#iirc he does say in canon he doesn't kill people if they killed someone who 'deserved it' in his opinion | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

theinfiknight · 1 year

Text

On a similar vein as the other post, here is a list of top ten Bleach characters who fuck the LEAST, in descending other of how little they fuck. Again, this is based on vibes alone and not canon.

10) Renji

It's not that he hasn't got game!!! Renji is pretty hot, all said and done. It's just that he would probably collapse into a quivering wreck or straight up run the fuck away if anyone so much as looked at him romantically. Man could not muster up the nerve to ask someone out to save his life. This is a man who is forever doomed to want and be wanted without anything ever actually happening.

9) Urahara

This man is a human wreck far too traumatised to allow any genuine human connection, on top of being generally less organised than your average five year old. He'd respond to any interest by making a bad joke and then backflippng away. He'd probably break down into tears if exposed to any actual intimacy.

8) Byakuya

Wet blanket ass mf with the personality of a wet paper towel. Whatever charm he had died with his wife. If you asked him what his hobbies are he'd probably say some shit like "meditation" or "taxes". Anyone who initially thirsts after him in Seireitei immediately withers up inside after a single conversation. Itachi Uchiha ass mf.

7) Captain Unohana

Iirc she's a 1000 years older than everyone else except kyoraku, ukitake and genryuusai. And besides I don't think she'd be very interested in that sort of thing. Again though, this is just vibes.

6) Kenpachi Zaraki

This is the face of a man who does not give a single fuck about sex. Gokupilled Zorocore king. All he cares about is whether you can put up an entertaining fight. I very much doubt he'd give the time of day to anything else.

5) Ulquiorra

Hi my name is Ul'quiorra Quarto Espada Arrancar Cipher and I have powerful ebony black reiatsu (that’s how I got my rank) with purple streaks and green tattoos that reach my chin and icy green eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like L Death Note (AN: if u don’t know who he is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Aizen-Sama but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m an arrancar but my hollow is smooth and round. I have pale white skin.

4) Kurotsuchi Mayuri

This man is a sex offender. He's on every registry that soul society has. Anyone with ANY self preservation instinct keeps far far far away from him. When he dies, I sincerely hope Nemu is the one who gets to kill him.

3) Chad-kun

Gay but more repressed than Sasuke Uchiha. This will never change.

2) Soi Fon

Girl, she doesn't like you back. She is never going to like you back. Get over it. Move on. Find something to do with your life.

1) Ichigo Kurosaki

Aroace king. No further notes.

#bleach #renji abarai #kisuke urahara #bleach ichigo #kenpachi zaraki

105 notes · View notes

the-lady-amphitrite · 10 months

Note

😈 feeling evil. for the asks:

14. that one thing you see in fics all the time

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

we LOVE violence in this household, K

lets choose violence! send me a number and i'll answer

14. that one thing you see in fics all the time

i answered this one here!

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

inhales deeply

everyone is wrong about Loki being worthy to wield Mjolnir.

no, no, don't give me that look. my logic for why everyone is wrong about it is rooted in canon for both the MCU and Marvel Comics.

everyone needs to take twenty steps back and sit down and think about why you need Loki able to wield Mjolnir in the first place. what is so fucking special about this hammer, you need Loki to wield it. is it rooted in the belief that being able to wield it means Loki is a hero? does the ability to wield it mean to you she's redeemed herself for all her past misdeeds?

if it is, this rant is for you! (and even if you don't, hi welcome to my biggest pet peeve related to my most beloved!)

Loki cannot, and will never be able to wield Mjolnir. he will never be worthy to carry it. and it makes sense for this character.

in the comics, it's established at some point (i am not citing the specific issue, sue me, Thor has 12343464574 comics) that to be worthy of wielding and using the powers of Mjolnir, the wielder has to be someone who can reasonably fulfill the role of Thor in Ragnarok should Thor die.

the text on the hammer itself essentially says whoever wields the hammer is worthy of the power of Thor. and what comes with that is the role of being Thor. the responsibilities and the trials and choices that come with taking on Thor's role. they have to be willing to walk the life of Thor in Ragnarok, including his death.

in the comics, Thor recognises he cannot be the hero that people need Thor to be while he's unworthy of Mjolnir. it's why he grants Jane the right to use his name when she wields Mjolnir. now, granted, there was a lot going on with Thor at this time in the comics which lead up to him being unworthy, but that would take too much time to go over so i won't. but Jane at this point was dying, and she kept wielding the hammer even after learning it would kill her. she remains the Mighty Thor knowing that this path will kill her in the end. and that is part of the reason she's worthy, she's willing to sacrifice herself in the end to save people.

but Jane (and Thor, when he was worthy) had faith and conviction in her decisions while wielding Mjolnir.

Loki doesn't have this, not truly.

i will admit to there being a (very short) point where Loki could wield Mjolnir in the comics, but it happened during an event known as AXIS, when (via an inversion spell done by Red Skull [don't ask, comic shenanigans, he's still not Actually Dead iirc]) the heroes/anti-heroes became villains/anti-villains and the villains/anti-villains became heroes/anti-heroes.

and that Loki? the Loki who was worthy to actually wield Mjolnir and classified as a "hero"? a complete, utter ass of a person.

you think i'm joking? here, having these comic panels.

but!!! this actually brings us to the point of this rant. why Loki is not worthy of Mjolnir, and why she will never be worthy.

this Loki? mentions he no longer feels guilt for the things he's done bc of this whole event fucking with his mind.

what do i take from that?

one of the core fucking reasons that Loki cannot wield Mjolnir is because he feels so much guilt. but that doesn't go deep enough. we gotta go another layer deeper, because Thor can still wield Mjolnir when he feels guilt.

but Thor never doubts himself and his ability to be a good god to his mortals. when Thor does? that's when he's unworthy to wield Mjolnir.

you can absolutely layer that specific lens of interpretation onto Loki, because he is always doubting himself. why? because everyone questions every little thing he does, and no one trusts that he has good intentions (except for Thor, and for a time even that wasn't guaranteed for Loki, in either universe).

even when Loki is doing things for the good of others, he doubts himself because he's weighed by the fact others will see the worst in what he's done. so it's less "i no longer feel guilt for my actions" and more "i no longer doubt myself for the things i do or have done".

and yes. you can apply this specific lens of interpretation to OG Loki in the comics too, the one pre-Siege. the one literally titled God of Mischief, Lies, and Evil.

"amphi stop reaching" IM NOT

okay maybe a little, but i'm not reaching that far.

i don't recall exactly who in the comics knows/remembers the fact Ragnarok is a cycle, and that the creation and destruction of the universe is something Odin is trying to break. not the point, doesn't matter.

for a moment, imagine that Loki knew about the Ragnarok cycles. imagine that he knew about the various lives he'd lived before. he'd know he would never be trusted, or loved, and even if he clawed his way into respect with the Asgardians, he is always fated to fall from their favour and be twisted into the villain of the Aesir and of Asgard.

because remember, in the mythology (which is referenced in the comics as a previous Ragnarok cycle) Loki is trusted by the gods of Asgard.

as much as they blame him for things, or they rage at him, and they hate and mistrust him, Loki was one of them. Loki is a jotunn in the mythology, and while we no longer have the myths that tell us how, we know that he and Odin were blood-oath brothers. that implies serious trust and love on Odin's part about Loki, to take that oath and to call Loki brother. to bring him to Asgard, and call him one of their own. it is an enormous thing that does not get enough attention about their mythological counterparts.

but through so many small and large things in the myths, Loki falls out of favour with all of Asgard. including Odin.

so. imagine this. Loki in the comics knows all of this. knows that, even if he can get Asgard to love him and trust him, eventually things will happen and he will lose all of that. the major difference in this is that Thor is his brother, and they're not bound by blood or a blood-oath, but a life lived side-by-side as brothers who loved and hated each other in a complicated dynamic that only they understand.

but Loki knows his fate. so he pushes everyone away. he makes people hate him before they can love him, because he assumes it will hurt less. and everyone but Thor (and later Sigyn) falls into this.

but Loki is also selfish. he holds onto Thor and Sigyn, falling into a loop of trying to pull close those few people he cannot truly push away, only to remember his fate and do what he can to push them away again. because Loki truly and deeply loves both his wife and his brother, and they both love him too, they love him back. but he's trapped himself in a cycle of self-abuse by doing this.

can you imagine the doubt that would sow?

#amphi answers #infinitystoner #loki laufeyson meta #loki laufeyson #wow that took me a WHOLE HOUR TO WRITE UP #so sorry K (and anyone who opens this readmore)#i had a Lot of thoughts and feelings about this and it took um. a lot of words to get out.

9 notes · View notes

lighthouseborn · 4 months

Text

i'm gonna say something i want to say on a post moving through the non-rp po.tc fandom space but i don't want the smoke. yes i'm a coward. yes it is also a thing i have said in different shapes before.

tl;dr the problem with dmtnt isn't what they say about elizabeth, it's what they don't say about elizabeth (i.e. literally anything.)

honestly the biggest flaw in the entire "should elizabeth have left piracy" conversation is that the movie never asserts that she did. she's just literally not part of the narrative of dmtnt at all.

(which makes sense, to a degree, as it's a next gen story; one of its bigger flaws (imo) is jack's (largely mischaracterized) over-presence. he's not necessary or even all that influential to the plot, he's genuinely just there. mostly to the effect of annoyance or occasional hinderance. henry and carina could go for the trident and have a perfectly reasonable adventure without him, and nothing necessitates salazar's motivations being about him at all. in fact i think it's coincidence, in the nathanson draft? captain brand, iirc, hates jack, but it's not actually what makes him a part of the story, he's actually a figure tied into the myth by hades. jack's only there because he's the franchise pull and the people who wrote the movie had nostalgia for him but i'm digressing--)

"elizabeth stopped sailing" is a version of the story that people don't like — but they invented it to begin with so the whole conversation around it -if it makes sense, if it changes or ruins her character, if someone can find reason in it for themself- is a big pointless circle! nothing canon says definitively comments on what happened to elizabeth except to say she raised her son in a lighthouse that might be near port royal. that depends on how completely the word-of-god you think a prop map shown on screen exactly once is. even then, there are a thousand reasons she could be living near port royal. 'she retired' is easily the most boring of those possible reasons, i agree, but it's still not what the movie says about her.

the ultimate fact is - the movie never says anything about her, because it doesn't think to say anything about her. sure that sucks for other reasons (pushing her out of what was, really, her story to begin with) but it doesn't actually unstitch her character it just leaves things frustratingly ambiguous. it's lazy and uninspired writing but not nearly as much of the big betrayal it's made out to be. no one broke elizabeth, they just weren't interested in writing more about her.

which, again, sucks! but for completely different reasons than the (for some reason) still ongoing conversation about 'she could have retired after her trauma gauntlet'.

she could have retired! she could have not! she could have built a pirate empire on untamed seas! she could have became a heartless evil pirate king who killed for sport! she could have gone mad! she could have found another husband or four! there are lots and lots of open ended possibilities with a character so complex. the movie doesn't actually infringe on any of these, because it just doesn't care about her at all. it doesn't even care enough to say for fact, she retired and lives a horribly wealthy lifestyle, or she didn't retire and turned port royal into a new pirate haven-- it doesn't care. it doesn't. the movie says nothing because, other than Henry's Mother, elizabeth is nothing to the version of dead men tell no tales that we got.

—which, further, if you sit with that for a couple of seconds, isn't that surprising or even different at all from the rest of the franchise. which does not care about elizabeth's mother, or will's mother, or jack's mother, or angelica's mother--- all of these characters are nameless. the one non-appearing mother (from the movie universe. yes i've read tpof, not i'm not acknowledging it here, it's a different beast) who has a name in this list of ignored women actually also comes from dmtnt. magaret smyth, however, has a name that has been established in the franchise as meaning no one. ("Welcome to Port Royal, Mr. Smith.") carina's mother is magaret no-one, the aptly named madame not-appearing-in-this-film. so, once more with feeling, elizabeth being pushed into the background as Henry's Mother And That's All fucking! sucks!! it's! lazy!!! and! boring!!! but what is isn't is some big surprising upheaval. they didn't give you a stranger, completely 180'd character with a familiar name, they gave you a big empty place in the narrative who doesn't speak a single word and only shows up to be kissed. those are different things! by all means complain about the big empty spaces in this story (i hate them!) but stop, please stop, repeating the same bullshit that isn't even what happened

"i hate how they treated elizabeth" me too! "they changed her" wrong! it's worse, they did nothing because they didn't even care enough about her to try! which is a big shame because what they got right about henry and will and gibbs is SO right. carina is SUCH an interesting heroine in her own right but also as a foil for henry - and the fantasy of the series in general. barbossa is THAT BITCH who gets a full run of character arcs for no other reason than he's fun to explore and keep widening, he has the range. a 'down on his luck, washed up' sparrow is an brilliant and unique concept! unfortunately, at almost every turn the writers missed the lynch pins and the places where gravity fit into this franchise. so it turned out a big crumbly, unfinished-feeling mess. and that really starts to make sense when you consider; they didn't think elizabeth was worth writing about.

the dmtnt team's* nostalgia for pirate adventure and grand chaos blinded them to how essential elizabeth, the heart of the trilogy, was. and they got very close! by scrapping the Yet More New Characters (a big complaint of on stranger tides) in order to tie them back to where we started. they just tripped a few feet in front of really, really getting it. but failing to get something is not the same as picking it up and ripping it in half. it's bitter tasting, and disappointing, and frustrating, but it's not an act of spite or malice or even misunderstanding. they just never picked it up. didn't even see it.

*the rossio version of the script is also sorely lacking in this regard. true enough philip and syrena reappear, but people didn't find them all that compelling to begin with, they go through more or less an identical, ambigious arc and end in the same place they began, and the script even directly notes they could easily be replaced with unrelated, new characters. his version is even less connected to the heart of what made the trilogy good, imo. i'm forced to assume ted e.lliot is elizabeth's champion, and that while rossio is very good at the grand concepts and mythical atmosphere, elliot must have brought the grounding elements tying character together and giving them real substance. without both, the rossio script is empty adventure, like on stranger tides, and the nathanson script follows down a similar road. joachim and espen as the directing team were fans enough to bring their nostalgia in and i think is what led to to looking back toward the trilogy more, which was great, they just -again- tripped and fell short of a full return to spirit.

ultimately, the whole problem with elizabeth isn't "she was ruined" it's that she was abandoned. forgotten, or ignored. they killed all her loved ones and left her on a beach and when someone thought to go back to that beach, to that moment, it was to wonder "what about the kid" and never even ask "but what did She do?". I'm fully convinced you could ask that team "what did elizabeth do in that time" and they'd all collectively shrug at you. it's fucked up. but it's not the same as being unwritten. whether elizabeth sat on a beach for 20 years or not is left up to you, the viewing audience. and while that is just so... annoying. they still didn't tie her to that beach themselves. fandom did that. they filled a space and then blamed the writers for the thing the audience filled it with, instead of for leaving a big gaping hole in the heart of their story. it's very vexing.

("then why is henry in the navy at the start?" why is the govenor's daughter a pirate? shit happens. he's 20, a lot could have put him there. if the first thing you think of is boring as hell, make something else up. the movie has fuck all to say about henry's background, too. this is the big gaping hole in the writing that i'm talking about — by overlooking elizabeth, henry's entire history is likewise a big non-statement. sure, you can choose to infer certain things, but you're still inferring. you're still inventing. the movie doesn't care. all we know is everyone on the monarch thinks he's a "landsman" - but if that's true, where has he learned so much about pirate flags and oceanic mythology? what was he doing, between age ten-or-twelve, when he sank himself, and when we see him again in the triangle to be so self-sure and impulsive? the movie doesn't care, it just wants you to see that he is. this is both a strength and weakness, because it invites you to play. unfortunately it invited a fandom who had long ago decided what the future of these characters must be, who then were angry and disappointed when what they got didn't match a mess of a thousand visions that couldn't possibly be matched. so the movie decided "we'll let them decide", removing all the hard and fast statements, and the fandom assumed the worst and decided that was what they were given, instead of empty spaces. and now everyone calls the movie something it isn't. and it's all because the writing forgot that the heart in the chest wasn't actually the heart they needed to be focused on.)

anyway. i think that's out of my system now i'll try to shut up about it going forward.

#i'm just sighing into my hands about how people keep saying the same things again #which also means i am saying the same thing in response to it yeah #the circle spins on or w/e #genuinely about to haul off & start biting ( ooc. )#tbd(?)

2 notes · View notes

jyndor · 2 years

Note

I think Cassian in the show is too chaotic and I am not sure how this man is the man we see in Rogue One

okay so spoilers under the cut <3 and yeah this turned into a whole thing lmfao of course it did.

Anon, I feel you but I also think we need to see more of his backstory to really get a feel for what sort of chaotic he is and what caused it. Because I definitely don't think we have seen everything about him as a kid. I also feel like years of fanfiction and fanon may have skewed our opinions on what Cassian should be like in canon. I want to give the show time to get there before I make a judgment on whether or not his characterization makes sense.

I can accept a lot of things - I can handwave the weird useless homeworld change although I don't understand WHY they did it - if they are well written and make narrative sense. Someone on twitter said something like "why would people think a man who wears parkas and jackets everywhere he goes be from an ice planet?" and I'm like ??? because Lucasfilm said so? lol like it was canon, even if it isn't now. It isn't that outrageous for fans to believe what is in a visual dictionary about a film.

I can accept Cassian having a first love named Bix who he has an on and off again relationship with even if it's unhealthy af for them, I can accept Cassian being "adopted" even if I'm side-eyeing how it happened (and they'd better show more about that shit because that was a kidnapping lol). I can accept him not having Kaytoo for a while or being a thief and a con artist and a messy bitch as long as it's not just self-interest that makes him act out.

All of these things could work if they are well written.

But I will stand on what he says to Jyn on Eadu as being 100% true and if they stray from that it will absolutely be a problem for me, even if it makes for a compelling story on its own.

I saw someone else on twitter say something like "do you think a guy who kills a guy in cold blood has a problem with twisting the truth?" in reference to what Cassian says on Eadu but I find that to be weak AF. For one, Eadu was a turning point for Cassian so why would he lie to Jyn about something so personal? Rain is one of the most basic tropes in storytelling and it is commonly used to signify cleansing, change and rebirth. Cassian choosing not to snipe Galen Erso and trust Jyn fully happened during a massive rainstorm on a stormy planet, Rogue One wasn't being subtle with that. We see Cassian struggle to lie to Jyn at first about how she's in shock but he can't even really do that because he's just gone through a transformation into a man who follows his intuition and does what he thinks is right even if it is against his orders. And he wants to defend himself to her because he didn't betray her in the end- and because they are mirrors of each other, he therefore didn't betray himself. But also she knows how to push his buttons because they are so similar and he snaps and goes off on her for it. It's the most honest he has been with her and the audience to that point in the film. I need the show to treat it as him being honest, not honest from a certain point of view.

So the following things have to be canon:

He doesn't have the luxury of deciding when and where he starts to care about the cause.

He's been in the fight since he was six.

He's lost everything.

He's decided to do something about it.

He didn't have any choice but to care about the cause because he saw his homeworld be exploited and destroyed by the Republic. Hopefully we will see more of younger Kassa/Cassian in order to see how he behaves a child who has been stolen from his people - even if it was with good intentions. I think that would be a big mistake to just let that be the end of it. I am sure we will learn about his father - I am not sure if they are going with an adoptive father (the man with Maarva?) or if Jeron is his father on Kenari and was hanged there? I think iirc the man with Maarva is her husband.

I need to see him resisting in some way throughout his life. I think he was sabotaging some Imperial tech of some sort on the ship in episode one, and I would prefer that if he's gonna be a schemer, he's a well intentioned one who is trying to fuck with the Empire in some way. That makes more sense for Luthen to want to meet with Cassian imo than if he's just a talented thief and con without any clear politics. The way Luthen talks about sacrificing everything to take down the Empire makes me think he knows how much Cassian cares about imperialism. And Cassian's reaction was more than just anger at hearing about his father, it was shock at something so held so secret being revealed by a stranger, which makes me think that the father who was hanged was from Kenari and not Maarva's husband but idk it could be either. I don't think he'd be as surprised if it was an adoptive father that everyone on Ferrix knows like they know Maarva.

For instance, when he goes to the brothel he doesn't make it clear he's searching for his sister and not actually interested in paying for a service, but it's pretty clear to me that he's not interested in what's going on around him apart from just figuring out the lay of the land. For all this talk about Cassian being a slut I don't see any real evidence of it? If anything, it seems like both Bix and Maarva are assuming the worst of him (being a homewrecker, being a hoe lol) like everyone else, even if they and his friend Brasso are more concerned for him than judgmental. I am not sure anyone really knows who Cassian is at this point - but I am sure that he has things he wants to accomplish that are more than just conning people out of their money. See: searching for his sister.

The main thing that doesn't fit in that speech so far is that he hasn't lost everything and honestly has a pretty decent support system (so he better be apologizing to Jyn in Force Heaven or whatever lol because she had nothing after sixteen jfc). That's why I assume they're all gonna die or be so estranged that there is no reconciliation.

I assume his sister is dead, I assume Bix and Maarva will die at some point - Bix maybe being in the second season doesn't mean anything - and I assume Ferrix will break out into war. And I assume it will be put down brutally.

So the chaos. First the man is 21, he's still so young and he's also been through serious trauma. I don't think he's acting terribly chaotic if we look at it through the lens of him being single-minded about a goal. Because he isn't really chaotic on Morlana, he's actually very composed for a man who thinks he may see his long lost little sister who is apparently a sex worker - until the idiot racist bully mall cops fuck with him and find out.

I think that maybe this is the first time he's ever killed someone (at least in cold blood since the man has a blaster and I'm sure he's used it before) and I can imagine that even if he thinks they deserved it, he's still under a lot of stress about it.

I wouldn't be surprised if he refines his natural ability to lie and becomes more stoic - especially in a more organized military environment. And as he loses more of his support system I cannot imagine that won't sharpen him up a bit. So the chaos? I don't have a problem with it necessarily as long as it is more circumstantial than like him just being chaotic by nature since he's not like that in the film.

Also let's not forget that Cassian always did have a bit of chaos in him in the film - killing the Stormtroopers and then killing Tivik, lying to Jyn about the mission, snapping at Kaytoo. The novelization has Cassian constantly thinking about Jyn's need and fire (lol i swear to god boyy) and his attraction to her, the fact that he sees so much of himself in her and how she helps him become his truest self. Jyn Erso is chaotic af. And she's his mirror.

I'm not saying I love the idea of Cassian being chaotic on her level because I'm like, just make a Jyn Erso show then idk. I've always seen her as the one who will pick the bar fight and Cassian as the one to help her end it.

Anyway I just say let's see what happens but undoubtedly this backstory is so far removed from what I and a lot of other people had imagined for Cassian.

That doesn't mean it's bad though. It's just different.

#andor spoilers #star wars andor #cassian andor #rogue one #star wars #meta

33 notes · View notes

fluxofthemouth · 1 year

Note

[ 🥀 ] would your muse betray someone they love?

HMM complicated question! I think the short answer is, yes, but he would tell them the whole time they knew each other that he could betray them (which accounts for the him loving them part).

Canon doesn't show any of Piter's close friends, if he has any. I get the idea that a lot of people are kind of repulsed by him personally, regardless of his successes professionally.

The Baron sort of privately secretly appreciates him, but the Baron thinks he talks too much and gets super annoyed with interacting with him in person. The Baron tells Piter he made a bet about a choice he'd make with (iirc) the quartermaster, so it's like. I wouldn't say they necessarily bully him in a sense where they're being as evil as possible to his face 24/7, but I definitely see something more subtle going on where it's like, he can sit with them at lunch but they're going to say mean things about his hair behind his back. He fits in as more of a useful object and an interesting subject, and less as truly one of them.

I also expect there to be a heck of a lot of tension between the Harkonnen ideals of strength and hmm masculinity? Compared to Piter being this short little feminine guy who talks a lot and gets emotional easily. Like, the ranks of soldiers look one way, and here's a little guy who looks like something else entirely. Since strength is so prized, I'd imagine he's under constant pressure to prove that he can do things his way and still arrive at strength, which probably looks more like intimidating people with his creepiness, and the terrible things he's capable of doing to people, than connecting with others.

It's possible that Piter gets his emotional fulfillment purely from Spice (and other drugs), and being rich, and not having friends is just a wound he's carrying around. Since Spice is a fantasy miracle substance, a quasi-immortality drug, I feel like this actually works for him, more or less. Not in a way like, he feels good about loneliness, but like, he can expect a better outcome than just about anyone else who was that lonely. He can get by. Or maybe he does have a couple friends, even close friends. But it's still lonely and isolating to be so different at work and in culture.

I interpret that, being so lonely, he'll very easily empathize with other Mentats and with people who have trauma in common with him. I interpret that his mind actually works like the Looney Tunes cartoon where the coyote and the sheepdog literally try to kill each other while they're working, but as soon as they clock out they feel no animosity towards each other whatsoever, and can even coexist as friends (and some people thought that the 'perfectly objective' side of a 'twisted' Mentat was only about killing people!). I think that if he had sat next to Dr. Yueh on an airplane, instead of meeting Dr. Yueh through a sinister order to turn him against the Atreides family, he might very, very easily have connected a mark of Imperial conditioning to parallels with Mentat conditioning and struck up a genuinely friendly conversation from a standpoint of meeting someone like himself. I think he'll sometimes have interactions with strangers where they remember him only as delightful and charming (too bad they never saw him again), and he'll sometimes vent anger and pain and mess with innocent strangers (and thank goodness they never saw him again) (shoutout to Huxley, a muse who was supposed to be easier to bother like that).

So to answer the question of whether Piter would betray someone he loves, he doesn't seem to be loved by anybody, and he doesn't necessarily love anybody, and he could betray anyone he's ever met. He has completed training that allows him to bypass mental blocks against it if he wants to, and there are plenty of times when he is ordered to, for work. If he ever met someone new who could love him, or who he thought he could love, he would try to push them away as soon as he realized what was going on, because love means protecting someone from something dangerous. No one can just, completely change who they are, on a dime. If that person came right back after being pushed away (shoutout to Mikol, a muse from a discord thread who is this person sdfsdfsf), he'd get all stressed about feeling like he was dangerous to them, and he'd probably be right. If it's possible for him to ever become the self-sacrificing type after a lifetime of learning that safety and fulfillment only comes from selfishness, and diving and scratching and biting for scraps, it would probably take years and years of building trust and learning new patterns for that to ever happen.

#fluxofthemouth || characterization

1 note · View note