#like i'd prefer if komaeda just woke up with all of his baggage from the game and had to work through it organically to like...

[windcarvedlyre]

@1loer OH GOOD SHIT

I like most of 2.5 but I've always been a little salty about the World Destroyer thing. Since Komaeda's allergic to vulnerability and shoved Hinata away after he opened up too much it feels a bit... counterproductive? to end everything with 'don't worry man, I'm not actually Hinata and everything that just happened was private'. It'd be way more interesting if it was him, imo- it would do fascinating things to early-post-NWP komahina- and you're absolutely right that he's not the only person in the class who'd have horrible baggage to work through. I've always wondered what happened with Tsumiki considering her reversion to being an Ultimate Despair.

That time loop poll really got me thinking about Komaeda in one; I think that thematically he'd be a fascinating character to force into a groundhog day situation.

His entire thing (or a large chunk of it) is that he's spent his entire life at the mercy of external forces, right? He's just had to roll with whatever fate throws at him, never really earning anything positive or negative and his existence potentially being dangerous to anyone around him. So he's ended up with this inner contradiction where he seems desperate to be important and be valued and loved by others, but he also sort of displays learned helplessness regarding his own fate and has absorbed societal ideas around the worth of talented vs talentless people to an extreme degree. Some part of him has never given up on himself but he only pursues being impactful in a sort of vicarious way, trying to further other people's growth to the point of destroying himself.

So I'm fascinated by the idea of a story where he literally can't. Where the only way to move forward involves him acting for himself just as much as he does for others. Post-NWP can already be like this to some extent- he 'finally' managed to sacrifice himself for hope but died terrified and has to process that now, surrounded by people who know more of his baggage now and won't let him do that again- but the way he'd be the only consistent factor in a timeloop fic could be really compelling.

He'd be forced to come to certain realisations by himself and slowly, painfully pull himself out of them, and having him have good experiences with others only to loop again and have budding friendships reset would be a horrible way to make him internalise how much he wants their company, not just to help them from 50 metres away.