This prompt by Purple Dragon Prompts has a character who is really trying hard to sound like he or she doesn’t care. While reading manga a lot lately I have come across a word that seems to describe the speaker in this prompt. That word is tsundere.
Although I have a general idea of what that means, I figured it was best to look up a definition, so here is what Wordnik had to say on the topic:
tsundere
NOUN
▪ a fictional character who fits the archetype of having a cold and even hostile personality towards another person before gradually showing a worm and caring side over time.
I will absolutely take that over a yandere. Yanderes are scary.
Back on track this character could mean what is being said, but it seems more likely based off the way it is said that this character just doesn’t want to show his or her emotions. Telling someone not to die because it would be inconvenient is a lot of claiming you don’t care.
There is no indication of what the relationship actually is between these two, but I would be willing to bet that if the speaker does care about the listener this is something that was either never said, said when the listener wasn’t supposed to hear, or said very infrequently.
Another thing we don’t see here is what the listener thinks of the speaker. We know the speaker told the listener that their help doesn’t mean they care, but did the listener think that or was that the speaker projecting? I can see this starting after the listener thanked the speaker for their help only to be told, this means nothing. I wonder if the listener believed them.
I looked at this and saw a tsundere. What did you see when you looked at this prompt? Did you see a specific character archetype or did you see something else?
