take the pleasure out of the pain - Iori/Takeru and Iori/Ritsuka fic
This is the fic that has truly stuck with me. This is the biggest elephant in the room in FSR. I wanted to make a proper analysis on their dynamic before posting it, but since I already wrote it, I won't play coy anymore.
This is Iori/Takeru with Takeru being abusive, and Iori/Ritsuka with Ritsuka having one-sided feelings.
take the pleasure out of the pain - Enkelana - Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms [Archive of Our Own] 伊剣 剣伊 伊ぐだ
That's the FSR elephant in the room - I believe that Takeru is abusive towards Iori. All interpretations with textual and image evidence are valid but..I don't know how you can interpret this any other way. Iori is my top 1 OAT - I can't ignore the harm towards him.
I hate what Takeru's done. But I love them as a character because of their superiority complex and never having the privilege to be a good person. The only way they could cope with how their life sucked : "He preferred peaceful times" was by being superior. "Everyone praised his achievements".
That causes their apathy towards Iori's problems, and the stalking I believe is from having lost both him and Ototachibana-hime. I know why Iori needs them too - the one person who understands him and is his ideal he wants to surpass.
Ritsuka's role was inspired by the stupid discourse. People bragged that Ritsuka got "cucked" even though Takeru was the stalker in Iori's Valentine, so I decided, you know what, let's have them get cucked. Let's make a story of humanity's good watching someone be stuck in that kind of relationship.
This is my favorite dynamic, even if there's..so much drama over it.
Writing this made me truly love Takeru as my 2nd TM character because I dug into their head and made them hilarious at the same time. They dominated the scenes with not just power and charm, but humor too. These lines I wrote really stuck with me!
“Another one, Iori!” Takeru’s laughter pierced the air. “Another woman chasing you as soon as she laid eyes on you. Aria, Dorothea, Yui, and now Ritsuka. That’s all you are to them - a pretty face to drool over. They really can't help themselves.”
“Am I really that attractive?” Iori quietly asked.
The first one says..that elephant in the room out loud.
“I just wanted to make sure you two were alright, is all.” Takeru finally turned on Iori with widened eyes. “I also wanted to make sure that Yui wasn't doing anything weird to you. Was doing that bad?”
Iori’s head spun at how quickly Takeru had changed moods in just the blink of an eye.
Why didn’t you choose to hang out with us, then?
“I didn't like it,” Iori managed to get out, despite his confusion. “I don't like anyone watching me like that.”
The second one is the gaslight girlboss grindset.
“Or what?” Takeru’s lips curled into a sneer. “You’re going to cry about how you’re forced to kill people? That’s what you weaklings do.”
The third one is the cruel yet relatable superiority complex. When YOU used to struggle with something and overcame it, and can't stand to see others go through it too when you used to be like that. That's how I feel seeing people who had struggles I used to have.
Anyway, this fic was so good I almost wanted to stop writing after it. My masterpiece. It hurt so much to write, but also was very cathartic, and I laughed my ass off too!
This is the song that inspired it! If you read this, please listen to this song called Dear God by Tate McRae, or these two sad Full Metal Daemon Muramasa OSTs! I listened to these while writing it!