#i loveeee comparing characters to each other I love how they're different and the same i love foils and parallels and bullshit and arcs

[springcatalyst]

🖊 for any milo and/or reiji details they fascinate me ^-^

YES thank u they live in my brain

Let me go on a tangent before I even get to what this ask actually is cause why wouldn’t I- Milo and Reiji are interesting characters to compare to each other, because despite their entwined storylines, I don’t draw a lot of connections between them as they were designed.  Characters that never interact are fun to draw conclusions with because it’s more obscure out-of-universe things:  Julian and Milo are so different but they follow very similar paths and come from very similar places.  Milo and Brooke (actually they do interact but only like, once) both deal with the results of a corrupted worldview that once questioned, can’t be ignored once again.  Reiji and Diana share an inherently wary, bleak outlook on how the world functions as a result of their own experiences.  And characters that do interact but were designed that way are... designed that way.  Julian and Liliana are the same stuff poured into different molds, impossibly similar and impossibly different, and that drives everything about their relationship- they’re foils.  Diana and Julian start at the same place in the same situation, (for different reasons), and end up wildly different people in opposite directions- they are diverging paths evidenced by truth or lies. 

But Milo and Reiji aren’t connected by anything inherent or anything unchangeable.  Their meeting in the first place is mostly chance and a little bit of give and take of compassion.  They stick together because the alternative is being alone in a world that’s so much bigger than both of them, so much older, and just a little bit more broken.  Their relationship is a choice in a way that really isn’t the case for a lot of other characters. 

And I mean, they do have parallels, but they seem different somehow, because they actually apply in-universe.  They reflect off each other.  They both leave something behind that they wish they could get back: but while Reiji’s was taken from him by circumstance and chance, Milo’s was a culmination of something grown that eventually he had to choose to abandon, though if there was any other way, he would have taken it.  (He tried, before.  It didn’t work.) 

But now they’re both missing something, and with it, their place.  Reiji doesn’t know where he belongs and the truth is that he doesn’t belong anywhere.  He can’t return to the one place he did- (it wasn’t a place, but a people.  They’re long gone, even as they live) -and now he searches aimlessly for someplace he can return to.  He doesn’t find one.  Milo loses everything he’s ever known when he walks away, and even as he makes the decision to, it feels like the admission of some crime (it looks that way to them, and he knows it).  He longs for the community he lost, but even if he gets something close to it, it’s wrong, because it isn’t them, and because the reason he left still follows him. 

They’re both ghosts wandering a vast expanse of unknown.  There is exploration in it- Milo especially does genuinely love the places he passes through, the people he meets briefly, the idiosyncrasies of each town, city, village.  Reiji less so- he’s only ever known the wandering, so it isn’t as special to him.  He’s always looking for something that will change, but even so, traveling with Milo forces him to see things he wouldn’t otherwise. 

The difference between them is that Milo stops being a ghost.  As time goes on, less and less is searching and more and more is exploring.  More is fixed than is broken.  But the opposite is true for Reiji.  As he finds nothing it feels more and more like he is one of very, very few.  That he has found no place to exist because there is no place for him, for those like him.  Reiji is looking for answers in an environment that buried most of them, in a world that hunts the rest.  And it becomes this obsession- a thousand whys. 

Why didn’t his flock look for him?  Why did he even survive?  Why is he hunted?  Why did it start and why won’t it change?  Why is the world sitting on the ashes of an older one?  Why are people broken by something they don’t remember?  Why does every place he goes scream that there used to be more?  Why are his people a part of it?  Why are they here?  Why do they occupy a world that is so clearly not made for them?  Why does he not know where they are made for? 

Reiji asks a thousand whys and they can all be summarized by one what: What happened?

Milo and Reiji cross incomprehensible distances and in the time that takes, a lot changes.  Milo goes from being a ghost of who he was and who he should be to being alive in a way he wasn’t before, genuine in a way he didn’t allow.  Milo looks for an answer in a different way than Reiji, because he is looking for certainty.  He wants someone to tell him, with no room for error, what is true and what is corrupt.  He wants surety and permanence in a way that just doesn’t exist, and so instead must choose which side he’s on- he must decide what to believe, because nobody can tell him black and white.  With that choice becomes an acknowledgement that the world isn’t as simple as good and evil, and the two can very much coexist, that perfect and unredeemable don’t really exist, not here, anyway.  He’s allowed to just be.  Reiji, though, doesn’t get the opportunity to make that choice, to take that answer.  He isn’t looking for the answer to a moral question or a cosmic should.  He is looking for a reason, which is an order of magnitude more impossible to find.  He looks to the past for why and the nature of time is that he keeps getting further and further from it.  He finds very little, which only makes him look harder, which makes it worse when he finds even less.  He starts down an impossible spiral that he can’t get out of until he finds what he wants, but what he wants just doesn’t exist in the way he needs. 

[cat-vase]

Heyoo, same VickyChesGlam anon here. About the Anna and Glam thing, aaah man, it's complex. I personally do not care for Anna at all, not to say i hate her, but I don't rly have a reason to like her at all, or to want to like her. Plus, I very violently dislike Ches/Anna, simply cuz i am incapable of understanding HOW they even slept with each other. I adore Ches to hell and back but Ches is the embodiment of what Anna would hate in a man, flirty, playboy, overly confident, cocky... I like Anna when she's not being paired up with Ches, i like her potential with Vicky and her relationships with literally anyone else but Ches, cuz i cannot feel chemistry or history from them (plus, the cliche of "the main couple both have best friends and the best friends get together too!" Is... Hm, well. I GUESS. Idk if you see what I mean).

I think Glam and Anna's relationship is much more fun as animosity and sass filled interactions, simply cuz i think Glam SASSING or being passive aggressive to someone would be so entertaining and funny to see. Anna was been shown to hate Glam's GUTS in Vicky's Qna and Glam is always unfeeling or apathetic in every sketch or questions that even hints at Anna he had in his QnA, so i personally think Anna and Glam being sassy and disliking each other, having funny banter, trying to one up the other would be so.... Cool to see. Like Glam emoting and rolling his eyes at her, smiling while saying smth very passive aggressive, letting annoyed sighs when she's around... Idk, Glam disliking her and outwardly showing it!! And Anna giving it RIGHT back!! Idk, i may just be hungry for playful animosity interactions in MF, so it may just be me that wants this to be their dynamic.

See! Like!!! OK, I like this too!!!

Ok let me explain: We don't know everything about the characters right now! Except maybe Glam! So I have a couple similar-but-different versions of them in my head? They're slippery like a water slide! Like rolling a bowling ball in the adjacent lane! Because there's a bunch of headcanons you can make, right? We only have what we have of the show right now, and various sketches that might not even be canon by the time that plot point in the show is reached!

So like! I also don't really care about Anna? She shows up, like, twice? But! There's so many places she could go! And we already know Alina and Dima loveeee parallels so I'm stringing together characters with red thread like I'm talking about aliens!

Ches/Anna is like... they aren't DATING? They just hooked up. So they're not really TOGETHER? They're probably not together BECAUSE of what you said: Ches is everything Anna hates! So I get that!

THAT'S WHY I LOVE YOUNG GLAM SO MUCH THOUGH!!! It isn't healthy for HIM but that's ok he's ok now. <3 But he's so sassy and snippy and it's still THERE: just only when someone messes with his kids or Victoria usually! And of course it started out as a trauma response so it's still there but we're not going to talk about that in this post or else it would go on for 5 years. But yeah you're right it would be SO funny, I think realistically he would only be mean to her out of earshot/eyeshot of everyone else. Because then they'd be like "what the FUCK Glam???" otherwise. Quick enough for her not being able to react until way later, even. But that's still fun!!!

Vicky was shown not to be buddy-buddy with Anna as Ches is with Glam though? As in "oh, it's just you... fuck you, whatever, ugh..." so maaaaybe we'll get more of this through them? I think Vicky is supposed to be explored more in this season compared to Glam and the last one, so!!! I'm excited for that!!!