#even outside the scope of shipping their bond is so precious

[devoted-assassin]

lol well it's cause I noticed you posting about them recently and wanted to talk to a fellow fan! plus, your blog title yeah. those headcanons are cute! I guess I'll keep asking you things if you don't mind? what are your fave quotes from each of them, individually and to each other?

Yeah, L/N kinda held me hostage recently, so I’m usually just posting incoherently here 😭

I’m always here to talk about them!

I’m not great at remembering exact quotes, but Ichika’s terrible attempt at a pun always sticks with me.

Ichika: you’re so down to earth, Shiho.

Ichika: or should I say down to play bass?

Shiho: was that supposed to be funny?

Ichika: was it not?

For something more serious, I just got around to reading Shiho’s fes story this morning, and this quote where she gets so defensive of the npcs shit talking the others is pretty sweet.

For Saki, another goofy one off the top of my head is in a recent card story, she teases Shiho for being now shorter than her by like 1 cm, then she talks about how she’s gonna overthrow Ichika next lmao.

And I can’t remember the exact quote, but Honami standing up for the band against their label manger guy in little bravers was a great moment — especially for a character that had such a tough time standing up for herself. Her collapsing afterwards like “did I really just do that” is so real pfttt.

Also this:

As for the whole group, I always love when they reminisce about their childhood together — as someone whose had some of the same friends since I was five, there’s something just so special about those that share so many memories with you as a kid. It’s definitely a different type of bond, and they speak so fondly of each other from when they were kids.

[shattered-glass-shattered-mind]

*sigh* So it’s like this.

A while back, Muse and I got permission from Mama to ship Zane, the character of hers that Muse and I are disproportionately and probably unhealthily deeply attached to for reasons neither of us can puzzle out, with Locah in an alternate version of one of Locah’s AUs. We’ll just call the ship ZxL. Keep shit simple. She gave it to us with the added disclaimer that her own participation in it would be minimal because the concept didn’t grab her interest. That part wasn’t a problem--Muse and I are the exact same way, we can’t do dick all with anything unless we find it interesting, and we can’t fully choose what all we do find interesting, even if we want to.

Muse loved ZxL, and so did I. We immediately began trying to do things with it, to build the ship and to try and get Mama interested. It didn’t work. In fact, all it did was annoy her and stress her out. This didn’t come to light until I pried it out of her, because I had told her several times to tell me if she was uncomfortable and I would back off, but she didn’t until she told me about another aspect of ZxL that had been bothering her, and because she has a tendency to bottle things up I suspected there was more that she wasn’t telling us. Once she let it all out we were able to resolve the problem and ultimately Muse and I bottled the ship. It was simply too early in the story and Zane was wrapped up in too much spoilers for us to work with it. We still look at it from time to time but I’ve forbidden Muse from unbottling it until and unless Mama gives us the green light. Hell I haven’t even let her add it to our shipping masterlist, even under a redacted label so that nobody would know it was specifically Zane and Locah.

In the main storyline, Zane is shipped with another OC of Mama’s, whom we’ll call...fuck, let’s call her Aphrodite. We’ll call that ship ZxA. I personally think it’s adorable, even though I know very little about it because Mother has kept it mostly hidden so she can reveal it properly in-story. Aph is a very interesting character, she’s sweet and strong and works well with the surrounding characters, she and Zane look great together, and Zane turns into an absolute dorky mess around her, which is fucking adorable.

Muse, however, is for some reason Really Fucking Salty about ZxA and about Aphrodite in general. She won’t tell me why, and I think that even she herself doesn’t know. After all, she has no logical reason to be. If you’re thinking it’s because we wish we could ship Locah with Zane in the MS instead, you would actually be mistaken. Locah already has an MS ship, which Muse and I adore to pieces and which is the best choice to advance Locah’s storyline and even a few other characters’ (including Quill, one of Mama’s major characters). ZxL, on the other hand, would not work well in the MS, and Hell, something about it just feels wrong to me. Don’t misunderstand, I really do like it, but...something feels off. And neither Muse nor I can identify what. So, if that’s not the reason, what is?

Again, I don’t know and I think Muse doesn’t either. But I have a theory. It’s a problem that we haven’t been able to articulate, not even to ourselves, but a problem that’s existed for quite a while and that we’ve only just fully identified.

There is an imbalance in Zane and Locah’s relationship. Zane is incomprehensibly important to Locah. While they don’t love him romantically, they love him more than they can ever express or even understand. What they feel for him is something they have never felt for anyone else. He is utterly precious and irreplaceable to them in multiple ways. Throughout all the conversations I’ve had with Mama about Zane and Locah’s character interactions, I have come up with many things that either display or galvanise this, but I’ve gotten little reciprocation. Hell, I’ve gotten little reciprocation on even just run-of-the-mill friendship aspects.

I know that kind of love is a very big thing to ask for and I do not want Mama to force it. It needs to come from Zane naturally, or else that will be unfair to both me and Mama, both of our Muses, and both of our characters. But out of everything I’ve read (and I spent several hours picking through our Skype conversation reading every conversation we had about Zane, to make sure my memory wasn’t warped), there is nothing that Mama has shown us that expresses how or why Locah would be truly special to Zane. They are indeed close friends, yes, practically family, and he truly does love them. Mama decided on that of her own accord. But this has been mostly told rather than shown, and due to that I cannot help but question the degree to which Zane cares about Locah.

The way I see it there is nothing unique about their relationship from his perspective. There is nothing they can offer him that he can’t get from someone else, and they’re already giving him everything they have to offer. And this is something that I’ve worried about for a while and that Muse has fretted and cried over. I feel as though Locah’s appreciation for Zane is, at best, taken for granted, or at worst, unwanted, probably because it’s too intense and smothering. And if events follow current trends, Locah themselves will begin to fret and cry over it too, in-story.

I am prepared for there to be an imbalance in their relationship--again I say, love of that kind and magnitude is a very big thing to ask for. I just need to know if the imbalance really is supposed to be as significant as it currently seems, so that either it can be fixed...or I can make peace with it. Either way, I won’t have to worry anymore.

But to return to my original point; I don’t know for sure if this is the reason Muse is bitter towards Aphrodite. It’s simply our best guess at the moment. I’m trying to remind Muse to reserve judgement given that as of presently our current view of ZxA and Aph’s role in the story is very narrow, and she’s trying to keep that in mind, but unfortunately it isn’t working. As of presently, Muse can’t help but feel as though Aphrodite is eclipsing/replacing Locah, because story-wise Locah was there first and bonded most strongly with three characters: Zane, Match, and Kitten. And due to their bond with Zane, they grew to hate the story’s villain, Quill, very strongly. And then much later on in the story Aph floats into their lives and Zane is instantly smitten with her for seemingly little to no reason. No reason we can see anyways, but again, our scope is very narrow because Mama’s kept so much quiet. And for someone as antisocial and science- and logic-oriented as Zane, he really doesn’t seem like a ‘love at first sight’ type of guy. Of course, Mama knows her own character better than we do, and we remember that, but it still doesn’t make sense to us due to our limited information. In addition to this, Aph also bonds with Match and Kitten, and grows to hate Quill very much very rapidly.

Now, there are two things that make this jealousy of Aph completely ridiculous. 1) In the meta sense, Aphrodite came before Locah. Mama had already made her and established all this before we even met. So if anything, that makes Locah the intruder. 2) Aph is guilty of doing nothing more than...pretty much exactly what Locah themselves has done. They both grow to care about Zane, Match, and Kitten very much very fast, and they both grow to hate Quill very much very fast. The only difference is that Zane’s feelings for Aph are much stronger, more visible, and develop much quicker, and Aph is more important to Zane. And because Aph has a special bond with Zane when Locah and Muse both yearn so badly for Locah to have that sort of bond with Zane themselves (although not romantic), all of that is causing Muse to project her own insecurities about Locah, their relationship with Zane, and their place in the story onto Aph.

See, because Locah and Aphrodite’s roles are so similar, to Muse that makes Aph the greatest threat, if that makes sense. If Aph already bonds with Zane and Succeeds Where Many Have Failed by convincing him he’s not worthless and giving him the confidence to ultimately escape from Quill, if she already bonds with Match and Kitten and becomes The Positive Mother Figure/Role Model both of them need, if she already swears herself against Quill and vows to rescue Zane from him No Matter What--then what the Hell is Locah’s purpose??? What do you need them for??? Why are they in the story?

It all comes back to our longstanding insecurity that Locah is irrelevant and non-integral to the plot. Unnecessary. Disposable. That we’re unnecessary and disposable to the ArrowFam. I have always struggled with feeling like the expendable one, the outsider, the interloper, in any friend group I’ve ever been in. And our other character Witch is supposed to be our mouthpiece for that God damn it, not Locah. Plus, as a Muse, one of the greatest insults you can throw at her is ‘this character is irrelevant to the plot’. I think that Locah is integral to the plot and it’s just anxiety riling us up on that front, but unfortunately we’re failing to remember how.

So my current working theory is that if Locah did become more important to Zane, then Muse’s saltiness towards Aph would finally go away and I/we could appreciate her and ZxA the way I wish we could. Not more important than Aph or anyone else, just more important in general--for them to have that one special something that they can offer him. Because right now there are a number of special somethings Locah gets from Zane, but nothing the other way round. And since he means so much to us, we just want them to be able to do that for him (and they want that too). But this is the kind of thing we need to just let play out naturally and see how it works out--neither Mama, Muse, nor I can force it or plan it, and it’s no guarantee. And if that isn’t the problem anyways, well, then we’re back to square one. And as I’ve told Mama before, I love Aph, so I hate feeling like this, even if most (if not all) of it is coming from Muse.

And standard disclaimer: This is merely what I see. I’m not accusing Mama of not caring enough about me, or Muse, or Locah or their connection to Zane or their role in her story. I know for certain that she loves and appreciates me very much and that she adores Locah, and both of those things mean more to me than I can ever express. And for all I know Mama could have stuff she’s planning on putting in the story that shows how important Locah is to Zane, that she simply hasn’t told us about. But I’m afraid that the evidence Muse and I currently have is not enough to keep us from worrying.