#browntiger15

I absolutely love that about Katarina’s character.

And your description of her – “A shipper on deck while being the face that launched a thousand ships”

Katarina is someone who loves romance and is very aware of romantic tropes, but yet is completely oblivious to everyone’s feelings for her. It’s absolutely hilarious.

Katarina is an active romantic at heart. With her love of Otome Games and Romance Novels, but she will do backflips to avoid the obvious conclusion that everyone is in love with her.

We literally have the girls confessing their feelings for Katarina when Katarina’s specifically asks about romance and her just being like – “That’s sweet. But I wanted to know who they romantically like.”

Geordo is whispering sweet-nothings into her ear, is deeply invested in agriculture and sweets (giving them to her), and visited her like 3 times a week when they were growing up (if not more).  

She knows (to some degree) that the only girl Geordo mentions is herself, but yet still assumes that the second he mentions Maria, he’s in love. Because she’s never known Geordo to mention another girl in front of her…because he’s always talking about Katarina.

Katarina sees potential couplings in  

-- Maria and all the guys

-- Keith and Nicol

-- Keith and Mary

-- Alan and Mary

And the thing that gets me about Katarina briefly thinking their is a romantic triangle between Keith, Mary and Alan, is that she herself is kind of in the same situation. 

Particularly in regards to Alan and Nicol, who are deeply in love with Katarina, but are reluctant to act on their feelings and are the most likely to repress them, because she is engaged to Geordo, their friend and brother.

Also, in no way should Katarina ever want Maria to be with one of the guys, aside from Alan, technically.

In her mind, Geordo and Keith falling in love with Maria is her downfall and she has no idea what happens in Nicol’s route in regards to Katarina. But yet…

She can become an odd mix of excitement and anxiousness when it comes to Maria having “romantic moments” with one of the guys or even feel bad for realizing she’s ruined said “romantic moment,” only for her to realize that’s what she wants.

She also states that she wants Alan’s “Beloved” song to be about Mary, not Maria, because she thinks Mary being downright territorial to Katarina is a way Mary expresses her feeling for Alan.

I just love her so much…she has romance on the brain and sees couples and ships everywhere and despite all the odds or maybe because she’s always looking at other people, she never realizes she’s the romantic lead of her own story…

Sorry this took so long but I wanted a good idea and then Gull finally gave me one.

Behold the PHANTOM THIEF AU in which the setting in the same except Nicol is an actual phantom thief.

1. Nicol is a phantom thief due to family tradition and his grandfather was the last phantom thief. His task is to steal dangerous magical items before they cause trouble. 

2. No one in the main group knows about this secret, not even Sophia, except for Katarina due to having played the game.

3. Katarina accidentally walks on Nicol during a heist and he believes that’s how she figured out his secret, but in truth Katarina walked in on purpose to avoid one of her doom flag and had to pretend to act shock at the reveal.

4. Katarina helps Nicol out with his heist and Nicol enjoys having someone in on the secret.

i think he would definitely tell her everything!!!! because he knows he can trust her with it, and he realizes all her investigating the dynamaxing and the darkest day will inevitably lead to her and rose’s paths crossing, and worries that rose might try to use her to further his weird experiments/obsession. so after a lot of thought, he figures that the more she knows, the better. 

the thing lead to his conclusion was a conversation between the three of them around the beginning of their adventure, where rose asks sonia what shes up to nowadays, and Sonia replies that Professor Magnolia gave her an assignment to research the darkest day and its connection to dynamaxing/the red light. and rose pauses for a moment, and he gets a look in his eye that leon recognizes and immediately knows this means no good, and rose says “Is that so...?” 

and leon makes up some EXCUSE and PULLS SONIA AWAY REALLY FAST before she says anything else that might get rose more interested in her and her research. 

(and leon knows what sonia is like. shes a strong-minded girl, and maybe shes not too interested in the research subject (yet), but if her grandmother gave her an assignment, shes gonna finish it. despite any protests mr champion might have about it)

so she huffs and puffs and asks “What's the big idea?!” after leon drags her away, and he tries to give her the message without disclosing any details that might put her in danger, telling her things like “you should stay away from the chairman” and “dont tell him the things you're doing!” but of course she keeps asking “why” and “whats going on??”, and he knows if HE doesn’t tell her, then she’s gonna go investigate it herself and find out the hard way. 

Hhhhhmmmrrrrn. This is actually pretty hard, since the other Canon Paladins were barely treated as more than set dressing. I suppose if I were going to make an AU where Zarkon never fell based on the series canon, there would need to be two main alterations:

- SAFETY AND ETHICS GUIDELINES. My God. I love Zarkon, but going all in on Honerva’s experiments the way he did with no protections or backup or anything was a spectacularly stupid move. It never should have gotten to the point that she was being driven insane by the quintessence radiation or whatever. Apparently love makes you a dumbass in his case. 

- The backstory of the Paladins was super hamstrung by the retcon of how they became a team. The complete removal of all the training and bonding Coran said they had done was a seriously bad move. Not only did it strip out a metric shitton of potential characterization, by relegating the three other Canon Paladins to the background that way, we have no reason to see them as a support network for Zarkon like Alfor was. And Zarkon desperately needed a support network, since clearly Alfor alone couldn’t keep him from making really bad decisions.

Yes! Absolutely! Valid! I adore this scene so much. Although the implications of alteans not know what milk is can get disturbing if you think about it too long. Still, the highlight of an episode filled to burst with comedic highlights. ❤