Ranting with the Sanses

Rant about Hanahaki

All : Huh, what is this ?

Kathleen : This is a trope that the creators use sometimes. Most of the time, in angsty ship stories. 

Jill : To make it simple, Hanahaki is a fictional disease that slowly kill the individual infected by it with flowers growing in their body. The disease is coming from the feeling of one-sided love, which...

Kathleen :  is stekchy as funk. I can't count the number of story where you find out that the other one was also in love with them but never said anything. Huh, don't ? This feels really upsetting. Like, you literally killed a character we liked and then you tell us that death was completely useless and could have been easily avoided.

Jill : ... In most stories, this is said Hanahaki can be cured by one of the two actions : 1. confessing your feelings to the other and them loving you back. 2. getting some surgery which usually would have some side-effect. Since the aim of the surgery is supposed to be to "remove" the love you have for that person, of course, you stop being in love with them. Possible side-effect could be : Being unable to fall in love ever again or losing all of your memories with the loved one. There are most likely some other, but those are the one Kath remember the most.

Kathleen : So, in some stories, I could forgive it. The reason was either because, the one being loved didn't love the sick one, until it was already too late and that he was going to lose him, which goes with the narrative of "You never know what you have, until you lose it".

Jill : I precise, this was a Killermare one. Killermare has a lot of Hanahaki.

Kathleen : Another one, this made sense Killer didn't want to get cured. This was the "losing your memories" kind of side-effect. Meaning if Killer got that surgery, he would basically forget years worth of memories, because he is the first member of the bad, and he is sick because of his feelings for Nightmare. In this one, I could forgive that Killer didn't do surgery. His biggest issues wasn't stopping to be in love with Nightmare, but forgetting all his time with the Bad. All of those years, who were the happiest of his life. This makes sense he would not want to discard all those precious memories, so I was slightly forgiving... UNTIL I FOUND OUT NIGHTMARE WAS IN LOVE WITH KILLER AND THAT DREAM KNEW !!

Jill : For Dream's defense, he maybe realised Nightmare's feelings for Killer when confessing wouldn't have saved Killer anymore, and he just respected Killer's will to try to hide the truth to Nightmare as long as possible. But, like she said, Kath really hate the "I was actually in love with you too, you big dummy" kind of ending.

Kathleen : There is another one I kinda liked. I think this was one where Nightmare had Hanahaki because he was in love with Cross, but didn't dare to confess, and Killer pushed him to confess his feelings before it was too late. So Nightmare did and fortunately, Cross loved Nightmare too, so Nightmare was cured. But, you find out at the end that Killer also has Hanahaki, and that he is in love with Nightmare. So, Killer this time, had an understandable reason to not confess. Why would he, want he already knows this is pointless and that he will just get rejected ? He will surely even make sure Nightmare never learn that the one Killer loved was him, because I am sure Nightmare would figure out that Killer was already sick at the time he was helping him.

Jill : Also, this is actually a somewhat frequent trope for Killer to shallow his own feelings if he is the best friend of his love rival or that his crush is in love with someone else.

Kathleen : Yeah, like, Nightmare for instance, is often depicted as a yandere, same for most of the Bad, but Killer is more often depicted as that person who wishes for the happiness of their loved one, even if he isn't part of it. Which goes well with the final reset he wanted to do before meeting Nightmare and his loyalty toward Nightmare too, who he is the closest thing to an actual best friend and confident. Though, if the best friend of Killer is Cross and that they are both in love with Nightmare, trust me, if the author dares to make Cross being like "he pushes me toward Nightmare, while betraying me in my back" or some shit, I will snap. I hate thoses.

Jill : I love how this started about Hanahaki, but because Killermare is maybe one of the ship with the most Hanahaki OS, she kinda went on some of her complains with Killermare too...

She snorts while looking at Kath trying to calm herself.