#achi rambles

[kariachi]

Two things in the brain right now, one of which is getting a consolidary post, congratulations.

Argit shoulda joined the fucking team.

'But Achi it's Argit' I hear you say. 'Achi what the fuck' I hear you say. 'But Achi why' I hear you say. My loves, trust me.

To start with, we should have gotten him instead of Kevin in UAF.

I know! I know! I haven't gone two days without a Kevin thought for sixteen years, six months, and nine days exactly, I love him too, put down the pitchforks!

Alien Force would have had an actual blatant alien in the main cast rather than us occasionally being reminded that the trio were supposed to be some. We could have leaned into the fact aliens are living on Earth prior to OV, would have damn near been forced to.

You know how much people whine about Kevin's sudden redemption? No longer an issue! New character, new start, and we don't even actually lose Kevin for it! He's Argit's friend and partner in crime, instead of having 'oh Kevin isn't murderous and is actually quick friends with the people he tried to kill who are mostly good with him' we get a more organic 'getting to see how Kevin has grown and improved over the years through his relationship with Argit while the Tennysons have mixed feelings because of the history'!

Or the rushing of Gwevin! By making Kevin a side character rather than a main and altering his relationship to the team you add space that would let the pairing develop more organically! And you know if they were gonna set Gwen up with somebody it would end up Kevin, sure as shit it wouldn't be Argit.

It also makes for a completely different team dynamic, especially since there wouldn't be that baggage hovering over everything. Fuck, let Gwen have the vitriolic bestie she deserves! Let us see some of how the past still affects Ben with him wanting to be friends with Kevin again and Argit helping bridge the gap and complicated feelings their history has caused. Let Gwen get to show off her martial arts, combine it with her powers and magic, since Argit sure as shit isn't gonna be filling Kev's brawler role.

I am still fucking bitter that Gwen's martial arts got left to the side in favor of fucking 'women are ranged fighters' brand crap.

Sure we couldn't have Argit as he started out in canon, but lean more into how he is in the Rooters Arc, how he seems to have been as a kid, and it's totally doable!

Or, if you don't want to lose the old trio, just as firmly Argit should have joined the team in OV.

I know! I know! I will lock those pitchforks in a vault, don't start with me! Hear your bitch out!

I know that OV was going for a Buddy Cop vibe, but the show lost a bit of something with it. Love Rook, ya know I do, but the central team for every other series in the franchise is based around trios. Ben, Gwen, and Max. Ben, Gwen, and Kevin. Fuck, we get introduced to Manny and Helen- the only good guys introduced as a duo if I remember rightly- as a broken trio. Add on that the buddy cop thing is tied to the copaganda OV is rampant with, and going back to the tried and true trio makes sense. Bring balance back to the force.

And who better to put in the trio but Argit? It gives room to foreshadow the Rooters arc, especially with the existence of Argit 10 which would take on a whole new edge. Rook can be made as good a foil for him as for Ben- both alien immigrants in the same age range living on Earth, but with wildly different viewpoints, backgrounds, and morals. You don't even have to do some sudden change in Argit, just have him keep getting roped into shit, or maybe Kevin asked him to keep an eye on things to pay back a favor. It would probably be best if he wasn't always involved, since it would be a big shift from what came prior and would need to be worked in and up to, but that would just open the gate for more episode that deal with each chunk of the team.

We only get the one episode of UAF that has Ben and Gwen working on their own, this way you could do more of similar with various combinations of Ben, Argit, and Rook. Heck, could throw in more episodes focusing on Rook or Argit on their own with just background Ben. It would allow for more storyline variety, more character exploration, more dynamics exploration.

If there is anything canon was sorely, desperately, missing it was Rook getting help from Argit with settling into life on Earth, I'm sorry but it's true.

Heck, Rook's unmet expectations for Ben could be a stronger plotpoint if we're sitting him beside Argit 'you never try to change a partner' Levin. Play with shit like that, places where Argit is right, give him some spots of moral high ground. Play off the 'farmboy who went from home to Academy to Earth' against the 'mess who's first seen in the Null Void then travels the galaxy before coming to Earth'.

There is every reason for Kevin and Argit to be so much more worldly and knowledgeable than Ben, Gwen, and Rook and that should be taken advantage of more. By putting Argit in OV we get an opening.

As I put it in an old post- "-the Sliding Scale of Alien Knowledge- from Argit’s 'I am an alien and I’ve been living among a wide variety species if not my whole life than for over half a decade’ to Ben’s 'I have canonically about three/four years experience becoming and fighting a wide variety of species’ to Rook’s 'I am an alien and have been living among a wide variety of alien species for maybe a year, probably a matter of months’."

And that's before we get into the sudden opening to learn more Argit backstory, which would more than likely give us more to work with for Kevin as well (we already get two episodes hitting on Kevin's backstory, with Argit there to work with we would get more and odds are Kevin would be in at least one).

Look, just, this post. Trust me.

And the fucking Rooters Arc, again we could have gotten more foreshadowing! Could have already been asking questions and then that shit gets dropped on us! It wouldn't have felt as out of nowhere! Sure the change wouldn't fix the problems with it, but it could have helped!

And we could have kept the fucking improvement in his character we saw leading up to that point- rather than seeing him go from a six to a four then suddenly swing to an eight on the evil scale there towards the end- since he would be a part of the main cast by then!

Character development! Character exploration! Worldbuilding! Dynamic interactions! More balanced character work and growth! There is so much to gain from this simple concept of dropping Argit in with the heroes and letting him stumble grumbling and just a little panicked into the role of a mild antihero.

And most important, most necessary thing ever- it would go a long way towards explaining how 'Uncle Argit' became a thing and how he ended up being the only relative we see Kenny hug.

[jackspamifold]

Me, after reblogging like 20 posts about c! Manifold: :) :)... Jack.... Spamifold

[kariachi]

Okay, so everybody who knows anything about my love for Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles knows that the twins own my soul. I offered it up as tithe to the church of Yuui and Fai. And this has been great on the Yuui front! The Yuui front eats well, the supply lines are unharried, everyone is sad but everything is great.

The Fai front's rations consist of three bread crusts and a boiled shoelace.

There is, understandably, very little in canon for our boy. We know that he was the one in the tower, that he was more 'curl into myself and die' traumatized as opposed to the 'burning brightly like the end of the world' traumatized of his brother though we can't be sure how much of that was the difference in the trauma they were experiencing and how much was a difference between them, that he was suicidal ideation before Dickcheese even showed up, that he just straight up ordered Dickcheese to his face to save his brother (seriously, go look at those pages, I love them, in fact I have a whole post), and that he loved his brother more than anything.

Which seems like a lot when written down all together but it really really isn't.

But! There's hope! There is more Fai content in the form of Shiritsu Horitsuba Gakuen, which all TRC fans likely know about by now but for everyone else is essentially a school au series of shorts featuring a range of Clamp characters, including Fai and Yuui among the teaching staff. It's not a lot, but even like three more panels of OG!Fai opens the door for doubling what we know about him.

There is a problem- namely that I've heard conflicting information about who is who. I've heard a lot of people talk about how the names are switched to avoid confusion from fans- since Yuui goes by Fai for the whole of TRC- but I've also heard claims that this isn't the case at all. So, part of this my first read-through of Horitsuba will be figuring out which I believe is the case, based on what we already know of both characters from canon. To this end, I'll be keeping track of traits of each one as I read the shorts and whatever script translations I can find, and then working shit out after.

So let's get ourselves into this.

~~

"Yuui"

Home Ec Teacher

More chill

Ver nice, good teacher

Polite

Brother picked his clothes for a special occassion, was chill about it

Comforting Kurogane over his brother's shenanigans in one panel

Seriously man can fucking bake

Plays piano

New to the area

Managed a restaurant in Italy

Happy for his brother's happiness

Wears glasses

Cooking for three because Kurogane lives next door and, well, *gestures down to "Fai" section*

If nothing else pulled pranks as a small with his brother

Can imitate his twin's voice?

Played archery

Not much of a voice actor

Seems rather modest and maybe a bit shy maybe?

"Fai"

Chemistry teacher

Nicknames for Kurogane

Just the general fucking with Kurogane we get from early!Yuui!Fai

Bright and smiley

Energetic

Playing up his emotions

Playful troublemaker

Crossdressing

Definitely leaning more towards the 'ship with Kurogane' end of things

Works with Kurogane on department budget shit in one episode of the drama

Can sew

Number one most precious thing is his brother, awww

Can imitate his twin's voice

Voice-acting-capable

Acted in school

Refused to be in a club because too much time from his brother

~~

Okay, so what have we got here? Two very different characters, I'll give that.

"Yuui" seems to lean more towards late!Yuui!Fai in personality, but doesn't seem to be as playful, teasing, or bombastic. Especially that last bit.

"Fai" meanwhile very clearly leans more towards early!Yuui!Fai in personality. He's very playful, teasing, bombastic, and really trying to wear his way into Kurogane's heart. He lacks in a touch of the seriousness of him though.

In fact, when we look at the sequel to the manga- Tsubasa World Chronicle, one seems quite reserved in comparison to the Yuui!Fai we get, while the other is far too bombastic. TWC Yuui!Fai is calmer and more obviously serious than he presented himself early on, but still very clearly teasing and playful, just less bombastic about it.

And that's an important point to make, because one argument I've seen for "Fai" being OG!Fai is that Yuui!Fai was mimicking his brother when he was acting all bombastic and smiley at the start, and I don't think that's the case for a few reasons.

As I just said, Yuui!Fai is a teasing, playful person, just not to nearly the degree as he initially presented himself

We see where his stepford-smiler stuff begins in the manga, where he begins to smile not because he feels it but to make other people happy and repay Ashura- the persona we first see is an exaggeration of himself with a thick layer of smiles acting as a mask between him and these people he's supposed to betray but cares too much about too quickly (because Yuui!Fai is a fucking gift who cares so deeply all the time)

While there's not exactly a lot of opening for it, we don't see any reason in the canon to believe that OG!Fai would have been the cheery bubbly sort if life hadn't had his balls in a vice

Not to say that this isn't the case, but that I just don't think it's likely. Gods know I'm not Clamp, I could be wrong.

Continuing- "Yuui" has some Yuui!Fai traits, like his piano playing, his cooking, his archery. "Fai" acts (and what was Yuui!Fai's life for so long but playing a role), uses nicknames, and crossdresses.

But what I think is something really important to look at is the relations with Kurogane. Because this is Clamp, whatever they're writing, it's also a romance, and they're big on fuckers finding each other throughout space and time. Like who even knows how many versions of Sakura and Syaoran there are getting together anymore.

"Yuui" doesn't get much there. He pats Kurogane on the shoulder in support while his brother is being A Lot. Kurogane helps him move a big cake. The trio all have dinner together every night. That's it. That's what he gets. "Fai", meanwhile, get so fucking much interaction, so much of the same brand of banter and dynamic the pair have in canon- leaning more towards early canon rather than the sequel, yes, but the dynamic is still there in the sequel, just at a chiller level.

So I can see why people would look at that and think "Yuui" is the real OG!Fai. I can also see how people would look at things like cooking and piano and not being so bombastic and think that "Fai" the real OG!Fai. Both sides are understandable. Personally I think...

It's neither.

"Yuui" is close but he's not quite Yuui!Fai- he doesn't seem to have that same teasing, playful nature that still is his nature even when the mask comes off and the world isn't weighing on him. "Fai" is also not Yuui!Fai, he's more like the mask become truth, an exaggeration of the character. Neither of them is the man we all know and love.

So, I present a third option to the board- Clamp didn't have anything more for OG!Fai than what they gave us in canon, which isn't a lot to work off of. To build a character off that, you'd essentially be building someone entirely new for what seems like it was supposed to be all familiar characters just in a different setting. So, instead, they split Yuui!Fai in two.

They took the bombastic teasing and playfulness that would be most familiar to casual fans, the relationship that's straight up canon, and put it under "Fai"- the name Yuui!Fai goes by for the entire series and that would be most familiar.

They then took the calmer, more mature aspects, alongside the hobbies, and put them under "Yuui"- a name that's only really used in one world and late into the series, combining the parts of Yuui!Fai that would be less likely for casual fans to remember clearly into a character who's still familiar enough to work with.

So, what would this mean for OG!Fai? Well for one thing, it'd mean we still only have a few panels to go off of for him, which is a damn shame. Especially since they take place in a time of his life when so much of what we see is colored with trauma.

But, we can always take traits from what we see here and add them to the character- they could be shared, or things that OG!Fai was interested in in those early years that Yuui!Fai took up in his name. Or just because. Or we can futz with shit on our own, work with what we have and, well, make it work.

And at the end of the day, we still have what's canon. That OG!Fai loved his brother more than anything. That he was broken or loyal enough to turn down Fei-Wang's offer of salvation thrice. That even as a small, broken child he still was determined and strong enough to stare Fei-Wang- the big bad of the series- in the face and give him an order.

And damnit if that's not enough to love him by.

[kariachi]

Pulled from a more-notes-than-post I've been slowly working on regarding that wher pack from last month.

What even are we talking territory size for a wher pack? Okay, pulling numbers only 95% out of my ass and calling these fuckers magic because I can and nobody wants the numbers it would take to get actual numbers on this to see the light of day- in a good territory with lots of food around: ~550-650 sqkm. In bad territory with limited food: ~10k-18k sqkm. So the North Valley Pack would be in bad territory, so call it goal range of 14k sqkm? That would give them pretty much the Northern Cascades up into Canada at least to the Fraser River...

[kariachi]

Okay, I can’t promise that this will be a proper essay because words but let’s give this a shot-

The treatment of whers in the series is reflective of Anne’s own ableism.

Details! The defining traits of whers are as such-

A “stunted” equivalent to the dragons

Photophobic

Rough-skinned

Don’t bond as readily to humans as dragons

The first two are the relevant ones here, because they’re the ones that get brought up over, and over, and over again. They’re ‘uglies’, ‘wretched’, ‘stunted’, and photophobic.

And the immediate response when they hatched was that they should be killed.

“But Achi-!” The recommendation when they hatched was specifically stated to not be to find a place where they could be comfortably kept, and then later fuckers had to be talked into not having them killed as soon as Wind Blossom‘s control of the situation was removed. If you think Pol and Bay’s suggestion wasn’t to euthanize those hatchlings you’re kidding yourself.

And just, let’s take a moment to talk about how fucking stupid of an idea that would’ve been. Because it would have been monumentally stupid. Even setting aside that you have no idea what future use you could put them to (because gods know these people can’t take five minutes to consider that), they could be a vital aid in figuring how the dragons work genetically by looking at the differences between them! “Wind Blossom was egotistical wanting to keep the whers and make more dragons” Wind Blossom was the only one with a brain in her skull! Nobody could figure out Kitti’s handiwork, not entirely, and having the whers available allows for a different angle to look at and compare information from! They provide a portal into a better understanding of the dragonkin by looking at where the differences lie and being able to go “okay, these correlate to this”, which is invaluable when it comes to genetics! And keeping them alive allows for you to study the differences in growth patterns as well for an even deeper understanding. People refer to the whers as a cousin to dragons, but they aren’t, they’re a sister species, and damnit that’s valuable!

Okay, okay, I’m chill...

Why does this reflect Anne’s own ableism?

There’s plenty of reason, after all, for the colonists to be disappointed to get the whers. They don’t bond as readily and so at first probably appeared not to bond at all. Their proportions are wrong for flight. But those aren’t what people bring up about them, are they?

Sean’s not calling them Wind Blossom’s ‘loners’ after all.

One could get away with calling attention to their photophobia, since it would mean they can’t safely flame, but the fact that even by the time of Wind Blossom’s second clutch that’s the primary way of referring to them? Does not sit right coming from a writer who has dragons suiciding if they lose the ability to fly, and who partly wrote Dragon’s Kin. In the context of the first wher clutch that’s a visual disability, it’s literally caused by improperly formed eyes, and it’s at best rude to treat beings’ disabilities as their defining trait. Especially when they’re being referred to as such by people who actually shudder to think about them (hello Dr Bay, I see you).

Which brings us back around to their appearance. The thing that always seems to be the big topic, especially when they’re being compared to dragons, which is pretty much all the damn time. Wher proportions are different from dragon proportions, they’re smaller, stockier, longer proportionally according to my math, seem to be more rugged and angular in appearance, and are constantly referred to as ugly.

By pretty much everyone.

All the time.

And this is treated as one of if not the thing that makes them lesser than dragons, and therefor deserving of being mistreated, derided, nobody loves them, nobody cares, how dare you think a wher would be worth any effort or matter. They’re smaller and ‘ugly’ and can’t fly and so they’re treated as if they’re nothing.

Now, before we go any further, I need to explain why this is absolute bullshit.

‘Ugly’ has not stopped people as a whole from latching onto sweet babies once in all of history- and we know they’re sweet babies because we meet Kisk. They’re incredibly useful, can be kept in groups, very affectionate, fucking dragons that you can keep in your shed (every child’s dream), there is no way in hell that they would realistically be disdained to the degree they are in canon. ‘Ugly’ is subjective anyway, and can be overridden by the human pack bonding instinct. Fuck, there’s enough people who find ‘ugly’ dogs charming that there’s a whole annual competition to find the ugliest one and they have a fucking crowd cheering and fawning over them every year. Ugly can make things harder, but the near universal idea that the whers, who shouldn’t even be considered ugly after a few hundred years anymore than we treat a goat as an ugly sheep, are lesser creatures who don’t really matter in large part because of their appearance? Should not be so pervasive. It shouldn’t be extolled by even our heroes.

But then, whers aren’t judged on their own merits. They’re judged as dragons, ‘stunted’, ‘malformed’ dragons.

And here’s where we get into the treatment of whers as a reflection of ableism.

There is a pervasive belief out there that there is a ‘normal’ type of body, and that if your body does not reflect this then that means you are ugly, and bad, and lesser. This belief is behind a lot of fatphobia, the portrayal of people with disfigurements as villains in media, it plays into racism, and a shitload of ableism. It says that one’s body isn’t right, and that because of this they are inherently Other. No matter if you’re perfectly healthy or not, if you’re happy or not, good or not.

Let’s look at the whers again, shall we? They’re smaller than dragons, stockier, not the same proportions, more rugged and rough.

Sean can only describe them as ‘uglies’. Bay calls them ‘wretched’ and shudders in revulsion at the thought of them. They were by all accounts healthy at hatching and yet the immediate response by the experts present was that they should be killed. To want them alive is to invite disgust. When their sole defender is removed, their salvation comes in being able to make themselves useful to those that hate them, and even then they’re quickly cast aside. Derided and abused over and over and all while being treated as lesser than their ‘noble’, ‘beautiful’ siblings.

Their siblings who came out ‘right’.

“But Achi, Anne surely didn’t mean them as a reflection of the disabled!” I’m sure she didn’t, any more than every person who pits a disabled villain against able-bodied heroes means to send a message, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t reflect biases she may not have even realized she carried.

“But Achi, Anne had proper disabled characters who weren’t villains!” Yes, and how important were they? How important were their disabilities? We get a load of disabled characters in Dragonsdawn, not that you’ll remember that by the end of the story because it’s brought up maybe twice each and never has any sort’ve effect. We had a Master whose disability was mentioned but neither were ever of real focus. Multiple times we get openings for major characters to exhibit disabilities and they always miraculously have no ill effects. F’nor and Canth are disfigured and never again act as major characters. Camo’s father is encouraged to forget they’re related due to his disability. Nuella gets to be a major character, but her whole story feels like inspiration porn, like the McCaffreys wanted to prove they weren’t ableist despite being ableist. And that’s all ignoring that statement in Dragonsinger that dragons who can’t fly (aka: become disabled) commit suicide, which is one of those big fucking ableism red flags.

And whether they were meant to or not, the whers act as a nice little reflection of all this. Why do the people of Pern hold so little regard for whers? Because whers are, as a species, on level with disabled dragons, and the disabled hold little regard with our writers, same as queer people.

[kariachi]

This was supposed to be short, but I got rambling about Kevin’s past and what we’re told in UAF and the Rooters arc and... my poor son.

Have some shit.

Whatever the circumstances of him ending up on the streets, Kevin most likely felt going home would be worse than being homeless given that kids his age and younger (and with how well established he seems we're likely talking younger, it seems likely he's not new to this life) tend to stick close to home and not be gone especially long unless something happens to them. More specifically they generally don’t have the means to get far, tend to stick to areas they know and therefor are likely to be found in rather quickly, and more often than not quickly realize that whatever has driven them to run away is less horrible than being alone in the dark and the cold while you’re hungry and there’s bugs and animals running around. So normally, a runaway his age generally at least tries to go home if nothing horrible happens to stop them. But, again, we see Kevin’s hideout, he’s very well established, meaning it’s more likely than not he’s been in that spot for a relatively long time.

And when we look at what we see in the reboot, which isn’t a proper one-to-one for OS but can give us insight? Where he has no powers and still is very blatantly the victim of neglect, emotional, and verbal abuse at the very least? While OS!Kevin directly states that the issues with his family are due to them “not being thrilled with having a freak for a son”? He may not be entirely on the wrong track. He probably would’ve been safer at home, but given that kids who aren’t ‘normal’ tend to experience more and worse abuse, and he states he was born with his powers implying they’ve been notable for a long-ass time and therefor he would’ve been seeing the response to them for a long-ass time... It’s entirely possible, maybe even likely, that OS!Kevin was dealing with a whole other level of parental abuse than Reboot!Kevin, and Reboo!Kevin also clearly does not have any drive to go back home despite everything he’s been through.

And of course this is all assuming that he is a runaway. In OS he simply refers to his family as “long gone”, which doesn’t really tell us anything, but in UA he specifically states he was thrown out. Harvey says he wasn’t, but also doesn’t actually back up the statement with anything based on the transcripts I’m looking at, only going directly into claiming that he demolished his childhood home.

Which stands out to me, because it doesn’t really fit what we’ve seen of Kevin. He doesn’t demolish his own shit, and the shit he does demolish is generally either for work or retribution. That retribution may only be required in his own mind, and/or only when he’s unstable, but it’s still a consistent thing with him. It’s not until after he seems to run out of people to get back at that he starts targeting people to feed his addiction, and at no point are we given a reason to believe he targeted Harvey. 

Which is really fucking important to consider. Kevin very clearly has issues with his stepfather in UA- again, he blames him for his ending up on the streets- but despite having put a guy in traction over a tenner, we don’t see any real indication he intended to hurt him. Even when he threatens him, which only comes after telling him to get out of his way, the fact he holds it as a threat for as long as he does before Harvey calls his bluff implies that it was a bluff. Add in the fact Kevin at first assumes that the way they would be protecting Gwen would be to have his mother in there with her, and you get the feeling Kevin’s least likely to do things to harm his family. Which itself tracks with Hit ‘Em Where They Live, where he straight up says that they should kill anyone who threatens their families (which also means his treatment of Devlin in Ken 10 is an even greater crossing of the event horizon for him than originally intended- the Kevin we see in that future is the farthest gone, so much so that even this has left him in his quest for vengeance and power).

So, if Kevin’s not really a person who goes around destroying his own things, and he’s not a person who really threatens or even takes to threats to his family, why the fuck would he demolish his own home? And, even more importantly, how? The Kevin we meet in OS didn’t have that sort’ve power, unless he fucking ran a car into it, in which case we get back to why. And if it had been an accident, we then go back to two factors- 1) runaways his age don’t stay gone unless they can’t come back or feel that being gone is better than what’s waiting at home, and 2) Kevin thinks he was tossed out. If he just ran away due to the consequences of his actions, which seems to be what Harvey is implying, why would he think that? What consequences were there that made him think he was being kicked out?

Bringing us to a point- I don’t think we can trust what Harvey says here. It contradicts the other information we have, not just from out of Kevin’s mouth but from what we’ve seen of his behavior in the three series that existed at the time. Things don’t really add up. But then...

And then we get the Rooters arc. That makes Devin a non-entity and calls into question the stories of the parents Kevin is given in UAF, given at best his mother’s brain was messed with by Servantis and at worst, those weren’t his parents. The latter of which actually makes more sense with what we’re given. First, while we don’t know where for certain Bellwood is, it has to be in the west because there’s not deserts and wild cactus in the east, and WoG tries to say his parents are in Bellwood because he’s originally from there, but a young child getting all the way to the east coast from that far is incredibly unlikely, unless he was abandoned there, which again contradicts Harvey’s claim that they didn’t abandon him. Second, the easiest to way to keep Kevin in Bellwood- where Servantis needs him for his sleeper agent deal- is to put his family there, but the easiest way to do that would be to fake it. Moving Kevin’s original family there requires messing with a load of people’s minds because there’s a whole fucking family there to poke at any holes. Adding Kevin to a local family encounters the same problem. But if, say, you had a couple of the Rooters pretending to be his family while acting as his handlers...

We only see his mom and Harvey in two episodes- in Vendetta, where a man WoG would later reveal was a Rooter gets framed for Devin’s murder, attacks Kevin’s mom’s house while she’s so luckily not there, and she’s the one who informs him of what happened to Devin, leading to him killing said Rooter. This could serve two purposes for Servantis- who had to be involved if Ragnarok was a Rooter- in that it both proves Kevin isn’t going so soft he won’t still kill a bitch (if which case he’d probably need to be brought in and reprogrammed again) and would get rid of Ragnarok, who presumably had made himself disposable one way or another given he was dropped into the fucking sun.

Meanwhile, Harvey only shows up on screen during Absolute Power Part II, where Kevin has snapped but is targeting the wrong Tennyson, and the Tennysons are planning to kill him before he can, at which point Harvey... riles him up. Somebody he has a clearly bad history with shows up, calls his memory of what had to one of the most major events in his life bullshit, accuses him of having destroyed his childhood home, specifically notes his dad's being dead for some reason, gets in his way, and challenges him. Nobody in their right mind would’ve let Harvey get involved just in general, this is a not a situation where you want somebody the guy has beef with coming in if you don’t absolutely need the fucker, and that’s before you consider that the way he handles things is iffy and his claims don’t line up with what we know of Kevin and what he’s capable of.

But, looking specifically at the counter of Kevin’s memory of events and the claim of destruction, they make sense as a form of manipulation. Firstly, by making Kevin question his own memory- which again is liable to upset him and therefor get him more riled up, more likely to kill Ben which is what he’s been a sleeper agent for in the first place. It’s entirely possible that the story is one Servantis implanted in Kevin in the first place, which is why he doesn’t react more too it. Given in AF he ‘learns’ while he’s mutated how to shapeshift materials he’d made from, despite having already been shown doing this in OS, and the severely conflicting accounts here plus his minimal reaction compared to what you would expect, it’s entirely possible that dealing with energy doesn’t just fuck with his head, but also fucks with what Servantis did to his head. So a false memory of demolishing the house and running off gets superseded, and Harvey was bringing things back in line while also fucking with him and, again, riling him up.

Meanwhile, the claims of destruction don’t really make sense, Kevin isn’t known to shit where he eats and is clearly shown to not want harm on his family, even during this arc where he’s at least as bad off mentally as he was after a load of time alone on the streets which likely didn’t help his mental state, so what the fuck was going on there? And why bring it up like that, ‘we didn’t throw you out, you demolished the house’ and nothing further? But then you remember, part of how Servantis manipulates Kevin is through guilt. I’ve done a whole other post on Servantis’s manipulations, check the analysis tag, but Servantis has been shown giving a twisted viewpoint of reality and pushing guilt and responsibility onto Kevin in order to manipulate him, and the idea that he would do the same to push him further from the edge- especially with Ben right the fuck there and willing to get involved, especially to rescue what he thinks is a civilian? Not farfetched.

Get Kevin angry, upset, confused, get Kevin to start threatening his poor innocent stepfather, so Ben gets involved and Kevin, now more riled up than he was before, is more likely to kill him before he can be killed in turn and Servantis’s plans all fall apart at the seams.

I’ve seen some people suggest that the abandonment thing was the fake memory, which would scuttle this, but I don’t think it’s likely. For one thing, if these are his real parents, Servantis would have already been fucking with their heads to implant Devin and such, and I doubt he would’ve missed such a big hole as ‘not making sure one of his parents knows the history I need them to know’. For another, given Servantis would’ve wanted Kevin to stick around Bellwood to ensure close proximity to Ben- not only would this be less likely to happen if his parents were hanging around the place and he thought they’d thrown him out into the cold, but also it would be more likely to happen and make him even more trackable if, say, he felt guilty about demolishing the house and running away and therefor felt the need to make it up to his mom by doing things like buying her a new house and hanging around. Not things one does when they feel they were abandoned to the whims of fate.

Again, Servantis is known to use guilt to manipulate Kevin, and it adds another layer to bringing up the house thing. It wouldn’t just be feeding off guilt of the moment to worsen his mental state, but dragging in guilt he’s been dealing with since Servantis put that shit in his head, which would make the whole thing hit harder.

All of which is to say, here at the end, that given the Rooters arc makes what we’re shown of Kevin’s family and what they say questionable at least and an active lie at worst, Kevin was probably not a runaway in the original series. If he was it would still say a whole hell of a lot as I said at the start of this post, and again the reboot- being made by the collection that created him- gives us a damn good insight into his situation and why he may have run, but out of everything we hear in the sequels regarding Kevin’s pre-premiere history, his own claim of being thrown out is the one that aligns the most with what we already know about him, about his history, and about how mutants seem to be treated in-universe.

So, yeah, more likely than not OG!Kevin was neglected and majorly abused at home- verbally and emotionally at the very least- and could very reasonably be assumed to have eventually just been abandoned entirely.

[kariachi]

Okay 1 am rambley post about the way I write Kevin and Mike and how they ended up with their energy bullshit because there's similarities and differences and my brain isn't shutting up right now. Mind that this is all rambling about what's in my head so take with whatever salt you want I don't care I got out of bed for this.

Like, okay, to start off from what we see of mutants in this franchise this is not a well-treated minority group. Alan (not a mutant but assumed to be by law enforcement) gets purposefully hit with a car and locked in a freezer with the justification being that his powers make him a dangerous freak. We see few mutants who haven't become criminals, when most people turn to that due to lack of options, and the most prominent of those is not only shown as socially isolated but also a tidbit in the background of one of his episodes makes it appear likely he's neglected. Malware's whole everything is a story arc.

Yes, this is all relevant. Because this is something that most definitely impacted both of them growing up. We know for a fact it affected Kevin because the entire reason he's alone on the streets when we first meet him is due to the mistreatment he received at home as a result of his powers- which given what we see in the reboot likely consisted of neglect and at least emotional and verbal abuse. We can make a reasonable assumption about Mike, due to multiple factors the most blatant of which are

1) While he has a lot more privilege (we'll touch on this again later) and being pretty and filthy rich will protect you from a lot his mutations are also more visible and visceral (not as bad as the likes of Thumbscrew, but if elementary school wasn't a bitch for him I'd be shocked, kids are enough of little bastards when you just hang out alone a lot nonetheless when your hands are 60% teeth by volume)

2) We've seen how mutants are treated in this setting and it is Generally Not Well

3) He's Kevin's foil and gets a similar 'my parents aren't around it's totally awesome' line in his introduction, bullshit that's not one of the places where they've got similarities

"But Achi why is this relevant to their ending up dangerous little energy-eating bastards?" Because this is the sorta shit that increases the odds of somebody going down the path they both started sprinting down. When the world is against you self-destructive tendencies can become more common, in part because they can provide short-term relief from what the world throws at you and a sense of control. Neglect victims (pretty obvious with Kevin and again Mike is his foil and seems to have been shunted off to a guest house and out of the way) are even specifically at higher odds of developing issues with addiction and getting into trouble because they start fucking shit up as a sort of cry for help/attention and well, if fuckers were liable to notice and care they wouldn't be neglected in the first place.

So we can assume their powers and mutations played a part in the why on the sides of 'the rush of energy pushes aside the negative toll of shit for a while' and 'neglect makes people more likely to get into shit like this'.

We continue on.

Now, we're hitting on Mike specifically again for a second because this one takes some explaining on his end. All of Mike's victims recover fine from being drained and seem to recover quickly, we're talking hours. Mike, meanwhile seemingly doesn't recover at all. Makes no fucking sense, Gwen should logically be a matter of scale more than anything, fucker should've recovered on his own eventually. Makes more sense if you run with the idea that his metabolism is shot, presumably due to his mutations (we know mutations can have negative side-effects, if we take the reboot into account, because Acid Breath's whole deal is shown to be a side effect of his shit combined with a lack of medical care), meaning he has to take in a lot more fuel than is normal, and that he hasn't been capable of getting himself past 'maintaining' and into 'recovering' because it's harder to have these large steady meals when you look like shit and therefor struggle to get close enough to bite people so they come back later.

Kevin is easier to just say straight up on this one- we meet him alone and homeless, even with his powers food is not gonna be easily available.

"Achi why-" Energy = fuel, boys are fucking hungry, moving on.

We also have the matter of power and control, which they both come at from similar but opposite sides as befitting foils.

Kevin of course is on the harsher side of this, for him this is all tied into a matter of self-defense. When we meet him Kevin, again, is alone on the streets and his energy-related powers are a source of protection. They also give him power over others by being literally more powerful than them, and also a sense of control via both that power and how he's able to use his powers to manipulate tech and machinery. This sense of power and control would be important for him, given the lack of power and control his position and entire situation gives him. He's had no control over how he was treated at home, nor over his circumstances on the streets, no power to defend himself, and this energy he absorbs gives him that.

Mike has it easier, again he's very privileged as a result of being filthy rich, he doesn't have the issues of self-defense and lack of any sort of security that play into Kevin's descent. But, being wealthy only opens a different angle on the matter of power- the rich tend to be raised to believe they're owed it by the grace of their social class. It's part of why you see them pitching so many fits whenever anything doesn't go their way. So you get somebody raised to believe they're owed power and status, but by grace of their minority status is on a lower rung than a lot of people around them. You mix that kind of spoiling with a lack of power within one's own community and the ability to draw actual physical power from shit, there's gonna be higher odds of trouble. The control, meanwhile, likely a combination of that same spoiling regarding what is owed alongside the same 'no control over shit at home but I can control this' shit we hit on with Kevin, with the difference being that Kevin was manipulating and controlling electronics while Mike's powers are geared towards people.

I take some additional stuff from the reboot for both, because it works very well with what I've already got.

Mike in the reboot is reimagined as a centuries-old vampire who feeds on adoration, with a delicate enough balance that somebody else taking the spotlight in his vicinity is enough to start him withering within minutes. Of course I don't go with this exactly but it can add an extra layer to his shit in the OG series. Kevin, on the other hand, repeatedly shows a desire to avoid sticking around people, every time it seems like they can maybe lock this boy down and keep him around he poofs. This one actually ports straight over and goes very well with Kevin's canon nightmares about everyone hurting him.

In Mike's case, we build off the presumed bullshit going on at home, add in the shit that happens with mutants, and wave some reboot over it- boy craves attention and validation. There's the control aspects and power aspects, but also how his bite causes people to not only come back but to beg to see him, how he beelines for the fucking cult plan, convincing masses of people to praise and swoon over him.

In Kevin's, on the other hand, it's a self-destructive trauma response. He's been burned too many times by people driven off by his powers or driven to hurt him by his powers, and so sinks deeper into use of this flashiest aspect of them in a semi-subconscious attempt to sort of hasten things along. Aided by the potential depression we see evidence of in especially the Rooters flashbacks. People can't hurt you if you scare them off/hurt them first, people aren't abandoning you if they leave before you can get attached. (Also easily given as a reason why he elevated things with Ben so quickly, from attempted theft to attempted mass murder within an hour- whether he was consciously aware of it or not, he knew it'd drive Ben off and he wouldn't have to deal with the hurt if he got more attached and then he left.)

In both cases it plays into the destructive cycle. Yes, you have attention and validation as long as your meal is banging at the door or swooning over you, but the void you're trying to fill with it is still there when they leave, and you know you just aren't getting the dopamine rush you used to anymore, better expand into more victims- Yes, you got them to leave before they could hurt you, but now you're alone and vulnerable and it still hurts to see them leave, better grab some power and a pick-me-up, maybe double that since it's not hitting like it used to- Feeds into that high then crash then high then crash until you either get shit back under some sort of control or you die.

So, tl;dr

Kevin- started absorbing energy due to a combination of it being an easy meal for a hungry child and the power granted by it giving him security in a very dangerous situation, spiraled into addiction due to a combination of attachment to the control it gave him a taste of after having no control over anything, standard 'makes me feel good for a while', and utilizing it as part of a self-destructive cycle attempting to protect himself from further hurt

(also I've started putting it, Kevin went through some serious withdrawal while he was first chimera-y, which put him in a semi-better place where, after it was clear that Kwarrel wasn't going to hurt him even if he was starting shit, he was able to step forward and ask for help, which I am very proud of him for it could not have been easy)

Mike- started absorbing energy due to a combination of it being an easy meal for a bottomless pit and his upbringing leaving a sense that the power that came with it was his right, spiraled into addiction due to a combination of attachment to the control it gave him over others after having minimal to no control over the bullshit in his own life, standard 'makes me feel good for a while', and using it's effects on others to shovel a shallow semblance of validation into the hole in his soul

Does any of this make sense? I don't even fucking know, we'll see when it's not 3 o'clock in the morning.

Goodnight, little loves, have sweet dreams where Kevin gets cocoa, a loving family, and all the tech he could ever dream of, and Mike gets a smack upside the head, some life lessons that stick, and a proper fucking diet plan.

[kariachi]

Welcome back to Achi climbing out of bed in the middle of the night to ramble. Tonight’s topic: MasterSinger Merelan.

Now I’ve mentioned before how fucking weird it is that in the Menolly books and beyond it’s treated as this shocking, weird-ass thing that a girl could be a proper student at the Harper Hall. Everyone acts like your only options are to be a fosterling/paying student (aka ‘you aren’t here to learn music you’re here to make connections’), be somebody’s wife, or be a general worker. Everyone acts like this has always been the case, or at least the whole of the case in living memory.

But Merelan. The last two MasterHarpers were directly related to this woman, who was very clearly not only a member of the Harper Hall but also incredibly well respected. Yet both of them act like the very idea of considering that maybe a girl could be taken in as a proper student in any capacity is tantamount to asking the Weyrs not to fly Fall. I could understand them being reluctant to do anything that could even hint at being replacing her, but to act like the idea is entirely unprecedented just- What the fuck dudes?

(And this isn’t even getting into the DLG giving us a lady Harper who ended up marrying the Lord of Ista in the far past. Yadda yadda ‘the DLG isn’t canon’, it’s only as contradictory as the books themselves, and it’s statement that ladies have been allowed in several Halls for a good while and the Harpers just got dramatic about it, presumably to present themselves as progressive, tracks better with the sudden ‘what no ladies can’t be Harpers ladies have never been Harpers don’t you dare look at that portrait behind that curtain’ shit than the proper books do.)

And that brings us to another thing buzzing in my brain right now- Meralan is referred to as just Singer multiple times, but is also given the full title of MasterSinger. This is, such a big fucking deal and I don’t know how other people haven’t seemed to notice, how did I not notice-?

First up, Singer as a title brings up some interesting concepts about the potential inner workings of the Halls. We know Harpers as teacher, composer, musician, singer, but for Singer to exist as its own title means it’s its own distinct subcategory. Which leads to questions, the main ones being 1) is this a distinct ‘ladies can’t be Harpers so we’ll call them this’ situation (in which case why not recommend Menolly for the position), 2) if it’s not, is ‘harper’ the generalized term/title (like how you would call your cardiologist ‘doctor’ even though there’s a specific job title), 3) or is ‘harper’ more a term for generalists (people who teach and compose and sing and play etc) while specialists get the more restricted title (singer, player, teacher, scholar, etc), 4) if any of these are true, then are there similar situations in other Halls (does the Minecraft Hall have Miners, Cartographers, Lapidarists, etc?) and if so what are they?

We don’t learn much to help is those questions, though we do know that Merelan was considered a Master in her own right, that she was a Big Deal, and that she had her own students.

But, more than that, much more than that, she’s titled MasterSinger. One word.

A Harper who’s reached Master rank is a Master Harper. A Smith who’s reached Master rank is a Master Smith. Master Miner. Master Healer.

MasterHarper is the title of the head of the Harper Hall. MasterSmith is the title of the head of the Smitchcraft Hall. MasterMiner heads the Minecraft Hall. MasterHealer heads the Healer Hall.

MasterSinger...

I don’t doubt Anne didn’t give a second thought to what that title says about her worldbuilding, but I’m not Anne and so I can. MasterSinger Merelan having that title, in a singular word, implies that she’s not just a singer, not just a Singer, but in charge of all the other Singers on Pern.

Singer is never treated as it’s own crafthall in the series, not to my knowledge, and that makes sense. The Harper Hall covers everything else music and with it the oral histories of the civilization, so it makes sense that Singers would also be lumped in there. But for there to be a MasterSinger says a whole lot about 1) the status of Singers (namely, that they’re likely equal to Harpers as far as Crafthall politics if nothing else, if this was just a minor position among the hierarchy, or even just ‘we give women this so they can be included’, likely there wouldn’t be a MasterSinger), and 2) that one way or the other they were more-or-less self-governing within the Harper Hall. Again, single word Masters, everywhere else in the series, are treated as more-or-less on par with Lords and Weyrleaders as far as power and status goes. It’s a big deal. Meaning that it’s entirely possible that MasterSinger is supposed to be either second only to the MasterHarper or, more likely I think, on equal footing with the MasterHarper.

The power imbalance in place by Merelan marrying Petiron and him being... Himself, may well have fucked up what was supposed to be functionally a dual position- with the MasterHarper managing composing, teaching, and that whole branch and the MasterSinger being in charge of the actual learning to sing and to play. It would also make sense with just how expansive the Harper Hall’s jurisdiction is, if it was more of a split-but-united deal. It’s the Harper Hall because that’s what it’s been forever, but the Singers are a distinct subset within it with power and import of their own.

 Which then brings up the question of wtf happened to the position of Singer? Because Merelan had students, and a very blatant rank of her own for those students to take. And for her to be MasterSinger she can’t have only just started getting students, that would’ve started when she was just Master Singer.

So we’re left with four questions Merelan’s existence and title drop unceremoniously on us-

What is a Singer in the context of the Harper Hall?

What happened to Merelan’s students, of which there can’t only have been the ones we meet?

What happened to the concept of Singers in general, that is never comes up again chronologically?

What the fuck bug crawled up Robinton and Petiron’s asses that despite there being a position in the Hall that explicitly allowed ladies, one that they’ve both been alive to see, one that would likely have been The Norm when Petiron was a student and teacher given Merelan’s position doesn’t seem to be questioned, both of them pull the ‘well you know the Hall hasn’t taken a female student in half of forever if ever, but maybe I can make something work for you’ game?

And we are never going to get a fucking answer so damnit we better start coming up with some for ourselves because nobody else is gonna touch it.