How did you decide what character(s) would narrate the fic?
Talk about the characters’ struggles & how you decided on those
Share your favorite line
thank you so much!! ^-^ this got super long, I'm sorry...
7: How did you decide what character(s) would narrate the fic?
For LAFF, it seemed most natural and fitting to have Hinata be the narrator since it's kind of a canon rewrite. I think it's sort of strange that the story developed into being a canon rewrite since it's got this typical smut excuse plot, but I honestly started writing it mostly because I wanted to write a komahina story set in a canon-like world rather than post-canon, and I really felt like forced proximity/intimacy is one of the only ways that they could come to understand each other in that kind of setting, since Hinata builds such a huge wall between them in canon.
For example, I always enjoy the common "Hinata stays with Komaeda during despair disease" trope, but I find it really hard to suspend my disbelief that Hinata really would do that. I feel like his resentment and disgust towards Komaeda only grow throughout the game, and catching it early while the pain of betrayal is still fresh/wanting to reverse that betrayal is the only way to get around that. So because of wanting to keep that canon-like world setting, Hinata was the logical choice for me.
But also, I do just find Hinata a lot easier to write in general. I've written four komahina stories so far and three out of the four are Hinata POV. The Komaeda POV one though is one of my favourites and I would like to find a way to write through his POV again. I think my difficulty is that I'm a little too similar to Komaeda (as similar as I am to Hinata too...) so I find it hard to know if I'm writing him without too much bias and then really overthink anything I write as him, even though I have been told that I write him well. So I think I just need to practice as him more.
15: Talk about the characters’ struggles & how you decided on those
One of my favourite things with komahina is comparing/contrasting them, and finding those areas where they are similar and where there is a slight difference that is where everything falls apart for them, so I think that's how I came up with their specific flavours of guilt/pain.
I think for Hinata, my take on his guilt is connected to him never feeling good enough. With the added stress and trauma he's going through, it's hard for him to believe the comforting lie that he probably has a talent he forgot, and doubt and worry creep in and make him begin to regress back to how he was pre-Kamukura Project. He wants Komaeda's admiration and trust and love, but feels like he isn't worthy of it, and every time Komaeda says something about how he's amazing or wonderful or tries to take care of him, it only makes it worse, as Hinata feels like he's just deceiving him. And any perceived rejection or hurt to Komaeda (e.g. making him cry) just makes those feelings and knowledge that he's "worthless" even worse. He keeps trying to work harder and make things better, but no matter what he does, he can't ever be good enough to fully protect Komaeda or to stop bad things from happening to him (and also to his other classmates with the continuing killing game).
And for Komaeda, there are similarities too, but for him, I focus most on the cognitive dissonance and distress it would bring. He has his beliefs that he holds very strongly, and even though in canon you could see that he was disappointed that Hinata no longer wanted to spend time with him, he still stuck to what he thought was the correct path. I see canon Komaeda as truly wanting to be loved, but having this unwavering belief that it's not something he can ever have, so he hold onto his beliefs in hope instead. But here, that belief does begin to waver. If it was just his own feelings, he'd find a way to ignore them, but when he's confronted with Hinata caring so much that he gets sick, or doing things like coming after him even after Komaeda says and does awful things to try to get him to leave for good, there's no way that he can actually ignore it. He starts to want that love more and more, and also wanting not to hurt Hinata more and more, but still holds the belief that he can't have love, and the cognitive dissonance begins to rip him apart.
In chapter 20 I tried to have that cognitive dissonance really reach a peak, where he's basically trying to manipulate Hinata into being the one to decide to keep him alive. He's starting to want to live, but can't willingly ask Hinata to keep him alive, since he's believed so long that he's a tool who should just be used to die, so if he can find a way to put the "burden of choice" on Hinata, and have it be that Hinata was the one to make a "selfish decision" that Komaeda was helpless to do anything about, then he'd get to stay alive And put any feelings of anger or resentment for that choice onto Hinata instead of himself. But at the same time, I don't think he's consciously decided "i'm going to make Hinata do this," it's more his subconscious desires coming out. I feel like I'm overexplaining but I feel like there's many layers to his feelings that he isn't even fully aware of. There's this idea that he wants Hinata to love him enough to "take the blame" or take responsibility for his life. But if Hinata didn't love him that much, then it's all worthless and he's caused Hinata pain for nothing. Both he and Hinata have a lot of contradictions and confusion in their thinking. At their root they both have a feeling of worthlessness but it just manifests a little differently.
I guess ultimately it's this idea of "is love worth the pain? do I trust you enough to hurt me or take care of me?" which is maybe a weird question to ask but one that I find compelling. I like getting into the contradicting feelings of how much love can hurt.
25: Share your favourite line
I liked this part from chapter 9 of LAFF:
"Nothing about Komaeda is disgusting.
Someone should prove that to him. Someone should lavish so much love onto Komaeda that he would forget that he’d ever thought of himself as worthless.
But... it can’t be Hajime. It’s impossible now. It was always impossible. Even on that first night, when he’d gone mad, wanting to make Komaeda think only about him and forget hope and despair... it was impossible then, too. He was only ever capable of hurting him."
