Some kind of meme

[itsalluseless]

Okay, I can't currently brain enough to do a proper writeup of Battler's heart but I know people were interested to know what kind of changes they made so ASK ME ABOUT THEM HERE??

Also Battler recently made it to 10k comments so let's have a general question/relationship dot meme here too :|a

Comments

[ex_resignation472]

What changes did Fang make?

ALSO DOTS I GUESS

[itsalluseless]

Like everyone who talked to forest NPC and convinced him to let them pass, Fang made Battler feel more comfortable about admitting when he's not all right and being more open about his feelings in general. Since Fang was particularly cool about it and there were hugs, he'll think of her especially as someone he can trust and rely on!

Fixing the broken table in the boiler room restored some of Battler's ~hot-blooded shounen spirit~, though since it was done with materials from the study he'll mostly be saving it for things like games and possible logic arguments.

Cleaning up the logic error room actually had a somewhat negative impact, since the mess in there was related to his own (failed) attempts at solving it. Cleaning up some of those signs kind of leaves him feeling like he didn't try hard enough. But since he already knows he was rescued from there in canon and how it was done, it doesn't matter all that much.

The wedding/funeral room was related to Battler's parental issues, his mother's death and his father's remarriage shortly after. Tearing down the decorations means that he won't feel the need to act like he's more over those issues than he really is. With the photographs turned down, he's also more likely to redevelop some of his old resentment toward his father and stepmother.

Finally, finding a key and reaching the True Heart gave Fang a big relationship boost! Which brings me to dots:



give me some dots in return?

[ex_resignation472]

The same, essentially! Though the heart game helped. She realized Battler is similar to her in some ways. Maybe not in how they handle things—she can tell from being in the boiler room that he is a much lower level individual by default—but since he's stubborn and keeps going anyway, it really is something. But the difference is that she can tell he doesn't give up at the heart of it all, which ... well, Fang does. So a large part of her admires him a lot after all of that! Something he said in their first game together about it being why she's a knight has stuck with her the entire time she's been in Aather, and honestly, it's why she didn't throw in the towel right away. BEYOND THAT, she is generally fond of him and does genuinely want to get to know him a lot better than she does, especially since there's a part of him that he was afraid she'd judge him for. There's a part of her that's like that (actually, she's convinced it's all of her, even if that isn't true in the least but Fang focuses on the negatives), so yeah.

MORE THAN ANYTHING his own weird LET'S SHOUNEN FORTH mindset is really good for her to identify as someone she wants to be around and his opinion matters a lot.

OH RIGHT A QUESTION. Can I know how the Raven/Battler/Beato thing happened? I missed it!

[itsalluseless]

Oh man the story of the threesome. It's...more or less been building from the day Battler arrived in Aather, in a way! Raven and Beato were in an established relationship, and Battler's arrival kind of seemed like it would throw things off balance since he and Beato were together in their home canon? But of course at the beginning, Battler didn't remember that and Beato only let him know of the more antagonistic sides of their relationship because she has Issues. Raven was the person who kept defending her to Battler more than anyone and insisted that she wasn't as bad as she seemed and he should just give her a chance. Why he helped his unknowing romantic rival so much was kind of a mystery to Raven himself, but it was kind of a mixture of him having his own Issues and him finding out he actually liked Battler. The two of them became pretty good friends, even though the tension from the love triangle kind of kept building as Battler became more aware of things.

Eventually Battler did figure out that Beato like-liked him (which he probably couldn't have done without Raven's help) and there were occasional makeouts and such as a result. But Battler didn't feel comfortable actually going anywhere with it because she was already dating Raven, and he has Opinions on cheating! So things were just kind of weird and awkward for a fairly long time because none of them really wanted to address the situation they were in. Then there were things like Goldie's kissing game where Battler had a moment of gay panic and Raven kissed him to shut him up about it, and Three's soulmate game where Battler and Raven got an empathic link and somehow that led to them and Beato playing truth or dare, and the way every single conversation they had kept devolving into accidental innuendo because they are huge dorks. Oh, and Raven's teammates kept telling him that a threesome would be the best solution to things.

Then fairly recently Battler had something about epiphany about certain things regarding Beato and their canon and things, and talking about that with Raven first led to them finally talking about how they both had feelings for Beato. They agreed that even though it might not be easy, they would both try their best to be okay with sharing her since it was clear she didn't want to be forced to choose either one and they both wanted her to be happy more than anything! And Battler ended up kind of confronting Raven about his ridiculously low self-esteem and emotionally topping him into trying not to be so hard on himself. Which would be when Raven realised that he kind of had a crush on Battler and started to think that a threesome didn't seem like such a bad idea after all. But he just assumed that nothing could ever come of it and tried to forget it.

AND THEN at Raven's legacy party everyone got really drunk and Sieh told Raven he should kiss Battler and use being drunk as an excuse if it went badly. When he did just that, he and Battler were both surprised to realise that Battler was actually pretty okay with it. So a little later when Raven and Beato were taking things to Raven's private legacy room, they ended up inviting Battler along. After that, there was another short period of avoiding talking about things, but they did manage to agree that yes, it wasn't just a one-off thing and that they were all in a relationship together!

AND THAT IS THE TALE OF THE THREESOME wow this got long.

[ex_resignation472]

... Re: cheating, does Battler not know that Beato was dating other people? (SORRY THAT PART LITERALLY MADE ME CRACK UP.)

[itsalluseless]

HE DOES NOT. She...never bothered to tell him.

#beatriceproblems

[ex_resignation472]

I hope you know the Very Serious Talk Suzaku had with Battler in the one plot event was with the assumption he knew they had a thing. This makes me laugh so hard. Poor Battler.

[itsalluseless]

Battler can be preposterously clueless at times. I love it.

[ex_resignation472]

I don't even know why Suzaku assumed Battler would know.

(No, I know why. Suzaku idealizes Beatrice and why wouldn't she tell him.




Suzaku is a bit clueless, too.)