I'm actually frothing at the mouth because your art and ideas are so goood!!! I swear I feel like a thirsty man finding an oasis😭😭😭
I was wondering if maybe you could share some of your headcannons of Takaaki?
I understand if you're busy, so feel no pressure to reply💖
AAAAAHHH thank you sm!!!! for the compliment and going out of your way to send me a message; they always make my day.
as for takaaki headcanons..... i have a few. because i love to think about that sad old man.
i think he's desperately needed glasses for years but never made the move to actually get them. he thinks it's a waste of money and already knows he'd be constantly forgetting them. he's also managed fine without them for years, so why even worry?? *cue to him squinting to look at a computer screen*
he was kinda destined to be the dad who bragged about all of his kid's accomplishments at work, but he can't because everyone there hates him. he just seethes in place and thinks about how much better his kid than everyone else's.
LOVE the detective ishimaru interpretation of his job that we all just ran with. it's so funny that we all collectively ignored the fact that he's a police officer because he just looks too much like a grizzled detective. i have mentioned this before. but i think he was a detective before the scandal. then the scandal happened, and everyone wanted him fired because they lost their trust for him. the higher ups agreed that he should be punished, but he was a really good employee (curse the ishimaru drive. except for toranosuke ig). so they just demoted him to a police officer position while never lightening his detective workload. that way i can be consistent with canon while not letting go of the detective angle.
gives people he cares about random trinkets he found as a form of affection. it seems weird to a lot of people, but the people who matter to him appreciate it. taka was the main target of this behavior for a big chunk of takaaki's life. he'd get little things like new pen's and pencil's that takaaki found, stamps, coins, etc. (post-tragedy, it takes a WHILE, but hiroko, yasuhiro, and takemichi start getting gifts too.)
like kiyotaka, he has a lot of big emotions. he's just more restrained with showing them because he never really had anyone in his life who accepted those big emotions from him. it's a big reason why kiyotaka is very expressive with his thoughts and feelings. takaaki didn't want him to feel like sharing what's on his mind was a burden to people.
he's also. just very shy. he doesn't do a lot of talking. he kinda just grumbles with his hands in his pockets and doesn't maintain good eye contact. he's always been more of a listener anyways. people see this as very stand-offish. surprisingly, he only really locks in when in an interrogation setting. or when dealing with some especially rude coworkers.
he feels that making any mistake will make kiyotaka hate him the same way he hated toranosuke. yippeeee. he's so normal.
i do want to use this to segue into one of my biggest headcanons about him. and that's how he was raised by toranosuke:
so because toranosuke is canonically a hope's peak alumni, was the ultimate manager, and can be read as very self-serving and narcissistic, i think it makes a lot of since to read him as wanting his legacy to live on through takaaki. like his first child was a boy, so he decided that he didn't want to have any more children after that so he can put all his energy into shaping the one perfect successor to all his power. he believes a big part of that is takaaki going to hope's peak as well, since that's how toranosuke got a lot of momentum to begin all his business and political endeavors.
but of course he can't leave any of it to chance. he can't risk takaaki ruining everything for him because couldn't maintain control over his son. he has to mold takaaki into the perfect hope's peak candidate. he tried to accomplish this by keeping tabs on any kids takaaki's age that were already making waves for their being overachievers in their field (i'd imagine it'd be pretty easy to do that since this version of japan always has it's eyes on potential hope's peak students), pinpoint a gap where no one was doing anything extraordinary, and shove takaaki into that field so that he can fill the space. thing is, because takaaki didn't have a passion for these extracurriculars, he never really excelled at anything. he'd be average at least, so toranosuke pulled him out of it and tried again somewhere else. rinse and repeat for the entirety of takaaki's school years up until high school.
toranosuke just couldn't believe that takaaki couldn't grab onto anything, because he doesn't know what it's like to have to work and feel passionate about something to succeed at it. so he just thought that there was something wrong with takaaki that led to this outcome. he ended up just sending takaaki to preppy all-boys high school, and was never quiet about his disappointment towards his "unremarkable son."
takaaki grew up feeling very aimless because of all this. everything he did was in service to his father and his family legacy instead of himself. so he had this feeling that he wouldn't amount to anything, because he had already failed life due to never getting into hope's peak (he eventually just realized that his father was awful, but that self-hatred never went away.)
funny thing is: takaaki remembers expressing his desire to be a detective when he was very little (he always loved detective shows and books growing up), but toranosuke immediately dismissed the thought because the kirigiri's had a boy his age. they already have the ultimate detective spot secured, so there was no point in pursuing that. that boy? jin kirigiri. whoops.
anyways. takaaki knew he wanted to raise kiyotaka with the freedom to choose what he wanted to be, because he knew what being raised by someone who wanted to control you was like. so he let kiyotaka choose, and kiyotaka chose prime minister. like toranosuke. and he got into hope's peak. like toranosuke. because toranosuke's life was a tragedy, kiyotaka's life was a mission, and takaaki's life is a joke.
hope he gets therapy once he's rescued from towa city. i think it's in everyone's best interest that he does.
like i didn't really even touch his life after the tragedy. that's a whole other can of worms. but this post is getting long, so i'm gonna cap it off there until another day. he's so silly.