I don’t like minimizing the importance and gravity of Laios and Toshiro’s fight into just being a childish squabble, even if to a degree it is framed that way, because to both of them it has a lot of personal significance and emotional weight and runs very deep to their characters… The fight isn’t nothing it’s a LOT, they made up but it’s not something easy to express and to get over for either of them which makes it all the more meaningful! I’m on both sides but there very much are sides, there’s no "they’re both having a ball, Toshiro and Laios hand in hand yay" side to the fight, that comes after
The fight with Toshiro WAS very scary to Laios, almost existentially so, but it’s moreso the "I thought I’d made a friend!!" bit and my god. My god actually
Like it’s not "just" about oh his friend liking him less than he thought, THAT IS SO MUCH. It’s a bond he thought he had being a lie it’s all the time and moments spent together either being a lie from his perspective or marred now looking back. It’s not only being upset at Toshiro for lying but upset at himself that he’s so easy to fool, it’s being upset that there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even tell if your "close buddy" even actually likes you or not, it’s like. Holding my head. He can’t trust his own vision of events that happened do you see. There’s always this film of distrust that it could be a lie that should be there when he interacts with people there’s always this sense of cloak and dagger to expect backstabs out of nowhere because you CAN’T see it coming you CAN’T you CAN’T there’s something about you which makes it impossible so you CAN’T-
He’s so scared of not being able to read people. He knows it’s a weak spot he has, he’s always known. All of these bits are centered around social expectations and betrayals, the assumption that he doesn’t belong either in society or with other humans.
And Laios’ level of awareness is actually sort of complex to analyze, but it’s there, there’s how out of him and Falin he was the one sensitive to the ~aura of hatred~ he felt from the townspeople, there’s of course his nightmares whispering to him about the mocking looks, and how yeah actually he realizes that his gold stripper coworker was taking advantage of him. There’s of course the Winged Lion speech about his trauma and how he fundamentally mistrusts/dislikes humans to some deep seated degree, this distrust that he still keeps under control always. There’s how pre-canon he often wanted to suggest eating monsters but never worked up the courage to bring it up with the others. There’s how he gets across as stoic when he isn’t being enthusiastic…… We don’t know how aware and wary he is exactly in the moment but we do know he has some anxiety around social stuff, and looking back he does notice and aughh augh, the sense you have to hide yourself to not get hurt and be on your guard and shit and.
When you don’t know what to look out for and when to look out for it, the general ‘common sense’ of not always trusting people or noticing when someone’s messing with you becomes hypervigilance in social settings
"Man they really know what you hate huh". Being socially unaware literally plagues him, he knows, he knows it so well.
It’s so quick that it’s almost hard to digest how literal and blatant Laios summoning his monster to crush all the people who’ve hurt him is. His literal go-to coping mechanism for comfort in his literal monster-induced emotionally intense nightmares, saving him by taking away the upsetting element (the humans)
"Monsters are his coping fantasy, where they can whisk him away from humanity, all the hurt it’s caused him and its arbitrary rules" with the subtlety of a brick. Monsters are his comfort safe zone "because they kill humans" yes but no it’s because he pits them as the guardians against humans who to him are in the role of the agressors. To him they represent freedom from the shackles of what it means to be part of humanity, a fundamentally social species
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Currently in agony over the constant canon Patty-El parallels versus the S2 scene where El asks Jim if she has a mother:
Versus pre-TFS Patty, younger than S2 El, asking Mr Newby the same thing, except he doesn’t respond as kindly as Jim did with El.
Instead, Mr Newby throws the whole “your mother abandoned you, she didn’t want you, I rescued you,“ spiel at her, dragging Patty’s mother down to prop himself up, with either a.) zero regard for what that would do to Patty’s self esteem or b.) intentionally digging at Patty’s self esteem with it/trying to make her more obedient/“grateful” by making her feel worthless/unwanted.
Especially with Patty’s canon lines re: her talking about “My real mom abandoned me, and Mr Newby saved me, so I’m just- grateful,” and e specially since the delivery of those lines very much has the vibe of “Patty is quoting things that have been said to her by somebody else”.
And Patty being sarcastic and upset about the whole thing in those ^ TFS lines, except this whole thing happening with younger Patty so she hasn’t quite developed those emotional walls so she just sort of sits there quietly and tries not to cry until Mr Newby’s gone/not looking at her…
Especially with how El starts crying after Jim tells her that her mom is “gone,” versus Patty crying because Mr Newby told her that her mother didn’t want her…
Patty, 10, having tucked herself into bed, asking Mr Newby if she has a mother vs Patty, 10, trying not to cry being told that her mother didn’t want her… I’m in agony…
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thinking about how hunter never got a fucking break until thanks to them. he goes from failing at eclipse lake to attempting to capture some criminals to his entire reality crumbling in front of him to mortal danger and near-certain death to protecting someone else to running in a panic to homelessness and starvation and never leaving that mindset to Oh Shit It's Him He's Gonna Kill Me to Please Don't Let Him Kill Me to needing to save a friend to immediate retraumatization he needs to put aside to soothe the friend to having to explain how they're all gonna die to joining the rebellion and fruitlessly planning how to save the world to Don't Tell Them to not-homophobia-orb to Why Am I Luz (also fighting) to Oh God She's Been Captured And It's My Fault to having his life source drained gradually through a sigil to YOU'RE LYING to Uncle Just Fucking Died to being stranded in another realm and needing (thinking he needs) to protect his kin from the authority figure.
Not ONCE in that stretch of time did he get to stop and process anything. He still has to come to terms with his uncle being evil, and by now he's been splatted by a star child. He has to have been so tightly wound the entire time. The moment he felt safe at the Nocedas' house, I have no doubt that everything just fucking CRASHED into him at once. my guy probably went catatonic for days on end. When there's no threat of death to keep you driven, there's nothing to stop the absolute terror and betrayal, and I'd be shocked if he wouldn't be paralyzed by fear.
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i'm thinking about the wgm i saw on tiktok and and imagine you and rindou in that show. It was your first meeting and you barely know each other but eventually did as the show rolled on. And at the end of the season, it was time to say goodbye. You didn't want to. Not when everything you guys did during the whole season. None of it was real, yet part of you wished it was. Not when the way Rindou held you and laughed with you. The eyes, oh those lilac eyes that really did a tug at your heart. Everytime he looks at you..it feels so warm and beautiful. The compliments he gives you, "You're pretty", "You look beautiful", "You're amazing" simple words like those that made you blush. Those words coming out of his lips always made an impact on your heart. You don't know--Rindou is just a man that you met on the set. But the way the show went on with the two of you as one of the pretend couples, you feel like, some of those moments felt real and you always think, at the end of the day, if some of those are the 'real him'. You want to get to know the real rindou, because each time he makes you feel light as a feather whenever you're with him, your heart sinks. Light. Kind. Peaceful. Present. Lovely. This whole thing feels so painfully beautiful. He is beautiful. And before the show is over, he gives you a pouch, one that looks familiar. You opened it. It was a mix tape. You couldn't help but to sob at the words written on top of it. It was your initials next to his. He didn't say much during the final set- only did to comfort you, as you hugged him and you buried your face on the crook of his neck because you can't possibly contain the emotions that already filled the bottle in your heart that threatened to burst out. And as if he knows your struggle, he positioned himself in a way that an angle of your current state won't be caught by the camera. And then he held you. Listening to your sobs and caressing your hair. And just like that, you parted ways with a stranger you developed a strange attachment you cannot describe completely.
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thinking about how this:
this perspective shot right here 👆 where Kwazii's explaining how his grandfather "Once set out to find [the hidden city], but was never heard from again..."
is most likely a real memory. the last memory Kwazii had of Calico Jack: watching him leave.
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no cause as much as I would love to believe that LWJ grabs WWX's hand in that reunion scene on the mountain after 16y of trying his best not to touch him is because he's finally realized how much he needs WWX with him and will never let him go again, there will always be that lil voice in the back of my head that knows LWJ grabbed him to keep him from butchering his song of love with that god-awful make-shift flute like "no honey, im taking you to gusu so u can actually learn this, not going based off of fever-ridden memory like u didn't even remember me confessing to u with the song's name how u gonna remember intonation?"
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