In one of your posts you said Kai is genereally and anxious person. How do you mean that?
hey anon!
If it's this post, I was specifically referencing attachment styles: avoidant, anxious and disorganized. Jo is a runner at heart, we know she canonically flees from situations that cause her pain or distress. But Kai tends to fixate or react emotionally to anything that dysregulates him, showing more anxious behavior patterns throughout s6 and 8.
There are lots of subtypes and little variants inside attachment theory (just like we see within PD's) and Kai can be confusing because he flips back and forth depending on pre or post merge. You can easily make an argument for him being disorganized once we meet him in the pw since his ASPD brings out some more avoidant traits, but I still think his core attachment style beneath all of that is closer to anxious.
When I approach him as a character i look at pre merge kai being unhealed and post merge kai being healed (-ish lol he's still got plenty of room for growth, but the hardest things have been dealt with if ygm). in my currently published writing i don't always spend as much time with the unhealed side of him, but it influences how i write his personality later on in his arc. the obsessive tendencies turn into more targeted protectiveness, the toxic codependency turns into properly valuing his inner circle, etc etc.
lets get deeper into it tho:
Jokai are both pretty chill in terms of base personality, but they show signs of only maintaining that apparent chill via control. Her hyper-independence speaks to avoidance, while Kai's hyper-vigilance signals anxiety. If Jo doesn't like something she leaves the situation behind, but Kai will ruminate on a comment or event until he can't hold it in anymore. Then he either fixates and plots out a 12-step revenge plan (partially calming himself down in the process), or he explodes in the moment and gets himself into a deeper hole emotionally. My man doesn't really know how to just breathe through it and let things go lol
Anxiously attached people tend to struggle with low self-esteem and their personal fears center on rejection or abandonment. I can't think of a better way to describe pre merge Kai's unstable behavior, especially where Jo and Bonnie are concerned. He's been abandoned before in the most horrific way possible, and most of what he does in the show is to make sure he never lets that happen again. His trust issues, tendency to self-isolate, and need for absolute control all speak to this.
Kai fronts as a veryyy laid-back person who isn't bothered by anything, but his actual reactions tell us how much people's words and actions hurt him. While I do think jokai share the same sarcastic dark humor, I still think they both use it to cover up insecurities. When we meet her, Jo seems to have reached a point where she's not pretending anymore and (aside from the family she's hiding in the closet lol) she's sure of herself and much more grounded internally. She still uses jokes to deflect things, but she's also more pointed with them and stands up for what she wants.
But for Kai specifically, he's still hiding almost all of himself behind that jokey smile. He's built up a super silly mask that keeps everyone entertained, but the contrast between that and the darkness lurking right under the surface is what makes him so hard to understand. I've always found that this type of mask speaks to anxious attachment, because no one expects anything from the guy who doesn't care and makes everything a joke, and if no one expects anything from him he can't fuck anything up. (I've explored this part of his personality a little more in my post regarding tate langdon & kai, which is here and a 1994!kai post here).
But like this is just not the face of an unfeeling robot who gives no fucks:
bsfr with me this man gives So Many fucks it's not even funny.
It's one of the reasons I'm glad they made the distinction of him being a sociopath and not a psychopath. He reacts so strongly to things because he ultimately cares on some level, which means he's capable of deeper feeling whether he likes to admit it or not. but i fear it's also part of what makes him so dislikeable to so many people in the fandom: he's 100% choosing to be this way, even with the people he loves.
As y'all probably know by now I hc that his ASPD is a result of his mind needing to protect him from the pain of his childhood, which would have made him a kid who was very much in tune to what was being done to him and how it was wrong. Kids in this kind of abusive environment grow up to be hypersensitive to changes in mood and often read the room to a fault, always trying to ensure they aren't doing anything wrong. this trait is the hypervigilance i mentioned above: we know that Kai is consistently studying the people around him, learning how best to move inside their complicated dynamics.
I enjoy that sometimes he uses what he learns to blend in, and other times he stirs the pot on purpose just to pick and choose everyone's reactions. It really showcases his need for control and the way he can manipulate a group even when he's technically on the outside. (It's also why him spilling the beans about the massacre so early on in the pw feels so out of place. there's just no way he thought that was genuinely a good idea to dump on Bonnie before he'd tricked her into liking him).
That learned ability to grasp everyone's thoughts/feelings/weaknesses so quickly is also why he's annoyingly good at poking open wounds, a fact that's made worse by his ASPD taking away any sort of filter he might've had growing up. instead of using that skill for any form of good, he's weaponized it into something cruel (we see this much more pre merge, while post he starts actively trying to control it).
Post merge, Kai's darker emotions are still always on a hair trigger, (emotional volatility is connected to both ASPD and anxious attachment). He never fully shakes the tendency to lash out when he feels threatened, his intense need for self-preservation sometimes outweighing rational thought. If his rejection sensitivity is hit (like above when Bonnie openly ignores him) he's going to have a really hard time not freaking out, partially healed psyche or not. His reactions often come before the perceived threat has even been fully established, because he'd rather be wrong and 'safe' than right and caught off guard by someone else's potential attack.
I have something written somewhere about how he genuinely trusted that he'd be allowed to merge up until the last second, despite all of the abuse we know he was being subjected to growing up. Somehow, he never believed his parents would actually take that away from him, no matter how awful they were. He never even considered Jo might turn on him, despite the fact that he'd been the one to crash out just hours before. (yes, that is partially his narcissistic side coming out, but it does also highlight the innate trust he has in Jo as his twin). To me it also shows that (mental break down aside lol) there's something in him that still wants to believe in hope the way that Bonnie does.
I've never felt like he's 100% lying when he tells her that he wants to be more brave, loyal, and patient. it's absolutely attempted manipulation, but it's also an admission of the things he knows he lacks. (such an interesting take on the way people with pd's like this have a tendency to confess things through projection. you see it more often with straight up narc's, but kai does it a lot where bonnie is concerned as well).
Unfortunately for all of us he's trapped inside the cursed canon, so no matter how hard he tries to be different he'll always be kicked down by the narrative.
Even though Kai tells us a few times that he likes himself the way he is, his actions paint a different story. His harsh and violent reactions to rejection show us how worried he is about not being good enough, which obviously stems from growing up being told he was the defective twin etc etc etc. I occasionally get shit for writing him as a virgin, but I stand by my hc reasons for it. We as the audience know that Chris Wood is objectively attractive, and Kai must understand that on some level (which is why he does use his looks to get close with Bonnie initially), but it doesn't mean he's confident enough to follow through.
again, you've gotta remember that so much of his personality is a mask, especially in the beginning pw arc. we are only ever seeing exactly what he wants us to and whenever it slips to show the vulnerability hiding underneath, he Panics and reroutes. when you're looking at this through an anxious attachment pov, it becomes clear that he's covering up obvious insecurity. as i've shown in my writing i totally think he could grow into someone extremely confident and genuinely sure of himself, but that doesn't change that he starts from this unstable place.
also, just the fact that he chooses to stab the two most important women in his life speaks of intimacy or sexual issues. Knives in the hands of insecure men typically correlate to one specific thing, if ygm.
If I'm looking at teenage!kai, I'm picturing someone incredibly reserved and emotionally stunted who struggles to express themselves. I hc the Parker's were mostly homeschooled, which limits the amount of access he would have to outside friends. But even if he'd had a semi-normal life amongst humans, we know canonically the entire Gemini Coven ostracizes siphons. that kind of intense social isolation is going to have lasting effects that'll follow him into adulthood until he actively works on them.
Even inside canon, he comes off as pleasantly surprised whenever Bonnie leans into his flirting, like he isn't fully expecting it to work. He's charming as hell but so easily off putting, and he's smart enough to know that about himself. i think he craves touch/intimacy/connection like crazy but has no idea how to go about asking for any of it, so half the time he just ends up Taking which doesn't go over well either. (but look at me when i say this: PRE MERGE he put the ascendant in his jacket pocket so she'd have to put her hand on his chest to find it. he could've hidden it Anywhere on his person and he picked over his heart. thank you and goodnight.)
Idk y'all I just don't think anyone genuinely liked him much growing up, or that he even had many chances to get close enough to have much practice in the romantic or sexual department. Why else would he fixate so desperately on Bonnie, if he truly felt like he could just leave her alone and go find someone else? aside from them being cursed soulmates, ofc
I think the anxious side of his personality starts to mellow significantly post merge (which is partially why i don't have a lot of writing exploring it in depth, since ya girl usually stays out of pre merge kai's demented brain for my own peace of mind). so much of what's wrong with him comes from his missing magic, once that's finally fixed he seems to settle fully into his own skin for the first time. We see him attempting relationship repairs in a relatively healthy way (the jokai letter, calm conversations, full verbal apologizes AND changed behavior which is like...the biggest one lol), trying to figure out where he fits inside the group (and where he might be most needed, hellooooo anxious attachment yet again), not to mention risking himself + showing his vulnerabilities more openly.
When I write post merge Kai, I tend to have him transition from that anxious / controlling energy into something significantly more secure, but it takes reassurance and acceptance from whoever I put around him in the given fic, (but he also has to be willing to accept it from them).
imo, canon Kai ends up crumbling because he can't maintain that newfound mental + emotional stability when his bonds with Jo and Bonnie shatter entirely. There's so much overwhelming reinforcement being thrown at him that he really is just a worthless abomination with all of his old anxious fears getting triggered back-to-back, so we end up having to watch him give up and self-implode.
thanks for the question anon!!
