yalla | tandem axle dual tire / bonus features (Reply)

if no one feed me i feed me

hooray for finishing two fics in a year and beating last year’s word count ^-^ commentary below the cut

ngl i can’t even remember when i got the idea for this. allegedly it was EARLY 2022?!?! according to my google doc which is crazy bc i didn’t think i was iznrlo’ing that long but i suppose my mind is a mystery to many including myself. actually now that i think about it i’m like ninety percent sure that it came to me in a dream (lmfao?). title was from when i was walking back from a class and i saw a tandem axle dual tire sign about trucks in the overpass tunnel… i was like damn that’s poetic as fuck write that down. couldn’t figure out anything better and HONESTLY WHATEVER IT’S MY FIC I GET TO CHOOSE THE STUPID TITLE!!!

setup/process
as previously mentioned i love triangulations, and i love ambiguous relationships, and i love open endings. it was going to happen eventually. i also specifically love triangles that are based less in romance and more in general love and loyalty (to people, ideals, etc) so.. KNIGHTS CATCH IT! i’ve always been fond of iznrlo bc 3pick and also i fw the themes of all the individual pairs… within the unresolved divorce of ! era izlo and my personal agenda of naruleo and whatever the fuck is always going on with snnr… my playground and mission was very clear. i wanted this to be the first iznrlo fic to hit the archive but within my hands it turned into evil triangulations and i quickly realized that it would be misleading to tag it as suchsgjdvsnehdj im sorry ot3 soldiers i’ve failed you…. they’re not even together. maybe they never will be. notes as i was setting up:

literally triangulations

obviously this piece is about a triangulation but it’s the specific kind that arises when you have these three bitches in a room

izumi and arashi are attached at the hip but when leo comes back how does that dynamic change? what used to be izumi and arashi becomes muddled up and indifferentiable from anything else. izumi doesn’t want arashi flirting with leo because he’s terrified of what could happen between the two people he loves the most when they don’t want him anymore, and he’s jealous. arashi was chasing after traces of akiomi in izumi and wound up becoming his reflection and she loves him so deeply. but with the reinstatement of leo it creates a rift, trying to create space for arashi where there isn’t one—leo wants to make room for her and izumi doesn’t know how. izumi is trying to have his cake and eat it too and arashi isn’t sure and leo is trying to work it out. leo wants arashi, he likes her a lot, he thinks she’s beautiful the way arashi thinks izumi is beautiful. it’s not about any of them wanting one of them gone: izumi does not want arashi to leave any more than arashi wants leo to leave, but they need to relearn how to navigate. how can you maintain equilibrium without a balance? leo operates as an outside force in this way; the tandem axles are izumi and arashi. canceling each other out, take the halves and frame them. reflections in the water. i don’t think any of it is necessarily romantic but they all fill a sort of romantic role for each other regardless. in the end, what else is there to be done? if arashi can have leo than she can have izumi, too, and if leo has arashi then he has izumi not as he was but as he could be and if izumi has leo nothing has to change and if he has arashi nothing has to change

nrlo reads as exes who were not divorced and izlo reads as divorcees who were not exes

it looks really ridiculous and insane now that i’m seeing it again actually and i didn’t use most of this. but that’s what i was working with!! arashi is like the only one whose angle is principally about romantic feelings LOL leo’s is a mix of that and ideals for the group and izumi’s is (as always) about stable societies. in the end it is all about love but i don’t know if i’m very good at convincing the audience so it’s like Dude just trust me. unrequited dynamix are always fun so the premise of this was essentially arashi > izumi > leo > arashi. ofc with them being the way they are it’s way more complicated than that but this was the initial outline.

speaking of outlines i was working with a monstrosity bc i have never in my life been neat on a first go. i forgot to upload the image and i can’t be assed rn on the day my baby is to be released into the world so Just Trust Me. it was bad. although tbf it was less an outline and more of what i was going for in terms of the general focus and feeling of the fic. the later streamlined version became this when i had drafted the scenes and figured out an order for them

initial nrlo
arashi realizing he’s definitely into her
early practice from nerves/callback/izumi initial warning “don’t get involved with him”
pondering the dynamix
izumi would never look at her / iznrlo piano
fraught meeting fishbowl nrlo
he was looking at leo looking at her and that was as good as anything. / what are you trying to pull? / (you) im not pulling anything
tsukasa
classroom kiss. izumi would not touch her
ritsu
i’ve got you now (she feels like she has izumi but when she goes to practice room early and he chews her out then she realizes she really doesn’t have him and never has. it’s about knights as a unit)
dark rooms we have to stop this
i broke it off with the king
handholding on stage

so really don’t give up ever. another thing i need to mention before i forget is that i usually write in present tense and this was in past tense. partially because the first line came to me in past tense but also bc tadt is supposed to take place within canon and the ending is like. nothing fucking changes.. i wanted it to feel immutable. present tense always seems a bit more tenuous and unstable to me but i wanted this to be like Well nothing will change. even as the societies are being destabilized LMFAO

honestly though there was a lot of trouble with this fucking fic ahdsfkbfas i wanted it to be delicious so i was fighting for my life trying to make it subtle and nuanced but also terrorful. when i write very seriously i have a tendency to like recede into my own mind and get stuck there bc i get so caught up in the visions that i can’t unsee them. although the visions may not be visible to other people. it got so bad that toward the end i slid into lacey’s mentions like SAVE MEEEEEEE but they saw it so maybe i’m not insane. maybe.

other stumbling blocks included the general Vibe of the piece and the characterization… i wanted to avoid making the bitterness/fatalism too overwhelming bc on one hand i think arashi can be very bitter when she wants to be but on the other hand she would handle it. like it’s under her skin but it’s UNDER her skin you know. she doesn’t dwell on it. it just is the way it is… IMPORTANT TO NOTE that leo is kinda an instigator if we think about it. but he is not a villain he is just some guy who happened to catch feelings for the members of knights involved in a ten-year-long situationship. izumi was written much worse initially and then i had the bright idea to throw in the portion where he lets her cry to him even though he had told her not to… the love is there to me. i realize the entire fic is an uncharitable reading of all parties (which i frankly think is soooo fun and enstars has it all in the text im just dialing it up a bit) so it’s definitely alienating to the audience… reading goals TEN KUDOS ONE COMMENT TWO BOOKMARKS…

themes, motifs, symbols, etc
i was putting so much shit in here. obviously there is the mirror images thing that crops up.. not unlike the title. the image i was rolling with was snnr as mirror images perfectly stable societies…. and leo as a weight that throws them off because with his reinstatement then there is the realization that whatever knights had been initially did not exist in a vacuum. it had changed and it could change again… i didn’t end up doing anything with tandem axles but i’ve grown fond of it so the title stuck. the idea of snnr as reflections is a bit more obvious but my final note on it was this:

reflection. but that denotes one original and one trick of the light however they are both material THUS of course it doesn't make sense for arashi and izumi to be pursuing the same thing (leo) bc by laws of nature that's not actually how it is. they're their own people. but arashi leaning into the idea of being Like izumi because if she cannot have him then she must encompass his role > in a sense become him

i couldn’t explain this in the fic without it getting weird and overwrought but i liked the idea of it being like. does arashi want to be on the other side of the mirror? because that means when izumi is looking at leo and seeking him then she must be doing the same thing… despite her initial desire being for izumi. and then leo piano demo izumi would never look at her etc etc so she leans into the idea of being not the reflection but the material > decides to let her thing with leo evolve

another symbol was the rings… ngl they are literally just a vehicle i just think that little gifts/accessories are ripe with potential for relational symbolism… tsukasa being the main proponent and devotee of knights ot5 (through the purchasing of the rings, the throwaway lines about how he takes it all very seriously, his conversation with arashi where he tells her he knows she wouldn’t jeopardize them) as a shoutout/foreshadowing to his current role as leader. arashi thinks that they’re pretty and is proud of that but is on the fence throughout the fic till the end where she as well decides to incorporate the five forever ideal into her worldview because in the end knights-as-unit matters more than whatever the fuck she got going on with izlo. izumi constantly wearing his ring to show insistence on and pursuit of the status quo vs leo tossing his aside for the majority of the fic… semiotics of rings as symbols of eternity/everlasting love… and the rejection of this symbol being the rejection of eternity (unchangingness) in itself.... the final acceptance of the rings. and if placed within canon they can no longer represent unchangingness but rather represent Love <3 i wanted to do more with ritsu but as a sakuma he has the uncanny ability to absorb everything into himself like a black hole and i do not have the scope to worry about all that rn. maybe one day with knights roadtrip

FINALLY there’s a lot about The Gaze here. the funny thing about arashi is that even tho she doesn’t really want to be Seen she does want to be Looked At, so to her, love is predicated on the gaze. which is why there’s the repeated lines about izumi only looking at her when leo is involved, leo looking at her very intently, where she lets her eyes go, visions of izumi, arashi making it a point to look at the faces of their fans even though the lights hurt her eyes etc etc. lots of emphasis on izumi’s eyes as well (comparing them to the rings, noting the color and where he looks or isn’t looking, etc).

irl i am very much love is stored in the kitchen and in the hands that prepare food… but for arashi who is a model that models and a performer that performs? it’s in the eyes. going with the idea of The Gaze as well is like. how to arashi, izumi’s ire is less directed toward Her and more toward the Situation and Leo being part of it. the thing about how the opposite of love is actually apathy….. everyone knows that izumi gets on ppl more when he really cares but arashi’s problem is that she thinks izumi doesn’t Care about her at all. like in her mind if anyone else got involved with leo he would react the same way because she thinks it’s about Leo and Knights (career ver)… but it’s actually about knights (precious thing ver) and Her specifically. whether or not it actually carries into the text is another matter entirely but this is how i was thinking about it while writing. i think one of the funniest ways to read snnr is when arashi has been subtly pining for years and izumi finally realizes he has feelings but he doesn’t know what to do with them so they’re always in a state of situation. so fun. in this case it’s also terrorful but usually it’s fun.

favorite scenes

Leo drew closer. “You really are pretty.” He had tossed his ring aside some time in the past week, complaining about it getting in the way of his composition process. When he reached out for her now, cradling her cheek in his hand, there was no sting of metal, nothing to mitigate the terrifying softness of skin on skin. Nothing but Leo.

Arashi wasn’t delusional enough to think that Izumi would ever hold her, but if he did, that ring would still be there, a chilly reminder of what they were. Knights before anything else. Reflection in the water, not meant to be touched. But Leo was touching her now, wasn’t he? His hand was on her calf, behind her knee. Even with layers between them, his touch burned. When he kissed her, she felt like she was on fire.

“Ousama,” she muttered.

“Nope! Try again, Naru.”

“ — Leo-kun.”

He hummed, drew back with a grin. His face was beautiful in a way that she could never be beautiful, the bones fine and the features delicate like a girl’s. She had always thought this. In the light it was more obvious. Leo had so much that she wanted. And now she had him.

• me when the triangle is triangulating

“You’re a good kisser,” Leo said. The calloused tips of his fingers skimmed the nape of her neck.

“You’ve kissed a lot of people, have you?”

“Not a lot. Just one.”

“And how do I compare to that one, Leo-kun?”

Leo’s responding smile reminded Arashi of a painting she’d seen of a fairy once, the expression knowing but impish. “You’re better.” Certainly it wasn’t much of a contest. Just one other person, not hard to guess who, the answer superimposed behind her eyelids: a vision of Sena Izumi, frowning that signature frown, blue eyes like the gemstone set in their five matching rings. Her own ring felt heavy in her pocket.

I’ve got you now, she thought. Maybe only by proxy, but that was as good as anything.

• ME WHEN THE TRIANGLE IS TRIANGULATING

He gripped her by the wrist, easing her hand down to the tabletop. She’d established last year that silver wasn’t actually bad for him, despite the vampire thing, but when she felt the chill of the ring she still wanted to make a jab about it. She still couldn’t figure out whether she liked her own or not, so glitzy it hardly matched anything in her wardrobe, an accessory that only looked natural when in context of the full set of five. Ritsu’s scarlet eyes were uncharacteristically serious. “It’s just that with you and the king… It’s making everyone nervous.”

“Even you, Ritsu-chan?” she asked.

“Even me, Nacchan.”

• this was kinda just me having fun with it and i like how it reads. i think their dynamic is so easy bc they just get each other so even if arashi is being purposely vague and opaque it’s like girl no one is buying that one. i love dialogue and i love caginess!

Izumi batted at her shoulder with a frown. “Hey, Naru-kun. I told you not to come crying to me.”

“I’m not crying,” she said, but her throat felt tight around the words.

Through her blurring vision, Izumi’s gaze was steadfast. “Yes, you are. You’re a terrible liar.”

• terribly unromantic. unless it isn’t

deleted excerpts
most of these were just portions that did not fit honestly. ngl there was more but the truth is i do not want to look at deleted scenes. these, however, were my darlings. and i had to kill them

On her other side, Leo didn’t seem particularly interested in arguing this, so she acquiesced. Izumi’s iron fist was absolute.

• i do so enjoy senaizumi reign of terror isms

“You’ll stay with us, won’t you, Izumi-chan?
the words came out almost as a plea. she hadn’t meant for it to sound so desperate. if Izumi had noticed, he said nothing. he seemed to consider the request, blue eyes narrowing in thought briefly
like any unwelcome visitor in a space not for him, leo had to cut in, “i can stick around! no problem ~ ” Ritsu hummed and pulled himself off her with some reluctance. Leo drummed his fingers on the kotatsu top, humming to himself.

• the introduction was initially much longer but it was 1) sweating hard 2) BORING so i scrapped it

she would be willing to give him the entire, unabridged account of her thoughts. She hadn’t been prepared at the Starlight Festival, so she had to be careful now.

In honesty, by now they had probably been through too much together for Arashi not to trust him. If she hadn’t been willing to follow him as their leader, she would have quit Knights as soon as he had returned — the cut as clean and easy as possible. Knights originally had been a group where no one was truly indispensable, after all. As it was, she had put her faith in him and his ability to lead. But the thing about Leo was that he wasn’t content with just faith — a king like Leo could accept nothing less than a heart laid bare. Arashi just never let anyone peer beneath the skin.

• as the fic went on there was far less explicit emphasis on arashi’s “you are not coming in” thing and when i went back to edit it everything felt too extreme so i had to cut it out. the vulnerability issues are still there but they’re more implied IM TRYING TO LEAVE SOME ROOM FOR THE IMAGINATION…

With the blunt force of his presence set against his youthful energy, he seemed less a king than a prince in a role he had yet to grow into.

• couldn’t fit it in but i managed to squeeze in blunt force leo isms so i won rlly

When this was over she would do it for keeps, easy and clean like she knew how. But for now, she closed her eyes and breathed in Izumi's scent, almost too sweet, like lilacs. Can't we be like we used to? But for an idol, to look back was to die.

• i kept the clean and easy references when she’s thinking about the nature of ending things but the rest of it wasn’t necessary. i initially wanted to play more with the idea of snnr appeal to the past but in the end i think it’s more interesting for arashi to view it as something that never existed in the first place because izumi would never make contact with her. the idols looking back thing was just overwrought and unnecessary bc i was putting too much on the table to begin with

“Leader, your signature is getting sloppy,” Tsukasa said balefully.

“Nuh-uh!”

“Ha? It wasn’t even that neat to begin with. Ousama…”

Arashi glanced over. Leo’s signature was starting to have a dangerous slant to it, but it was hardly terrible, and she was pretty sure every one of their fans already knew about his tendency to scrawl. “Now, Tsukasa-chan, it’s not bad. Not all of us took penmanship in elementary school, you know.”

“I hated that stuff,” Ritsu murmured. “They used to get mad at me for using my left hand.”

She patted his head sympathetically. “Poor little Ritsu-chan. If we’d been classmates back then, I would have defended you,” she murmured. “Anyway, Tsukasa-chan, I’m sure no one will notice, or mind. There’s a point where perfectionism is just an obstacle to improvement, you know?”

Izumi scoffed. “You can’t improve without a goal, Naru-kun.”

“People usually get lost when they look too far ahead, anyway. They miss what’s right in front of them,” Ritsu said with a half-lidded glance in Izumi’s direction.

“Only if they’re not smart about it.” Izumi clicked his tongue. “Although I’m sure that wouldn’t be a problem for you, Kuma-kun.”

“Ehehe. Probably not.”

Tsukasa looked up from his work, pursing his lips. “I suppose in the end it is about balance, no?” he pointed out. “Realistic, rather than idealistic, goals.”

“Everything is an ideal, Kasa-kun. Our job as idols is to attain it.”

Tsukasa looked like he wanted to refute that, but Izumi had a look in his eyes that meant any such retort would receive no mercy from him today. Arashi cut in,

“Let’s not talk about this, okay?”

As if on cue, before there could be any more exchanges deliberating about the nature of idolhood, Leo stood up triumphantly. “Ta-da! Finished!”

Arashi glanced over. Sure enough, he had completed all the albums that had been given to him earlier today, but he still had to put his signature on the ones that she had left. Arashi realized, much to her chagrin, that she had wound up being the slowpoke today. “Sorry, Ousama, I’m not done with mine yet,” she apologized. Leo pouted, but she didn’t think there was any real displeasure in it.

They’d done the signing in a sort of assembly-circle, but Arashi suspected that Izumi had ordered Anzu to give them all to him beforehand so he could have a head start on the signing. The remaining order, then, was Tsukasa, Ritsu, Arashi, Leo — Tsukasa at the front, of course, being nothing if not dedicated when it came to idol work. Arashi had expected Ritsu to be at the end of the line, but despite his reputation, he had gotten his signatures out with little issue. She hadn’t realized he’d finished so soon.

“Ha?” Izumi’s expression was sour. “Now you’ll both have to stay longer. So annoying.”

“Izumi-chan, can’t we just finish tomorrow before practice? No harm done.”

“Secchan probably thinks we have more important things to do than wait around,” Ritsu muttered, pressing his face into the soft muscle of her upper arm. His nose was cold.

“We have more important things to do than wait for you two to finish signing them,” Izumi said briskly. Arashi felt Ritsu’s mouth stretch into a smile. “Just stay longer tonight. If you do them right now, it won’t even take long.”

On her other side, Leo didn’t seem particularly interested in arguing this, so she acquiesced. Izumi’s iron fist was absolute.

“You’ll stay with us, won’t you, Izumi-chan?
the words came out almost as a plea. she hadn’t meant for it to sound so desperate. if Izumi had noticed, he said nothing. he seemed to consider the request, blue eyes narrowing in thought briefly
like any unwelcome visitor in a space not for him, leo had to cut in, “i can stick around! no problem ~ ” Ritsu hummed and pulled himself off her with some reluctance. Leo drummed his fingers on the kotatsu top, humming to himself.

“Man, do we even need Sena?”
Ritsu patted her on the back as he went off to search for maa-kun and tsukasa politely wished them all a goodbye
izumi’s eyes narrowed farther. “like you’re not just going to goof off and be an overall distraction.” that sheen of annoyance in his tone.
“i’m great at helping and staying quiet and getting work done,” leo insisted.

She wondered if taking an extra thirty minutes would get him to head back without her, but it didn’t make sense to waste her time like that. The sun was starting to go down, and the daylight with it.

IN MEDIAS RES

The nature of the game of chess was to look as far ahead as possible, because at the end of the day, losing pawns meant nothing so long as the king was still standing. Even when it hurt.

• too many metaphors DON’T START BY CALLING SOMETHING AN HOURGLASS AND END WITH CALLING IT A SWORDFISH

end notes
ultimately i do think i’m proud of this bad boy so even if it gets negative kudos i will be okay because i learned something. and that something was KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!! in seriousness i had a lot of fun despite the horrors and due to the subject matter this kinda has been my baby for almost two years so i’m glad i can finally bring her into the world…. thanks again to LACEY for she/ing her