#i am yuu's biggest faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan i want good things for them except when i write angst

[yuri-is-online]

Happy Holidays! I’ve been on a bit of an angst fix lately, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to brainrot in your inbox about it.

I’ve been thinking about a scenario where Yuu just finally snaps. I mean, an entire school year of being trapped in a foreign world with no certain hope of seeing your family again, being forced to contend with (at least) 7 life-or-death scenarios, the massive egos these teenage boys have, and probably at least a little bullying from the NRC students for being magicless. I mean come on, I love our boys and all, but a lot of them are kind of awful people. There’s no way a regular person’s mental health survives that.

And maybe Yuu, tired of it all, packs up what little they have and leaves. Surely their prospects couldn’t get any worse than at NRC. Maybe Yuu tries their luck at RSA in finding someone to help them go home. Maybe Yuu just wanders until they find somewhere where they can be something. Would they even leave a letter behind explaining what happened to them, or would they just assume no one would care anyway?

I just want some more Yuu angst lol

Do you have any thoughts on this?

Happy Holidays to you too annon! Everyone is welcome to brainrot in my inbox, especially about Yuu. And I do have some ｢(ｰﾍー;) but I might be a bit nicer to the NRC boys than they deserve.

notes: they/them used for Yuu, more fleshed out fic can be found on my masterlist here. SPOILERS FOR UNRELEASED CH 7 CONTENT. CW for abandonment issues, ptsd, bullying, and just general ignorance on the part of the OB boys. Heavy on the angst, this is a mega oof tm of a post.

I want to start off by saying that, in my personal opinion based off of the in game voicelines and vignettes, that the various NRC boys do like Yuu and enjoy having them around. They think of them as the same of any other freshmen student at NRC, which is sort of the problem.

The average NRC freshmen has magic, a dormitory with a housewarden responsible for "guiding" them, and a family they can fall back on if things get rough. The average student has a basic understanding of the history of the world they live in, of it's pop culture, it's food, it's clothes, and a bunch of other things that they might not think about because of how ingrained it is in their very being. Yuu has none of those things. They don't even have a cannon club which I think is more meant to allow players to have head cannons, but since we are talking angst I have wondered if since Yuu and Grim are one student, any club Yuu wanted to join would have to take Grim as well and no one wanted to deal with that. So Grim started his own "club" and Yuu just takes pictures of birthday celebrations and events they aren't able to fully participate in for the school at Crowley's request.

Ace's first reaction to Yuu is to bully them for not having magic. Deuce admits to having done the same thing as when he was a child, and is very embarrassed by it. We don't really see Yuu getting outright bullied outside of this, but given how the faceless students reacted to Deuce being excited for Starsending, yeah I think Yuu has had to deal with some bullying. And while I do think Adeuce (and the rest of Heartslabyul really) would stick up for them, it wouldn't make it stop. If anything it just gets sneakier and Yuu, not wanting to cause any problems, does their best to cover it up. Something about keeping a stiff upper lip or a smile better suiting a hero and all that.

The overblots is a whole separate issue. We get two real apologies, one from Riddle and one from Vil, who again do not take Yuu being magicless in to much thought. They think of Yuu highly! They are a housewarden of their own little dorm! And they take such good care of Grim and the others, not to mention all those overblots you survived! Not many mages can claim that but you can! What could you possibly have to be stressed about?

As if that isn't the entire problem. As if anyone understands where Yuu is coming from. As if they even would care if they did.

They might be just as capable as any other freshmen, but when school ends, hell even when it goes on a break, they have no where to go. They were stripped from their friends, family, and especially their belongings, including money and autonomy! I have some thoughts about my own Yuu wanting to be nurse in her world, but given how much of even basic medical care seems to rely on magic in Twisted Wonderland I wonder if that would even be a career path any magicless person could take. We know a lot of them work at Styx because they don't risk blot accumulation, but even cooking is done with magic (if it can be) in Twisted Wonderland! How would you feel if you had your heart set on being a doctor, worked really hard to get good grades and took up a part time job to save for college/university only to be transported to a different world with different laws of physics completely against your will. A world where all that hard work is meaningless and you might not be able to accomplish those dreams of yours. And! AND AND! If you get upset about it, that will be seen as a weakness on your part and no one will care.

Because hey, they had to work for what they have. Why can't you? They didn't ask to be born with magic (even though they would have probably) so there is no use crying about things you can't change. Ruggie and Jamil do seem to feel a bit of sympathy to Yuu's plight, but neither of them think twice about exploiting Yuu for their own gain. Sure it might be unfair, but life is in general! It's not their fault, they aren't to blame. And that's really how all of NRC sees it, they aren't to blame for Yuu's circumstances, so they aren't owed any special treatment.

How Yuu snaps and what they do because of it would really come down to how you hc your Yuu to be. My own personal thoughts come back to personal autonomy a lot; I don't think Yuu has much of it and that would grate on me constantly. I could see Yuu hearing their friends talk about their plans for the future, and though Ace and especially Deuce try to include them in the conversation they can't add much. Ace applauds them, says "we need to take things easy! We're still freshmen..." and drones on about how he just wants to enjoy school life. And maybe Yuu does too, but they have no concrete answer about whether or not they can get home. They don't have the support system that their classmates do, so there really isn't anything waiting for them after the school year ends. Yuu feels so helpless, and they don't have the words to explain how they feel, because how could they?

If Malleus's overblot ends without any real repercussions (which I doubt it will but hey, I am like 65/35 on whether or not he apologizes to Yuu specifically for almost killing them I will be so pissed if he doesn't) I could see everyone else making fun of Malleus for loosing while Yuu just. Stares off into the distance, trying really hard not to cry in front of people they are convinced will make fun of them. This has all been scary, things like this just aren't possible in their world and they aren't mentally prepared to face death again.

And they are convinced they will. You can say overblots are rare all you like, but Yuu has practically seen one once a month ever since they arrived in this world. It is normal to them, and who should they trust? The lying headmaster or their lying eyes and ears?

If Yuu decides to run away, I think that the Ramshackle ghosts might try to stop them. Sure the headmaster sucks, but your ghost buddies really love you! And want to support you in anyway they can, so does Grim! He wants to be together for the next 100 years, and while he does really want to stay at NRC so he can be the world's greatest mage... I think he might love Yuu more. Just a tiny bit. He would play it off as him being too good for the school, or that he and Yuu are only one student after all so he will be expelled... but really he wants to come with because he will be worried about Yuu.

While going to RSA does sound nice on paper, Yuu doesn't really have a reason to go there. They aren't exactly on first name basis with any of the students we've met so far, and there is always the risk of Che'nya snitching to Riddle and Trey. Better to try and find a place where they can be something and maybe send letters to all the magical academies they can get contact information for to see if they can help. And also, to see if they will accept Grim as a full student, got to make sure he isn't sacrificing his dream for nothing!

The ghosts, realizing they can't convince Yuu not to leave decide to help. They already sell things at the markets downtown, so maybe they chat with some of their clients and convince them to let Yuu rent a room for a while. You have the option in Portfest to mention you have been to Craneport before, and I like the thought of Yuu having a part time job there. Maybe the ghosts explain that Yuu has no real family to go back to and Yuu's part time employer agrees to give them a full time job while Yuu figures out where they want to go.

Another thing related to personal autonomy, Yuu wouldn't have government documents if they just got isekaid out of the blue. I could see that being a huge issue for traveling to different countries and trying to establish a life. I also wonder if Crowley even did anything about that... but assuming he did since he (allegedly) talked to the school board about what to do with Yuu I think the ghosts would get them for Yuu on the condition they still come visit sometimes.

As for the note, I think Yuu would leave one simply because they feel like they didn't have the words to explain themselves out loud. And because they don't want to face the fight they know will come where everyone tells them to just suck it up and get on with it. These are teenage boys they are dealing with, their brains just can't fully comprehend the situation Yuu is in and they have given up expecting them to.

Just so we're clear, I think this would devastate Ace and Deuce, maybe to the point of destroying their friendship, at least for a while. Ace does think about Yuu not having magic, he wants to protect them. He says so when you level him to max, that protecting you will be easy, but clearly it wasn't. Clearly he failed you, and what does Ace do when he feels bad? He takes it out on everyone else and in this case especially Deuce. Deuce just feels stupid, which he already does a lot, but he really saw you as being around for the rest of his life. And now you aren't, and not for a happy reason like you got to go home. You aren't there because they failed you.

The others are a bit of a mixed bag I could do a separate post about but to hit the other big one...

I have no real idea how Malleus would react. I can see him thinking this means Yuu is afraid of him now, which I don't think he would react well to, but assuming this is post ob then he might be willing to take responsibility for it. It would certainly make him think, but how that thought would manifest? Outside of the obvious weather changes I do not know. I could see him being slightly resentful to his mother for cursing him to be hated by humans and loved only by fae when he so desperately wanted to be loved by one specific human. They were his first real friend, and he didn't treasure them in a way they found meaningful.

idk Yuu dropping off the grid isn't something I can see Crowley letting happen, but I can see why Yuu would want to try.