#komanaga

"Angie," he greets her with a smile. "Did you need something?"

"Nope! Just worried the bench might fly away, if someone doesn't help you weigh it down." Angie giggles. "Nagito is so skinny. Careful, or I'll tell Hanamura-senpai."

"Ah, please don't," he says. Mainly because he's grown protective of Angie and would prefer if she didn't interact with Teruteru at all, if it can be avoided.

"What a pretty sky," Angie digresses, gazing at the beginnings of a sunset. "She's wearing her nicest dress for us, today."

"You should try painting it," Nagito suggests. When she doesn't answer right away, he adds, "I'd certainly love to see it, if you do."

Angie hums in thought. Recent breakthroughs in de-rad class have made her strangely more reluctant to create art. But after another moment, she says, "Maybe after school. But only if I have a friend to hang out in the art room with me."

Nagito smiles. "Count me in!"

I've had this ship on my mind[for a sorta specific au I'll infodump about if im allowed-] for a while but polycule Kiyo, Angie, Nagito, and Hajime[and maybe just maybe Gundham and Sonia but i haven't decided...]??

JUST A TIRED TEEN AND HIS FERAL GENDER NONCONFORMING OCCULTISH LOVERS...

Asking for context and the infodumping in DMs was the best decision of my life, I am going to think about these freaks (complimentary) for SO long

(To answer your first question, it was mainly just that I liked Angie and found myself thinking of different characters to have her interact with, and eventually I had to ruminate on how alike she and Nagito are. Also, I think @snellyfish did some fanart of them interacting that I really enjoyed.)

This might retread some stuff I've already established in other Angie & Nagito posts.

Okay, Angie-Nagito friendship headcanons, off the top of my head:

I could see them first meeting in a group-therapy-like setting, but I could also see it just happening organically. Having been raised in a cult, Angie has a way of instinctively identifying vulnerable/lonely people and wanting to reach out to them, and Nagito likes beautiful, strong-willed people who take the initiative. (Angie's intentions aren't to start a cult or anything; seeing people's vulnerabilities is just a skill of hers.) Angie will gladly start a conversation with Nagito, and he will gladly keep it going.

Angie is very casual with physical contact. It's 100% chaste on her part (She was just raised with different boundaries.), and Nagito's touch-starved self is kind of shocked by it, at first. Angie is someone who will take his hand to lead him somewhere, or hug him when she sees him.

Angie is pretty well-liked at Hope's Peak. She has a good attitude, people have a tendency to exoticize her more palatably "other" traits, and the "worst" of her doesn't really come out, outside of a killing game. Nagito is pretty upfront about the things not to like about him, so while he isn't as hated at school as he is in a killing game, he's still someone people find kind of weird and off-putting. For a lot of people, Angie is "I don't know her very well, but I like her vibes," and Nagito is "I don't know him very well, but I don't like his vibes."

This results in some people either keeping track of the Angie-Nagito friendship out of the corner of their eye, watching for any misbehavior on Nagito's part, or just passively assuming Nagito is taking advantage of Angie's kindness and naiveté in some way.

People who know Angie well are not worried that she's too naive to handle Nagito. Angie is sage and she's good at cheerfully shutting down what she doesn't like.

Both Angie and Nagito are big on smiling and giving words of affirmation. Angie is one of the only people in Nagito's life who can both pay him a compliment and keep him from deflecting the compliment. ("Do you think Angie is lying?") She is capable of being more manipulative than he is slippery, and that is an asset to mankind in my book.

Nagito is one of the only people in Angie's life who will engage with her art intellectually and share detailed analysis. The effect her art has on people tends to alienate her from the kind of discourse normal artists enjoy, but Nagito is willing to get swallowed by the beauty of it, in the course of fully appreciating her talent.

They're also both great at seeming laidback while being extremely proactive, behind the scenes...including for each other's sakes; they're both great about checking in on each other at very regular intervals while pretending they just happened to come across each other.

When Nagito's luck acts out, he tends to spin the bad things that happen as either a positive thing or the natural price of a positive thing. Angie looks at it a little differently, in that she tries to find very specific messages from God in the small details. He doesn't necessarily believe her interpretations, but it is good for him to hear other perspectives on the things that happen to him, instead of just burrowing deep into his own interpretations.

If they ever get invited to a game night, Nagito and Angie will always be on the same team, and they will either win in a landslide or lose bad. Usually the latter; their objective is typically to bring something out in their opponents, not to win some silly game. But if someone brings out Angie's competitive side, then Angie and Nagito will probably win.

But in that AU where Nagito and Angie are in the same class for unlearning radical ideologies (because she was raised in a cult, per my headcanons, and he's Nagito) and become friends there, I suddenly imagined a Yandere AU/Heathers AU variant where the song (or sentiment) "Our Love is God" from Heathers the Musical is Nagito using Angie's preexisting vulnerabilities to get her on his side about something dangerous.

Okay! This is in a tiered order moreso than a sequential order, and I'm tossing a few platonic ships in, too, when I'm equally passionate about them. (There are some friendships that I just really want him to form, lol. I'm not wholly closed to them being romantic, but I really like them as friendships.)

If you know the actual ship name for the ones I don't, please let me know.

So first of all, I'm weird about Nagito ships (and this is fully a me thing), in that I don't love any ship that I feel reinforces his worst beliefs. So, in the

Favorite Tier: Komaegi, Komahina

Because those two don't have talents (in the way Hope's Peak understands talent) and I feel like having him date someone with a talent means he isn't having to confront any of his own opinions, and on some level that bothers me. Granted, dating the untalented doesn't necessarily mean he's confronting his beliefs either, but this is Makoto and Hajime we're talking about.

Favorite Tier (Platonic): Komanaga

Because I feel like a lot of the mental/emotional work Nagito has to do is stuff Angie also has to do, and I just really like them as friends. I really think they can be good for each other, provided they're both working on unlearning a lot of stuff.

"Still Really Like" Tier: Komanami, Komazumi, Kamukoma, Nagito x Chihiro

I think most of this is self-explanatory, and also the possibilities created by Chihiro x Nagito excite me.

"Still Really Like" Tier (Platonic): Sonagito, Nagito & Taka, Nagito & Kyoko

Also mostly self-explanatory, I think.

Like Well Enough: Kuzukoma, Soumaeda, Twomaeda, Komawari

Okay I wasn't sure whether to put Komawari in this or the "Still Really Like" platonic section, but I went with this just because I think it'd be interesting. I made a post in the past about how I think Akane could also make Nagito think about his internal biases and how he kind of views and treats intelligence. Also, I'm kind of hard-headed, and when I see it commonly taken as a matter of course that Nagito and Akane are platonic, my brain wants to try the opposite.

Can Enjoy, Depending on Execution: Komamiki, Oumaeda

It really just depends for them. I've seen some cool stuff and I've seen some stuff that super wasn't for me. In a vacuum, I'm not into it, but I can see potential.