Round 2, Bracket 2, Side D, Fourth poll
Nine and Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer [NineJuice/SatelitalLove], 17776/20020 vs Takumi Tonooka and Itaru Chigasaki [Tonoita], A3! Act Addict Actors
Vote for the best ship
NineJuice/SatelitalLove
Tonoita
Voting ended onJun 30, 2023
I DIDN'T EVEN LIKE TONOOKA UNTIL LIKE EARLY 2022. THIS MAN HAS BEEN IN THE GAME SINCE 2018. OUR FIRST INTRODUCTION TO HIM IS HOW HE LITERALLY RUINED ITARU'S LAST YEARS OF HIGH SCHOOL AND WAS THE REASON WHY ITARU CAN'T TRUST PEOPLE ANYMORE AFTER THAT AND CLOSES HIMSELF OFF.
Listen, I'm not an enemies to lovers liker. And exes to lovers is the kind of thing I like when I make them exes, not when they're canonically exes (they never canonically dated but like come on. they're basically exes). So why did I start shipping them?
I have these Twitter roleplay accounts for a3, a handful of them, and while roleplaying a different character in the series, I joined this little server of roleplay where we'd talk about stuff and plan out events and whatever, and one of them was roleplaying this fourth character (Citron!) mainly, but also had a Tonooka account, you might be able to see where I’m going with this.
We had this friend who had the Itaru roleplay account who really liked to roleplay this other Itaru ship (with a guy called Chikage), and sometimes he'd forget to do the replies to other ongoing roleplays. so my Citron/Tonooka friend dm'd me about it since they felt kind of left out whenever that happened, especially if there was an ongoing thread with Itaru and Citron, and I was like yeah I get it. I liked Chikaita a lot but it wasn't my go-to Itaru or Chikage ship, so I was like “uh huh nods”, and we got to talking about Itaru ships, and they mentioned Tonoita.
They really liked Tonoita, who is kinda unpopular in the general fandom because he caused Itaru a lot of trauma, and Itaru's like the number one or two most popular chara in the whole game, so a lot of people didn't like him. But my friend liked him a lot and told me so much about him, and literally he only appeared in one event story in the entire game at that point but I was listening so intently, and then I was like “mhm nods i understand”, and hey u can come to me about Tonoita whenever u want in case you feel judged or whatever.
BUT THAT WASN'T THE KICKER.
I was still kinda neutral about it but I didn't dislike it, but the aforementioned Itaru rp friend went inactive, so after a while, I was like “What if I make an Itaru account instead?” so I did! and then, fuck, I literally still have the roleplay bookmarked. My friend was on their Tonooka account goofing off about whatever shit and I posted this stupid reaction pic of the press x to doubt guy and then Tonooka fucking REPLIED. And then we had the usual exes banter. And then it became real??? LIKE THEY STARTED CRYING AND SHIT?? AND APOLOGIZED TO EACH OTHER?? AND COMMUNICATED WITH EACH OTHER??? AND THEN LIKE. AGREED TO AT LEAST BE CIVIL TO EACH OTHER AGAIN? WHICH TURNED INTO BEING FRIENDS AGAIN?? AND THEN THEY STARTED DATING AGAIN?????
AND THEN I JUST WENT SO INSANE ABOUT IT THAT THEY'VE NEVER LEFT MY HEAD SINCE, LIKE, THIS WAS IN EARLY 2022. SO IT'S BEEN A YEAR AND I'M STILL VISCERALLY INSANE OVER THEM BECAUSE OF THIS ONE THREAD THAT STARTS WITH A PIC OF A STUPID MEME. MY GOD, I HATE BEING OBSESSED WITH THEM BECAUSE LIKE I CAN COUNT ON ONE HAND THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO LIKE THIS SHIP (I KNOW LIKE. 2 PEOPLE AND I HAVE LIKE 200 TWITTER MUTUALS.) THEY ARE SO MESSED UP. I CAN FIX THEM.
Once upon a time, one of my now-friends was posting stuff about them, I didn’t like it, but then I looked at the tags And she was tagging it as frEAKIN… DAIN… BALLAS… I DIED, YO. I couldn’t live with the fandom knowing the pairing as that so I conferred with my beta and we came up with NaviMind and MasterGuide.
Then I started interacting more with the fandom and started accidentally converting people to this pairing like it was a religion. KEEP IN MIND that I didn’t ship them yet??? Like actually I was talking about canonical things and the people I texted were like “It’s my OTP now” 😭😭😭😭. My record time from me meeting someone to converting that person was a few hours. Literally, I had a NaviMind aura, it was a passive effect.
Then afterward I actually started imagining super angsty things about them and I wrote about their friendship, and I thought it would be much sadder if they were in love but couldn’t be together because of Bain’s paranoia and Dallas’ refusal to admit his feelings. They’re already best friends in canon, I write it to where Dallas can’t live without his guy… yeah, I have the most fics about this duo. I’m still strong even though it’s been over a year.
