#but i still think its a very interesting insight to his character
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arceespinkgun · 2 days ago
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More detailed thoughts on the current arc of the Skybound comics (spoilers for up to the most current issue, #16) in which I give some more insight into why I'm still kinda ambivalent about certain parts:
Starting with the negatives to get them out of the way (they're not super serious or anything but I think they're why I'm not sure how I feel yet).
The characters who are part of the Combiners are not really characterized at all, and when they are it seems very odd. The Combaticons as big Starscream fans is really strange to see, especially when I remember their G1 debut. Mostly, the Constructicons and Combaticons feel like they're fulfilling rank-filling roles.
It's too vague right now to know what exactly happened between Starscream and Megatron in the past, but if Megatron was compelling or mind-controlling Starscream, I think that doesn't really do Starscream a lot of justice. However (and this is a big however) I believe this plotline is probably symbolic and ties into what's going on with Optimus. This series seems to be exploring the harsh realities of war and its corrupting influences, so even if I'm not sure about how one particular character is written, it may serve the greater narrative.
Arcee's crisis in #16 didn't make sense to me? She didn't jeopardize anything at all, that was only Optimus's (wrong) interpretation... and he went and killed Shockwave anyway! It just seemed odd to me to see her be comforted by Optimus when it almost feels a little hypocritical.
The thing I still find most frustrating is, unsurprisingly, how Jazz is written in this series. He barely feels like a real person with depth even now. Although nothing is like, contradicting his G1 characterization, the fact that Jazz was one of the most prominent and fleshed-out of all the transformers is making me feel like he's not being utilized very well. He always had lots of interesting things to say in the cartoon but I don't feel like that's happening here.
Now onto the positive things!
I continue to adore what DWJ's doing with Elita-1. We get to see her now as a leader of a team, a trait I've been waiting for, and I was surprised by and enjoy her friendship with Warpath! I never would've thought of something like that, but I guess it makes sense. They've been portrayed as Cybertronian resistance fighters before. Her smile while he's getting repaired was so sweet.
In a similar vein, I love seeing characters who have always been around but rarely focused on getting much more attention and care in the narrative. Bluestreak's ruthlessness was great to see focused on and maybe this series will do something more with the fact that his backstory is like Cliffjumper's in this series. I was really excited to see Trailbreaker, a character with a ton of potential, get to shine a little too! I really hope he goes on to be a major character.
Astrotrain is also a highlight for me, and I was pretty surprised to hear he wants revenge against Megatron because... Megatron killed his love interest? This is a surprising and confusing turn I never would've thought of, but I guess this is how Astrotrain would act if such a thing happened, and I'm wracking my brain trying to guess what the backstory is there. I think I'd prefer if this was about a pre-existing character and not an OC, because I found Starscream's backstory about a dead OC friend kinda weak TBH.
I'm super excited to see further fallout of Thundercracker feeling so betrayed and I was happy that this finally happened.
Megatron using Laserbeak as his eyes is really cool and I doubt DWJ would do this, but it would kind of be nice if Megatron was just blind for the whole series.
I'm really eager to see how this comic approaches the deep-seating transformer cultural issue of creating new life to be soldiers thing now that its reared its ugly head, and if Cliffjumper might have some kind of crisis later on if he feels guilt over his choices.
The art is just incredible and continues to be!
For now, I think I'm waiting to see if all this comes together like the end of the last arc worked so well.
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pettyprocrastination · 2 years ago
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I know the quote “We don’t hurt little girls in Dorne” “Everywhere in the world they hurt little girls.” Is said so that it can be mirrored by Ellaria killing Myrcella but I think it definitely gives this interesting insight into oberyn’s character and his sort of. self-righteous ignorance to the reality of the world. 
Like we know oberyn is incredibly intelligent. But he’s also still a man, and a prince no less. So he comes from this place of privilege and confidence (since he sees dorne as superior to everywhere else in westeros) that he can say with confidence that children are not harmed in dorne when Cersei, albiet a cruel character but still a woman and a mother in her own right has to tell him that no, children, especially little girls are hurt and preyed upon every corner in the world because that’s just how the world is. 
And yes Dorne is leagues ahead of other places in talk of equality. Given that women can be warriors, rule the country, and (if i remember correctly) take their husbands to court for domestic violence charges. But to say that there is no pain or suffering there that young women face is incredibly ignorant and shows that his perspective is one that comes from a very different world than the ones that women must live in. 
I think it’s the same reason that Oberyn has never married. He gets the choice to push off marriage and travel the world with his lover, meanwhile a woman at his age would be well into her marriage with multiple children. Cersei for example, at the same age and social status is being forced to marry a second time, despite her power as the queen regent she cannot stop the process, even when she begs her father with tears in her eyes because she knows the reality of marriage for a woman, even at her status, is one that is quiet dark because her role as a wife isn’t one with much power or safety. 
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why didn't they just use franziska for literally all of this.
#freya talks aai2#my goals of not being a forgotten/forsaken hater are not going well. he goes from 'kay is a dear ACQUAINTANCE' to 'i've not known her for#very long but i know she'd never kill anyone' to 'you are the kay i know so well' in the span of a few hours and it's like.#okay so you know it was too early in their acquaintanceship for this to really make sense but you still wanted a 'deep' and 'meaningful'#relationship to take the lead in this plotline. his sister is literally right there. it wouldnt have been hard to swap her in either because#she's literally investigating the smuggling situation. it would make perfect sense for her to be there following a lead instead of suddenly#revealing kay's promise notebook went missing. im not saying that the super-gentle super-meek persona would have made more sense with#franziska but honestly it wouldnt have made sense with any of them because it's more a caricature of a character rather than being an actual#previously unseen facet of one but you could've done so many more interesting things with franziska! she has an actual personal stake in#edgeworth's decision to continue as a prosecutor or not and we could get actual insight into how her own relationship with prosecuting and#its inextricable link to her father has affected her as a person. like when you show amnesiac kay the prosector badge all she says is that#it feels heroic warm and familiar like someone she knew used to show it to her often. and like cool. it's basically telling us she and her#father were close. which we already knew. imagine if franziska had said something like that or had had a more complex reaction. there would#be so many avenues to go with that!! you'd even be able to delve deeper into what edgeworth thinks about it all. like what if franziska was#just. happier. without her memories. then you'd have a story where edgeworth has to reckon with whether it might be kinder to let her live a#different life where she's unburdened by literally everything she's been made to go through and give her the same opportunity of starting#over that he now has.#im just writing fanfiction at this point but like. the amnesia plot is so frustrating to me HAHA they dont even do anything interesting with#it!! it's just oh she's lost her memories and we need to get them back because she's not 'herself' anymore without any discussion of like.#the nature of identity or living as who other people know you as vs whoever you might actually be#WHEN THE WHOLE CASE IS ABOUT EDGEWORTH DECIDING ON HIS PATH FORWARDS AND GRAPPLING WITH BEING THE PROSECUTOR EVERYONE HAS KNOWN HIM AS#whatever. WHATEVER.#annotations#some people might argue so it's not rehashing old conflict between franziska and edgeworth and like ok. she literally repeats her 'are you#running away from me again' line during this case. does that sound like the words of resolved conflict?#i know WHY they use kay. it's because they need to justify her place in this game and because they want to play on the pseudo father-figure#thing they played up in aai2 to contribute to the overall themes of fatherhood this game is dealing with. and to that i have to say that i#might just not be the audience for it because i've never bought that version of their relationship and i dont think kay should be in aai2#anyway. plus i posit that franziska would've still worked for that theme because. literally everything. about her.
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thosewickedlovelies · 2 months ago
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A guide to writing fics set in museums / with a museum worker character
Hey hi hello it’s your local museum worker here, offering you some insight and tips to writing museum-related fics! This is primarily organized as a list of different jobs you could have in a museum and what their duties entail. This post might also be useful to you if you’re considering working in museums and want to know What Goes On In There. Let’s go!
For simplicity/fic-writing purposes, I would divide museums into 2 very rough groups: large national or city museums that Have Money (think the Smithsonian or British Museums, or the Chicago Field Museum or the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds); and smaller local museums. These could be local industry and culture/history-of-our town museums, historic houses, or  really niche subject museums run by One Person With A Passion.
Big national museums have a fuckton of staff and money (museums can never have enough money. But these places are very well-off compared to somewhere small that might always be hustling and writing grant applications). If you work here you’re likely to have a specific role in a particular department, and you probably won’t do much outside this role (ex., if you work in collections management, you probably won’t also design exhibits)
The smaller the museum, the more varied your workload will be/the more likely you are to be doing a little bit of everything. You’re probably organizing collections storage, manning the front desk, and desperately running fundraising efforts, all at once. 
To this end, smaller museums are more likely to be closed one or two days a week- you’ll be there, probably cleaning displays or managing storage, but visitors won’t be.
A lot of (most?) universities also have museums, so a college town setting is also doable. But the same big vs small museum disparity is still possible! At Penn State University, for example, the Palmer Art Museum is its own (recently redone iirc) building in the center of campus with a lovely plaza out front, while the Matson Museum of Anthropology is uhhhhh a couple classrooms in the Anthropology Department (which they’re currently rebuilding tbf, so we’ll see what they’ve done with it in 2025).
Types of Jobs
Curator
The one museum job that everyone can name. Nominally the person in charge. Probably laments that their job is way more admin than fun hands-on stuff now.
Actually this is the role I have the least knowledge of, but I think that’s partially because this job might vary the most from place to place? Structural organization can vary a lot between institutions, but I think the higher up you get in any field, the more your job tends to consist of meetings/overseeing, designating, and ~liaising~
A list of things a curator might do:
Planning or approving events and fundraisers, schmoozing with donors and members at said events, approving or designing a schedule of exhibits, publish outreach/advertising or research materials, oversee hiring, approve new object acquisitions (or de-acquisitions), generally make sure that the museum is working within the scope of its mission and if necessary, change or refine their mission
The curator might not necessarily control a museum’s funds; in this case they’ll liaise with the people who do, likely a Board of Executives or Board of Trustees. Once they get the money from these people, though, they could potentially redistribute it as they see fit.
 If you work in a fuckoff museum like the BM, you could also be the curator of a specific department, arranged by overarching subject, geographic area, time period, or even object type (eg Curator of Archaeobotany, Curator of Korean Collections, curator of coins from the medieval period). These categories can be more or less specific depending on what kind of holdings your museum has. I think these types of curators would still be able to do interesting things, as they aren’t the ones who Oversee The Whole Place.
You can also be an assistant or associate curator, like being an assistant manager.
Education/Engagement
These are the people who design fun extra activities (esp for kids) in the galleries or relevant events/workshops/lectures the public can attend. They might be called Engagement/Education Officer or Events Manager or anything similar
Again, the bigger the museum you work at, the more specific your role is likely to be. You might focus on web content/outreach and social media, manage the ‘friends/members of the museum’ program, or engage with shareholders, etc
Or you might do things like develop content and events to engage adult audiences. Workshops or lectures connected to new exhibits, after-hours visits. These people are also probably the ones with an eye on accessibility- you’ve probably seen advertisements for museums’ early or late hours for older visitors, or ‘quiet hours’ for people who might be overstimulated by normal museum hubbub, or tactile workshops designed for visually impaired folks.
I think most places would try to have someone specific for kids activities at the very least. They’ll be designing little activities or dress-up stations for the galleries, kiddie mascots or scavenger hunt trail kind of things, as well as, potentially, activities for any digital elements in the museum. They probably also coordinate school visits and act as a tour guide for classes, and will lead the kids in specific workshops or lessons in classrooms attached to the museum.
As a note on technology- some people would probably say that integrating digital elements into exhibits is the ~next big thing~, that museums have to get with the times in this regard, but opinions vary. Big science and technology museums are the most likely to have the most digital and techy elements in their exhibits, so if this is your setting, your character could also be a generic “tech person”. I would go so far as to say the smaller/more local the museum, the less technology you’re likely to have, but smaller museums are able to get grants, some of them potentially for specifically this type of thing, so it’s totally possibly that they have a few tablets with integrated activities, or some other Digital/Screen Thing.
Engagement Officers are probably the most likely people to be drafted for out-of-hours events, so that’s a potentially fun thing for your character to do. Some museums, particularly bigger ones, have event spaces attached that anybody can rent out, for weddings, galas, markets, etc, so they might also take care of these bookings as well.
Exhibit Design
This role has a lot of nebulous terms: exhibit coordinator, design constructor, exhibit programmer- but these are the people who design the exhibits. They’ll come up with a theme or narrative, a design scheme, choose the objects, write the text. They’ll probably come up with some marketing material as well, that matches the design scheme, or they’ll liaise with the marketing people who will.
These people might not be as familiar with the collections as the collections management folk (below), depending on how strictly divided your roles are, so they’ll likely consult with the collections people on choosing objects for a particular exhibit or theme (they say that good exhibit design builds an exhibit from the objects up, but I digress).
These people will also direct and participate in the install and deinstall (the actual terms) of exhibits- putting the objects on the right plinths/stands and arranging everything just so in the cases. Genuinely there’s a lot of psychology behind exhibit design- colors, lighting, the way you might design an exhibit to be navigated vs the path people will actually take through the gallery, people’s sight lines and where their eyes go first, how the display of any given object affects people’s perception of the importance of that object. Fascinating stuff, many books on the subject. 
There are also a lot of accessibility concerns to be considered here- how bright is the gallery, how large is your display text, at what height is the central eyeline of your cases?
Museums often loan objects to and from each other’s collections, so if you’re building an exhibit and you’d really like to include X type of object but your museum doesn’t have any, you can borrow some from another museum (this isn’t necessarily a guarantee- museums are allowed to say no to these requests, but I think manners would dictate that they should have a good reason)
Museums sometimes tour whole exhibitions as well- the objects, the text placards, maybe even the stands for super special or fragile items- and exhibit coordinator people are the ones who would handle those arrangements.
Potentially good opportunities for angst stories here- wow things come to life at your museum, you fall in love with a statue but oh no it’s only at your museum for three months
Collections Care
People who work in Collections Management have the most direct contact with the museum objects themselves. You probably work here if you prefer objects to people. When a museum gets new material, these are the people involved. They might not always initiate acquisitions, and the final approval is probably down to the relevant curator, but 98% of the time they’d be consulted (I hope).
A mind-boggling statistic is that most museums only have like 10% of their collections on display at any given time. Yeah. Forreal lol. But collections folk will know where the other 90% is and what’s in it (particularly the longer they’ve been there). 
There’s usually a head Collections Manager. Other workers might be a Collection Assistant/Associate, Collections Officer (we like calling people Officers for some reason), Registrar, or some variant of these depending on the specific flavor of your duties. 
Main job duties can be divided amongst documentation and database work, organization and storage of objects, and lite conservation. Just how much/how technical the conservation work depends on your own training, but also on the size/funding of your museum. The more money, the more likely your museum is to have its own lab with people specifically trained as conservators. More on them later. 
Here’s what happens when a museum gets new stuff!:
Ideally, it goes to a ‘quarantine zone’ first. This is a separate space or room where the objects can relax for a few weeks to a few months (ultimate best practice is actually a year, but, you know. that’s a long time) to ensure that they’re not harboring anything icky (bugs, mold, etc) that will infect the rest of the collections. It’s ideally super-sealed and climate-controlled, but the primary feature should be that it’s away from the main collections store.
Collections folk do the paperwork. They’ll give each individual object a unique number (following their preexisting system that will allow it to be identified distinct from all the other objects in the collection). They’ll create a ‘collections record’ for the object- documentation containing any and all information about the object. This includes the accession paperwork (everything that says ‘we legally own this now’); provenance info (all previous owners and everywhere else the object has been in its life); measurements and description (in painful detail); and conservation history and concerns (ie ‘there’s a crack in the side so pick up with care’, ‘this was repaired in the 70s so that glue is gonna fall apart any day now’).
(I'll say as a fic writer that this would be an great time to wax poetic over a beautiful statue or painting; you can’t write “This golden crown deserved to be worn by a great king, or maybe by that broody Roman general in the painting in Gallery B” in the collections paperwork, but you can think it.)
For fiction’s sake, your collections records could be either paper or digital, but in an ideal world a museum would have both setups, for security’s sake. So you’d fill out some long forms and/or input all the information to the digital collections management system (‘the CMS’, or referred to by your specific software’s name, as there are many out there). The CMS is not a static archive, but rather a living register that’s updated every time an object is interacted with. The object records also include where an object is at any given time (‘normally in Case E in the Fancypants Gallery, currently in Conservation Lab A for repairs’).
Once the objects are done in quarantine, they’ll go to storage. If they’re being displayed immediately, they’ll probably go to some interim storage space/shelf with other objects for the same exhibit and in that case only get a temporary setting. Every object will get labeled with their object number (directly on them, with a special pen that’s safe for this. Or if it’s really tiny, like a coin or jewelry, then their own tiny box will get the label). Small or fragile items, or items grouped together, will go in their own boxes (made of acid- and lignin-free cardboard or polyethylene plastic, like Rubbermaid totes; lined with polyethylene foam and then acid-free tissue paper). Stable ceramic vessels might sit directly on lined shelving, particularly if they’re very large or heavy, like many stone objects.
Listen, every type of object has a particular way(s) of storing that’s best for them, you’re gonna have to look that up yourself or consult someone if you need that level of detail
Ideally, before being stored away, objects are also photographed. This could be part of the Collection Officer’s duty, and/or your museum could have a photographer on staff. (say it with me:) This is more likely if your museum is really huge and/or has a backlog of unphotographed collections and has hired someone specifically, even if temporarily, to improve its collections documentation.
I would say a collections person, or anyone with a museum studies degree, should have some minimum amount of conservation knowledge that includes basic storage standards for different object materials, how to spot potential preservation problems (like if your bronze axe head is actively oxidizing or if that green spot looks the same as it always has since starting and pausing decaying), and maybe how to give objects a basic clean or deal with certain types of problems. But the nitty-gritty science is more the realm of Conservators, someone with a degree that ends in -Sci or who’s done some other certification course.
The general collections store should always be dark, slightly too cool for prolonged human comfort, and labeled to high heaven. Objects will most likely be grouped by material- ceramics/pottery, metals, precious metals and stones (jewelry or beads), stone, glass, wood, bone/ivory/other organic material like feathers or teeth or anything that can be decorative, textiles, paintings. A museum often has some paper material/documents, usually part of or related to a group of objects they acquired, but generally paper and photographic material is the realm of archives and archivists. Yet again, the bigger/more well-funded the museum, the more likely it to have a separate archive department, so your character could also work as an archivist in a museum.
Another thing the collections care folk probably do is ship objects. Remember how I said that  museums loan objects and exhibitions to each other? The stuff’s gotta travel somehow! If things are being shipped internationally, they’ll go in big wooden crates, with specifically dimensioned partitions inside. Then it will be lined with our favorite foam and tissue paper, cut so the objects sit snugly inside. I haven’t personally worked anywhere with a possibility of local shipments, so I can’t say where the threshold might be as to when a museum would just pay an employee to drive the objects over vs ship them with a shipping company. But the preparations would be similar, minus the big wooden crate but with extra-careful packing (and paperwork and insurance etc)
Conservation
Conservators are the people who work in labs with fancy equipment. Not every museum will have a formal conservator or a lab of any kind; sometimes the collections care person fills this role, or if something urgently needs care beyond the abilities of the museum’s equipment, they might send it away to a lab elsewhere, the same way you can send your old VHS home videos to a professional archive to be digitized.
If an object is actively deteriorating in a way that could harm itself or other objects (as opposed to like, at risk of fading bc the lighting is wrong, which is a straightforward fix related to the environment), that’s when a conservator would intervene.
Some methods/machinery by which you can analyze objects:
Ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) light - Different materials absorb and react to light differently, which you can use to identify them. Useful for seeing things like the different layers of paintings
Stereo-microscopy (microscopes, of varying strengths)
At magnifications of x5-x100 you can see things like tool marks from an object’s manufacture, traces from wear, deposits, and coatings
At x50-x500, with a thin sliver of a sample, you can see (and hopefully identify) fibers, layers, particles, metallographic structures 
You can get information from objects without taking samples, but samples are usually worth the information. 
energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDXRF) - EDXRF allows you to identify the elemental composition of the surface layer of an object. So it might tell you what a tool is made of, and also the composition of the objects it was used on, if they left traces
scanning electron microscopy (SEM) - an SEM uses a focused beam of electrons to produce a magnified, high-resolution image of the surface of an object
X-radiography, both film and digital - X-rayy are beneficial for objects that might be covered by dirt or corrosion and can show you details of an object’s construction or hidden structural weaknesses
I’m not a conservator, so if you want more hard science-based info, ask one of them lol
Listen to me. If you take nothing else away from this post, let it be this:
 Once an object is in a museum, it is never seeing natural daylight again. Sunlight is the ultimate enemy of every object’s lifespan. If you need to see an object in the sun or moon light for ~magical spell reasons~, you will straight up be stealing that object to smuggle it outside.
Okay. That being said, you do hear (and could probably google) stories about museum employees stealing things from their museums on purpose to prove a point about security or insurance to their higher-ups, so like. Depending on your type of museum, it might not be impossible to steal from lmao. (Don’t tell anyone I said that.)
Possibly the most useful advice for you to keep in mind when writing your conservator or collections care characters would be that touching objects hurts them. It might not hurt them now, it might not even hurt them in ten years, but every time you handle an object, there’s a risk that you’ll damage it. Not on purpose, obviously, but to err is human. The simplest, most effective advice my conservation professor ever gave us was “don’t handle an object if you don’t have to.” That means don’t move an object without a plan and a place to put it, first examination should always be visual, not tactile, etc. Unfortunately, that means that your character cannot walk around lovingly handling and caressing their favorite objects (unless this is a Night at the Museum situation where the objects are caressing them back, ykwim)
Museum Technician
These people probably have a lot of different names, but basically, technicians are the background muscle of the museum. They do the technical construction of bigger pieces of exhibition material, up to and including the exhibition cases themselves. 
So they wouldn’t deal with the small mount that the object rests on, but they might build the big plinth that the mount sits on. They’ll help move things around the building, particularly big heavy things, hang big framed works, assist with exhibit installs, and generally do most things which might involve power tools/equipment or heavy lifting
I worked in a big museum that hired a third party company to supply their technicians; I interviewed at another place that hired their own. If you’re a small museum, you might just have a freelance person that comes in once or twice a week to help move things.
Other
Other miscellaneous roles one could have in a museum: researcher (for exhibits and/or collections), gift shop or cafe worker, security guard, room attendant, translator, archaeologist, consultant
Honestly, TL;DR? Just have your character be a consultant of some kind. “Oh no, I don’t work here, I’m Y’s friend. They called me in to provide some expertise on X subject that they’re doing an exhibit on.” This could work for literally any subject- history/archaeology/anthropology, art, transportation, science and technology, anything you might find pictures of in an archive, idk. This could get you into an office or meeting room of some kind in the ‘employee only’ space of the museum, or potentially all the way into the collections store if you’re giving them information they were missing about some objects. Otherwise you’d probably (hopefully) need a key or some other kind of security clearance to get into the collections store.
Whew, that was a ride, huh? I hope this guide was useful to someone! I’m always open to answering questions if you think I forgot something or if anyone wants more details <3
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toxycodone · 6 months ago
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đ˜€đ˜ž. 𝘯𝘰𝘯𝘩
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Laios:
I genuinely think Laios is attracted to the unconventional or stereotypically attractive. Anyone with unique features, personality quirks, etc. If you don't fit in, you're more willing to catch his eye.
He finds it difficult to really like? Gain an interest in someone who doesn't really "stick out". I think it's clear with the way he treats Kabru that like! People kinda are a blur to him! So! anything that makes someone stick out will catch his interest and he'd be more willing to remember them + actually continue to think about them.
MUST. Share his interest in monsters/animals. This is very important. Like there must be a shared interest there whether its just about anatomy, behavior, etc. I just think he needs to be accepted to talk about this and share fun facts. He likes it. Cooking or an interest in food would also be another plus.
Also just? He likes really easygoing people who aren't super judgemental. Laios is really unapologetically himself and he gets chewed out for it by his friends enough. He's very self aware when it comes to his own issues (esp by the end of the manga) so. Yeah. Just someone who he doesn't feel the need to mask around.
Honestly, maybe someone childish would fit his vibe too? I mean this in a more lighthearted sense. Like someone he could play tag with or goof around in the woods with. He missed out on being a kid for a while, and he's still kinda interested in stuff like that (bug collecting, cool rocks, etc.). Even in post manga he still wants this.
Also uhhhh beastkin/monsters/whatever of any kind get bonus points. Do they have to be this way? No. But. It would definitely do some favors to be feral/wild in some way like this.
Kabru:
Okay I am not saying this is healthy or anything, but Kabru is ridiculously attracted to fixer-uppers. The main character/savior/hero complex kicks in and he cannot help it.
This can either be super good for him if the person is like. not terrible and is actually okay with this. but uh. that isn't always the case. Bro is often setting himself up for some sort of situationship most of the time. He cannot catch a break.
But he totally needs to be confronted about this to have a relationship work out. Hope you can be at least a little assertive!
Oh and the people pleasing. It's going so far. Please, I-....
He needs to be stopped.
Ultimately. He's gonna go after the people who show the least interest in him and this SPECIFICALLY comes from his own insecurities as a person.
But in the end he's gonna truly fall for someone who can put their foot down and confront him about these issues. He's so insightful and perceptive when it comes to others and can easily point out and help you with you're own shortcomings. But he is super blind to his own faults. Legit does not. Even realize.
He honestly needs someone to help him grow, because in my eyes I can see him like even post manga being pretty stagnant here so . Yeah. You don't need to be like some badass assertive person either. As long as you can just sit down and have a serious conversation w him about this I think it'd go well.
And he'd fall for you because I think it's the first time he genuinely sees someone who recognizes things that are bad about him + still loves him despite that + wants him to grow as a person and assert his own wishes and needs more. Yeah. I just have a lot of feelings about that.
Chilchuck:
This goes two ways.
Non Toxic Route
He'd easily see himself falling for someone mature and responsible. It would start out as just a professional admiration but it would slowly become more intimate as Chilchuck starts to enjoy their more unique personality traits (and even ones he'd consider annoying) --like being feisty, or maybe they're picky, or they can be silly sometimes. That type of thing.
It's a total slow burn with him.
But he also likes people who are more lowkey. Chilchuck is not a "falls for you immediately/puppy love" kinda guy. He's jaded and has a past and has KIDS so. He needs to be treated gently and not rushed into things. Anyone who lets him come to them and start to be more affectionate without demanding it...yeah. Handle him with care PLEASE.
And speaking of this...he wants to keep up appearances since he does value his professional life and has kids and an ex-wife. So he wants someone that can blend into this life without causing drama or more headaches (his party gives him plenty. pls.)
"Toxic"/Not Gonna Last Route
Chilchuck is easily motivated by the more basic pleasures of life, so I can definitely see him having a bootycall that becomes some weird "what are we" type of vibe.
He's like...in the back of his mind the type to enjoy a "dirty little secret". Something he thinks only him and this person know about. But as time goes on he eventually gets emotionally involved with them and is like "we need to cut this off".
It is an extremely painful breakup on his end for sure and makes him more jaded when its literally! His own fault.
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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 6 months ago
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â­•ïžđŸ‘‹Hi I’m new, I really like your character analysis, world lore analysis etc,
I think they’re very accurate and provide more insight into the twisted wonderland world,
do you think NRC gets enough funding cause they’ve been losing to RSA for like almost 100 years now and the Magift incident where the recruiter’s and scouts probably didn’t really pay attention to most of the players cause of Malleus .I know they probably get funding and tuition and stuff from affluent parents who care about the quality of education & environment of their children but is that really enough? Is Crowley secret Stressed about funding cause of their losing streak to RSA???
I just wondered what your thoughts were on the matter
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Hello and thank you very much ^^ It always warms my heart to hear that people enjoy my more analytical writings!
Now to answer your question, I don’t think NRC is hurting for money. Like, at all.
You did bring up a fair point about NRC’s almost a 100 year loss streak to RSA + the lack of interested Spelldrive/Magical Shift scouts in book 2, but that’s not enough of the big picture. RSA is only one rival magic school out of several. Just because NRC is not doing well against one other school doesn’t mean that NRC is suddenly deemed “lesser”—NRC is still considered a top arcane academy and eclipses other magical institutions like Noble Bell College. In regards to the pro recruiters, I don’t think it has a huge impact?? Sports is only one sector at NRC; they’re still doing relatively well outside of it (such as in academics, extracurriculars, and connections for internships) in the grand scheme of things. Things like not winning VDC and not being noticed by scouts seems to only really impact the career prospects of students who were interested in the entertainment/sports industries; I doubt that this would seriously hurt whatever funding NRC is receiving.
Night Raven College is a private school, so they are most likely receiving money from tuition and not the government. Though tuition is not explicitly mentioned in TWST (at least not that I am aware of), if we assume the average cost for one student to attend a British boarding school—for which NRC is modeled after—that means 25,000 pounds per person, PER YEAR. Let us assume that NRC had only 800 students (this is the rough estimate TWST provides us). That means, from one year’s worth of tuition alone, the school is raking in 20,000,000 pounds or 4,058,310,000 madol. Note that this is just money in, not yet factoring for expenditures, taxes, etc.
The school also receives 10% of Mostro Lounge’s proceeds, and while we cannot put an exact number to that, we do know that most menu items range from 600 to 1500 madol. The lounge must also make significant enough money to pay for its ingredients, nice silverware (something which Azul stresses to give customers a high class experience), and even provide pay to workers (Ruggie would not be doing labor for free and refers to his time at Mostro Lounge as “a job”; see: his Ceremonial Robes vignettes). While this doesn’t make up a large part of NRC’s money, it’s still a nice little bonus to account for.
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NRC also has many, MANY wealthy students, including literal celebrities and royalty. In fact, the upper middle class to flat-out rich make up the majority of the main cast (close to like 70-75%). If this is also the case for the regular mob students, then there are many other ways for the school to get huge donations. In the main story alone, two significant donations are mentioned: Kalim's dad gave enough money for NRC to completely renovate Scarabia and the Shroud parents paid for all the damages caused to the school's buildings. Additionally, Crowley says that the Shrouds made "substantial contributions toward expanding [NRC's] facilities."
Please note that this is just donations from current students’ families. Think about potential donations coming from NRC alumni too!!
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It should be noted that NRC has the financial power to spend liberally, and no one really says that this will put the school in a touch spot. For example, all students are provided free uniforms (school, dorm, PE, robes, labwear, etc.; even the birthday outfits are said to be provided by the school), but they have to pay for replacements if they fuck up their first one(s). Crowley literally buys up Sam's entire stock of goods during Ghost Marriage... and if you know anything about Sam, it's that he can magically keep things "IN STOCK NOW!!" Crowley even indicates in one of his voice lines that he is in constant competitions to buy out Sam's stock and has scarcely managed to one-up him--so the fact that Crowley does buy out Sam during an event is meaningful and speaks to how much of the school's money he is throwing to save it. He also tells Sam to bill the school for the cost of the fairy dust in Fairy Gala.
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Both times, Crowley complains about how he would rather not spend money, but he does so anyway. This in of itself does NOT prove that NRC is in need of money, this is just proof of Crowley's cheapness. (We see many other examples of this greed and stinginess of his; he guilts Yuu for spending money on them, constantly tries to get free food and souvenirs from his students, and cuts costs for Halloween candy.) If NRC were truly hurting financially though, then they would not be able to throw lavish events or donate back to the community, both of which still happen multiple times. For example, NRC holds a huge Halloween event every year in which they open their campus to outsiders. This event is entirely free and involves a budget large enough for each dorm to create intricate decorations and costumes for 800ish students. There is also enough money to throw a celebration party for the students at the end of it—and let’s remember, NRC has the money to afford five star ghost chefs to regularly cater, serve in the cafeteria, AND teach their Culinary Crucibles/Master Chef courses.
While explaining the nature of the Halloween events, Crewel cites that NRC has survived this long in part due to the "While explaining the nature of the Halloween events, Crewel cites that NRC has survived this long in part due to the "understanding, cooperation, and subsistence of Sage's Island locals." This implies that the immediate community on the island also supports NRC in some ways. Perhaps it isn't financially, but it's clear that NRC still has social capital and a good reputation in spite of its losses to RSA.
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In Port Fest, Crowley states that setup, food supplies, and all other expenses will be covered by the school. Half of the proceeds will then be donated to charity and the other half will be granted to the students to celebrate their hard work. Again, would NRC be giving away this money if they really needed it for the institution itself? They're not obligated to give money to the students, yet Crowley easily agreed when Azul asked for an incentive.
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And let's not forget the school cultural festival, which was largely open for the public to attend. If they choose to spend on additional things (such as food and drink or VDC tickets, which are a "hot commodity"), that's on the individual. The school itself is hosting the event for free.
Yuu is offered a large sum of money (if the NRC tribe wins VDC)... and Ramshackle renovations (from Crowley) in book 5 in exchange for letting the boys host their training camp in their dorm. Look at how old and run-down Ramshackle is; there is no doubt that such repairs would be pretty expensive—but Crowley doesn't complain about the cost, he's not above bribing someone to make himself and his school look good.
Crowley caring about his reputation isn't new either, it's a pattern. We see him getting upset at NRC's loss in book 5 and lamenting bad publicity/being excited about good publicity in numerous events (Ghost Marriage, Wish Upon a Star, etc.) The school has been under his care for a long time, so naturally he will feel proud and/or slighted whenever NRC is involved.
This leads me to the conclusion that Crowley, the figurehead and headmaster of NRC, and his own personality quirks are being misconstrued as an indication that NRC is in a bad financial spot. His own fixation on triumphing over their rival school, acquiring and maintaining material goods for himself, and wanting positive attention do not reflect the state of the school. Notice how no one but Crowley whines about the financials and how while Crowley still complains about spending money, he has no qualms with spending lavishly himself on school events and holidays. This means NRC has money to spare, but Crowley is just stingy about how those funds are allocated.
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abnomi · 4 months ago
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random assorted headcanons for Turbo because I like thinking and having fun !!!! 🎉
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Read More to Find Out...or are you too scared?... i bet ur too scared ahaha youre too scared Lol! Hahaahaaa!!!
The steering wheel of his kart is covered in bite marks, similar to how one would bite their favorite pencil. he bites things to mark his territory because Nobody is gonna touch that unless they want all of his diseases (150+).
i just know he was fighting to restrain himself not to chew on any of the candy civilians
when it comes to music, he doesn't see the point of listening to it. he doesn't have enough patience to really take it in; to him, it's just a thing that exists and not much more than that ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ ∔⁠ )⁠_⁠/⁠¯
adding onto that point, this guy listens to metal clanking sounds and loud engine roaring for entertainment because he likes things that would overstimulate any normal person. turbo is incredibly sensory-seeking and will do anything for The Sensations
someone should take him to a heavy rock concert i think it would change him a little. keep that thang on a leash
related to being sensory-seeking, i think he would absolutely love running his hands over random textures. if anyone has run their hands along a wall while walking alongside it...He does that...If u know u know... he is SO stimmy its unbelievable. Unreal.
very pain-tolerant. he'll whine and complain about it for attention, but physical hurt really doesnt bother him much until it gets in the way of what he wants to do.
funnily enough, he is very picky when it comes to temperature. he can handle getting ran over but if its 1° too hot or cold he'll start nagging and nagging for it to go back to normal. turbo really needs his own enclosure i think it'd do him a lot of good
this is a more popular headcanon and its canon-leaning, but he's an artist :-] he usually sticks to graffiti art because its generally considered more "rebellious and cool" but he also sketches cars, design decals, and other stuff when hes alone!
i would love to see his process of character designing king candy because i dont think he really knew what he was doing
he was just like "ok what does a generic king look like. uhhhhh.... 1, old and jolly like santa claus.... 2.... uhh crown..... 3......... purple.... FUCK YEAH im so good at this!!!!đŸ”„đŸ”„đŸ”„"
i just noticed how his design has like 0 actual candy motifs aside from his bow being a candy wrapper and his shoes having those little gumdrop end pieces. what was he THINKING
while King Candy has a lisp, i think it's a coverup for his actual voice because of how goofy and recognizable it is. Overall its the same as his regular voice, he just gets silly with it. i noticed that he still does retain some of his lisp when hes screaming his lungs out at Vanellope, however, so maybe he genuinely does have a lisp that makes itself known when furious :3
another thing i noticed is how he hisses his S's. very cool very cool the reptilian
@/tasticturbo made a post abt how he has tinnitus from the constant noise in his game and i couldnt agree more
AND THE PRESCRIPTION GLASSES. where did he get those...he needs to See
side note, the aforementioned account has made so many interesting analyses on turbo and theyre all so insightful. i recommend u check them out
i think he gets migraines from stress. constant buzzing or pain flood his head but hes like "IDGAF i need to DO something at ALL TIMES no matter what"
hes like a shark in that way. if hes not moving he'll die instantly. idk a lot about sharks or if thats how it works srry but im going off of what the Worms are saying to me and i dont have much to work with
i think a really big contributer as to why he lacks in the self care department is because he fails to notice that something in his body is wrong. hes far too distracted on something he thinks is more important than remembering to Eat Food or Drink Water or Wash Himself or
he's like "WHY DO I FEEL LIKE SHIT ALL OF THE TIME!!! I HATE MY LIFE" and he hasn't slept in 4 days
hes so me. Sorry.
i dont think turbo is necessarily suicidal, but the way he behaves shows a clear disregard for his own safety and wellbeing. he thinks that he knows what he needs but he really doesnt :-[ i think he has some kind of immortality complex, feeling untouchable and like nothing could get to him. as scared as he was when ralph was about to turn him into sloppy mush, he didnt take the threat very seriously. like it was some kind of joke
his kart regenerates every time his game starts up, so what if he smashed it into buildings for fun. He's the number one fan of car accidents. he is all about that shit
i think his living space would literally be a garage btw. its a place to sleep and a space for his car all in one!! he thinks its very convenient and awesome but i think he is coping. he has some old dingy stained sheetless mattress that he has never washed in his life and its covered in dirt and smoke particles. no wonder he has such heavy eye bags Dude Please
the turbo twins have a garage used in a similar way, and while its still pretty shitty, they still at least TRY to maintain it. they just fight a lot over who has to care of it. nobody taught them how to take turns ever
but this aint about them. maybe another day
i think that turbo would find comfort in garbage and keeping it around because its familiar to him. a big clean empty space would make him so mad and if anyone moves even an inch of scrap off to the side he will throw a fit. he generally doesnt pay attention to his surroundings but when its his personal space he is 1093 times more neurotic
i think the big empty castle he stole wouldve been a big transition for him. maybe it helped him clear his mind a little more to practice his tricky schemes...it helped him get more subtle
thats all i have for nowww ty for reading ^_^ if anyone else has any wacky ideas pleeeease tell me i would love to hear them!!
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tanoraqui · 7 months ago
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Dungeon Meshi Liveblog: "What did [orcs] taste like?" {*distant sounds of tanoraqui going feral*}
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I'm enjoying Chilchuck more in the manga because I notice him more, because he's less front-and-center talkative but in the background he's visibly thinking about things. I certainly noticed and enjoyed this moment in the anime, too, but it's a good example: Chilchuck is by far the best in this party at people, in terms of reading a room, understanding long-term group dynamics, and considering larger social questions like morality. His pattern recognition skills are obviously superb, and he applies them to dungeon navigation, trap- and monster-disarming, and social dynamics. He understands and gives practical advice on the relationships within a successful vs unsuccessful dungeon parties, and the skills of leaders thereof. He can often be seen eyeing the terrible new food consideringly before eating it. He's the one most often calling Laios out about No Eating Humanoids, including picking up on the fishmen eggs. When Laios complains that that's just based on a "feeling", Chilchuck does think about it - but still, when Marcille says of the dryads that maybe it doesn't matter if the plant is humanoid, Chilchuck says with concern, "Marcille..." He's the first to wonder how to make money from the dragon, but it's a practical concern, not greed. He's the only who realizes and convinces everyone that they have to turn back.
It all adds up to a guy who's never read a textbook of moral philosophy or the makings of a stable society in his life, but who could probably expound on them in layman's terms while drunk off his ass in a bar. He's responsible, including wanting to look out for his people, and very practical, and genuinely whip-smart. I'm not at ALL surprised to learn that he observed the systemic abuse of halffeet in the dungeon-delving trade and organized a union against it.
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Shuro: Just say the highlights, alright?
Laios: We killed the red dragon, got Falin out of its stomach and resurrected her, but then we ran into the Mad Mage ad were separated.
Shuro and Kabru:
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...actually, it's interesting how surprised I am, and was when I watched this, to see how...Normal Human Interaction Laios is in this moment? Upon request, he handily gave an efficient summary of exactly the highlights that needed to be shared - both what the others needed/would want to know, and not what they didn't need to know, lest Marcille be arrested for dark magic. Is he more relaxed around his usual crew, and thus acts "weirder"? Is this just a very specific circumstance, ie, it's reasonable to think the whole party has been considering exactly how to describe their adventures to others?
Maybe more notably, he left out monster-eating, which is also a cultural taboo but one that he's shown no sign of respecting so far. One must ask, for a moment: wait, does he respect that it's taboo in polite company? It's true that Marcille and Chilchuck, who'd both dungeoned with him for [mumblemumbletime], didn't know until the start of the story - he's clearly only just started unleashing all this culinary glee, even if he probably did already share infinite useful monster(-killing) factoids. Or is he aware and respectful of the fact that Shuro's definitely of "highlights" definitely only includes What Happened To Falin? This, too, is a level of character insight rarely if ever seen in Laios before.
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Laios is like a deer in front of a lion... Yeah maybe I do want to watch Kabru flirt with him and Laios get completely flustered... Only if Laios turns it around by (later, after fleeing the initial scene) bluntly asking if Kabru wants to go on a date and/or have sex, and Kabru.exe stops functioning.
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One must ask, for a moment: wait, does [Laios] respect that [eating monsters is] taboo in polite company? -my considerations 10 seconds ago in in-canon time
nvm, he's back on his bullshit! :) <3
Which! Indicates that his summary WAS intentionally geared toward Shuro's known preference, with maybe a dash of responsible dungeoneer team leader-to-team leader "fyi the Mage IS around"!
.
Ok now for the bit I'm particularly obsessed with...
Shown: man forcibly slamming down an impenetrable mental barrier called "Doing What I Must" in between Traumatic Memories & Moral Qualms and Words, Tone, Facial Expressions, Body Language & Anything Else Someone Else Could Sense:
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Shown: Man with aforementioned barrier firmly in place [but still possibly seeing horrors on the backs of his eyelids]:
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(Also shown: Man increasingly wishing that this is all some sort of elaborate hallucination brought on by sleep deprivation and stress:
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.
Then this!
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Until proven otherwise, I'm pretty certain that this last panel is the exact moment Kabru's brain started bouncing like a yo-yo wrt Laios. Because!
Kabru invited himself into this conversation as part of his overall quest: to look for a decent King for the dungeon. [ABBA playing faintly in the background] He's officially given up "finding" rather than "becoming", but he hasn't 100% ruled it out as an option - the goal is to get one.
Imagine that Kabru's brain includes a little hexagon like the food matrix, but for necessary aspects of the new King of the Golden Kingdom. In order, Laios goes...
- up several notches in "Likely Ability to Kill Mad Mage" by having defeated the red dragon and met the Mage
- down probably 1 notch in Trustworthiness/Honesty(/Readability to Kabru Specifically, who is prepared to Manage a mediocre candidate if that's what it takes)
- plunges down in the meta-category of Will Prevent Another Utaya by plummeting like a Boeing in the technically-not-on-the-chart category of Triggers Kabru's Trauma by admitting - bragging! delightedly! - that he eats monsters. Kabru's trauma is centered around monsters eating people. What sort of horror is a person who eats monsters? (Yet, perhaps already starting to yo-yo: if monsters eating people is the ultimate evil, what is this reversal...?)
Then Kabru asks a few innocuous, friendly questions about this Absolute Horror, because that's what Kabru does: he lies through his teeth about his own opinions and discomfort in order to put others at ease and (thus) achieve his goals. Laios gives innocuous, friendly answers.
THEN: ORCS. This whole comic, we've had the debate about whether it's okay to eat humanoid monsters, with Laios begrudgingly agreeing to his party's refusal. And orcs aren't even humanoid monsters, they're full-on demihumans! Second cousins of tallmen!
Kabru actually has to take a moment to process this new depth of depravity which he swiftly assumes Laios has sunk to. I imagine WWII air raid sirens are going off in his brain. Laios is But then he leaps this horrific chasm, too, itchy though his knife hand may be - interestingly, his face isn't shown in the comic, but in the show, Kabru retains the exact same friendly, eagerly interested tone of voice when he asks, "What did they taste like?"
- (Sidenote: truly, in all of this, I'm most obsessed with Kabru's ability, willingness and determination to seemingly-blithely hopskotch and/or outright running-jump over any moral qualm for long enough to get the other guy to dig their own grave and/or let down their guard. Who even are you under your infinitely shifting mask, sir. Do you even know? Because I think some of what we've seen that's more "real" is part of the mask you wear to be the Hero Who Will Be King.)
And Laios realizes what he'd implied and says, alarmed at the misunderstanding (though it's not clear if that's for moral reasons or social awkwardness) but still smiling with excited pride, "No no!! We didn't eat them! Due to circumstances, we're currently working with them!"
With them! Laios is yoinked out of, if not the depths, then at least the utmost depths - while also snapping unexpectedly upward in Alliance-Building (pref. Interspecies, Local-Centric). Laios had already rated a 2, maybe 3/5 for his party makeup, but given his known lack of people skills, I can't imagine Kabru expected him to go any higher than that - and with orcs! Orcs who are maligned by everyone else; for whom the Island Lord regular offers a bounty!
Now, this IS predicated on the assumption that Kabru considers orcs a people who should be treated with like a legitimate, well, people, rather than killed like vermin. But I think I'm on solid ground, considering a) Kuro the kobold being a (mostly) respected member of his party and their secret late-night study-friendship; b) Kabru's harshly learned skepticism of the stories Elves tell about themselves and other races, which is where we've seen the heart of anti-orc sentiment; and c) Kabru thinks the Island Lord is a moron.
Mind you, I think the yo-yo-ing is relatively subconscious at this point, and won't start reaching an audible fever pitch until Kabru learns about the black magic in, oh, another 5 minutes or so.
...but I really need to go to bed, so I'll see what overanalysis I make of that tomorrow!
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anendtopursuit · 2 months ago
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ok. so. viktor is my favourite character in arcane. i am also physically disabled and hate the Magical Miracle Eugenics Disability Cure trope with a fiery passion. naturally i have a lot of opinions about where his character is going, but for now, here's a relatively simple one:
internalised ableism has always been part of viktor's character. he describes himself as "a poor cripple from the undercity" (yes, quoting how other people speak about him, but still); he shies away from the spotlight even when jayce encourages him; as a child, he directly acknowledges his disability as the reason other children don't associate with him.
i watched a video essay recently ("how arcane writes men" by schnee) that identified viktor's tendency to just suck it up and push through his problems rather than dwelling on them as a stereotypically masculine trait, which he is written to both subvert and lean into. whilst i agree with that to some extent, i think for viktor specifically it's more of an insight into a very common mindset for disabled people to have; a lot of us do not want to be pitied, and understand that acknowledging our hardships will often unfortunately lead to being treated as attention seeking. he doesn't dwell on things because he can't, unless he wants to be looked down on more than he already is; he's already had to fight to even be acknowledged as more than somebody's assistant, or respected as a zaunite living and working in piltover. i can't imagine he's keen to show any further "weakness"; he only ever cries when he's alone. it makes sense that he'd want to save himself rather than relying on anybody else.
the dangerous thought process of "fixing" people with the hexcore begins with that desire to save himself. at first he's just trying to stop his illness from killing him, but then he progresses to carving runes into his leg, seemingly in the interest of fixing his limp - which works, albeit temporarily. he seems aware enough of the implications of what he's doing to be somewhat ashamed of it (or, at the very least, enough to hide it from jayce). i've seen a lot of (mostly able bodied) people interpret the scene of him running down the pier as victorious, but it always felt bittersweet and scary to me; the dark, painful fantasy of "fixing" the thing the world has always looked down on you for, and the unsettling knowledge that you were never supposed to exist that way. a man experiencing a moment of joy only when he has detached himself from a core aspect of his being; self hatred disguised as progress. he only seems to register the horror of what he's doing when it kills sky.
it's not a leap to say that, with the hexcore dulling his emotions and blurring the lines of his ethical code, he would turn this externally. self loathing so insidious that he mistakes it for kindness and mercy and points the blade of it at the people he swore he'd help. before merging with the hexcore, he was desperate to destroy it and rid himself of its influence, hindered only by his physical inability to do so; under its control, he's seemingly lost all those inhibitions, wiped clean of his understanding of its danger. no longer "clouded by emotion", no longer human enough to know better, no longer suspicious of the arcane.
what viktor becomes in season 2 is, i believe, a hellish mix of his own internalised ableism and the hexcore's desperation to spread and survive. his genuine desire to help people has been warped into stripping people of their individualism, forcing them into some predetermined ideal in the name of healing (very "the empty child" from doctor who). it's his own character flaws mixed with the inhuman apathy of the hexcore. the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and also dressed up so nicely that you don't even realise you're headed downwards.
this is not what viktor stood for, but rather a perversion of his own insecurities, with a fresh coat of hexcore paint to stop him (or his followers) from scrutinising it too closely. they took the guy who dedicated his life to bettering humanity, and warped him into something doomed to destroy it.
(or something like that. idk. i haven't slept.)
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queen-simia · 29 days ago
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now that ep 4 is live to the public, I can finally post what I've been sitting (and spinning) on for like a week, wheeee!
Major Monkey Wrench spoilers abound, so putting below a cut if you haven't yet seen the latest episode. And if you haven't seen it (or the rest of the series), you can do so here:
now ON TO THE INFODUMP
Shrike's status
so, since the beginning, I've been putting all my money on Shrike being an artificial being. Not in the sense of robotics/cyborgs and the like, but in the sense of a one-of-a-kind bioengineered creature. Since he was confirmed as an endling (as opposed to just hinted at in past episodes), I'm choosing to take that as a bit of reinforcement; his species is still marked as "unknown" by LAW, and if no one knows what you are and you're the only one they've ever seen, it's safe to assume they assume you're the last of whatever you are.
now, in a leap on my part, I'm further going to postulate that Shrike is actually an engineered squid. As in an honest-to-god Earth cephalopod, albeit in the same sense you can call a human a monkey. I think that maybe our boy Shrike is the end result of years-long genetic modification and breeding programs to create something closer to human shape and intelligence, but with whatever attributes his human creators wanted from squid...
...maybe attributes like producing ink.
"that's stupid, what makes you think that?" Glad you asked, Strawman! Here's what I'm drawing from:
Scratch's nicknames for Shrike
As much as these can be considered throwaways, Zeurel and Ash have been very good about sneaking in foreshadowing in dialogue. I don't fully think Scratch is calling Shrike "squidhead" just to be antagonistic (though in-universe, he certainly is; I doubt the character himself in canon has that kind of insight); I'm choosing to believe it may be a bit of a Chekhov's gun.
Shrike's design inspiration
In Tumblr ask replies, Zeurel's confirmed Shrike's design is based heavily on Humboldt squid, and he finds cephalopods and deep-sea life in general interesting. It's going into meta rather than narrative precedent, but I think for these reasons, having Shrike actually be an ascended squid wouldn't be that far out of the blue.
Shrike's terran connections
It's been established that Earth no longer exists, and what humans remain are persona non grata in LAW space. They're the reason behind the Cataclysm/the creation of Secondary Green, and what artifacts remain are traded on the black market (as implied by Scratch and Jaw Bone dealing in them, neither of whom are exactly upstanding citizens).
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Yet somehow, Shrike speaks primarily in a canonically dead Earth language—Latin Spanish—and thinks highly of terrans/terran culture. He apparently is the only being in LAW space who does both. One could argue he picked up Spanish through exposure to contraband as a LAW officer, but even his translated speech is Spanish-accented. That to me is a clue it's his native language, as opposed to one picked up later in life. Maybe he doesn't speak it all that well, but it's what he learned as he grew up.
I believe that Shrike's interest in terran artifacts isn't so much fannish as it is nostalgic, though he doesn't realize it (yet). Remember, we don't know his true age—he's only estimated to be in his mid- to late 20s. He could very well be several decades or even 800+ years old, and for reasons yet unknown he isn't aware of it. Hell, he knows what VHS tapes are and how to watch them, something present-day kids are unfamiliar with right now. Even if he was treated as only a scientific specimen in his youth, something about Earth/its people may have been warm and familiar enough to endear terran mementos to him. But it's now too far gone in the past for him to remember why exactly he loves them so much.
Shrike got no dick
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(originally posted to Twitter before the Shittening)
Canonically, the boy is Ken-doll smooth both front and back. Even though he has a gender (Questionably Mascℱ), he has no sex. Maybe his species could reproduce asexually, but it's pretty unusual for complex bipedal critters to do that. Plus, there's the fact that no peehole and no butthole also mean no bodily waste excretion, which is pretty much a death sentence for most life forms that run on metabolic processes. Therefore, I'm taking all these as artifacts of Shrike's artificial creation (and not just so it's more difficult to make show-accurate porn of him).
The Primaries, LAW, and Secondary Green
So there are three godlike beings that ostensibly also serve as the basis for government, referred to as the Primaries. Only one has been directly referenced as active in LAW government—Primary Red—but given the colors of the three LAW divisions, one can safely assume there must be a Primary Yellow and Primary Blue (whether they also govern, are off doing something else, or are AWOL is a mystery for now). It also just so happens that interstellar travel takes place in subspace pathways in the same colors as the Primaries (with varying speed depending on color), and spacecraft is fueled by "ink" in those corresponding primary colors.
It's also revealed in a news chyron in ep 4 that an intergalactic-capable drive had been in development (and had been stalled by bureaucracy) for at least 20 years, and is now ready to deploy. It's referred to as a Trinity drive, and required Primary Red's approval before it could officially launch. I think it's pretty safe to assume it's a form of propulsion that combines all 3 colors, however the in-universe physics work in that case. At the moment, it's been shown that using the wrong type of ink in a color drive will cause an explosion and a tear in space at best (at worst, we don't know yet), so whatever science went into developing a drive that combines colors must have been fairly dangerous (or potentially threatens to weaken whatever power the Primaries hold over LAW citizens).
Secondary Green
Background details are vital lore sources in Monkey Wrench. If you paid close attention near the beginning of ep 1 (and can easily read backwards text), you already know what's in the box the boys pick up in ep 2: something called "Secondary Green." It was evidently once in Chester's possession, but by the time Kara caught up to him, he'd already sent it on its way to LAW.
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The second and third episodes refer to the Cataclysm being caused by terrans. The third episode explains the green corruption's effect on life forms, and LAW subsequently quarantining it to prevent its spread. It also shows Secondary Green corrupting the bit of Them that gets too close into the horrific black-green monster that overtakes the Bucket. The fourth ep has Jaw Bone directly refer to the terrans' "false idol" in reference to the Cataclysm.
While I was typing later paragraphs, I hit upon a possibility I hadn't even considered for what Secondary Green could be. So now, I've got 2 potential reads:
1. Secondary Green was the humans' attempt at recreating the Primaries' power for themselves. Whether this was to undermine LAW or to try to join the galactic stage at the Primaries' level has yet to be seen, but either way, it ended up biting humanity in the ass. Secondary Green and/or a byproduct of it/its creation ended up destroying Earth and a good chunk of its neighboring Milky Way space, and landed whatever humans remain squarely on LAW's shit list.
Now, those of you who remember me from pre-2018 Tumblr also know I'm pretty heavily into Mass Effect. That universe's version of the Milky Way also was governed by an alien-run coalition: the Citadel, which tightly controlled the means to interstellar travel (although the Citadel species did not create these means, they just found and activated them first). Thus, the similarities to the idea of a three-pronged alien government holding the keys to interstellar travel and commerce and forcing you to play nice if you want in have been resonating in the back of my mind whenever I watch Monkey Wrench.
The similarities end in that MW's answer to the Protheans are still very much alive and active, and are directly overseeing galactic travel, commerce, and government. There aren't established mass relays, but every ship contains its own "relay" in the form of ink drives. These can open portals into respective colors of subspace to get from one side of the galaxy to another faster than conventional propulsion (so far, red is the fastest, and blue seems to be the median speed everyday schmoes like our boys can access). And, most importantly, the means of this travel are less an external technological development and more appear to be tied to the nature of the Primaries themselves; these beings are not just obeyed, but worshiped (see Scratch's oaths in ep 3 and the red officer greeting Shrike and Armstrong exchange in ep 4).
However, there are still two very important similarities between these two settings that I think should be kept in mind:
i. Trouble started when humans started sticking their fingers into the galactic government's pie. In Mass Effect, it was shoehorning Shepard into the Spectre program and wriggling humanity's way into the Citadel Council. In Monkey Wrench, it was messing with fundamental forces it didn't yet understand and (maybe) creating human-made Great Value primaries, which resulted in at least one: Secondary Green.
ii. Control over interstellar travel—specifically, access to subspace—is a cornerstone of power. In Mass Effect, you need a specific form of reactor in order to engage the mass relays and "cheat" your way to FTL travel. These relays are heavily guarded and regulated by the Citadel; humanity famously learned this when it activated Relay 314 near Pluto and got a knock-knock from the police in the form of a turian armada. In Monkey Wrench, you need to equip specific color drives and fuel up at ink stations, which presumably are subject to LAW regulation and pricing.
In both settings, Earth appears to have taken a look at the galaxy already being run by someone else and immediately thought, "but how do I get around this?"
Engineering Secondary Green was MW Earth's answer to this question. Unfortunately, it backfired and drove humanity to (functional) extinction and criminal status.
2. Secondary Green is an unintended fusion of Primaries Yellow and Blue. This would explain their current-day absence (provided they don't directly appear in later episodes), and the subsequent fall of LAW enforcement into disorder that Armstrong alludes to in ep 4. Humanity was up to something that attracted the Primaries' attention—perhaps tapping into pocket dimensions, like the one embedded in Shrike's head?—and maybe things went awry. One way or another, Primaries Yellow and Blue's intervention ended in them fusing into a new anti-entity, Secondary Green. Instead of fostering life, their combined and imbalanced power corrupted it.
Left to their own devices (and likely hawkish methods, given Red oversees enforcement), Primary Red sealed off Earth's part of the galaxy and declared humanity LAW's enemy. The quarantine for justifiable safety/life preservation reasons, the outlawing likely to create the narrative that humanity was entirely to blame and not at all any fault of Primary interference (and maybe some vengeance for losing their comrades).
Or maybe, Red is covering their tracks.
LAW and Order
So the League of Aligned Worlds (LAW—yes, it's an acronym) is the current empire ruling civilized space in the Milky Way galaxy, under direct command of the Primaries (or at least Primary Red). There are three established branches: enforcement/military (red, which Shrike was once and has since defected from), science (yellow, which Dr. Agness impersonated), and commerce (blue, as represented by Killix and Sixty-Two, who appear to be led by an as-yet unseen Commander Tezzoree).
Being a centralized civilization, LAW has certain cultural and legal standards it expects its citizens to observe. Commerce and community are enabled by way of implanted universal translators á là Star Trek, but with one specific caveat: swearing is not allowed. It's so not allowed that it's physically punishable through painful translator auditory feedback—interestingly, people in earshot get punished this way as well just for hearing it.
Maybe it's a form of socialization, in that LAW hopes you're nice enough not to want to hurt your fellow citizens by swearing? Or that your fellow citizens, having had pain inflicted on them, will browbeat you into compliance? Either way, it's a window into current LAW space being severely authoritarian in both the moral and legal senses.
This extreme authoritarian approach doesn't prevent corruption, however. Corporate lobbyists exist, as demonstrated by Chester in ep 1, and LAW officials patronizing vice industries like sex work (see the end of ep 3) is not unusual. And current LAW is disorganized to the point of each division being largely ignorant of what's going on in the others: Neither Killix nor Sixty-Two were aware Shrike is a defector, nor do they bat an eye at him admitting as such. Armstrong is able to impersonate a red officer with either stolen or purchased equipment, and even he's astonished that LAW keeps such loose tabs on itself that they still have Shrike registered as an active officer. Dr. Agness is able to get away with impersonating a LAW scientist, and the LAW representatives who collect her don't appear especially ruffled by it.
It's possible that this rigid adherence to authority and subsequent breakdown in the ability to enforce it is due to Primary Red being the only Primary left. The harder you clench your fist, the more sand slips through your fingers, and all that. However it happened, Red is at the moment the only one at the wheel, and they don't seem to be able to keep it together on their own.
aight, so where's this leave us
so for now, I think these are where we may be headed:
a: Shrike was genetically engineered to be in the running as a peer to/defense against the Primaries, but aligned with Earth. He has a means to access a pocket dimension/subspace, could possibly be a source of ink (either as secretion or in the form of his blood), is an exceptional marksman, and possesses anthropomorphic form and (allegedly) intellect. The problem is, he turned out anti-authoritarian, impulsive, and kinda stupid. He was disposed of at some point and now wanders space as the only one of his kind.
b: The same program that produced Shrike also created Secondary Green. Unfortunately, something happened—whether through accident or external manipulation—that turned it into a rampaging force of destruction. We have yet to see whether humans really did just monumentally fuck up, or if LAW is rewriting history.
c: LAW is on its way to collapse through Primary Red's mismanagement. Whether said mismanagement is through the other Primaries going missing on their own, or through a power grab on Red's part is the main mystery.
hooray done for now oh god
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misterxsamsa · 5 months ago
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I think the JTHM universe's versions of heaven and hell are very interesting. They're evidently not based on mortality persay, not even just an objective measure of intelligence. It's very nuanced, and specific, and the introduction of it acts a good narrative conclusion to Johnny's character progression.
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We're introduced to heaven first, and an evidently very flawed God. He's portrayed as all grotesque, and lazy, and funny-looking — not answering any of Johnny's questions, or doing anything about the the world's suffering. However, in relation to heaven's inhabitants, the concept of "content" is stressed above morality. There's nothing enriching in the enviorment, just chairs to "bliss" in, but they're all completely at peace and given immense power alongside that.
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We're not given incredible amounts of insight into the people residing there. However, it seems some of them were likely quite unpleasant in character, like the crabby old woman. Through all this, the notion of morality not being the determining factor of where you reside in the afterlife is established. So, if it's not morality, subjective or otherwise, then what is it? Well, it's not any one thing, and the answer to that question is left somewhat open-ended and subjective.
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When catching a glimpse of hell, the characters of its residents are just as mixed as heaven's — some nice, some mean. The shared trait between all of them though is a preoccupation with the inane. They're cartoonishly reactive to the smallest of inconveniences, materialistic, superficial, or lacking in attention span. We're told many of them are driven to neuroticism by an eye in the sky that they all simultaneously believe to be watching them specifically. To me, this is a barely symbolic representation of an obsession with appearences: the judgements, opinions, praises of others.
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Personally, I interpret the determining factors for the fate of your eternal soul in JTHM to be that of priorities and perspective. To be specific, what you allow to consume your thoughts — the things you value and pursue during your life. By choosing [or rather prioritizing] contentment, the residents of heaven decided that it was more worthwhile than wasting mental energy on fleeting negative emotions, or other base things. It's not that their souls are being judged from some detached perspective outside of themselves. They're determining the course of their own afterlife, and hell is effectively just a self-imposed state of mind.
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That's all intriguing from a lore perspective, but this system is a backdrop meant to emphasize the themes of Johnny's narrative journey. The idea that "heaven" and "hell" are states actively sought rather than assigned is meant to highlight Johnny's agency in his own deterioration. He's chosen to prioritize his misanthropy, and homicidal tendencies, over his art and relationships. By seeing himself in the residents of hell through their shared flaws, he's forced to internally take accountability. That's what ultimately drives him towards a pursuit of contentment in Issue #7.
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What's interesting though is that the notion of what exactly "contentment" entails is left purposefully vague. Why wouldn't it be? The concept of "contentment" is subjective and self-determined. That's why Johnny continues to kill, and overall be very morally dubious even after his change in perspective. He's choosing to make it about his own amusement and enrichment rather than centering it in exhaustive hate. Hey, everybody finds happiness a little differently, I suppose, it's still tangible progress nonetheless.
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There's an interesting dichotomy to be found between God and Senor Diablo. Upon a first glance, I've seen many take their portrayal [and differences] as a cynical, but straightforward poke at organized religion. That's probably the case, but I see more to it than just that. In JTHM, the systems of heaven and hell are meant to reflect and support Johnny's character progression. As such, I'd make the argument God and Senor Diablo could be symbolic of the judgements Johnny would normally make on others.
Senor Diablo is very distinguished, intelligent, and he loves the word "DOOM". He's seemingly well-off compared to the God of this world, and Johnny respects him significantly more [relatively speaking] as a result. However, he's unhappy with the people he rules over, and exhausted by their repetitively short-sighted tendencies. In some respects, you could view him as Johnny's parallel, both are cynical enjoyers of suffering looking down on idiots who they view as beneath them. Perhaps, by a subjective character evaluation, and on aesthetics, you could say he's above his heavenly counterpart. Still, that judgement would bring him no joy.
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It's emblematic of the lessons Johnny has to learn about himself and others. He's not better than humanity for constantly engulfing himself in the sufferings and injustices of the world, ones he only pretends to truly care about. His intellect is only valuable for as much as he can properly utilize it to better his own circumstances. With God, he's greasy and ignorant, but he's completely happy, or content. He's a representation of all the traits that motivates Johnny's hatred of others — he's all fleshy-like, and completely unconcerned with his sorroundings in any deep sense. It makes sense for humans to be apparently made in his image, since he's a fucked up interpretation of the quintessential human.
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Still, by the end of the comics, Johnny learns to appreciate his love of content, rather than fixating upon his numerous detestable traits. In life, you'll encounter many people you'll find to be as disgusting as that lumpy God-dude in his chair. Regardless, it's in your best interests to only allow their bad qualities to occupy your thoughts to a limited degree. By learning to internalize to philosophies of people different from him, or particularly flawed, Johnny's learned to become a more well-rounded person. Again, relatively speaking by the standards of a homicidal maniac. Rome wasn't built in a day!
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dalishious · 2 months ago
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Veilguard Companion First Impressions
So, I’ve finally recruited all the companions for the Veilguard! And as such, I thought I’d share my initial thoughts on them each.
Please keep in mind that as the title says, these are just my first impressions. I am nowhere near finishing the game yet. My thoughts very well may change after getting to know the characters more as the story progresses. Also, please do not take any opinions you do not share as a personal attack against you.
Bellara
Bellara might be my #1 favourite.
I’ve seen some people just say Bellara is “a Merrill rip-off” but I don’t think that’s fair at all. If all it took was a few similarities to say a character is a rip-off of another character, than I can think of so many boring white cishet male characters who would be guilty of that. But heaven forbid we get more than one elven woman who is passionate about her people’s culture and history!
Frankly, I think Bellara is a breath of fresh air in terms of Dalish characters specifically. Finally, a Dalish elf who isn’t punished for being proudly Dalish by the narrative.
I also really appreciate that so much of her can be easily understood by her backstory, too. Like, her feelings of never being good enough is reflective of the very realistic grief she is experiencing.
Lucanis
If Bellara isn’t my #1 favourite, then Lucanis is. They really both dominate that spot neck in neck. I can’t decide if I want to put him in a jar and shake it to see what happens, or wrap him up tight in a quilt and give him some good coffee.
I’m just a sucker for Lucanis’s character archetype, is the thing. I love taking him out simply because he’s so much fun to have around. And in terms of companion arcs, his is the one I am most intrigued to see where it goes.
Taash
(While I haven’t personally gotten to Taash’s non-binary plot yet, I am aware Taash switches to they/them pronouns, so that’s what I’ll be using.)
The moment I met Taash felt my heart skip a beat. The only thing hotter than their appearance is their voice. I know BioWare probably left Taash out of a lot of the advertising because they wanted to keep Taash’s gender stuff a surprise, but oh my god, because of this I was taken by quite the surprise. And so far Taash seems to be the type to keep a hard outer shell to protect a much softer side, and that is yet another character archetype I really love.
Davrin
My initial gripe about Davrin’s writing being so exclusively about Assan rather than Davrin himself is slowly peeling away, I hope. While I still think its bullshit that you can welcome Assan into the Veilgaurd but not Davrin, at least I’ve finally gotten a few bits of dialogue to get to know more about him finally. I just want to keep this momentum! Because Davrin as a concept has so much potential, in my opinion, and what little bits I have gotten from him have captivated me. But I can’t tell yet if it’s intentionally part of his character that maybe he’s just a closed off person who takes a while to trust others, (a little like Taash?) Or if the writer just cared more about griffons than the actual guy. I’m really, really holding out hope for the former.
Emmrich
Emmrich is so much more charming than I expected, and I found him instantly endearing the moment we met him. I also really like that we’re finally hearing some different stances and insight on death and necromancy than we ever had before from a companion! It makes him feel so fresh and completely new!
Harding
I’ll be real with you: I was not anticipating caring about Harding so much. She was who I was originally least interested in, when the companion line-up was announced. But the direction they’re taking her in has me questioning so much about bigger lore questions.
Unfortunately, I still don’t see much in her except being a vessel for those bigger lore questions, though. Like, Harding as a person has me mildly curious at best.
Neve
I’m really sorry Neve fans, but I just find her really boring so far, in comparison to everyone else. She doesn’t have a lot going on, and what she does have going on, doesn’t really captivate me much. Maybe I was just hoping she’d have stronger stances on things than she does? I don’t know.
It could be that I just really fucked up with Neve, and it won’t be until another playthrough that I’ll get to experience more that will change my mind. Because I will admit I am very good at picking choices she disapproves of, with my first Rook.
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applestorms · 3 months ago
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ok, well. if last time i talked about parallels between near & light, i guess it’s only fair that this time i talk about parallels between mello & misa. yap central on this blog lately.
the main thing that stands out the most about mello & misa, and the reason why i will forever Defend them and their place in the story, is that in my mind they both function in a similar way on a narrative level: namely, both of them are incredibly active wild-card characters that keep the action going and the story moving forward when the other main characters like light, L, & near start getting too passive.
notably, while i often see this trait praised in mello, usually in the context of a comparative criticism of near for his overly-abundant passivity, i have also seen it used as a criticism of misa's character, that she breaks up the status quo of DN too significantly and thereby makes the story feel less realistic. this last point in particular is an odd argument to make imo, as if anything misa's presence only increases the realism of DN by adding some extra luck/random chance into the story in a way that is ultimately still character-motivated and thus easier for the audience to go along with-- something DN in general is very good at, often introducing elements through pure chance but keeping them grounded in characters enough that you almost don't even notice.
take light meeting naomi misora, for example: the only reason he runs across her at all is because he offers to run an errand for his mom on a bored laundry day, literally stumbling across her right at the exact moment she is divulging important insights she is literally the only person capable of making about kira. yet this moment does not stand out as particularly aggravating or out of place in the story, as ultimately the only reason why light is able to get out of that situation is his own quick thinking and ability to calm himself while under immense pressure, squeezing his way out of a potentially run-ending situation he didn't even know existed moments prior.
(not a fan of that big joel video, if you couldn't tell. lmao.)
point is, mello & misa both fulfill about the same narrative function in the story by being so aggressive in their actions, catching the others off guard even if their plans aren't as well thought out or careful as they could otherwise be. they're both incredibly passionate, dedicated characters as well, tough enough to take the hit when it inevitably comes, and in my opinion neither of them are nearly as stupid as the other MCs like to make them out to be. to some degree, i think both of them are aware of the fact that they can't win at the Mind Game Cold War Bullshit the others are inclined to get involved in, so they instead choose to carve out their own place in the story through sheer perseverance alone.
which, speaking of passion: one of the most interesting parallels i think you can make between mello & misa is the ways in which they idolize their respective heroes, misa's obviously being light while mello's is L. allow me to elaborate.
as this post points out, DN has some very interesting use of its religious imagery & theming, and in particular its use of christian/catholic gothic imagery in its story and especially its art. however, as op notes, a lot of this is quite superficial, ascribing to an aesthetic of "kitschy Catholicism," that was characteristic of a lot of early 2000s japanese goth style. yet, while i admit that a more serious consideration of religious elements in the art & story could add some interesting flavor to the story, i also think that, regardless of intention, the superficiality of DN's religious elements works really well in the context of this particular story. as i stated in my tags on that post: light is a superficial god. he is a fake, a scam, some idiot human that stumbled across the powers of a real shinigami and got his head up his ass about it. and a lot of the arcs of other characters in DN is about their reaction to light's claims-- whether they choose to follow him (e.g. misa, mikami), follow somebody else (e.g. mello), or follow nobody at all (e.g. near, also kinda soichiro?), and the implications that has for their lives and personalities.
this is all to say that while you can, on a surface level, connect misa & mello pretty easily as the two aggressive, fashionable blondes of the series, i also think that these somewhat superficial traits betray a greater connection between the two of them. if we understand the christian/catholic elements of misa & mello's fashion as a demonstration of their connection to not just a higher power but a lie, a superficial deity simply reflecting the sunlight of powers greater than himself, then i think we have great insight into another key element of both their characters.
do not forget: in the world of DN, heaven & hell do not exist. at least in the context of death itself, the realm & lore of the shinigami reign supreme, a point which the DN musical makes even more overt: "Isn't it a laugh? / Isn't it a shame? / Thinking there is someone in heaven to blame?" and "Going through the motions / as if there will be a reward / Oh, while we stay eternally bored!" (BEST SONGGG.) everyone is destined for the same fate of MU, the same void of nothingness awaits all. no reward, no punishment, no greater deity looking down upon us than the bored, slothful shinigami, lazing about in their realm and picking people off only when necessary (for the most part).
misa & mello are thus dedicating themselves to false idols, and we can see the negative effects this has on them in almost every facet of their character-- particularly for mello, who is perhaps more self-aware and has more of a mixed emotional outlook on his idol, but maybe even to a more extreme degree for misa. i keep going back to this idea of equating boredom with depression in DN, but where light/L/near are all "bored" in a very quiet, passive, stewing-in-bed late at night kinda way, misa & mello are characteristically a lot more aggressive and intense about it-- while neither of them are super overtly suicidal, necessarily, their actions still betray a distinct lack of care for their own safety or lives, expressing the same thematic sentiment as the others. even if they still don't straight up say it, through their actions they're a lot louder about not liking themselves, and seem to take the problems they see in the world more personally, shouldering the blame as a failure within themselves instead of projecting it outward like the others: e.g. light taking his unhappiness at the emptiness of his life at the start of the story & placing the blame on the world for "going to shit" & humanity's moral failings, versus misa being willing to literally & figuratively give up her life for KIRA the second he demands it, whether that be in the form of shinigami eyes or killing her own friends w/o second thought-- all because he was the only thing to bring justice to her own parents' deaths, an almost undoubtedly traumatizing/horrible experience for her considering how much value she places on KIRA/light afterwards.
to clarify, this is not to say that all of these characters are actually and literally depressed and/or suicidal, though you could certainly make that argument for some/all of them-- this is just one way that i think you could interpret their roles in the plot, and their thematic attachment to the story. even if DN isn't all that interested in considering the True Moral Answer to ethics/the justice system/human society/etc, it definitely takes at least some interest in the emotional viewpoints of characters in relation to those concepts, so i think this is a fair enough approach to take. or to say this another way, it's less about justifying the claim that "the world is shit," and more about trying to understand the emotional motivation & experience of feeling like the world is shit, if that makes sense.
that being said...speaking more on the whole "not liking themselves," thing: even if she doesn't say it aloud often, if ever, i think that misa is deeply aware of the fact that she was not supposed to live this long, that her existence at all is a pure stroke of luck that let her live on past her destined date. she dedicates herself to light so fully, not even necessarily expecting reciprocation (though she at least reserves herself the possibility of such), because being a disciple to her god at least gives her life some kind of purpose. similarly, i think mello is also aware of just how out of reach the one thing he wants is, how his desperation in and of itself is ironically the one thing keeping him from surpassing near and truly being #1. it's important to note that pre-time skip misa & post-skip mello are almost exactly the same age, around 20 years old at the time of their main arcs. they're immature, and in the case of mello especially, are lashing out at the world in whatever way they can because they know they don't quite fit into it in the way that they want to or should. regardless of the intent behind it, mello & misa both still make the conscious decision to kill with the DN-- perhaps in a way that still keeps their humanity, at least following near's logic, but it's a decision to end a human life either way.
anyways, going back to my previous point, this "worshiping of false idols," idea has some interesting implications-- for misa & mello yes, but also for L and the ways in which he contrasts again light, as under this logic mello's treatment kind of inherently gives L a similar status as a sort of false god/idol. which-- actually makes a lot of sense? or at the very least, viewing wammy's house as a kind of mystery cult a la the eleusinian mysteries is a neat approach to take. L & light's mutual alienation from humanity fits them both filling a false god status, anyway. also there's another thread of analysis you could follow here where near is instead fit into the role of the person mello is fixated on which AAAAAAAAA has interesting implications but jesus fucking christ, this post is long. some thoughts for another time, i suppose.
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avelera · 19 days ago
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I loved your post on Jayce's lack of haggling skills, I thought it was really interesting! It made me think about the class divides that have to exist within the twin cities, actually, independent of Piltover's sovereignty over Zaun. Like we know that Jayce is more middle class (especially compared to characters like Caitlyn) and that the chem barons are comparatively rich when held up next to the average Zaunite laborer, but now I'm wishing we had more insights to how classism works within the cities. I also wish we had more information on Viktor's background in Zaun. Like where did his family rank on the economic/social scale compared to other Zaunites? How'd they manage to get him into the academy? I'd love to hear your thoughts/observations/theories/etc, if you've got any to share!
So I agree and writer of the show Amanda Overton agrees that one thing I think we'd all like to know more about is Viktor's background. BUT we do have some word-of-god (which means, outside canon technically and could be changed later, but can still inform a canon read) information about Viktor:
"We have a backstory for Viktor that wasn’t made canon to explain how he got into the Academy. His parents saved their money to buy him a uniform and he pretended to be a student until he gained Heimerdinger’s attention. Instead of punishing him, Heimer made him his assistant!!" (Source)
I think if you want to learn more about a possible inspiration for the way Piltover/Zaun's class divide works in Arcane (I can't speak to League of Legends where it's very different) I would highly suggest this lecture series about London from The Great Courses Plus.
Specifically, lectures 14-17 talk about the rise of industrialization and how that impacted London, its class divides, the introduction of social services like the first orphanages and its sewage system (implied to be very similar to the ventilation system installed in Zaun by the Kirammans) which was built to combat cholera, and the class frustrations that led to the rise of workers' rights movements and the first legal pushback really in the world against things child labor.
I can absolutely guarantee this history of London in the late 1700s-early 1900s was at least a major contributor if not a purposeful direct parallel to the simmering class resentments and wealth disparities we see between Piltover and Zaun in the show. And as a bonus, you learn a lot about a real world parallel that can really enrich your understanding of history and current events!
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athousandbyeol · 7 days ago
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keep up the thamepo [episode 4]
good Lord, so many things are unfolding in this episode! it was quite an overwhelming watch for me, to be honest. i didn't expect the story to change its pacing for the first three parts of the episode. it was a pleasant, surprise! and I believe it was intentional because it had to do with dylan's 'fire'. it's so well done!
therefore, aside from addressing the symbolism of dylan's fire as the rage that affected the pacing of the early parts, I also want to delve into the relationship between thame and dylan and the physical distance (but growing emotional connection) between thame and po. additionally, I want to address the potential parallels between ep 4 jun/po and the possible ep of jun/po because something's going to happen and it won't be as pretty. also, other thoughts will come to mind as I'm writing this post xD
1. dylan as the fire; thame as his water — easily sparked, easily distinguished
dylan is such an interesting character to me because his rage is rooted in his feeling of betrayal for thame. i didn't see much dylan and thame in the official trailer, thus I was unsure how their story would unfold. but it's so crazy to me how thamepo is showing us these perspectives—like I mentioned in (all of) my posts—from every character, not just one. they serve as reliable narrators, providing insights into their emotional turmoil and the intentions behind their decisions.
it's a dylan-centred episode and i was honestly overwhelmed with how fast the first three parts of the story went. not putting it negatively, but i was used to the slow and languid pacing of the last three episodes, so this one felt like a hardcore punch in the face.
i wondered why it was constructed this way—because it wasn't rushed at all—it was just happening too quickly—like a spark of fire.
oh.
dylan is the fire.
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that's why this episode felt like I was on fire while watching it. it burned and hurt and dissolved so quickly and I was shell-shocked at how well they incorporated this motif into the story, blending it with remnants of dylan's anger toward thame and the resolution of their conflict. it's so beautifully done. (I don't know, probably it's the lit side of me that regards this as something so groundbreaking because I don't really see that much infusion of symbolism/motifs in a story this seamlessly. I'm so proud. i adore p'mui and her team even more now T_T they know what they're doing really.)
however, i do feel like dylan's story could be explored just a little bit more. to me, jun's storyline was perfectly told, seasoned with the right amount of ingredients that made us resent, understand and root for him. yet, dylan's story feels more like on the surface level to me, even though his story has so many interesting points to talk about—social commentaries on idols vs artists, the industry's demands for in-trend music instead of authenticity, and the company's ability to stun an artist's growth.
i was hoping they would show snippets of dylan rapping to his songs or joining these underground rapping competitions and comparing his experiences doing these as a solo rapper and an idol rapper. i think these scenes could contribute to a better understanding of the origin of dylan's passion for rapping and producing, as well as unveiling the 'undiscovered' sides of idols/idol rappers in the underground scene—also the spark of betrayal that began because of his crushed dreams and witnessing his best friend 'ruining' everything they built together.
it's just me... but i really wanted dylan's story to be stretched just a bit more because it's not strongly tied to thame the way jun's story did. but I still respect p'mui's decision to tell dylan's story in this manner.
i love thame's persistence in wanting to bring dylan back first before nano because dylan is indeed very important to the group.
i think these two are the producers in the group (along with pepper), but they shared a deeper bond because dylan was difficult to approach, but thame befriended him anyway. (why are they reminding me of namjoon and yoongi T_T)
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i love this found-family trope in thamepo, and every time they showed us how thame found the members—found the real them—my heart swelled.
and thame saw dylan's potential. he saw how enthusiastic dylan was in writing and producing. he saw dylan as an artist—an art—that should be appreciated. and it's so beautiful. :(
as mentioned before, the members loved thame as much as thame loved them. it's so obvious. the reason behind the drift between them was miscommunication, wrong/rushed decisions and the company's intervention and ability to twist the narrative to their liking. perhaps, all of these could be solved if thame and the members talked it down, but it's easier said than done. so I understand why the strain in the group happened/appeared. it's not easy to let down our egos, but I'm thankful that (with the help of po) thame could finally breach the line between him and the members, hence reviving the group before they crumbled.
moreover, i love how thame effortlessly switches his elements to suit the members' elements. jun was like the wind to me, and thame became the earth that kept him from flying away. dylan was fire, and thame became the water that distinguished his fire with sincerity and another promise that wouldn't be broken. (i have a feeling nano is the water, and thame might be the fire that boils his love and passion to be in the group again, to work together and reach for their dreams—as promised.)
2. physical distance, emotional connection- it makes thamepo's heart grow fonder
ok... so... the thing that's going on between thame and po is CRAZY.
again, i'm so surprised that the scene happened so early into the episode. i thought it would be around the middle (because from my observation, the intimacy of thame and po's exchange would only escalate towards the middle or end of an episode). but they were hitting us as hard as this in the first part and I was honestly struggling to breathe.
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i LOVE these shots. it's so intimately captured. po was looking at thame from the spaces, and thame's focus was instantly on po once he saw him in the storage room.
there was a respectable distance between them (probably because of jun's presence in the room). i think it sets a foreground for us in future episodes, especially after they're already in a relationship: in the eyes of the public, there should be this distance—this five-metre distance—so that they could be accepted—so that they could exist without hurting each other.
and when p'mick came, they were 'forced' to hide and huddle so close to each other. this was when everything was unveiled, the rapid beating of their hearts, the golden light raining against their bodies, the yearning stares, the confusion, the hesitance, the answer, the need.
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i personally love the idea that thame and po were in the moment, but the world was still revolving around them. p'mick and jun were still talking in the background, but thame and po were spiralling in this juncture of intimacy, of connection, of understanding their feelings and making no sense of everything they were experiencing—the oh moment.
because i think scenes like these are often a form of hyperbole: time stops when I look at him/her. the construction of similar scenes would often go the route of slow-mo or focus shots to emphasise the weight/message of the scene. to me, it's always overly done (and I find it a bit cliche... I'm sorry for saying this T_T). but this scene doesn't feel cringy to me. it's really subtle and sweet and purposeful.
but their moment ended too quickly.
again, the fire symbolism not only reflected thame/dylan's dynamic in this episode but also thame/po. (and I find this so CRAZILY WELL DONE!!!)
however, something about fire with po... i don't think they go well together because...
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i think, po was all elements for earn's fire. earn wanted to build a career. he wanted to be successful. he was a blazing fire. and po changed himself according to everything earn needed, complimenting earn when he was indeed of something.
but this fire left him. this fire betrayed him. this fire destroyed him.
thame is all elements for MARS, too.
but when it's po and thame, who are they and what they'll become?
throughout the episode, we didn't get much of thamepo, not until the conflict between thame and dylan was resolved.
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in my opinion, po is really the best partner for thame (and honestly, everyone) because of his diligence, patience, kindness and warmth. he's willing to search for the lyrics, going through boxes, and piecing the shredded lyrics together just to give it to thame—just to help him reach his goals.
he did all that to earn, too.
the shot above broke my heart because po felt the physical distance between them. he was already thinking about the conversation he shared with jun. he was already doubting himself. he was already self-destructing.
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when he saw thame and dylan on stage, smiling, he was happy. he was glad and relieved that thame was okay and he achieved his goal of reuniting with his teammates. however, at this point, po might have thought that, oh, I was used again.
but we know it was never thame's intention to make po feel so helpless and worthless. thame knew what po's ex did to him. the emotional trauma/distress po's experienced couldn't easily be discarded. we can see some moments where po just stared into space. his anxiousness of always checking on his messages. po overthinks everything, already making scenarios in his head of the worst-case what-ifs.
earn took so much of po that po was still trying to find himself again—still wishing that the world would treat him better.
without po realising it, he was already emotionally depending on thame. because thame saw him. thame appreciated him. thame made him feel like he was po again, not earn's shadow, not a nobody.
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but thame didn't reply to his message. thame didn't come to him afterwards. so po thought it was just in his head. it was impossible for thame to see him. everything thame said to po was—perhaps—only because of the spark of the moment.
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but i'm thankful that thame called po before he could destroy the last ray of hope in him.
the conversations they shared were so heartfelt. even though they didn't meet the whole day, thame knew everything po was experiencing. he knew po was overthinking. and that, to me, is a sign of devotion. and it made me realise that thame and po were emotionally closer, emotionally connected, closer than their bodies could ever be.
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thame apologised. he helped po regain his self-worth. he assured po that he would always be here. he would always feel for po. he would always care for po.
and po learned a lot about thame—he was closer to his dogs than his parents. he loves reading. he loves writing his thoughts down. everything so small and insignificant to others, but meant the whole universe for po.
and they became each other's safe zones.
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i'm so sorry, but i relate to po in so many ways. i see myself in him the most (throughout all of my years of watching dramas). so I might be biased and root for him the most... and when he feels the most pain, I feel it too :( and when he's so happy talking to thame, I was over the moon. //i'm happy for thame, too. finally, he could give his neverending love to someone who needs that genuine devotion. thank you, thame :((//
and they were on call for nine hours??? and thame waited for po to wake up so that he could serenade his soon-to-be lover with his favourite song??? romance is restored! the slow burn is slow burning!
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//this scene is too sweet that ants are starting to swarm the screen...//
3. potential parallels (aka upcoming heartbreaks) and nano/pepper's story arc
ok, so this is something that i couldn't stop thinking about after I watched the episode.
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jun saw po. he saw right through po the way he saw straight through thame.
he knew po liked thame. i think he had an inkling that thame liked po too.
however, everything he said to po here was hurtful.
it reminded me of his story arc in ep 3. he was bad-mouthing thame, but it was for thame's benefit—it was his way of showing he cared.
i would like to indulge in the idea that jun cared about po too because he was the only one who knew thame's true intention behind everything he did, and who was helping (or enabling) it in the first place. he knew po was special to thame. but...
the nature of being an idol, i think jun knew it too well. he didn't want either thame or po to suffer in the future. because it'll be difficult to navigate their feelings, to hide their relationship, to behave like they don't mean anything when they're in public. i guess, jun was giving po a head's up, telling po that he wasn't thame's type, crushing po's fantasy of having something different with thame—not in a condescending manner—but rather i don't want you to fall too deeply. there's still a chance for you to move on from this.
but of course, they end up falling.
and this is the price they shall pay.
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nano's storyline will be interesting because he's the youngest in the group—the maknae. usually, from my observation, the maknaes love their big brothers/sisters the most. they want nothing but the best for them. and they're willing to sacrifice themselves for them. they felt the most pain when their brothers/sisters experienced anything difficult, and vice versa. (I'm sorry if it's wrong... but this is what I gathered as a k-pop fan for more than ten years hehe...)
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it's heartbreaking to see nano behaving this way. i think he was certain that the members didn't need him anymore. MARS was better as a four-membered group. he wasn't important to them how they were important to him.
but... we know that's not the case.
i'm so excited to see how nano found love and purpose in thame. we saw how important thame was to jun and dylan, so seeing it from nano's perspective will definitely serve as a treat (and more pain).
and pepper's story arc... oh God. i have a feeling he's the easiest to return to the group because he holds no grudges. he understands thame and sees the decisions he made were for the group. he's the mediator and also the connector of the group, and potentially thame's relationship advisor.
however... i think pepper's story arc will be the turning point in this story, the conflict, a reflection of thamepo's relationship in the future.
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in the trailer, they held a press con and pepper was sitting in the middle. i think he would be involved in a gossip that might affect the group's reputation. but at that point, they'd already reunited, so all members were present to support him. AND ALSO, it was when thame kissed po in the storage room (?) so yes... so excited to see how pepper's story will unfold.
ok, before i end this post, i also want to add...
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i think khun pemika knows that thame (and MARS/po) are plotting something behind her back because it's impossible for a company's CEO not to know what her artists are doing? she has many observers... it's not possible for another betrayal arc initiated from the people closest to MARS/po in the upcoming episodes...
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philosophicalpug · 6 months ago
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Ship whiteknight?
Why white knight? Well let me show you
So, we will start out with the obvious: beacon. why would I ship this annoying dork with a girl that is clearly not interested and has rejected his advances multiple times? It’s simple, I don’t I ship the jaune that helps people,
See he’s a dumb teenager, they both are, but the key here is that jaune matures, sure the intended comedy left more than a little room for sour interpretation, he stopped and saw that she wanted to be with another, and promptly ceased his advances, this is very key to his characterization that we must forget, he genuinely wants her to be happy. And when Neptune beefs it because of his own insecurities? Jaune doesn’t come in for the rebound or any opportunistic sense, no, he confronts him and makes sure Weiss has a good evening.
Not only that, he follows up on his promise to Pyrrha at the dance, this once more highlights his good qualities, he may not be particularly clever or insightful at times, but when he gets it, he gets it
At his heart, he’s someone who tries his best and wants only the best for others. Rocking the dress while played for laughs, still shows that he will go above and beyond because people matter to him
(Also doing this in front of Weiss is important too, he’s not afraid of acting the fool to his crush, not at all! Hes been setting aside the macho bravado, which is a good thing if he’s ever to be in a real relationship) Now onto some Weiss analysis from the beacon era, pompous, classic rich girl, doesn’t have time for all this nonsense and is a career girl through and through- and though she would never admit it, she’s just as much of a dolt as those that surround her,
But we know she’s come from a terrible household, cold was putting it nicely, her fathers a terrible man who doesn’t love anything except money, her mother is an alcoholic that didn’t love them enough (if at all) her older sister being the only member of family where she’s had  a consistent positive relationship, and she ended up running away to the military, leaving behind all the eldest daughter shield duties and trauma to her, which, boy that was a lot. And her little brother, her father’s favorite, she’s not anywhere near mature enough to confront, separate and acknowledge her feelings for said brother who is being raised to be exactly as detestable as the man that sired him. And what choice does Whitley have? He was so young, and he was left behind. Its safe to say she wants a normal, loving life. Desperately. It’s easy to see it in things like Zwei, how over the moon she was for the little guy, and in winter, how she comes to idolize her and seeks her approval over anyone’s. This girl is STARVED for affection.
With beacon being her chance to spread her wings a bit, it’s also natural to see that she would be interested in pursuing a romantic relationship, at her own pace. It’s no wonder that at first early volumes Weiss didn’t like Jaune-she doubtlessly dealt with the bravado of a dozen boys trying to gain her favor because of her status and wealth. Additionally, jaunes impostor syndrome ultimately bled into his interactions with Weiss as well, he was faking it all in beacon, what’s a little more to impress a girl? it’s not like shed like the real him, right? This and Weiss’s self-image of needing to be this pristine, perfect princess is also a huge factor as to why white knight wouldn’t work at beacon, its simply too early, Jaunes attempts were at the height of both their respective character flaws/failings. There's no WAY it would have worked.
Which is why she gravitated to Neptune, I think it was her trying to get out of her shell and try new things, yet still in the trappings of the “need to be pristine” persona. Thinking about this, seriously, yeah of course she was going to get a crush on Neptune, it’s what she knows except she’s convinced herself that its “different”. This suave guy that’s well dressed, knows what a perfect contrast to jaune doing is. It’s not like Weiss really knows Neptune but she thinks she does, at this stage of her life she’s really ruled by her first impressions of people (Ruby Pyrrha Jaune are some examples)
Back to the dance, an entire night worrying, feeling all sorts of emotions after what is likely the first time she opened herself up to a relationship and she’s been left behind. But of course, she must act like it doesn’t bother her, she’s Weiss Schnee, she’s above little insecurities like that. And along comes Jaune with the dress, she saw him make himself the fool in front of everyone laughing along it was a good time for all.
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Lo and behold! When Neptune came back she started asking what happened, that she thought he was too embarrassed, Neptune says that it was Jaune that convinced him to come. The boy she’s rejected time and time again, the one she likely thought no more than a nuisance at best, took it all in stride and made sure she had a good time, he definitively proved himself as someone trustworthy, especially with how “an arc never goes back on their word”. It’s no wonder that at this point many people think it could potentially work out, they both have matured, and Weiss finally sees that while Jaunes attempts were annoying and grating, they were always sincere, especially when you consider he had no idea the significance of the Schnee name before.
This is all a solid foundation to work with, they’ve matured a decent bit from where they started, both now able to see each other in a better light. Its not that they are head over heels for each other, but you can’t deny this works as a solid foundation for a possible relationship down the line
But of course, it’s not all gumdrops and Weiss-cream
FALL OF BEACON Moving onto the fall of beacon the first person jaune calls for help with Pyrrha is Weiss, in his most vulnerable moment he reaches out to her, now could this just be how the writers decided the order of things would go? Sure.  But consider this
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I think he believes Weiss to be the best among them, someone who he sees as levelheaded and skilled to do something about it, since her semblance is the most flexible one of them all. If theres anyone who can do something, it’s her.
POST FALL  
They’ve both are in their lowest point, truly where the new versions of themselves are put to the test, and oddly enough, both share a parallel with returning home both wouldn’t choose to go home, but one of them was forced to. Jaune decided to persist with his dream and followed through to help his friends, his loyalty is almost second to none: he was a hack, a fraud, no business being amongst his heroes, a dork at the best of times. The easiest thing he could do is return home. No one would blame him. But he didn’t.
Jaune is loyal, astoundingly so, he has a family, with 7 sisters, he could have gone home after the fall, no one would have thought twice about it. Instead, he stuck through, traveling for weeks through monster infested terrains for his friends with whatever they needed. At this point has been steadily improving, no longer just some punk that doesn’t know what they are doing.
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(mans stopped a whole ass charging man-devil-horse -hybrid dead in its tracks, noodle boy has been promoted to Pasta with Beef) And yet...he’s still very affected by the fall, mourning. In the battle of haven he was recklessly pursuing cinder, he’s someone with a lot of pain, someone who clearly doesn’t think themselves as important as those that surround him.
Meanwhile everything in the Schnee manor is shit show, Weiss is back in the middle of her family dynamic, looking to be free once more. She ends up struck by her father, disowned and generally treated with scorn, then she gets kidnapped by bandits afterwards. Theres really nothing Weiss wouldn’t do to find real family. By the time they are all reunited, I think she will notice just how the members of Team J_NR are people to trust and confine in.  Knowing what we know, Nora and Ren  didn’t really have anywhere else to go given they are orphans, so it would make sense for them to follow ruby to haven. But once again, Jaune demonstrates true courage and chooses the hard path. That means something for sure. Skipping to the haven fight again, this is another heavy moment, particularly when Weiss-
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Well, Weiss was nothing less than struck down. And what is Jaunes immediate response? The only one he seems to have, to be there, no matter what. And in that instinct to protect, in caring for others, he unlocks the mystery of his soul.
At his core he only wants to help, a selfless desire so strong, so literally suffused in his very essence of being that it actively manifests itself in the world.   
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You can’t tell me this means nothing to her. For a girl that has lived in a stifling coffin of a home. To find someone who’s so selfless and caring, despite never once needing to. Finding someone that manages to see her for who she is, who cares for their happiness without asking anything in return. Someone whom despite all they have suffered, still pushes forward to be there every moment they can in service for others. Someone who reached out with their very soul to halt the hand of death, fueling your own to give you the strength to come back, to your loved ones, never once even mentioning it. Is it any real surprise that love is in the cards for these two?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What makes this ship work is all the post beacon stuff, they both have suffered terrible losses yet they still need to push through, they both have matured and see each other for what they really are,  they can both look back on their beacon days and reminisce, laugh about how stupid they were, mourn lost friends and in that, they find comfort.  They have both been given the space to improve and be better, and it’s not hard to see the qualities they would see in each other Jaune is a loyal and loving person, he knows about family and would sooner suffer ills before ever breaking a promise, someone who WILL love someone to the fullest. Weiss may be cold, but she’s a sweetheart under all that, she’s been hurt and desperately wants to love and be loved, something jaune wouldn’t hesitate to do.
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