I know a lot of people like the idea of Klavier immediately being really into Apollo, but I cannot for the life of me read “I’ve never felt this way before with a man” as sincere.
Klavier, at this point, has laid eyes on Apollo for all of two seconds and only knows of him as the dude who jailed his brother, which he later points out in court in a way that is clearly meant to insult Apollo, by calling him “the little boy who bested him”. He then promptly gives Apollo his famous Herr Forehead nickname, which, again, doesn’t really seem like a typical course of action for a man who is supposedly already fully smitten at this point.
I more see that flirtatious line as a way for Klavier to control the conversation. His dazzling persona has already very much impressed Trucy, but Apollo is clearly not so easily swayed. So Klavier instead decides to fluster and annoy Apollo, make him just uncomfortable enough so he won’t try and do something as outlandish as saying something Klavier won’t have a response too.
Even in everyday conversation Klavier behaves like a lead singer. He is always performing and directing the other performers (aka his conversation partners) at the same time, making sure he is deciding what is being discussed, and, more significantly, what people’s responses to him are. If he can’t charm them, he’ll annoy them, but it is important to him that that is his choice, or at least it appears to be his choice.
No wonder he is so out of sorts when literally everything that could go wrong goes wrong (and then some) in Turnabout Serenade, and later on when his façade fully cracks in the final case. There is something very satisfying about watching him slip up and reveal his true, kind-hearted and principled self. But I haven’t replayed those two cases yet so I won’t go into it too much here.
We can only speculate as to why Klavier is like that, and that is what so much great fanfic is for, but to me, at least, this is all a lot more juicy than: “it was love at first sight, uwu”, though there is a place for that in fandom too of course. Klapollo is definitely my main aa ship, and I love thinking about the kind of dynamics and problems that arise from someone as carefully in control as Klavier and someone with little to no filter like Apollo dating, but this line just doesn’t feel all that shippy to me.
If you’ve made it this far, let me just put some big disclaimers up now that this is of course all just my opinion, and you’re welcome to ship them however you like. I’m not trying to police that at all, these are just some thoughts I had when I was replaying Turnabout Corner.
snowghoul
2087
stormborns
prguitarman
titsay
