rpanons | All the pretty little anons

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natsume oh my god ♥♥♥!!!

uhhhhhhhh i think the main thing to remember is that natsume's not a clamp character. by which i mean he craves bonds and fears loneliness, but not to the point where he'll hurry to sacrifice himself for someone else's good fortune. that's both in the literal sense of his life as well as the less-tangible sense of "who he is". he has a hard time approaching others for help, but he is getting better about ... thinking about approaching others for help ... (see: that time his family photograph was lost in the woods and he actually spends like five!! whole!!! minutes contemplating asking his friends to help him look before tanuma jumped him with a question. i'm pretty sure he would've just given it up at the beginning of the series, or tried to comb the woods alone.)

he overthinks his actions a lot -- little remarks from old classmates stick with him for years even when he's aware that they weren't meant to hurt him that way. he actively, constantly tries to see the other point of view; it's in fact one of his driving forces. so i have a hard time imagining him being really petty or sarcastic in a way that's meant to hurt someone else.

i also feel like he also draws his boundaries pretty clearly? negative cr is one thing, but he's not one to get involved with people with grey morals and not say something about how they clash with his own code. but at the same time, be careful not to make him too active and shounen-heroish. natsume's just an op boy learning to be kind. given his own (still-running!) issues with bonds, he might just withdraw rather than seek to change them.

lastly: when in doubt, punch something supernatural.

drive-by anon here to say this is such good advice on playing Natsume, and i wish more people played from this canon, because it's wonderful and deserves all of the attention because it's so full of wonderful and complicated characters.

And yes, Natsume's got his tragic backstory, but even with that at the end of the day he really wants approval and a place to belong, and that's such a integral part of his character (and sets him apart from so many other anime characters - he's as kind as anyone could be given the circumstances of his childhood etc).

His relationships to the other characters always seem to reflect this, even with the characters that are not super great - he's always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, because if he does, maybe they will do the same for him. Making enemies is just not his style, unless he's pushed, and even then I feel like he'd be willing to give them another chance, and another chance after that too.

BASICALLY YES PLAY NATSUME UGH HE'S A DARLING.

gonna go ahead and disagree with a tiny, tiny piece of this -- i don't see natsume as giving people the benefit of the doubt because he wants people to do it for him. nbf always strikes me as a series that's very much about kindness and about understanding the other person's position. natsume tends to assume the best of people either because he's (1) being kind and it doesn't occur to him to be suspicious (see: the tiny mushroom yokai that seriously contemplated feeding him to its friend) or (2) because he wants to be a gentle person. it's not a quid pro quo -- it's entirely focused on what natsume wants himself to be.

mostly i think this makes a difference in the way he reacts to characters that are not super-great -- there's that encounter with matoba at the hakozaki mansion, for example, where natsume walks away thinking not "i don't understand why matoba operates the way he does" but "i just can't bring myself to like exorcists... but perhaps not all of them are like that." he has an opinion and he sticks to it, and i think the number of chances that he gives are limited, if very lenient.

(obv these are just $0.02, op, please do ignore what seems like nitpicking to you!)

OH YES THIS IS V TRUE

I was thinking in terms of youkai, but Matoba is a different story because he's the Big Bad.

All the pretty little anons

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