#most canon wlw ships don't really interest me but This one.... is so <3 angst-filled well-written & soooo good

[coffeeshib]

would you ever consider writing a fic for avatrice???

i really adore avatrice, so writing isn’t out in the realm of possibility. mayhaps sometime someday!! for now i’m just here to vibe & look at pretty art/read some fics

[blooming-blooming]

So I've been scrolling through your blog for a while now and I hope that I don't bother you with my post zexal shipping related questions^^' If I saw right you ship hellshark and that you think that it will need a lot of time before it happens but mentioned that you believe that ryouga has a one sided crush on yuma and that durbe is in love with ryoga/nasch. So what makes hellshark your endgame ship for ryoga, considering the mess that is his love life?How do you think they got together?

HELLO ANON!!!! I hope you enjoy my horrible train of shitposts that is slightly more moderated than the hurricane of shitposts that is my twitter account. 

Don’t ever feel bad about sending me asks about my Zexal opinions on basically anything, because I live to talk incessantly about Zexal. I actually saw this ask on my way to work so I couldn’t answer it then, and when I ended up having a really bad day, remembering I could come home and answer this ask was one of the things that helped calm me down from a really bad anxiety attack.♥

Ok this got really really long because despite not talking about it much I have a lot of Thoughts about HellShark and Shark himself in general (though I talk about Mizael and III way more, Shark is actually my second favorite Zexal character after Kaito) so this is going under a cut

As for your actual question: The biggest reason I ship Shark with IV as opposed to Yuma or Durbe is because of his dual identity of Ryoga Kamishiro and Nasch. Namely, that IV is one of, if not the only person besides Rio/Merag to acknowledge his dual identity to his face; in his duel against Nasch, he starts out deadset to bring back Ryoga, but once he realizes towards the end of the duel that Nasch is trying to make him hate him so he’ll have no regrets being a Barian, he ends up accepting his death and tells Nasch he understands that he couldn’t change his situation.This is in contrast to Yuma, who definitely tries to understand Shark’s situation, but is still just a 13 year old and ultimately can’t, and for the most part just treats Ryoga and Nasch as the same person, as opposed to them being the same person and different people simultaneously. Durbe flat out rejects Ryoga the second he realizes that he’s Nasch.

Another thing is just how the interactions of the characters played out that lead to my ships is that, while a lot of Shark’s actions really, REALLY read as having feelings towards Yuma, to me, Yuma’s reactions… just feel like he really loves and cares about Shark as a friend and nothing more. It’s like how my best friend and I are both wlw, and while I love my best friend with every fiber of my being, the way I love her is different than the way I love my actual girlfriend, if that makes sense.As for Durbe, I can’t deny that a lot of his actions towards Nasch (and some of his smaller ones to Merag) are also very romantically oriented, but… I’m just not interested in Durbe as a character, honestly. That, and I love one sided gay feeling angst because Boy, have I been there.I have put some thought into it, though, and I do think I’d like a post-canon Tomoshipping fic where Durbe slowly gets to know and fall in love with Ryoga as much as Nasch. I wouldn’t write it myself, but I’d definitely read it. I also realized that I’m pretty sure at one point early on in II Durbe mentions that he’s the one who gave Tron his powers, which means he’s indirectly responsible for ruining the love of his life’s life without meaning it. I think a fic about that could be really interesting, too.

There’s also something really beautiful and romantic to me about someone who’s gotten so badly belittled and verbally abused as Thomas being loved and reassured by a highly respected king like Nasch.

As for how they get together… I don’t think they do for a few years, post canon. I think Shark is probably extremely mentally unstable for at the very least a few months, and many days he can’t even get out of bed. It takes him a long time to piece his identity together and decide what aspects of Ryoga are and aren’t valid to him – while Ryoga Kamishiro was mostly a vessel used to carry Nasch, he still did live most of Ryoga’s life for him. He is just as much Ryoga as he is Nasch. Meanwhile, IV is still mentally unstable himself. I wrote something that goes more into that here, but while he’s definitely started on the path of recovery from his abuse in II, I think he still has a long ways to go before he can see Shark again without guilt. 

Basically, both of them want to see each other again, but neither have the means mentally to be in contact. I’d think Shark makes the first move (IV doesn’t want to initiate contact because he wants to be positive Shark is ready) after about a year. From there, it takes a long time for the two of them to just become friends; between their baggage, getting caught up with each other, and the fact that despite Shark being IV’s only friend, they’ve never really… done anything that friends do. And, I think in this time period, they realize how alike their problems really are – Shark isn’t the only one who has a dual identity, and Thomas Arclight is a different person than his unhealthy coping mechanism, IV. It leads to a lot of bonding and understanding/support that’s different than the support they’ve gotten from their siblings.

I think they’d start dating after… maybe a year, year and a half of this, so effectively 2-3 years after Zexal ends. Once they’re older IV moves in to the Kamishiro mansion with him and they live together. They never get married because neither of them think they need to to validate their love; they don’t have kids either, but that’s okay because Thomas has 5 Great Pyrenees dogs to fill any void that would be there. There’s something really appropriate about the mental image of them as adults as the gay uncles with no kids but a bunch of exotic fish and a bunch of dogs instead in a mansion together.