retellers | TL;CR MEME

TL;CR MEME

1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

screams i am bad at tl;cr but i'll try

lays a thousand hands on your shoulders

where do i start? where do i fucking start holy shit

Their CR is so bizarre? Their first thread was so innocuous with the stupid fish in the emporium and him lying to her face and then once she found that out and ran him down the following day I feel like we were doomed? She thought he was weird, but like a nice kind of weird when she first met him? Like "I don't understand half the stuff you say but it's fine because I like being around you!!!!" kind of way. And then wolf doxxed Kano as being a liar about the Emporium and about stealing stuff, and oof. We're gonna have to split this into like. three parts.

FIRST PART is WEEK ZERO AND ONE which was "hikaru is very loud and shuuya tries to pry her off with a stick and run away for five thousand years". Week zero she chased him down and asked for his name, he never gave it at this point and asked her to do something stupid for it, which she of course took very seriously. That's when she said she would call him Nico-kun until she could earn his name! She knew his name because she has eyes and could read, but it was a stubborn point for her to try and get him to see her as trustworthy. This was also when she took him to the planetarium, and he told her about The Snake. This will be important later and i cry for the rest of my fucking life.

And then Hajime died and whoops. that sucked. No worm for Hikaru.

Week ONE they were tied together and what a miserable week for both of them.

They had that first PC and really, really clashed, where Hikaru was trying really hard to just protagonist speech her way into trying to get an emotion that wasn't Lying out of him, and he wasn't having it. He wasn't entirely dishonest, but he was extremely hard to read, and she is earnest and stupid and emotional and there was a lot of tension there and she didn't quite know how to approach it, but she knew he wanted her to give up and that was the one thing she refused to do. I think this is when he started showing his true colors pretty damn fast, where she got the idea that he WANTED people to think of him as disgusting, and him admitting pretty casually what he thought of himself and getting legitimately dark with his mood when she refuted that.

But then he called her efforts to try to break through to him her winning their game, and that really upset her, because at least to her by this point she had only seen it as herself just trying really hard and not letting him drag her down. But he started shooting her the really evil looks, and she just chased him down and he ran like the big baby he is but she promised him that she wouldn't give up on him even though he'd given up on himself, and that she would earn his name but not if he was gonna just treat it like a game, and that she wanted to be his friend. And, you know, him calling her stupid about 7000 ways and saying it wasn't worth it. And that made her sad? The more he shot those evil, dead looks at her, the more she knew she was at least going in the right direction, but she was really scared for him and "What could be so horrible in your mind that you really don't want to tell the truth to anybody?" being shot down point blank was a pretty big red flag for her.

They then avoided each other for 4 days and were intensely miserable because they could barely walk, because kano wanted nothing to do with her. neato.

So then trial happened. :')

She saw him starting to just be himself As Kano Does, and between his actions and the evidence she panicked, and her trust in him broke long enough that she used an item on him, to force him to be nice for 24 hours. She 100% did this assuming it would help him to not be quite so brittle with people and open up a little more so that he wouldn't get any weird looks but OH BOY THAT SURE DIDN'T HAPPEN..... she was Extremely Concerned and though it wasn't working for a while, outside a few moments, but the most she tried to do was just stay next to him and help him feel a little less physically miserable. She was frustrated with him, but moreso she was just concerned, and she knew at least she could try and just make it a "I'll only be here to help you feel better and then you can do whatever you want" scenario

And then he got scapegoated and oof. She was so angry at everyone? And the guilt that came up with her was pretty bad? She was so, so so so so so so angry. And she went to talk to him first, because she at least wanted him to know what had happened, and she saw just how VULNERABLE he was and MISERABLE he was... This is the first time he told her (likely because of the item, which she would later come to hate herself for) he just flat couldn't talk about certain things, and that he was fighting for the people he cared about and that that was all that mattered to him, and the guilt just got the better of her and she doxxed herself. And, you know, he got understandably VERY UPSET, and his reaction was so visceral that it just tore her apart, because she realized that even though she thought she wasn't making progress whatsoever in getting through to him, that she still hurt him horribly in trying to undermine his own feelings, to make him think things he didn't want to think, and to make him feel miserable and exhausted and out of control when he was already under such scrutiny.

"There are better ways of helping, you know? You could just be there. You don't have to do anything, but be." That stuck out for a while and there's a reason it's on his CR chart for week one.

She let his name slip, because she'd known it, and she felt horrible for using it when she promised she wouldn't. But that at least got the conversation a little more to a place where Hikaru was so distraught that it redirected her to think a little more about how she was reacting, the things he was saying. And she tried, she tried her hardest to listen, to ask questions that weren't just useless filler, to take him seriously as he waffled between pulling her leg and actually saying things that sounded genuine. He told her he had to be on his own, and that he couldn't and wouldn't say why, and asked if she would leave him alone. She said no and we got this important little exchange:

"I'm still going to believe in you, Shuuya-kun.

There's a lot I can ask of you, without... making you do any of that."

"Will you still believe in me? Tomorrow, when I...

You know I have my reasons for things, right? Even if I can't explain it, even if nobody can understand it.

I haven't given up on fixing everything, both here and back home, even if it has to happen after my death."

She then promised that even if everything went wrong, she wouldn't forget him, and she'd try to find him. When he tried to shoot her down saying that, no dumbass the dead are dead, that wasn't something she'd accept. She knew she was going home to be dead, she knew at this point a few others were dead too... so she held on to a stubborn belief that, unless proven otherwise, there had to be a way. And that she would look for a way, and that she would try to find him no matter what. But, more importantly, she started pushing out of that protag go-getem attitude, and though she hated it personally, she still decided that his desires as a person and the mess that she'd learned was more important.

"If I can live, then so can you. And if I die... you can call me stupid for the rest of eternity, and I'll deserve every second of it. But I wanna do everything we can...

I'm not going to give up on finding how to fix this place, but... if I can find you out there, then I will! And if you don't want to come back, after all that...

I'll let you go."

And he told her that, if she found him after he died, that he would follow. And he promised that. And she was fucking MISERABLE FOR WEEKS. The entire conversation was good for her, to see how horribly she'd hurt him trying to do something good, and it got her to tell a bunch of people what happened so that everyone wouldn't be so "oh kano he's so ornery he was asking for it" vibe... plus Hikaru has such problems with guilt when another life is on the line, lmao.

This is only week one and I already have to split this up i hate this ANYWAY EXECUTION --->> WEEK FOUR I GUESS

SO HE TRIED TO KILL JEANNE AND THAT WAS HORRIFYING but the fact that he got to end on his own terms, while awful to watch, was something that she'd think about for a while after that. She wasn't able to send him messages because haha goats.......... but she kept being honest about what happened, and she got slapped at least once for it and yelled at a few other times, but she took it, because he got killed for her making a bad decision so what did it matter if she had to take the fire for something she was responsible for?

His letter disguised through Schwann/Raven just made that about 10000000 worse, which i feel was his intention. But since Schwann had expressed a similar sense of disappointment in her over something somewhat related, she didn't think anything suspicious of it. She just assumed she was failing more people than she originally thought, and she buckled down twice as hard, which really sucked because she was also losing a shitton of memories because I was very mean to her.

Anyway... she sure didn't forget him, and she sure was PANICKED AS SHIT about forgetting him. And then she died. :') Neat. Time to make part 2 oh my god

So uh WEEK FIVE. A lot happened week five and im so tired card

She'd just come in from being cursed by Emet-Selch's Wonder Powers to be calm no matter what so she was sitting on a week's worth of pent up emotions, plus she splintered, PLUS she GOT KILLED and she had to just BE CALM WHILE GETTING KILLED and while it could have been much worse (how????) it still left her in a really shaky spot, so when she ended up in the graveyard she just ran for the hills

When he showed up, she assumed he was there to get angry at her or poke fun at her or tear her apart for all the stupid stuff she'd done or for dying when she promised to stay alive and find him. And she was just so utterly tired at this point that she lost a lot of her fight. He tried to get her to do something stupid to get her mind focused on something else, and she shot him down, and he bitched back at her and she STUCK A SWORD IN HIS FACE SHE WAS SO SO SO TIRED........

This was an important crack, I think, in where they were. That he'd finally hit a big enough nerve to force something out of her that wasn't just protagonist bullshit, that she slipped on her temper without slipping on her ideals or what she wanted to do, and he still challenged her and made her voice out how she was feeling, and made her monolgue and even tried to prompt her to lash out. But he refused to lash out at her, saying it wasn't worth it, so what reason did she have to do the same to him?

She got to try to voice her reasoning for why she kept coming back, and why she wouldn't raise her sword against him even though during that thread there was literally a sword there, because she absolutely could kill him at any point, and she knew it, and he now knew it, but she had no reason to hate him. She hated a lot of stuff that he did and said and whatever it was that made him the person he was, but Shuuya himself? No, she didn't hate that.

He dropped the act for a bit, and they were both so utterly tired that she was able to keep herself honest without shoving into his space which was SO IMPORTANT THAT SHE LEARNED TO BACK OFF AND IM CRYING A LOT CARDORI, but that she let him quietly voice things, and she kept her distance, and told him he could call her stupid every second since she broke part of her promise by dying. He asked her if she would stay with him even if she knew he had to kill somebody, and she didn't hesitate to say yes, because that reason was his own.

And FINALLY FIVE WEEKS INTO THIS STUPID GAME HE INTRODUCED HIMSELF BY NAME AND I CRIED ON MY FUCKING KEYBOARD. He said it was a part of himself that couldn't stay, that he had a role, but she accepted that, and let him know she would be there whenever he was ready, and the fact that he went through all this and didn't snap back at her, didn't make it a joke, let himself be dead and bitter and beaten and still kept talking to her made her feel that maybe she was starting to understand him closer to a way he wanted to be understood. Nothing perfect, and she couldn't give him the hatred that made him most comfortable, but she found that crack and she tried to keep an eye on it.

This is about the time that she told him what happened with the curse and why she was off being a giant ass crybaby about it, and he called her out! And considering Kano being Kano he actually did it very nicely, even though she was extremely embarrassed about it. But she recognized that he was trying to do something nice for her in a weird way and it really was touching.

And then they held hands consensually. This was also important considering /sweats at kagepro lore later/ and hikaru wouldn't know how important this was but aaaaaaaa

She found about his letter crimes later that day, and that... really hurt. Really really hurt, to find out that he was the reason Bucky probably died, that he was the reason Claude ended up having a breakdown, that he was the reason she thought Raven was so upset at her. But she had an idea why, and she was just so exhausted that she couldn't be bothered to fight him over this and was too guilty to really bring it up and it's very sad. :(

And then the play happened and I HAVE TO MAKE ANOTHER ONE OR I'M GOING TO FUCKING DIE CARD anyway play gets its own section and you fucking know why

Anyway.

That sure happened!

It was not supposed to be anything serious, she went into it absolutely expecting it to be stupid fun and maybe they'd commit some arson and it wasn't a big deal, and i think we got... checks thread..... we got 11 comments in and she caught him drawing parallels on purpose, so she just internally went "fuck it" and drew from her own, and THIS GODDAMN PLAY.

The more they went through this, the more she felt like she was getting a glimpse at him saying a bunch of stuff he normally couldn't say, and that she wasn't supposed to understand entirely, but she made sure all her reactions were absolutely earnest, absolutely what she would choose to do, and it stopped becoming a play really fast and started becoming ?????? WHAT WAS THIS CARD???? I DON'T KNOW?????

The boy who was a dragon, and the girl who would become one, and they both were about ready to punch god in the face.

There was concern and there was EMPATHY and there was this glimpse into his reasoning that shook her because she felt like she actually understood, and she was kind of lowkey terrified a little? That she didn't want to scare him away now that he'd shared something like that? And she didn't know if it was a lie or not, but after their last couple threads she knew the only way she was gonna figure that out was just by being 1) very stubborn and 2) very patient.

This stupid play came up a lot later and I think we both hated it every time because neither of us intended that to turn into such an intense metaphor and YET HERE WE FUCKING ARE.

He got her to start Truth or Dare at the ball and didn't even play :T but he at least interacted and it felt like they could talk a little and not have it be like pulling teeth. And then he went and set bucky's clothes on fire!!!!!!!

Her coming to his defense was supposed to be such a simple thing, whacking bucky in the nuts and getting him to back up enough for kano to like. not run, but hopefully to get them to not be violent? except hikaru had yet to really accept that kano is, in fact, a giant ass baby, and we set the tailor on fire, but she absolutely would have thrown down to keep him from getting killed without letting him walk away from his own responsibility for being super stupid.

WEEK SIX Kano got a bunch of his actually desired CR back, hooray! She was really happy he had Mob and Elsa in particular because Kano seemed just genuinely happy around Mob in a way he wasn't around most other people so she was like yay :D but wow wounds were sure a thing!

Why did kano ever play charades with hikaru. She is so stupid. but they gave it a shot? And she was struggling, but instead of asking for the answers, she took a step back and tried a different approach, which he accepted and i still hurt about that. This is the first time she got a genuine smile from him, and the first time he told her about Tenmei, and that he made a promise to people he cared about (to Shiro, Goat and herself) and something about the two of them going across the bridge, and the fact that that promise meant enough to him that he was keeping it in mind like that was really encouraging to her, that even if his reasons were selfish and a Big Mystery, at least he was letting someone care enough to help him a little. She was trying her best to be careful in these conversations if she felt him backing off, and I think this is when she was trying to encourage him more to just tell her outright if she was being stupid? This definitely started the forehead poke trend which she came to quickly accept and find endearing.

He then dropped her in the dunk tank and ran away and she found him and bodyslammed him into the ocean and they were sopping wet the rest of that day whoops...

The following day I think was when they talked in the leader meeting room? Which was mostly her trying to be helpful with his neck wound, but then he touched her and it hurt like living shit, and he just froze up, and she got the distinct feeling of something being Wrong at that point, when he didn't even move and all he did was apologize. They dropped charades to him writing on her hand, then quickly dropped from that to him writing in general, and she absolutely felt the importance of that - that it had turned into a serious enough moment that he wanted to be understood, and that he was choosing a method of conversation to be understood when he himself could not talk.

The dragon came up here and we both wanted to die. But it got them talking about fate, and about God, and about what was waiting for them, and Hikaru chose to tell him about her position as the Pillar, and voice her view and let him openly question it, that she got to admit what exactly she remembered and that she was pretty sure she was dying, and that if she couldn't remember what it was that brought her into that decision as the Pillar, then she was going to lead an entire world to ruin - her "dragon".

And the first fucking thing he did was try to reassure her? AND THAT MEANT A LOT???? And they bounced back to the dragon play, and they did back and forth to try and explain it to one another even if they disagreed, and it really did feel to Hikaru they were finding their own way to communicate, and she was really relieved that she could just be someone he could talk to, because ultimately she realized his feelings of worthlessness were so deeply rooted that

well you know

"Of course I want that chance.
But I wouldn't know what to do with myself after all of this is over.
What sort of life am I supposed to lead?
At least when I die, I die knowing my siblings are safe and alive.
And I get to see my mother, and my mom, and my sister again.
I'm already very tired."

It was complicated, and she got her first glimpses into something being complicated with his mom, but thankfully she is not that bright so she left it alone for then, because him opening up about his family and what it is he cared so much about that he'd be willing to just die for and be so miserable and detached for was very humanizing.

The end of week six came around, and they were all having that bonfire to keep themselves distracted from hoping that the living killed the right people, and she tried to be a little cheery at him since he looked like he didn't want to be there all that much, but then he got that Look and she just went fuck charades and gave him the option of the PHS so that he could have privacy without making everyone look at him weird, because she wanted to recognize that he was in a weird position and that she respected him enough to give him an option to not just sit and be an angry bag of bees. So they talked! And there was a lot while they talked and most of it was just batting back and forth between their differences in views, and then she told him she thought he was like him and that sure happened! But it gave her a chance to show him that, yes, if asked her to stop, she would stop, and that he could draw some boundaries so long as they were clear and she would try to maneuver them, and that she trusted him to tell her when enough was enough. Which, you know, considering the forehead poke was very well established, she felt he at least got the idea.

Trial was awful! Execution was awful! Kano was miserable and a blanket burrito but she stayed next to him the entire time because she knew he was considering all of their attempts useless and she told him she would have hope for him, even if she was scared, too. The fact that he bothered to stay and watch without just fucking off into the distance showed her enough to feel that he really was very concerned about what was gonna happen, and having him at least know that she was aware without saying anything became something of a mission for her.

looks at endgame and wheezes in exhaustion.... anyway. time for part 4......

First, his endgame.

She got to experience the snake, and the existential dread, and she said fuck it to the snake because the dragon play haunts our lives and she was just repeating that, because as soon as she heard the hissing she remembered the story he told her and she was just like Oh No. But she stayed stubborn, and instead of mind torture she got to meet baby shuuya? And all the abuse storyline? AND IT HURT HER A LOT? To know the exact reasons for his scars and some of the ways he acted, and to know he was such an openly kind kid, and she absolutely did not have any maturity to argue with a 6 year old over whether his abusive mother was kind or not, but she at least showed him the compassion of understanding why he wanted to remember her as kind, because that memory was all he had left. She say this lonely, beaten, fearful boy that just had his world turned upside down and his only person that controlled how he felt and what he could do was gone, and Hikaru knew she couldn't interfere with that. He would have to find his own way and agency and so she didn't offer that, she just offered to be his friend. And the line about his happiness, about remembering what happiness is like even if happiness forgets about you for a while. That was important! She wanted to put some means of hope in him, even if it was just a fragment, because a fragment could still be held onto, and for as much as Kano liked to just let shit go and blow stuff off, if he truly chose to hang onto something it'd be like superglue. See: his petty grudge with Bucky. She has no idea how much this adventure embarrassed the shit out of him but we'll get to that later. She did the best she could, she showed him kindness and tried not to be overbearing with it, and he let her go.

Her endgame..... :')

Most of this will be probably in your feedback since she was in an observation role and we also aren't done yet weeps, but she was forced to sit back and play out the worst nightmare she had, of becoming her dragon, of returning to the Pillar only to have everything fall apart due to her own memoryloss and despair, and she had to pull Kano into that with people he loved, and she was just like "this is cruel and I hate this????" the entire time. But the most she could do was realize just kind of position she was in, and reach out with what little power she could to try and keep Kano realizing what exactly was going on, to keep him as out of the dark as possible without keeping him from making mistakes that would get his loved ones killed or keep him trapped there forever.

And damn diddly he sure did try! The scene with the mashin in particular was very good and I hate him. But he showed to the mashin, to Hikaru, that he knew EXACTLY what he cared about, that he COULD voice it, that somewhere in that giant sack of depressed potatoes there was a sliver of something that kept him going even if it was blackened and hollow. All the while she tried to be as gentle as possible, knowing the situation was garbage because haha yeah she had to do it too! And she gave him that nice little moment for a bit, of seeing his family and seeing her family, and that he kept reaching out to try to save her like he tried to save Ayano was heartbreaking, because Hikaru knew he couldn't. She wouldn't be able to save him that easily, and she knows if this were her fate, he wouldn't be able to save her that easily, either, and she hated hitting him with reality of it, but she refused to sugar coat it. WE STILL HAVE TO FINISH THIS THREAD OR TALK IT OUT I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HE CHOSE TO DO ULTIMATELY BECAUSE THAT... IS IMPORTANT... I know he is gunning towards "fuck this" but whether he just yeets into the distance or kills her or tries to grab her and THEN yeet into the distance is up for grabs and I have no idea.

anyway

They're back now! wowzers. She can tell he's just kind of tuned out so Friday was just nap day. But then trial happened! And it was pretty like, simple to start, and it was whatever, and she was glad he was there and that they were trying to be a team? And then the stupid... knives thing.... lmao. He wasn't talking to her at this point still and she had no idea why :( But she used the PHS gag again, assuming it was something specific, and he caved and used it which was a relief because she though he was genuinely mad and that convinced her that no, it was something else. But she voiced her opinion, and why his choice wasn't stupid, and he told her hey, you're telling the wrong person, and she took that like 100mph immediately and made a PSA in the middle of trial and a bunch of people got snippy at her!!!!!! And she was MAD about that! They weren't all entirely incorrect, but they weren't correct either, and she found herself in a complicated place where she knew she couldn't just force things about understanding or she was literally just repeating what she did to Shuuya for the first two weeks???? She at least made sure to keep her mouth shut when she knew a true answer would say more than Shuuya would ever want her to say, and she told Shuuya to tell her to stop if she went to far, which he did, and she stopped! She made sure to clarify that she wouldn't stop standing up for him, but at least in that manner that embarrassed him so bad, she wouldn't cross that line again. But oof that made her a little bitter.

We are still working on their saturday thread and i want to die thinking of them even talking on Sunday.............. she will let him go home, though. She will ask to hug him, and accept his answer regardless, and she will let him go without stopping, but she will try to ask him that, if for some reason, he finds his way to fight his god, and he finds his happy ending where he doesn't have to die, that maybe she can see him again. Because she wants to see him smile that genuine smile, no matter how it looks, and she wants to see him victorious, and it hurts to know he'll die but she can't argue when she's in the same position. So she's trusting him to do exactly what he said he would, and if he makes it out through the other side, he'll know that she's there, and if he ever extends his hand back out to her, she'll take it, and they'll go find another god to fight if they really have to, but she won't let him do it without at least one person in the universe trying to understand why Shuuya is Shuuya.

anyway I'm gonna go lie on the floor now goodnight