#but its such a real headcanon. u have indoctrinated me | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kalinara · 7 years ago

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Rip - honour. Rip - intelligence. Rip - savvy. Rip - interactions. Rip - groups. Rip - pride, hubris, arrogance. Rip - resiliency. Rip - attraction. Rip - relationships (any/all kinds). Rip -privacy. Rip - secrets (both keeping them and being out of the loop). Rip - touch. Rip - respect. Rip - love (all of them). Rip - disaster. Rip - loneliness. Rip - leadership. Rip - ever be ready/willing to have a relationship again? Rip - relaxation. Rip - nemesis.

Rip - honour.

Hah, that’s an interesting prompt because my gut instinct is that he is an honorable person…for the most part.

And for a certain definition of “honor”. (Sorry, American. I have no time for an extra “u”.)

I think he tries to follow a code of honor when he deals with the team, as much as possible. He lies to them, yes. But he also tends to be very open with the risks and their chances of success. For example, when he recruited them against Vandal Savage, he might not have told them the whole truth, but he never let them believe it was anything but a nearly-impossible quest. He always offered to take them home, and when Mick and Snart took him up on it, he didn’t make any attempt to stop them.

But at the same time, I think that he’s used to working on a bit more of a grand scale, with stakes that make honor and fair play a bit less of a priority.

Certainly, as we’ve seen, he isn’t inclined to a fair fight. He’s got that stunner for a reason. And while he’s a good hand-to-hand fighter, he does his best work via sneakiness and ambush. But he’s a scrawny man with no superpowers, so it’s debatable as to how fair some of these fights would be anyway, if he didn’t cheat. :-P

In the end, I think he’s a pragmatist who wants to be honorable, and tries to be honorable to an extent, but is willing to push that honor aside when the stakes are high enough.

Rip - intelligence

I think Rip has a lot of ingrained assumptions and prejudices with regard to intelligence and/or education. I think that it’s a quality that he values very highly. And I think we can see that in the way he initially responds to the crew.

He seems to immediately find a common ground with Martin. They clash at times, but there was an immediate mutual respect. As bad as he often was as a leader, he was usually pretty decent at managing Ray. (And for that matter, in Fellowship, he seemed to be even a little better at keeping Nate in line than Sara usually is.) He seems to have a lot more patience with the kind of accidental insubordination of distracted geeks than he does with other folk.

He gets along reasonably well with folks like Sara and Jax, who may not have the fancy degrees, but have a lot of natural intelligence. He respects, although distrusts, Snart.

And it probably, subconsciously, fed into his issues with Mick at first. Mick is not stupid at all, but his intelligence is on a social/emotional level that the Time Masters aren’t likely to value or even recognize. And I think Rip’s personal history adds some interesting layers to it.

Rip spent the first formative years of his life starving on the streets. We don’t know much about that time, but I’m inclined to think that if he’s so quick to stab an adult when feeling threatened, it probably wasn’t particularly pleasant. I think we can probably hazard a guess that there wasn’t much in the way of educational opportunities there either.

But that changed when he got recruited to the Time Masters. Suddenly, he was in this warm, safe, place, where he could eat his fill and no one could hurt him. It must have felt like a completely different world. And of course, the Time Masters didn’t just give their orphans housing and an upbringing, but an education as well. (and a healthy dose of indoctrination).

So I tend to think somewhere in the unconscious part of Rip’s mind, he associates education/intelligence with all of the good things like food, comfort, safety. Basically civilization. Whereas the lack of education/intelligence ends up associated with the fear, cold, terror, hunger of his very early past.

I don’t really think it’s the key reason he didn’t like Mick at first. But I think it’s tied up in all sorts of other issues. Mick is a criminal. Mick is brutal. Mick is angry and uncontrollable and violent. Mick is uneducated. Somewhere in the back of Rip’s mind, Mick basically is associated with everything that Rip has been raised to hate about his pre-Time Master past. And of course, the odds are that street-kid Rip would have met people that, on surface level, seemed a lot like Mick. And those likely would not have been fun or positive experiences.

None of this, of course, is fair to Mick. (Fortunately, Rip seemed to realize that after the Chronos debacle, and their dynamic shifts significantly and positively in the second half of the season.)

Rip - savvy.

Okay, so I was going to type a lot about how I think Rip values shrewdness and practical knowledge, but that’s boring and I just typed a lot about intelligence anyway. So instead, I will talk about pirates.

I think that Rip is secretly a big fan of pirate type media, and may have, at some point during rebellious adolescence considered running away and becoming a time pirate himself.

Gideon was always a little sad that he never followed through with it. His pirate dreams were a lot of fun, and she always thought she’d make a good pirate ship.

Rip - interactions.

I think Rip has no idea how to interact with people on a normal, person-to-person basis, without some sort of great goal or mission in mind.

I mean, can you imagine the poor guy trying to engage in small talk?

Rip - groups

So, the most interesting thing about the JSA/Spear reveal in season two, to me (as a single-minded Rip fan) was that it showed that Rip has actually worked with a group before. And surprisingly enough, seemed to be really effective at it.

I suspect a lot of it comes from the fact that by the time Rip recruited the JSA, they’d been working together for more than a decade. And even back in 1942, they were pretty calm, focused and disciplined. So it would have been pretty easy for Rip to present his case to them, and once they’d agreed to help, they would have devoted that calm, focused, discipline to the pursuit of their mutual goals.

But as we’ve seen: Time Masters tend to work alone. So I doubt he had any real appreciation of the work that goes into creating a team like that. Recruiting the Legends would have been a nasty surprise.

Rip - pride, hubris, arrogance

I think that Rip does tend toward a certain arrogance. I hesitate to call it hubris though, because I don’t think he tends toward “excessive” pride. (I think Rip’s deadly sin is more wrath than pride, honestly.)

Rip’s arrogance comes from his abilities and experiences. He’s a Time Master and he’s a damn good one. He’s Captained the Waverider for twelve years. He’s feared by time pirates. He has a shit ton of skills and training to back that up.

I don’t however think he’s a snob. I don’t think he has an innate sense of aristocracy, or the belief that he’s better than other people. He was pretty quick to treat his team as his equals. He respected Martin’s ability to use time equations, Jax’s ability as ship’s engineer, Sara’s ability to fight and to lead. I think that his initial issues with the Rogues weren’t so much feeling as though he was better than them, as they reminded him of an origin/life that he very much wanted to forget. There’s an interesting distinction there that might fuel its own blog post one day.

Rip’s secret keeping probably does have an element of pride, but I think it’s less about an inflated ego, and more a sense of “this is MY responsibility, I can’t put this on someone else’s shoulders.”

Now the Time Masters on a whole? The epitome of hubris. There’s a reason that I think of them as the time-space Order of Hermes. They scheme, they manipulate, they control, and they tell themselves that it’s for the best. That they’re the best people to make these decisions. And in the end, their machinations led to their own destruction.

Rip - resiliency

Rip is a survivor. He kind of has to be. We’ve seen the trauma list. But I wonder if maybe his resiliency hasn’t met its match. Rip’s been different since Land of the Lost. More shaken, less certain. And I don’t think it’s entirely about confusion over his place in the group.

I’ve described Rip as a festering knot of rage and sarcasm wrapped in a duster (a description that I am rightfully proud of), but we haven’t seen any of that rage since Rip woke up. Even when the poor guy was face to face with Eobard, all he managed was a tired sounding “in the brig”. It’s worrisome.

Rip - attraction

Okay, so I mentioned before that I officially claim Rip Hunter as an asexual character. Dude fell in love with a disembodied AI, whose only visual image is a floating blue head. He’s one of us.

That said, it’s clear that he has romantic attraction. We see that with Miranda, Jonah, and Gideon. It’s not a very large sample size, I’ll grant you. But what can you do.

But based on those, I would say that Rip seems to be drawn toward passionate, somewhat domineering personalities (Gideon’s subtler about it, but it’s definitely there), with strong convictions. And he seems to especially like beings with a wild or uncontrollable streak.

So this is where I reiterate the headcanon that Rip is romantically in love with his entire damn team.

(I suspect he also may have a bit of an oedipal/electra complex.)

(Bonus, slightly disturbing thought: if you look at Jonah Hex and then you look at Mick Rory, then it starts to be possible that there may have been yet another element involved in Rip’s initial difficulty in dealing with Mick. Just saying.)

Rip - relationships (any/all kind)

Hm. Well. For a Time Master, whose ethos specifically forbids most types of attachments, Rip seems to have collected a lot of them.

Miranda and Jonas are obvious, of course.

But there’s also the team, who he loves so much that even when he’s amnesiac he’s trying to save them.

There’s mentor/father figure, Druce. Mary Xavier. There’s Gideon. The JSA (at least Heywood and McNider. Courtney seemed more distant.) Jonah.

There’s even that fucked up obsessed villain dynamic that he has with both Vandal Savage and Eobard Thawne.

I mean, really? That’s a lot of fucking relationships. He’s really bad at the no-attachment thing, isn’t he?

(Awkward crossover AU idea: Rip Hunter in the old Jedi Order. or possibly Rip Hunter, the galaxy’s worst accidental Sith ever.)

Rip -privacy and Rip - secrets (both keeping them and being out of the loop)

I think privacy among the Time Masters must be a really interesting concept. They have AIs that monitor dreams. Councils that regulate romantic relationships. Devices to literally invade people’s minds.

That’s not a society that puts a lot of stock in privacy.

But I’m reminded of something I read about Japan, when I was much younger, which discussed how even though physical personal space was very different there than in the United States (as anyone who’s ever been crammed into a Japanese subway can attest), many Japanese people had other ways to establish personal boundaries and maintain some measure of distance from one another psychologically, even if it can’t always happen physically.

And it makes me wonder if the Time Masters don’t have their own ways of psychologically creating some measure of privacy for themselves.

It may explain why Rip finds it so difficult to open up to his crew. What do you keep for yourself in a society where even your dreams are monitored?

That said, to Rip’s credit, he isn’t prone toward hypocrisy. He doesn’t seem to have much of an issue when the crew keeps secrets from him too. (He was concerned about Sara’s bloodlust, but he didn’t seem to be upset that she didn’t tell him about it, for example.)

Rip - touch

I think this is one of the ways that the Time Masters really fucked Rip up royally from day one. Because Rip is so standoffish most of the time, so rigid and closed off, that he pretty much breathes “don’t touch me” vibes.

But as has been pointed out and illustrated in lovely gifsets, Rip is remarkably touchy-feely when people are injured. Shoulder pats. Face holding. Hand holding. And it’s not a matter of him tolerating their need for comfort. He’s the one who reaches out.

He’s the one that, as soon as he’s freed from the brig in his mind, immediately clings to Gideon (though when it came to the kiss, she pretty much jumped up to meet him half way. But that’s a different bit of meta.)

And then there was that weird sort of lean/not-lean into Jonah Hex’s space when they’re bantering about laser guns.

I think ultimately that Rip is not touch-averse at all. He’s touch-starved. He wants to reach out to people. He wants to offer comfort and receive it. He’d actually really enjoy a shoulder pat or a hand-shake, or a god-damned real, corporeal hug. But he doesn’t know how to ask for it.

He gives “don’t touch me” vibes because he doesn’t know how not to. And that’s so very sad.

Rip - respect

Okay, this one is more tangential. But I always find myself wondering about Magister Druce. I mean, specifically, his role in young Rip’s life. Because Rip respects him and trusts him so damn much for most of season one. EVEN after being lead into an ambush. EVEN after knowing about Chronos. EVEN after he issues the Omega Protocol.

And has that actor EVER played a good guy? Ever?

But Rip’s utter shock when he learns the depths of Druce’s betrayal is unmistakable.

And the thing is, I’m not sure that the regard is entirely one-sided. I’ve mentioned before that the entire Oculus reveal was basically unnecessary. Rip was captured and likely to be executed, exiled, or just imprisoned for life. Druce had no reason to remove him from his cell and explain everything. Unless he seriously thought something would be gained by it. I wonder, if Rip had given into despair and surrendered, if Druce wouldn’t have actually brought him back into the fold. I kind of think that was the intention. (Especially given the parallel cuts to Mick’s re-brainwashing.)

It’s pretty clear that they were mentor and student at one time. But it seems like a little more than that. This isn’t just a student’s respect and trust for a mentor. It’s bigger, blinder, more unconditional than that. It’s a child’s trust, and as we’ve seen, Rip isn’t particularly good at trusting anyone.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Druce had been grooming him from a very young age. He might have even been the one who initially found little Michael on the streets and brought him in. It would explain a lot. Particularly the level of self-loathing that Rip has for his younger self. Mary Xavier wouldn’t have encouraged that, and instead seemed gently tolerant of Michael’s issues. Druce, however, may have.

And of course, then it leads to more speculation. Rip may not have trusted the Time Masters, but he trusted Druce. How much did he trust him? Did Vandal Savage know how to find Miranda and Jonas because Rip told Druce where they were?

Rip - love (all of them).

All of the types of love or all of the characters?

Okay, so, this is another “I blame the Time Masters” bit, but I suspect that eros and philia are really easily mixed up in Rip’s brain. It’s what comes of a society that stigmatizes normal human connections the way it does.

I’ve mentioned before that I imagine Rip sees gestures of romance in the same way that we look at overtly sexual acts, and I stand by that. In a lot of ways, I think he’d be more comfortable seeing sexual acts, as that’s just primitive biology. Romance and friendship, concepts that prize connections between people, that prioritize certain people over others or even the world… those are truly dangerous for a Time Master.

And considering that Rip did help break time specifically for his team, the Time Masters may have had a bit of a point.

But anyway, this is yet another chance to state my sincere belief that Rip Hunter is deeply in love with his entire team. Even Martin. Even Mick. And of course, Gideon. And he has no idea how to begin to parse out these emotions or what to do with them.

I think the Time Masters probably have a really interesting stance on storge. There are certain implications that it’s frowned upon as well. Certainly Jonas was a problem. And I suspect there’s a reason Rip had to cross his own timeline in order to seek his mother’s help.

The one storge type of relationship that seems to be tolerated is Rip’s regard for Zaman Druce. But perhaps that makes a lot of sense. If the young Time Masters’ are only allowed one outlet for human connection, they will likely be very dependent on it, and therefore more easily influenced.

Agape is probably the love most favored by the Time Masters. But I think it’s the love that Rip is least suited to. Agape requires a level of emotional distance that I don’t really think Rip has. Rip goes all in.

Rip - disaster.

I feel like that dash should be an equal sign. And that pretty much says it all. :-)

Rip - loneliness

One very consistent character trait of Rip’s is that, in the end, he really needs to have people around him. We’ve seen what he does when he’s alone: he either ends up succumbing to despair or engaging in tremendously bad, self-destructive ideas.

The truly depressing part about Rip’s story so far, however, is that he starts out as a man who is (except for Gideon, to be fair) completely alone with his grief, rage and guilt. He ends up gathering a makeshift family of misfits and assholes. But he still ends up suffering alone.

Rip - leadership

Wisecracks aside, I don’t actually think that Rip is THAT bad as a leader. As we’ve seen in the Spear flashbacks and in Fellowship: when there’s a clear goal, with a clear direction, with a team that’s willing to listen, he does fine.

Furthermore, there are a number of really good decisions that he made in season one that he never really gets credit for:

For example, naming Jax as ship’s mechanic. This wasn’t just a lucky spur of the moment decision. It was a decision made in the context of a growing issue.

If you recall, the relationship between Martin and Jax was a pretty important arc in the beginning of season one. Martin had kidnapped Jax to bring him along, to begin with, while Jax had expressed doubts that he’d be any use on this kind of team. They were also dealing with Martin being overprotective and domineering toward Jax, as a result of dealing with Ronnie’s death. Martin had to learn to trust and back off of Jax.

So looking at that, then we can see why naming Jax as the ship’s mechanic was actually a legitimately brilliant management decision.

Jax didn’t initially have a lot of self-confidence. He saw himself as the normal guy. An ordinary mechanic surrounded by super geniuses and assassins and so on. (Not that there is anything wrong with being a mechanic.)

But Jax was a mechanic and a very good one. And he was much smarter than he gave himself credit for. This made him an ideal choice. (And since he’s patient and mature, he’s far better suited than Ray, who while brilliant and mechanically inclined, is a bit too erratic for this kind of job.)

So Jax discovers that he has it in him to be an awesome Chief Engineer. Instant boost of confidence.

It also has nothing to do with Martin or Firestorm. As we’ve seen with Ray, when you have powers or cool tech, it can be very easy to put all your self-worth into one specific role. And when you’re partnered with someone who can be a little overbearing, like Martin, then that can be a lot of added stress or a recipe for co-dependence.

But this way, Jax has something that proves that he has value as a teammate besides just being Martin’s partner. It’s something that’s all his. And it gives him more of a way to argue on equal footing.

And it gives him a way to seek privacy and vent if he needs to. Need some time alone? Important repairs.

Another good decision that Rip made was to pair Kendra and Sara in White Knights. This was, if you recall, right after the episode where Sara had revealed her issues with bloodlust. And of course, we learn that Kendra’s having a great deal of difficulty managing her Hawk powers and memories.

Neither woman would have likely sought the other out on their own. As we saw, both had a considerable amount of distrust for each other at the time. Furthermore, Sara’s used to suffering in silence, while Kendra was understandably overwhelmed with the changes in her life.

They’re both good people though and even though they’re not likely to ask for help for themselves, both women were inclined to try to help someone else.

So Rip pairs them up, points out to each how she’s uniquely qualified to understand what the other is going through. And voila, both women are able to help each other, and then embark on a lasting friendship.

I don’t point this out to give Rip credit for either Jax’s achievements or Sara and Kendra’s. He is certainly not the reason that Jax was a good mechanic or the girls became friends.

But in both cases, he was the one to recognize the potential that these characters had, and pushed them into a position to discover that for themselves.

And that’s pretty good!

In the end, Rip’s biggest obstacle as a leader is, I think, a measure of confidence. He doesn’t have the confidence to open up to his team. He doesn’t have the confidence to exert authority over his team. So he is never able to quite direct or control them successfully.

Rip - ever be ready/willing to have a relationship again?

That’s a hard question. I think at some point in the distant future, he would be ready/willing to have a relationship, but honestly, he’s nowhere near that point right now. He’s not quite the jagged chasm of despair that he was in season one, thank goodness, but I think he’s still a bit too fragile.

One of the reasons that I ship Time Hex is that I think it’s the only relationship that I could see actually working right now, because all the groundwork was laid a long time ago. Even if you don’t think they had something going on then, there was still a level of trust and camaraderie that predates Rip’s current fragility.

Prior to Turncoat, I thought Time Canary had a chance to work too. He’s still kind of broken, but she’s kind of broken too, so I thought they might be in a place that they could help each other. But then there was evil Rip. And even though I think Sara’s already forgiven him, and had basically as soon as they saved him if not sooner, Rip isn’t anywhere near ready to forgive himself.

And really, I don’t think Sara would pursue it either right now, even assuming she’s interested. She has some idea of how lost and fragile he is right now, and how hard he’s trying to adjust to the changes of the crew, his role and hers. Pursuing a relationship right then and there would probably feel like a potential abuse of power. And I think Sara is someone who is always very conscious of that kind of thing.

Oddly, I also don’t think Rip is ready for Time Ship at this juncture, and I kind of wonder if that wasn’t maybe some subconscious push for him to leave the ship. Because he and Gideon have been partners for a very long time. She’s a rock and a sole point of stability for him. But suddenly, thanks to his own impulsive gesture, there’s something new and chaotic in the mix. I don’t think he’s remotely ready to process that.

Rip - relaxation.

I’m not sure that I believe Rip is able to relax. Even before his family died. He just seems like the sort of person who is constantly focused on a goal or idea.

I’ve mentioned that I don’t see Rip as much of a chess player. I think of him more as someone who would be putting together a giant 5 billion piece puzzle, or making something. Basically solitary and creative pursuits.

Rip - nemesis.

Hmm. Well, so far we had Vandal Savage and Eobard Thawne? I admit though, I’d love to see the introduction of some rival ex-Time Masters or something.

But really, I want the return of Zaman Druce. He was such a great villain. I’d love to see him cross swords with Rip again. (Also, Leonard Snart would be back too. I know a lot of folk would enjoy that. :-P)

#Anonymous #rip hunter #legends of tomorrow #headcanon storm

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