#if I fucked up right vs left on my own post about chirality…..

[aabluedragon]

Chirality on Don Quixote and Sancho

I’d like to first establish that she appears to be ambidextrous, showing equal dexterity on each hand throughout her different IDs and when she emulates Bari’s moves as Sancho. Below are my observations on chirality (handedness) across my gathered IDs. I may follow up with her EGOs later on.

Left-Handed Don Quixotes

LCB

Shi South Section 5 Director

W Corp L3 Cleanup Agent (via sheathed knife on belt)

Right-Handed Don Quixotes

Just about every other ID

Please note that the below sprites have been mirrored to be viewed from the ally side. Both Bari and Sancho fight from the right-hand side of the screen in-game. I will be tracking chirality using Sancho’s boa to denote her left side.

Sancho’s Left-Handed Attacks

Odachi

Falchion

Double Straight Swords (all scabbards are left-handed)

Sancho’s Right-Handed Attacks

La Sangre

Thousand-Pound Bow and Arrow

Sancho’s N/A Attacks

Punching us (ow)

Analysis (the yappening)

I first noticed the discrepancy in Don Quixote’s handedness when I looked at her Cinq ID’s UT3 art shortly after looking at LCB Don Quixote. At first, I thought that she fenced right-handed to offer a fairer duel to most denizens of The City. It only makes sense. However, I soon noticed that she fights right-handed in IDs that don’t call for that kind of accommodation such as Lobotomy EGO Lantern (her right arm anchors her grip). N Corp Mittelhammer follows the same trend despite their religious discrimination not extending to chirality, seeing that Guido is openly left-handed.

Maybe, then, right-handed is her rule rather than an exception in most mirror worlds? I can see that, given the prominence of chirality as symbols of good and evil, sword and shield throughout literature. Which, given Don Quixote’s record, she may very well fight right-handed to emulate that common image.

So why does LCB Don Quixote joust left-handed? It might be as simple as Don Quixote wishing to fight at her best with her limited combat experience, seeing that she spent most of her known life in a tower like a waiting damsel.

Or, well—

Anyways.

Sancho, and by extension Don Quixote’s EGO La Sangre de Sancho, jousts right-handed. For Sancho, I hypothesize it as a matter of convenience since she prefers to wear her Armadura over her left shoulder. Therefore, left-handed fighting would block her vision and she has little reason to fight so seriously given her immense Bloodfiend strength and experience in war. When Don Quixote dons her armor to charge for justice in La Sangre de Sancho, I imagine that her reasoning for switching hands is both to emulate the knights of old and to entertain an old habit she doesn’t consciously remember.

In IDs such as Shi and W Corp Don Quixote, their deviance from other mirror worlds may be tied to a breaking dream. As a director of the Shi Association, Don Quixote beaming smile and quick blade is the difference between life and death for her exhausted subordinates. She cannot afford to play a character when she is so intimately and viscerally aware of the doomed path her section has been assigned to. As a W Corp L3 Cleanup Agent, her spirit is quite explicitly broken as she witnesses what she is meant to accept as her daily routine aboard the WARP trains. Where another Don Quixote may believe in the inherent and all-surpassing goodness of humanity (the Fixers merely haven’t gotten to this evil yet!), this one has been shown time and time again what humans will do to themselves and each other when time and consequences no longer exist. Righteousness does not eventually overcome cruelty when both are immortal.

As always, feel free to reply if I’ve missed something or you have something to add. Discussion is a fruit of community.