#also milla is not cold or emotionless

[maplemaplemaplemaplemaple]

it makes me upset when sasha gets mischaracterised as emotionless or cold when no??? i think it’s mostly to do with his monotone voice and him using very direct language (also he was described as cold in the game’s manual i think???) but it genuinely upsets me when it’s evident how much he cares for the people in his life !!! especially milla who goes without saying and raz as his mentor/sort of dad

also just generally being a friendly, polite guy :::

(one of the promotional comics! i love them they’re silly)

being monotone≠being emotionless!!! he’s doing pretty great for a guy who basically grew up without parental love!!! he’s just introverted and struggles with social cues sometimes

i could write more about this but i think it’s just me wanting to jump up and down and chew up the curtains when i see my middle aged man mischaracterised im soooooooo normal im

[sheltershock]

Sashamilla is such a nice ship. I just want to gush about my otp, so sorry if this isn’t organized as neatly as it could be. But thinking about them, their dynamic, and how they’re portrayed just gives me so much hope and makes me feel happy. Like suddenly throughout my day I’ll just break out into a big, goofy smile and that’s just nice. 

Also: warning, this is a long text post. 

I like how we get personally introduced to each of them separately, and that they get to be their own characters first and possibly in a relationship second. In the first game we get to meet Sasha, get a feel for his personality, run experiments, explore his mind, discover his traumas, and then get directed towards Milla. Sasha’s a complete, standalone character with personality, quirks, and a backstory by the end of his level without any mention of romantic relationships. And then we meet Milla. We don’t get as much time with her, but that’s because she shined more in the opening of the game. She’s already established with her job as an international secret agent, we see her character design which is colorful with lots of circular/spiral patterns, and we see that she’s motherly, kind and responsible. And then we enter her mind and get both  an expansion of that and a subversion. She's a bubbly party girl who’s always pumping everyone up, and has probably one of the most tragic backstories in fiction. Although her trauma memory vault is hidden, it is 100% accessible before her second one even if you’re playing the game for the first time. So before you get to her second memory vault you get her personality, a few quirks(overprotectiveness w/ the explanation of why), and her super depressing backstory. She’s a stand-alone character. And only after we have two complete standalone characters do we get to see her second memory vault where we get the implication that they’re both in love with each other.

But both of them have already been built up so well that they got time to be their own characters instead of simply being “X’s love interest.” It prevents this problem that happens in a lot of heterosexual couples in media where often it’ll just be one full character split into two roles. So the couple “completes” each other, because neither character was actually a complete character to begin with. I actually have a bit of a distaste to the idea of “completing each other” in romance, and I heavily dislike how it’s leaked into real life in the form of “your other half.” You are your own person, and absolutely complete as yourself. I like the terminology of “complimenting” instead of “completing,” specifically in the analogy of color theory. For example the colors red and green. You can make an entire painting in just shades of red or just shades of green and no other colors and it’s a complete painting. But if you put red and green together, it looks really nice because they’re complimentary colors. People in romantic relationships should compliment each other, rather than complete them. 

Sasha and Milla absolutely compliment each other as a couple. It helps that they’re clearly apart of the “opposites attract” trope, but the literary term would be a foil. They are so badly and fully themselves that they can’t help but highlight the other person’s qualities. Control vs. Chaos. Monotone vs. Colorful. Flat vs. Expressive. Logical vs. Emotional. But the reason they compliment each other so well is because it isn’t as easy to say that they’re just opposites, because they’re also extremely alike. For example, you can’t say that Sasha is emotionless, cold and uncaring. You just can’t. Milla is absolutely emotional, warm and friendly, but you can’t say that Sasha is the opposite of that. Firstly, because emotional baggage exists in his mind, which would imply, y’know, emotion. He sympathizes with Raz enough to step up to be his mentor, and when he believes Raz has mistaken a “scary, flaming-eyed demon” for a Censor, he doesn’t berate Raz for wasting their time, but just gently encourages that problems often seem larger in our heads, and that it’s alright. And in Rhombus of Ruin, Sasha tries extremely hard to be as comforting as possible to Lili, to the point that he actively tries to imitate Milla with slow speech, a softer tone of voice, and even throwing in a “darling” at the end. 

The same can be applied vice versa, too. Sasha is clearly a smart, intellectual character. But Milla can’t be called stupid. Except for the times where she is literally brainless, she proves herself to be really smart and capable. She can easily put herself in other’s shoes to identify problems, she knows how to read ripples in emotional oceans and trace its source, she’s extremely knowledgeable about children and their development, and in RoR she can rally the Psychonaut team from their emotionally charged, personal tasks to work together to achieve a goal. Milla isn’t stupid. She just has a different version of intelligence. Instead of Sasha’s logical-mathematical intelligence, Milla has really high emotional/interpersonal intelligence. And that’s the beauty of complimentary characters, that lean towards comparing and contrasting. 

Speaking about how Sasha and Milla compliment each other…well, they compliment each other. Literally. Their version of flirting is just them hyping each other up. Which is really cute. Complimenting their work ethic, ideas they come up with, talents and abilities, etc. Never in the games do they really talk about the other’s physical appearance. Which makes sense since they’re both psychic. But it’s refreshing to see a relationship where both people value their personality and talents instead of physical attraction. The famous scene in PN2 where they are both inching close in way that’s so obvious that they’re going to kiss, they’re talking about how fucking talented and good at their jobs they are. 

Since we see that this is how they flirt with each other, you can actually go backwards in the series and see that they’ve been kind of doing it for all three games. In RoR, when Sasha suggests the idea of tracking a constellation, Milla says “oooh~ great idea, Sasha!” Or in the first game when Sasha refers to Milla as “one of the world’s foremost levitators,” which Raz repeats to Milla as “the most powerful levitator the Psychonauts had.” And Milla’s response for her tone to get really soft and go “Sasha said that? Really? I didn’t know he noticed…” Which, uh, they went on multiple missions together and she’s in the air for most of them. I think he noticed. Then Raz goes on to say that he only works with the best teachers and Milla calls him a flirt. But armed with the knowledge from the sequel that they’re literally always talking to each other, and can do so while having a different conversation, I personally like to think that she was referring to both of them as a flirt. 

And that’s another thing, they’re always talking to each other. Which communication, yay! And it also hints that they like each other enough that they always want to be available for conversation. But surprisingly, when this is revealed in PN2, I think it’s the first time a two-way telepathy connection has been brought up. Of course, characters have been projecting their thoughts into Raz’s mind during all three games, but in these scenarios, Raz always responds out loud. You’d think in an organization of psychics, this kind of two-way communication is normal, but it isn’t? When Sasha, Milla and Hollis go on the casino mission, they’re using radios to communicate. Out loud. Radios. This is a stealth mission and they picked a type of communication where you have to vocally express your thoughts? At one point Milla is saying into her earpiece, “I’m approaching the front desk, I’ll distract the clerks.” That’s not something you want to be saying out loud, within earshot of the target you’re going to distract. Of course the argument can be made that this choice was because the interns were coming and they needed to hear what good correspondence sounds like. But there’s got to be a more effective, less life threatening method right? Unless, of course, that two way mental links aren’t very common. 

Projecting yourself into a mind doesn’t seem to be very hard, but manipulating the mental world does. Within all the games, Raz has to play each level and mind by its own rules. The same is probably true in the real world, that each mind is different and has its own vibe and rules. Solutions that worked in previous worlds are viable in new ones. For example, in Hollis’ mind you have to disconnect the ideas of money and risk to destroy the Lady Lucktopus. Bob’s mind seems to work with a similar boss idea, each plant represents a person in his life that has caused pain, and realizing that his view of them determines if they’re a monster. So if Raz really wanted to optimize his therapy speedrun, all he’d have to do is disconnect whatever thoughts Bob has with these people. But that’s not the solution, Bob has to do the disconnect himself. Like Hollis said, the Psychonauts are there to help people fight their own demons. Because it’s almost like trying to go in and manually changing someone’s mind usually fails in some way, because everyone’s mind works differently. 

What I’m trying to say is that psychically linking two people is probably extremely difficult. You probably need to have a good understanding of each other, get on each other’s wavelength, etc. The only other time something like that has happened was with the Meat Circus, which was terrible, and multiple characters said that untangling Raz’s and Oleander’s minds would be difficult. So thinking about how Milla’s and Sasha’s minds are linked in such a way that they can communicate without it going horribly wrong is extremely impressive. Especially with how stated previously that they’re really different from each other. But seeing how they can get on the same wavelength, it again shows how similar they actually are. It seems really symbolic of a healthy relationship. 

I don’t really know what else to necessarily say. They have their own identities, they compliment each other, they have subversive banter, they’re psychically linked and are probably really good at communication. Just watching them being in a relationship is cute. Even if the games don’t make it clear what exactly their relationship is. They love and appreciate each other for being themselves, and that’s just so hopeful and adorable to me. 

[yume-x-hanabi]

Unpopular opinion I guess but I don’t see the problem with Jude/Milla?

I know people harp on the age thing, but you have to remember to put things back into their world’s context. Jude may be young by our world’s standards, but that’s not the case in his world. And, I mean, his whole character arc is about maturing into an independent adult. Also, what’s the worst they do? Hold hands once before being separated seemingly forever? Oh no the scandal!

It’s also sad to see this ship be so hated, because imo it’s one of the healthiest canon couple? Like, they respect and inspire each other, have good and open communication, balance each other’s strengths and weaknesses really well... They bring out the best in each other.

I can see not shipping it if that’s not your thing or you like other ships better, but I never really understood the hate...