When I first saw Adam's scar I thought it was ugly. I thought it was awkwardly drawn. As if it was slapped on him and everyone called a day. Now I'm older and see how messed up that was of me to think. I was so used to seeing scars being showed as cool or badass (in anime that is) that when we're shown "ugly" type scar that don't fit that mold, it shakes me out of what I'm used to see.
Now when I see Adam's scar, I feel bad for him. His scar isn't unnoticeable or cool looking. It absolutely has impacted his eyesight. When he looks in the mirror, he has to see that scar every single time and be reminded of trauma that it holds along.
I also had a gut reaction kinda like that for those same reasons. Like, Adam's scar reveal has impact regardless of the goofiness surrounding it because of just how severe the injury is shown to be.
I don't think it's "messed up" to have that reaction as someone watching a show with expectations of how you think a character should look for exactly the reasons you lay out re: scars typically being cool or badass.
As much credit as I want to give the show for actually depicting severe scarring without twisting around itself to make it look conventionally attractive, I hesitate. Adam - a villain - has this huge, gnarly scar over one eye and it's used as part of a manipulation scene. Weiss - a hero - has this dainty silver line over her eye that's almost invisible a good chunk of the time. It's a weird contrast that undermines the subversive "not conventionally attractive/cool scar" choice with the "disabled villains designed to not look conventionally attractive/cool" pattern in media.
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“Surprise!”
Unknown nearly jumps out of his skin. What are you doing yelling like that? Hasn’t he told you a hundred times by now to stay quiet while he’s working? But when he turns around to tell you as much, he stops in his tracks. “What do you think you’re doing?” becomes a much more pressing question.
You’re walking at an awkward angle, propping the door open with one leg while you hop on the other and drag some long rectangle through the doorway with both hands. “I got you a present!” You announce. “Happy early birthday! Or… late birthday? I don’t know, man, you seem like a Gemini, so I’m gonna guess it’s close enough to your birthday that it’s not weird for me to give you a gift.”
Unknown is too busy being bothered by the fact that you’re bringing some unauthorized thing into the intelligence room to be bothered by the fact that you’re trying to guess when his birthday is. You’re not necessarily wrong, either… but he’ll worry about that later. Right now, he has to worry about whatever “gift” it is that you’re trying to give him. You’ve managed to get it inside, and you kick the door shut before tucking the rectangle under your arm and bringing it over to his desk. “What is it?”
You grin at him, flipping the item around so he’s confronted with his own reflection. “A full-length mirror! Tada!” You look proud of yourself.
“Why would you get me something like that?” Unknown demands, “And who said you were allowed to order things?” Truth be told, he has no idea how you even managed to procure such a thing. It’s not as if he lets you roam around Magenta unsupervised, and you certainly don’t have any way to access the internet without him looming over your shoulder. He does occasionally write shopping lists for you to give to the believer in charge of weekly grocery runs, but C3170 would know better than to just take your word for it if you asked for something that wasn’t on the list.
Your lips form an amusing o-shape before you respond. “Yeah, about that. I sort of… forged your handwriting? Okay, no need to reach for any weapons.” You hold up your hands, showing your palms, as if you think you can anticipate his next course of action. “I didn’t expect it to work either. I honestly thought the grocery guy would be like, ‘that’s not his writing’ and send me packing. But I figured, hey, it’s worth a shot! So I spent like, an hour copying the font from the real grocery list to make a fake one, and I brought it to the guy like normal, and he was like, ‘yeah, okay, this checks out; this seems like your boss wrote it; don’t worry, I won’t keep him waiting; for eternal paradise,’ so, here we are with a brand-new mirror!”
“You forged my handwriting,” Unknown grumbles, “And then you manipulated a believer into spending the Savior’s money on… this.”
“Yes.” You confirm, “When you put it like that it sounds a lot worse than it is, though. Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to, like, get things around here?”
“I made it that way on purpose.” Unknown rubs his temples, and his reflection in the mirror does the same. Who would have thought that having an assistant would be this much trouble? “Did you at least put the shit I actually needed on your made-up list?” If you didn’t, you’ll be spending the rest of the day sitting in the corner, staring at the wall, and thinking about your bad decisions. Unknown has half a mind to send you over there anyway, considering you had the nerve to forge his handwriting. Why would you risk so much on something so utterly stupid?
“Of course,” you grin, “I know you can’t get along without your caffeine pills and candy bars. Anyway, please enjoy your full-length mirror.”
Unknown scowls at his reflection, which scowls right back at him. As if he needs a mirror to tell him how annoyed he is. It was a mistake to leave you unsupervised, and one he won’t ever make again. “Why did you waste money on this? There’s already a mirror in the bathroom.” He should know. He uses it to check his eyeliner, his hair, and (though he’d never breathe a word about it to anyone) the careful placement of his jacket.
“Man, please don’t take this the wrong way,” you cringe, “Because the top half of your look is great, and it’s really hard to do black skinny jeans wrong, so all things considered, the bottom half is also… mostly great. Um, however… the thing is… it’s just…”
“Spit it out.” All this talking, and now you can’t even tell him whatever it is you wanted to say? Why bother digging yourself into this hole in the first place if you won’t do anything interesting now that you’re down there?
“I just thought you might benefit from being able to see your whole, entire outfit at one time.” You allow him a long pause to study himself in the mirror. What’s wrong with his outfit? “Shoes included,” you add eventually.
Unknown glances down at his shoes. They look fine. They’re just shoes, and they serve their purpose well enough— he’s kicked out windows with them and never gotten a single splinter. They fit him, so he never gets blisters, and his feet don’t get cold from the unforgiving floors of the intelligence room. Isn’t that what shoes are supposed to be for? Then he redirects his attention to the mirror and… wow, his shoes really stand out. Now that you’ve pointed out that there’s something wrong with them, they’re all he can focus on. “It doesn’t match,” he realizes. And the untied laces don’t look as cool as he thought they did, but he won’t give you the satisfaction of hearing him admit it.
“No, it doesn’t match!” You sound much too enthusiastic about this conclusion, “It has never matched. They look great on their own, but just… with the outfit…”
“Why didn’t you say something about this sooner?” Unknown demands. He can’t believe that this is even a conversation he has to have with you. He doesn’t like that you’ve been plotting in secret, lying to believers, and even impersonating him by way of forgery just to make a point about his boots. What an inconsequential little hill to die on. “How long have you been laughing at my shoes behind my back?”
You’re bold enough to giggle at his words. “To be honest? Months? But I didn’t want to upset you, and for a while I thought it was, like, intentional, or maybe you didn’t have access to other shoes, and I didn’t want to be rude. But then you told me you were gonna tie a rope to something on the roof and climb down to break into an apartment and I was like, ‘okay, well, then he definitely knows how to tie his shoes, so why is he leaving them like that?’ And, you know, now that I’ve been seeing more of this place… I’ve been here a long time, and I’ve never seen one full-length mirror anywhere. Until today.” You place your hand over your heart in a pantomime of solemnity.
“Mhm,” Unknown hums. He’s going to have to do something about your behavior before this treachery of yours becomes a regular thing. “You won’t get to see any more of this place after today.”
“I’m grounded?” You demand. You seem to understand what he’s telling you, at least. “That is not fair! I helped you!” You’re starting to whine at him, like you couldn’t have possibly seen this coming when you were copying his handwriting and tricking a believer into buying some useless thing that’s only going to get thrown away.
“I don’t care what my shoes look like.” It’s the truth. Unknown could not give less of a shit about his footwear outside of its practical purpose-- but you seem to care quite a bit, and he enjoys the knowledge that he can get under your skin like this. “You can stay in the intelligence room with me from now on. The believers can bring us food, since I can’t let you out of my sight again if I know you’re going to be off causing trouble every time I take my eyes off you.”
“I’ve only caused trouble one time,” you protest, “And it was for a good cause.”
“Set that thing down,” is Unknown’s only response. He doesn’t have time to try to reason with you, and since you’re his assistant, you should just be listening on your own, anyway.
“Set that thing down,” you mock him, but comply with his instructions before he can even shoot you a warning look. You gently set the mirror on the floor, and as soon as it’s out of your hands, Unknown scoops you up, pulling you onto his lap.
“Now, stay here. Don’t go sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong again or you’ll regret it, little assistant.”
“All this coming from a guy with untied, mismatched shoes,” you grumble.
Unknown ruffles your hair. What exactly is he going to do with you?
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the rwd season 4 qna inspired me to start thinking about college au headcanons except a lot of these are gonna be really specific to my school and y'all are just gonna have to deal with that <3
Kyana feeds some of the school cats. she would feed all of them if she could
Dani smuggled Plug (the scrawniest black cat you've ever seen) into her dorm room illegally and somehow management hasn't caught her yet (based on a true story) (Kyana visits to see Plug all the time)
Finbar keeps an updated tier list of every canteen in the school with breakdowns of the best stalls/dishes for each
A senior from the school of engineering once said to me 'all the engineering people dress like rats cuz our classrooms don't have aircon' (context: tropics) anyway that's Dani
Kyana would probably be involved in a lot of freshman orientation events from second year onwards. she just likes talking to the new kids and giving them advice like she would be the kind of orientation group leader who'd get messages from her freshies asking about all kinds of random nonsense because she's made sure they know they can always contact her with questions
VR-LA is The Guy you go to for textbook pirating resources
(this is more of a 'wouldn't that be funny' but VR-LA is just Veerle's discord handle)
Docent is the name of VR-LA's old laptop that broke down so he gave it to Cassimere (computer engineering major he met once at a networking event) to fix except Cassimere got everything off the hard drive and then somehow managed to fuck it up Even More so he had to get a new laptop (and named it Emi)
Roy has gotten food poisoning from his dorm meal plan at least once (based on at least one true story)
The heap trio + Mandy would be those friends constantly playing majong in the dorm lounge and if all the majong tables are taken they just play in one of their dorm rooms on a towel to dampen the tile shuffling noises (it was Mandy's idea)
Every morning Dani goes to the drinks stall at her faculty and orders one iced coffee to the point where the stall owner starts preparing an iced coffee whenever they see her approach (based on my true story)
Roy would be one of those people who goes clubbing every other week and every time he tries to drag the rest of the heap trio and Egan almost always goes and Dani would go if she didn't have a good excuse but always begrudgingly. anyway Roy would always be the only one having a good time until Egan gets drunk enough to start having fun
Finbar actually uses the dorm kitchens instead of just buying canteen food and it always makes the hallways smell really good
Vhas also uses the dorm kitchen sometimes but like. one time i walked into the pantry on my floor and someone had left cut sweet potatoes and 2 eggs in an inch of water in a pan on the stove. that's Vhas
Kyana's constantly applying for overseas exchanges and international summer/winter school programmes. the world is large and she wants to see it!
Maxim's the definition of a hall phantom. you know he lives on your dorm floor because you pass him by in the hallways sometimes and literally nowhere else. sometimes you're not convinced that he actually exists
VR-LA and Maxim's friendship stems from them being from wildly different faculties (VR-LA's in STEM, Maxim's doing anthropology so arts/social sciences) but also having lots of weird interests they cant really bug anyone in their home faculties about
Elyse is in student government and every once in a while Finbar receives a series of angry texts about the newest idiocy she's had to put up with
MR-SN and AS-TR start a stargazing club together. other notable members include AS-TR's girlfriend E-DN, MR-SN's friend C-RA (the one who always volunteers to carry the heavy ass telescopes) and MR-SN's friend K-LB who he pestered into coming to fix one of the wonky scopes even though K-LB's actually in electrical engineering but he's the only engineering person MR-SN (an arts student) knows
oh and of course VR-LA joins because he genuinely just likes space (developing a crush on his club chairperson was not on his bingo card)
Kyana and E-DN were MMA sparring buddies at one point which is how she found out about the stargazing and joined immediately
honestly i can probably think of more but this post is fuckin long LMAO
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