks he despises him and die a little inside. He put off adopting him because he thought he had to prove himself first, but in doing so he may have just destroyed their relationship entirely. He wants to go back and kick himself.

Crusch: I haven’t spoken about Crusch a lot, but her role is fairly important here, even if she might not show up a WHOLE lot. Crusch’s relationship with Subaru is somewhat distant when compared to characters like Wilhelm, Ferris, Julius, and Reinhard — who interact with him almost constantly — but she’s technically the one “in charge” of him at the moment, and she’s prepared to take on that role up until the point Wilhelm finally formally adopts him into his household. This outcome is one that everyone BUT Subaru has accepted as an inevitability.

Crusch believes that her job is to make sure that Subaru has a stable, structured environment that can not just keep him safe, but also serve to instruct him on how to behave himself properly in this new world, because he was INFAMOUS for not being able to conduct himself in what would have been considered an appropriate manner in the old timeline. The only reason he got away with it was because of his many spectacular feats, and everyone knows that they absolutely cannot allow him to put himself in a position where he can accomplish feats like that again — but that also means he’s not going to have an excuse if he screws up and paints himself as a weirdo who should be avoided at best or a jerk who needs the shit kicked out of him at worst. Crusch is very much using a carrot-and-stick approach to try and train him up as a model citizen who won’t get himself in trouble quite so much — but she ends up using the carrot pretty rarely, and when she does he’s often not in a place where he can recognize that that’s what she’s doing.

Also, she’s straight up Not Around a lot of the time because she’s busy as both a Royal Candidate and one of the top leaders of the new Witch Cult Elimination Force. Otherwise…maybe her Divine Protection would clue her into what’s going on a little sooner than it does.

Reinhard: Subaru is now Reinhard’s little brother. Reinhard genuinely completely forgot to tell Subaru this.

Reinhard is now so insanely overprotective of Subaru because he just saw Subaru die…a LOT. And he was almost never there. He will NEVER not be there again, not if he has anything to say about it. And — and he’s going to be a good role model who can teach Subaru not to charge into dangerous situations, and to avoid assassins and mabeasts and archbishops, and to not do stupid stuff like leaping out of dragon carriages while they’re in motion —

Subaru thinks that Reinhard now sees him as a prisoner, or a future crook, or just some untrustworthy fuck who needs constant supervision. Every time Reinhard tries to do fun things like go out for lunch or visit the local gardens or play games in the courtyard, his overprotectiveness makes everything blow up in their faces and paints him as some sort of correctional officer — and Reinhard doesn’t have the emotional intelligence necessary to realize that he’s failing that hard in the first place.

[sufferu]

Considering writing a short spin-off of that BTZ II ficlet where Julius actually realizes that he’s going too far.

[sufferu]

Been working on chapter 3 of No Refunds.

[sufferu]

Wonder if Subaru’s memories are still waiting for someone in there even now in gluttony if

[sufferu]

OI.

I understand that some of you do not like what I am writing or the ideas that I have regarding my fics. That is fine. Sending me asks to try and debate me on it is ALSO fine, honestly — it is harmless fun.

What is NOT fine is going to other platforms and bringing me up with random people — while also going as far as to give out my username — in an effort to either start fights on my behalf or stir people up against me. I know who you are, and I am asking you to please cut it out, because it is REALLY not cool.

Thank you.

[sufferu]

Is there any particular scene that your looking forward to writing in BTZ III?

PS: Saw the latest snippet and already getting hyped! Lets gooooo!

For BTZ III? Well…I have a very specific endgame dynamic in store for Subaru and Julius that I absolutely cannot spoil ahead of time. But it’s probably that :)

Also just — Subaru finally getting a whole bunch of affection. BTZ I and II are more or less just the buildup for the moments where he finally gets smothered in well-deserved hugs.

[sufferu]

Just dug into that new snippet. Great job by the way. Seems like Juli for all his good intentions is just making Subaru take a straight nose dive into his worst thoughts about himself. The man is clearly in denial that the Subaru he knew and cared for is dead and gone and is trying to recreate the same moments with this new version of him without having gone through steps one and two into building some type of rapport with in their relationship.

Speaking of which this kind of ties in to your last BTZ II snippet on Julius.

Here's one of the passages:

“Of course,” Julius said. “It‘s not like that every time. Our duel was more to settle a disagreement than it was to negotiate a deal, in the first place, and in the second place I did not feel particularly inconvenienced. I would have been happy to take responsibility for you afterwards, but there was no particular reason for me to argue for it when Lady Crusch volunteered to take you into her care instead.”

“…Volunteered…?”

“Something about making sure you stayed in close proximity to a skilled healer,” Julius teased. “It was part of the terms of her alliance with Emilia: Crusch takes responsibility for you, and Emilia lends her assistance with —“ He stopped himself just in time. “Well. Emilia lends her assistance.”

“Emilia…” Subaru said, looking slightly overwhelmed. “She…what did she agree to?”

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Julius brushed off. “Your only role in this is to enjoy Lady Crusch’s hospitality.”

Oddly enough, Subaru seemed to wilt at that declaration. Julius felt a pang at the look on his face.

Yeah, this man Julius sucks with his words. He basically stated that not only did Subaru embarrass Emilia at the Royal selection but in order for Crusch to take care of Subaru's injuries, Emilia had to join in on fighting a dangerous Killer Whale, which further adds to his guilt. This won't end well for anyone will it?

It is important to note that Julius’ false impression of what Subaru wants and how he is currently feeling is — at least in part — Subaru’s own fault. Because every time Julius tried to be cordial and polite, hold back so that the two of them could have a more balanced sparring match, excuse himself from his presence out of fear of stressing him out post-duel, or otherwise just be more typically nice to and considerate of him, Subaru’s insecure self took it as an insult and responded by basically letting Julius know in no uncertain terms that he did not want Julius to be nice to him. Julius’ memory of Subaru as a total masochist just served as a convenient, obvious explanation for his behavior. As far as Julius is aware, Subaru quite literally ASKED for this.

With that being said — Julius is canonically AWFUL at wording his intentions lmao. He’s so shit at it. It’s gotten him in trouble so many times. And yes, that conversation DID lead to Subaru drawing a very different conclusion than he intended! :D And you are completely correct about how this is not going to end well.

[sufferu]

So just to tickle my brain will there be any dark comedic moments with Elsa in BTZ II and BTZ III and in a roundabout way will Subaru have any kind of relationship with her in terms of forgiveness?

Elsa doesn’t get forgiveness because she just does not care. Elsa still has no fucking clue what’s going on, lmao. She couldn’t care less if Subaru never forgave her, and even if she could muster up some semblance of remorse she’s a little preoccupied because this whole situation is batshit insane from her POV.

Subaru is mostly just — kept safely away from her, for his own sake. Elsa isn’t allowed anywhere near him, by virtue of her being a guts-obsessed serial killer, even if she DOES have Meili and Emilia vouching for her to behave herself from now on. Elsa is fine with this, but she sure doesn’t understand the second half of that sentence.