#i always focus on Da Trauma though in pairings if its interesting enough

[bigkickguy]

hi! ur thoughts on gregor/yi sang?

I LOVE GREGOR YI SANG!!!! (gregsang?) I think I mentioned it before but the milk scene from hell's chicken rewrote my brain and I want to see more of yi sang, gregor, and heathcliff all hanging out now!

I don't feel like I know enough about Yi Sang (ch 4 is soon though AAAAAAAA excitement!) but i like some ideas around them? Yi Sang spent probably a lot of his life in a lab doing research so he is one of the only people on the bus. That makes his relationship to Gregor and how he grew up in a lab very interesting for me to think about!!

Going to keep things under read more for leviathan and limbus spoilers!

I think there's some fun potential crunch between Yi Sang being a researcher and Gregor's experience with researchers being a traumatic presence in his childhood! There's also lighter tones the pairing could take on - they have that good potential range!! (Like most pairings do, given how dire the setting is lol) I'll talk about crunchy ideas first, then sillier ones after!

Everyone knows 'oh Gregor grew up in a lab, some bad shit happened there' but no one Knows what it is like in a formal lab setting like Yi Sang might?

We see Yi sang is smiling and happy in the preview - but like we have Seen what happens to many well meaning researchers or inventors through L-Corp. It is very hard to try and develop anything and test it in the city without it causing harm to others! When that happened and how much Yi Sang might have known about it is up in the air but at some point to test the reflection mirror tech Someone had to try it out. And it probably didn't end well given what happens to all the kids in leviathan. We know from Leviathan their tech was being built based off of what Yi Sang's team developed!

All that to say there's potentially some discomfort on Gregor's end of things he'd need to deal with! The present Yi Sang in limbus doesn't talk about his research or anything related to his past at all. Gregor might not Know that he used to be in a lab research team! At some point it will come up and depending on how Gregor handles it the relationship could get some very crunchy tones for fanfiction there!

Not to say that wouldn't work out between them! But that Yi Sang might have the closest understanding of what Gregor went through outside of Gregor potentially telling someone else about the details. And that could be pretty helpful in a relationship if Gregor didn't have to explain a lot of trauma to someone else - that's hard!

We also don't know how the group split up that Yi Sang used to work for! We know that he used to be a little less sleep deprived and smiled at some point there from the preview. The narration makes me assume he was happy working there at some point! So how did it all fall apart? Yi Sang might also have some issues to navigate on his end with Gregor setting off reminders unintentionally. They are crunchy on both ends like this.

It's one of those things I could see being a tension point if Yi Sang suddenly uses some vocabulary of that time and Gregor has to suddenly realize his silly spoiled milk drinking buddy did the same thing as what those awful people did to him and his sister. Maybe talking about it brings up some betrayal that happened on Yi Sang's end. Maybe they both hate how the city corrupts research and science and tramples on people to make progress? That gets a high potential for some real emo fanfiction to explore everything and I eat that shit up!!

On a lighter note - Yi Sang is a silly guy and he's great! I think most of the sinners seem comfortable around each other by the time Hells Chicken and Dante's Notes scene 2 roll around! We know he seems accepting of most people and overall pretty chill.

Gregor seems exasperated sometimes in the intro dealing with all the tension on the bus. Tension is always going to be present! It's a tense world! I think it's nice there could be someone for Gregor to hang out with who is pretty low stress most of the time!

I think Yi Sang was one of the people who acted once or twice supportively or protectively over Sinclair in ch3 and I am always a fan of someone in a relationship trying to stick up for Gregor! He's had a rough time :,)

on the flip side i feel like Gregor would watch out for Yi Sang and enjoy hanging out with him. I just want both of them to be normal silly guys having a good time laughing and eating dinner together. And now we know they canonically do!! hell yea hell yea!!

I personally like the hyper positive outlook on the pairing where Yi Sang's lab experience is not something directly upsetting to Gregor but is something that ends up being an interest point between them - and as they talk through it they get closer together and trust each other on a deeper level. They could have both a light an fun relationship most of the time while having the deeper more meaningful understanding and desire to care for each other!

They could be silly! They could fall asleep together - Yi Sang could wake up early and make the Worst Breakfast that is basically poisonous. Gregor could cook for him and he would happily eat probably anything. When Gregor is too down Yi Sang can make silly jokes and lighten the mood. When Yi Sang is spacing out too hard Gregor can ground him and help him feel more involved.

There's a lot of fluffy ideas I like coming up with between them! They're fun to think about!

Ultimately - they're both good and I want them both to be happy!

[where-fading-princesses-live]

What is your opinion on Rolf’s scenes in the movie?

((Sorry this is going to be long. I’ve been trying to finish this for the past three days.)) So just going off from what everyone else said, I agree that Rolf’s scenes could have been trimmed down some, or at least utilized in a more productive manner. He’s all geared up like some hardcore Indiana Jones, looking ready as ever to whoop some serious ass, but he never really does anything. I mentioned it before, but it’s as if the writers just didn’t know what to do with him…

(Credit for art goes to Marlushion)

That pretty much sums it up.  

Granted, I don’t hate Rolf’s scenes. Far from it, actually. I just feel like he could have been slightly more on track. His scenes not only go on for too long, but in the entirety of his screen time, all he does is… fry an egg (???), pour some ‘’Rö suk’’ on a car seat, yells at Wilfred, mutilates a perfectly good muffin, yells at Wilfred some more, milks a cow, drinks unpasteurized milk, yells at Wilfred, gets a meat grinder stuck on his head… so yeah, basically, Rolf’s scenes are, as everyone described, just the very definition of filler. Which is a shame, considering Rolf is one of the most interesting and complex side characters.

In fact, Rolf isn’t the only three-dimensional supporting character that had less to do in this finale. Jonny and Jimmy also take back seats in their subplots, and they, too, have been the most developed of all the supporting cast. Maybe it’s just because these three characters had so much character development throughout the series that there just wasn’t anything left for them to do, and so the writers decided to shift focus onto characters that had very little development, like Sarah, Kevin and Nazz. The before mentioned characters were always the least interesting and least popular among fans, so I was surprised by how much screen time they received in BPS. Not only that, but their subplots are fairly interesting, at least compared to the more popular secondary characters like Rolf. I suppose it all boiled down to time constraints. It was more important, anyhow, that the Eds had their dramatic conflicts resolved and their time to shine– the rest of the cast just had to pick up the left-overs. Still, it would have been nice if Rolf, Jonny and Jimmy had the opportunity to be as great in BPS as they normally are in the series– even if they had plenty of development prior to BPS, this was going to be the last time we would ever see these characters, so to have them do nothing due to time, well, again, it’s a shame. EEnE was one of the few shows of its era that had a very strong supporting cast, so even if we watched it for the Eds, it was still a treat to see the others, too.

I think the majority of fans dislike Rolf’s story arc mainly because it lacks comedy (or at least, the usual Rolf antics we’ve come to expect). I like @mundane-ededdneddy-headcanons theory in that Rolf has been alienating himself further from the group and becoming more and more introverted as the series progresses. This is true. Towards the end of the series, Rolf has had some more serious moments than usual, moments that reflect his more introverted nature. For example, in ‘’Too Smart For His Own Ed’’, it’s revealed that he suffers from stage fright and has a phobia of public speaking. Yes, this same kid who bravely performs in front of his friends without a hint of shyness…

… loses the Spelling Bee due to social anxiety. 

‘’No Speak Da Ed’’ is perhaps one of the darkest Rolf-centric episodes, the plot which heavily draws upon past childhood trauma. So it’s not as if Rolf was never serious before BPS. Even before Season 5-6, Rolf had some heavy material in his episodes, such as ‘’Wish You Were Ed’’ and ‘’Dueling Eds’’.  So again it’s not like Rolf can’t be serious– but because he’s more beloved and popular for his comedic timing, I guess his story in BPS fell a bit flat for some. I think the criticism mainly stems from the fact that even in his more serious episodes, the writers always made sure to pull it back to comedy. In ‘’Wish You Were Ed’’, it begins kinda sad, but then it gets pretty outrageous. 

Same goes for ‘’Dueling Eds’’, which handled a pretty serious topic of Eddy unintentionally hurting Rolf’s feelings… it begins normal enough, but then escalates into… insanely… weird… shit… 

Even ‘’No Speak Da Ed’’ ended on a comedic note. So if BPS handled serious frustrated Rolf in the same way they handled these episodes, maybe fans wouldn’t be so nitpicky about it?

Maybe the meat grinder was meant to be hilarious, but it’s actually just kinda sad. I mean, the kid loses everything… all the possessions he can carry, his pig, his shoe… I mean, he’s kind of a wreck at the end. I don’t know about anyone else, but I wasn’t laughing, and maybe I was supposed to be?

But going back for a moment, maybe fans just weren’t thrilled with the idea of Rolf being so cut off from the rest of the group. Granted, he has really always been an introvert, just not in the pure sense of the word like Jonny and Edd. Rolf’s more of an extroverted introvert, in that he enjoys the company of his friends, but he’s also not afraid to go solo. We’ve seen moments of Rolf alone before– but that’s all it was, moments. He’s revealed to be a slightly different person when he’s alone as opposed to in a group. In fact, he’s more serious when he’s alone. In ‘’Pick an Ed’’ we see him sitting alone under the bleachers, dwelling over his poor grades. His frustration here mirrors exactly how he is during the entirety of BPS: talking to himself, talking to his pig. But I think because we’re not used to seeing him alone so long, it was maybe a tad unsettling to not have him bounce off of anyone and vent his anger and frustration in other ways– such as through comedy. The same would be true for the rest of the cast. It’s interesting to see how the characters react when by themselves, but they are much more interesting when bouncing off each other. I could say the same for the Eds– they wouldn’t be nearly as interesting by themselves. So because Rolf is alone for the majority of BPS, he doesn’t have the opportunity to be as fun as he usually is.

He isn’t playing comic relief in his story at all. Like Kevin, he’s terribly frustrated and solely focused on revenge. But even though we as fans sit here and analyze these characters like we created them, we didn’t, and maybe there was a creative reason why Danny–who obviously knows his own characters better than we do–decided not to go with comedy for Rolf. Maybe he felt it would be too inappropriate for this type of setting? I mean, all the kids have pretty dramatic moments in their stories… but then again, even in their most tense situations, they still have room for comedy. I’ve seen several responses already suggesting Rolf should have at least tagged along with Jonny or acted as a third wheel in the Kevin X Nazz X Bike subplot. Either one would have been good, but maybe Danny just didn’t want him around to crack jokes? Maybe he felt as though Rolf could be more than that? Maybe he just wanted to give us something we wouldn’t expect? The way they paired up the kids was a no brainer– but again, maybe there was a reason why they wanted Rolf alone with his pig instead of with his friends. I think there were other ways to make his story work without interfering with the other kids, one of the suggestions being the previously mentioned pitch that all he needed was more comedy. He could have still bounced off Wilfred the same way he bounces off the other characters, and in a less cruel way. That’s another criticism of mine, having him be so unreasonably harsh towards Wilfred. Rolf has never been shown to be extremely abusive of his animals before. Maybe he was just taking his anger of the Eds out on Wilfred… but it was still a tad extreme and slightly out of character, even for Rolf. I’m almost glad Wilfred bit the shit out of him.  

One last thing to add. Towards the end of the series, Rolf has been taking on subtle traits of Double D by not only improving his English and expanding his vocabulary but also…

Not only does he better his English, even though he can’t excel in school despite working his ass off to little avail, but Rolf also starts to embrace science and technology, as if an excess of Double D’s annoying habits rubs off on him. Season 1-4 Rolf is behind the times, often resorting to animalistic tactics and do-it-yourself conduct, using natural resources and living off the land. The only hint of ‘’technology’’ in his antique-ridden old-world colonial-style home is a dated television set with foreign characters on the control dials and limited channels. But in BPS,  he goes full Steampunk mode while tracking the Eds, which, as cool as it seems, is a little out of Rolf’s passé character. Though Steampunk incorporates modern technology with the aesthetic of 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery, it also seems very advanced for Rolf, who in previous seasons, would use traditional, natural remedies like Carbuncle of the Flesh Stew to heal acne and other skin blemishes. Analyzing egg whites to uncover evidence of missing persons in a forensic-styled science experiment sounds more like Double D’s mojo, not Rolf’s, no matter how DIY. Oh well. He may have temporarily stolen Edd’s thunder but he looks badass, so who gives a flying cow?            

Oh, also…

It might be safe to assume that science and agriculture aren’t so different after all, so perhaps Rolf’s retrofuturistic tendencies in eventual installments isn’t so bizarre.