i am so so incredibly curious about kugie and sou's hypothetical ytr dynamic... just. blinking at them. i recall you mentioned maple thinking sou is a very nice polite man and i was wondering if she's like the only one to think so :o

I LOVE KUGIE AND SOU!!!! they are so shaped. the general dynamic between them is that sou likes kugie well enough, and kugie’s feelings on sou are…very complex tbh. she really doesn’t trust him but she ends up feeling sympathetic for him in a lot of situations

their relationship starts off pretty well, as sou is one of the main people to comfort kugie while she’s grieving. he kind of projects onto her a little bit, because he’s also grieving kanna in his own way, so he empathizes with her. yet, as much as she appreciates this effort, i think part of her would be…unnerved by sou. kugie’s a very perceptive person, and something that struck me about her relationship with kanna is how she initially thought kanna was ‘creepy’ for always smiling and laughing, not realizing she was just trying not to inconvenience anyone. in that same way, i think she’d recognize that something was off about sou in that his whole demeanor just seemed sort of…fake.

i think this feeling of distrust would come to a head in the first main game, where it’s revealed that big ol’ liar “sou hiyori” and the more quietly deceptive “shin tsukimi” are working together. kugie and shin really mutually dislike each other when they first meet (recognizing the self through the other (derogatory)), and so kugie’s feelings about shin sort of rub off onto how she feels about sou too.

so, moving into chapter 2, we have this weird dynamic where sou is liking kugie more and more and kugie is liking sou less and less. yet, this begins to change when kugie comes to the conclusion that sou is being manipulated by shin. why does she think this? well,

at some point, sou finds the phone from kugie and kanna’s first trial room, and much like shin does in yttd he rewrites the message to sound like something kind: something kanna would actually say. he then goes to kugie to, effectively bribe her for the laptop, saying that he’ll give her the phone if she gives the laptop over to him.

initially she’s like HELL NO, i’m not falling for that, but then sou pulls his sadboy act and is like “but…if i can’t get the laptop, then i’m not sure what sou will do to me” which of course IMMEDIATELY activates her big sister instincts and she’s like ok what. we are not doing this. take the laptop do NOT hand it over to “sou” he’s clearly just using you for his own personal gain. so basically sou emotionally manipulated this poor girl into believing that he was being emotionally manipulated 👍 hate this guy (affectionate)

i think that from this interaction, kugie starts to trust sou more (which is ironic because this is one of the only times he just straight up lies to her). weirdly, i feel like kugie starts to see kanna in sou and sou starts to see shin in kugie. obviously they’re very different people but they have similar attitudes about lots of stuff. it’s just the elder sibling activation instinct over and over except they’re both trying to be the elder sibling

their relationship starts getting rocky again at the beginning of the violet route, though. and it’s because sou crosses the one line that kugie will never accept anyone crossing— hurting ryoko. she gets extremely angry at him and sort of holds this resentment throughout chapter 3. so now we’re back to that tumultuous nature of kugie getting really mad at sou, and sou atp in time realizing that he really really actually cares about kugie, which he never expected to.

…but then she goes BACK to being protective over him once she realizes how badly he’s going through The Horrors with his mom. kugie just. can’t make up her mind about this man. AND I CANT BLAME HER HES A MESS!!!

i hope this satisfies the greenbling urge but yeah they are the sibling dynamic of all time i luv them <3 that’s sou’s weird emotional support teenage girl who wears screws in her hair for whatever reason and beats him up for his wrongdoings /j