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vasito-de-leche · 8 months

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Could we have some Zima relationship headcanons :]

;R1999 ZIMA - Relationship Headcanons

Compilation of headcanons about Zima in a romantic relationship.

ofc you can nonnie, ty for the request! Zima was the other character that got me into the game so he's very dear to me

also also, I'm not sick anymore so I have some steam to work on requests, hehe <3 still working on the sleepy fics though, don't worry yall!

I haven't done a proper analysis/HCs post on Zima yet, so as usual I'll be talking a little about his character before getting into the whole relationship aspect of things!

The portrayal of Zima as a stereotypical, shy introvert feels extremely reductive to me, especially when it's all attributed to his speech pattern - the pauses, the stuttering... None of it is an indication of timidness. We have to remember that Zima's native language, like many other characters, is not english and he struggles when speaking it. That's the reason he speaks in such a way, there's a language barrier he's constantly fighting against in order to communicate with others and yet he's clearly trying.

There's an emphasis on loneliness, isolation and avoidance in his character that is impossible to ignore, which seems to add to the whole portrayal of Zima as a "shy baby". But again, this is something that comes from an important part of his life - the exile he went through. Him being socially inept is a result of a punishment, years of being alone with no one but animals to keep him company. It doesn't come from a sense of inferiority or insecurity such as Charlie, but an absolute lack of human contact.

When examining his voicelines, we also see that he's opinionated - criticizing the Tsar and the poor living conditions of the people, speaking of the beauty of nature and so on and so forth. He explicitly writes poems on any surface like trees, rocks and snow, even if he knows they'll be washed away overtime.

I understand that it's extremely easy to dismiss Zima when it comes to romance because of all of these details, his isolating ways and all, but he's a poet first and foremost.

While he may not be romantic in the more traditional sense we're used to, he's extremely insightful and takes a lot of care to appreciate the small details that often go overlooked, but that make life feel more lively and rich. In the context of relationships, given his age and his lifestyle, Zima would bring a completely different type of vibe - for comparison, most of the characters I talked about already lean towards high emotions, the fun of discovering love for the first time, etc etc...

Pavia's love is a whole rollercoaster on his own because there's always the chance of either getting hurt or having the time of your life, Forget Me Not's feels exactly like being hungover in the morning. But Zima's love is more like coming home after a long trip, knowing there's a warm meal waiting for you. It's familiar and calm.

On the subject of Zima falling in love.

Zima is used to introspection, so I genuinely believe he has a strong sense of self and a good grasp on his emotions. He quickly realizes when he's fallen for someone and he accepts it easily, despite the lack of romantic interactions in his life. This is because the object of his affections is, most likely, someone he already cherishes, and who puts the effort into maintaining a good friendship with him - so the idea of being in love with them feels natural!

I can't see Zima pursuing romantic relationships with strangers and/or those outside his close circle, not even a surface attraction beyond artistic appreciation for someone's looks. He strikes me as the type who can only fall in love with those he trusts and knows.

And even then, his behaviour wouldn't change much!

It's obvious that he lacks friends, so the very few people he does have are extremely important to him - even so, Zima does not need to constantly orbit around them and will gladly spend days (and weeks if you don't actively seek him out) without seeing them, content to catch up with them whenever their paths cross. He shares what little he has to offer with everyone, practical things and knowledge. Zima is 100% that friend who disappears for months and returns as if nothing happened.

When it comes to you, it's the same. Sure, if you ask him to stay a little longer then he'll oblige you. And if you're the chatty type or find his work interesting, then he'll put the effort into having a conversation with you despite the language barrier. But that's about it, the changes aren't noticeable no matter how much he loves you, because all of that happens when no one is looking.

If you happen to stroll around in the wilderness, getting lost in the forest and all, then you might find your name carved on trees along with many, many poems. If you don't speak or read russian, then all you'll be able to recognize is your name - the very first thing Zima taught you in his native tongue - but these are all declarations of love.

The animals are kinder to you, curious even. They follow and treat you like an old friend, as if they knew you, because everything they've heard from you comes from Zima himself. They speak about everything and anything with him, after all.

Zima lacks the initiative to confess or even consider being in a proper relationship with you - I insist, he's genuinely content with being a close friend - but he also lacks the restraint to keep his feelings to himself and thus puts them on display in the only way he knows how: as a poorly kept secret between himself and the nature that surrounds him.

Not many think of him as a romantic because of how stoic he is, but when Zima is in love, he sees you in every flower, in the snowflakes that fall and kiss his nose. You're the gentle summer breeze and the crystal clear rivers once winter ends. You're right there beside him in spirit when he sees little chicks take flight for the first time, or when all the other forest critters wake up after hibernating. Zima finds beauty in every aspect of nature, and he sees you everywhere he looks.

That said, there's no way he'll take the first step. That's entirely up to you, to pick up all these things and confront him about it - that's the only time he'll be open and direct about his feelings. Because you already know how much you mean to him!

Zima would love to teach you his native language.

This is partially me projecting because english isn't my native language either, but I do like to think that Zima's english is all self-taught. He understands when others speak english, but isn't as fluent when speaking himself. And that's why it's sooo infuriating and frustrating for him, as a creative person and poet.

Not only because it's harder to communicate with others, but because his work and poems - the most important part of himself - can't be fully understood. Therefore HE can't be fully understood. Some translations, while good, can't even come close to their original meaning. As his partner, Zima wants you to understand the full depth of his affections and thoughts.

I do think that the process of learning would also be quite organic, starting with Zima simply pointing out at things and teaching you the way they're named in russian, basic stuff he does unconsciously. If you pick up things on your own from his work and his translations, Zima will be over the moon and would ask you to repeat yourself to make sure your pronunciation is right and because he loves the way his language sounds with your accent.

But if you approach and ask him to properly teach you? He's gone, instantly overwhelmed with emotion and thoughts racing in his head, trying to organize a million different things - what would be the best way to teach you? Should he start with the alphabet? You want to learn this brand new language to understand him better, that simple gesture is a huge deal for him.

Once you have a pretty good grasp on the language, at least enough to have basic conversations with him, it will feel like Zima has gotten a little bolder - addressing you with pet names, being generally more blunt and talkative... But in fact, he's just finally able to express himself in his totality.

This also goes the other way around - Zima would love to learn your own native language, whether it's english or something else. It's yet another language he can use to express himself, so it's a win-win. And I know that it's common for us multilingual people to start confusing and mixing all the languages we speak, but I think Zima would have an easy time keeping them apart, so to speak!

On the subject of Zima and how he acts when he's in a relationship.

You two were close friends before you were lovers, so Zima doesn't feel any sort of pressure to live up to some dating standards like fancy dates, gifts or grandiose displays of affections - once again, it's all about what feels natural. You two know each other more than enough to simply fall into a comfortable routine that works out for both.

He does make the effort to drop by more often, to find a middle ground until he feels more comfortable and used to being around large groups of people. But he would also insist that you accompany for his walks in search of inspiration for his work!

When it comes to showing affection, I think Zima might be a little touchstarved - casual physical contact such as someone hugging or patting him on the back as a greeting still catch him by surprise, but affectionate gestures with those he trusts and loves is a novelty that leaves Zima starry-eyed.

He has a lot of things that he needs to slowly get used to again now that he's not exiled in the middle of the woods, but having you shower him with affection is something that he grows to like rather quickly. When you pet him, pepper his face with kisses, hold his hand when walking or hug him - it doesn't matter, Zima will always stand there, fascinated with the way you make him feel, so very warm and safe.

He would appreciate a warning before being touched, and he always makes sure to ask before initiating anything himself - it doesn't matter how many times you tell him that you're fine with this sort of contact, he's going to ask for permission anyway. Just out of politeness. Personal space is important, after all.

I think Zima would try to stick to a routine he can follow without overwhelming himself, especially if you're the type to need more attention (again, Zima will literally disappear for weeks if left to his own devices). It's more of a short list of things he needs to remember to do before the day is over, the two most important ones being greeting you in the morning and wishing you goodnight.

As for more general aspects of a relationship, I don't think there's much to say! Arguments with him rarely happen because he's patient and careful with his words, he communicates his needs and boundaries as well as he respects yours and all. Zima isn't that talkative, but his more "eccentric" traits are something you're probably used to on account of that initial bond and trust.

#reverse 1999 #reverse: 1999 #reverse 1999 x reader #reverse 1999 headcanons #reverse 1999 zima #basically zima is emotionally mature and responsible so hes OBJECTIVELY the safest option out of all guys if youre looking for a partner #the worst thing that can happen is that he just forgets to tell you that he needs time alone to cool off and he disappears for 2 weeks #BUT YOU KNEW THAT WHEN YOU SIGNED UP TO BE HIS BUDDY SO ITS FINE #i got very fluffy with this one bc i love him so much okay no one look t me #hes not a baby hes a grown ass man!!!! but hes so cute!!!!! and i wanna kiss him!!!!!!!!#i wanna do a post analyzing him and all but my god. i dont know nearly enough abt russian history to even GO there

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batsplat · 3 months

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from the stuff i’ve heard marc’s former honda teammates (dani jorge and pol in their media careers but joan also i guess) say about him now that they’re racing is generally quite positive, both on a professional/riding level but also seemingly on a personal level? i’m wondering what you make of that given that, yeah, marc doesn’t seem like a very good teammate (unless you’re alex who i’ve left off this list). like MARC wants to separate on and off track stuff and it seems like all of these guys are willing too at least in retrospect, so he can’t have truly burned bridges with them. do you have any thoughts on that

(x, x) most riders are quite good at not burning bridges with each other! it's not like marc's competitors don't know that this stuff is kinda part of the game. I mean, all of marc's past teammates were also trying to assert themselves within the internal hierarchy... you can say that certain teammates engage in 'worse' behaviour than others, but, like, these people do understand they're supposed to be fighting each other! a baseline degree of nastiness is factored in and will be accepted to a greater or lesser extent by your rivals - especially when it comes to asserting yourself in intra-team power struggles. you might hate the other guy in the moment, but generally speaking once the active part of the rivalry is done with... you will probably get over it. marc's fellow riders are aware of how ultra-competitive marc is - and to a certain point they do respect it, not least because they're aware that this is part of the reason why marc has ended up with all those titles. it's like dani said, right, it's marc's strong suit. and in general, you do have to say that there's relatively few teammate pairings that devolve to the level of toxicity that it completely destroys the interpersonal relationship. you might need some level of preexisting animosity... most of the purely competitive sins can be healed with a little time

on the 'separating on-track and off-track' thing... well. this is kind of a question of how you define these things, you can say that marc generally speaking isn't going to massively hold grudges over isolated on-track incidents or whatever... but he doesn't just leave his fighting to the track, and personally I've also never felt he can entirely separate these things out in his mind. can you really say his professional and private relationships with other riders are completely detached from one another? mostly, he's opted to be pretty disengaged from his fellow riders as a collective, and obviously that's a good way to not take things too personally... it's all part of the game, isn't it? sometimes it's good to go with the straightforward approach: marc tells you he will make your life hell, he does indeed make your life hell, and then you both move on with your lives and can maybe actually have a pretty amiable relationship with him in years to come. he's not really defying your expectations at any point here, is he now? it's still a question for each of them as individuals as to whether they think that kind of behaviour is above board and acceptable or not... but everyone by now knows that marc plays these games, so it's not like they're going in blind

and it's not like other former teammates are constantly badmouthing each other. I mean... look, let's just cut to the chase here and bring in valentino as our reference point (as he is for the sport as a whole, which by the way does also help create a certain baseline of acceptability for marc's antics - maybe goated riders are just supposed to be dicks who knows). vale's premier class teammates were 1) nobody (2000-01), 2) tohru ukawa (2002), 3) nicky hayden (2003; 2011-12), 4) carlos checa (2004), 5) colin edwards (2005-2007), 6) jorge lorenzo (2008-10; 2013-16), 7) maverick vinales (2017-20), 8) franco morbidelli (2021), and 9) andrea dovizioso (2021). of these eight men (let's just exclude 'nobody' for now), do you know how many had serious complaints at any point about valentino as a teammate? that's right, it's one guy. one. some of valentino's other teammates, like hayden, checa and edwards, were even quite actively positive about their whole experience. this is the thing - you do need some specific circumstances for teammate rivalries to escalate from 'being kinda bitchy every other month' to 'actively fantasising about stabbing each other'. not accounting for natural interpersonal animosity, let's list some circumstantial factors that you need to get a bridge-burning-worthy level of feud:

you need a competitive bike. it is possible to beef about development direction when you're in the trenches (cf late 2010's yamaha, 2020's honda)... but generally speaking this is going to be quite low-level petty stuff, not actual war

you also need something that approaches competitiveness between teammates. if one teammate is unquestionably stronger than the other one, then it is very unlikely that you are going to get any open hostilities. the tension comes when the two sides are close enough to each other for the internal hierarchy to actually be a contentious issue (this is also basic self preservation... if you're the far weaker teammate then you do not want to make the situation troublesome, because then you will be the one to be fired)

following on from those first two things... well, it doesn't hurt to have a title fight in the mix. there are also other ways you can generate competitive stakes, like, for instance, if you and your teammate know that one of you will be out of a job soon. basically, it helps to have something to squabble over

it is maybe easy to forget how rare it is this century for teammates to be fighting directly for a title, let alone over the course of multiple seasons. only two 1-2's since the year 2000 and they're both for the factory yamaha's (though 2006, 2011-13 and 2017 did all prominently feature two factory hondas). which means that for valentino, the prerequisites were met just the once in his premier class career... and yes, the results were pretty memorable, but (topic! for! another! post!) it's worth pointing out that even that relationship was pretty much 'fine' whenever there was a sizeable disparity between the two of them performance-wise (2008 and 2013 are the most clear cut examples). I think the way I'd frame it with marc is that he has a bunch of mildly dubious strategies up his sleeve to assert himself within the team, which don't really deviate that far from what you'd expect from a rider of marc's calibre and only need to be escalated under specific circumstances. that doesn't mean he doesn't have the potential to be ruthless, but up until now it's mostly been a fairly 'acceptable' level of ruthlessness on the intra-team level... and not something that is likely to make other riders actually hate him

taking marc's teammates one by one... dani was the closest to meeting the bridge-burning prerequisites, though he was only a title rival in marc's rookie season. and marc did go further with him than he did with anyone else, and dani has made some pointed comments about marc's style as a teammate... but yes, he is fonder of marc these days. partly I'd just emphasise again that this is a fairly natural progression when you've stopped directly competing for long enough, and partly it's also just a question of individual personality - dani's not massively into holding grudges. then there's jorge, who... I mean, they might as well not have been teammates, given that jorge was either too slow or too injured to even be sharing any track space with marc. you have to put that one down primarily to circumstance, seeing as jorge's own track record on the teammate front isn't exactly spotless. marc and jorge beefing in 2019 would have been pretty dumb and also a massive waste of everyone's time in a year in which marc singlehandedly won the team's championship. even those two needed more to get things going

moving on to the dark years, pol and marc had an extremely stop-and-start partnership on a honda that was generally pretty uncompetitive... so the only stuff they could get ever so mildly irritable about were riveting incidents like 'marc saying pol wasn't the biggest championship threat' (neither of them were) or 'pol saying he'd copy marc's set up' (which proved entirely useless). not exactly title decider territory, is it now, and marc very much had pol covered as a challenger throughout their partnership. also, those two do have a longer history! they've known each other since they were kids and hold a pretty significant place in each other's careers. now that pol's more or less retired, it's natural there'll be quite a lot of sentimentality there - which will paper over any small cracks that appeared during those two years. and joan was a one year teammate at a time in which the bike was consistently close to offing them both. they only managed to start a sunday race together as teammates on thirteen occasions. it would take some serious effort to engineer a feud with that little opportunity, and, really, why on earth would you bother. maybe if honda had gone for rinsy rather than joan for the factory seat, it could've been a bit more prickly, but it's unlikely that it would have escalated beyond that

this is the thing, right, the only one of these partnerships that would have been worth burning bridges over was dani, and even there marc pretty much had him handled after the first season. in general, marc has been pretty clear on how he's not interested in making friends with the other side of the garage while the teammate relationship is ongoing... which is fine! there's some prominent-ish teammate pairings that are actually good friends, some teammate pairings where one of them is actively helping out and advising the other one, but some riders prefer to just keep their distance. it would have been a little silly of marc to start a feud with a teammate who is galaxies away from being a competitive threat, let alone a title rival, but generally it is possible to toe the line between 'attempting to suppress your internal rivals enough to stop them from becoming a problem for you' and 'taking radical enough action to make your internal rivals despise you'

especially in the post-dani era, marc never really had any need to push things too far... and, let's face it, how many of your teammate relationships end up with burnt bridges is also quite frankly a question of luck and circumstance. do you want to guess which top rider on paper has the worst track record this century with premier class teammate feuds, in terms of a) how many they've had, and b) how little public reconciliation there has been since the end of the rivalry?

yes, that's right, it's the first name that comes to mind when you're thinking of toxic and conflict-prone riders: andrea dovizioso. that old devil, constantly causing trouble. just couldn't stop undermining his poor, innocent teammates. can somebody please stop this ruthless bully before it's too late

I think you get the point. I would personally suggest that dovi is not in fact the worst teammate it is possible to have in a motogp top team. he just happened to find himself in a situation where he was teammates with two separate guys he did not click with at all, in situations that involved a pairing of riders who were (or had the potential to be) competitive with each other, as well as some proper stakes attached to the rivalry. in general, situational factors are going to determine this stuff more than anything else... and marc more often than not does have a reasonably good feel for picking his battles. he's flirted with the line, but he's mostly avoided crossing it. he hasn't had to

#'joan also i guess' hold on now anon that's his former teammate relationship that's most important to ME i love them...#elephant in the room is 'let's revisit this in 1.5 years time'. ik people will try to make that just about the vr46 factor but *shrug*#i kinda feel like maybe i should have mentioned in the casey/marc post that casey is arguably more of an outlier than marc is #like his alienation with the sport ran deep which is how you get him engaging in melandri slander who was pee one million in 2008 #y'know casey/jorge ducati was a real possibility for a hot second and my take on that would ALSO be 'hm yeah maybe not <3'#ESPECIALLY given that it's quite likely the incoming jorge would've been paid way way more than casey was ('09 ducati... let's not even)#AND given how yamaha had repeatedly burnt casey and then handed jorge the seat on a silver platter... like idk man!!#genuinely fascinating '10 counterfactual... i do like casey/marc but i've also game planned casey/vale and casey/jorge i'm a completionist #(either dani or vale would've likely won the title in that timeline. but crucially casey/jorge interpersonally would've been. well)#//#brr brr #alien tag #batsplat responds #i need an ask tag so badly but i can't be bothered to back tag... i'll do it at some point #in my notes i did once actually rank the aliens by how much they'd suck as teammates but the order might be a wee bit controversial #i'm sorry to the guy i ranked number one but he did objectively have the worst track record like... it has to be said #i think u have like. different modes right. where how bad u are as a teammate is scaled to how big the threat ur facing is #now EYE actually think marc's not got a particularly *great* neutral mode either but it's not bridge-burning mode #also what even is a burnt bridge... i mean god knows even valentino and jorge are taking photos together these days...#jorge's still conducting autopsies of old beef every fortnight but otoh he's joking about motegi on instagram which is crazyyyyyy #you genuinely cannot. CANNOT convince me that if marc/jorge had had a title fight as teammates it wouldn't have been a MESS #there is literally no way. none whatsoever #and if i said dani had a higher number of strained premier class teammate relationships than valentino did... what then...

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