just realized the rumblejack is in fact, not a sharp stabby dagger, but a blunt stun one and now i have to rewrite a bunch of stuff and change my drifters design adsffs
but i wanted them to still have it since it's the one they had during tnw while they were powerless and i think they made it themself too? idk, but im saying they made it themself now. anyway, guess i could give them a modified sheev instead? could work since the drifter grineer armor has a sheev strapped to the chest and their pre-isleweaver gear is mainly modified grineer armor.
since we see them with a grineer drop ship during tnw, their ties to kahl etc i always imagined they worked with steel meridian and other rogue grineer factions before they worked with solaris, so overall they would be more grineer influenced, where the operator is more corpus and solaris influenced. although the rumblejack is clearly corpus influenced. hmmmm.
anyway, i guess technically they could have gotten the innodem on the zariman instead, but it looks so fancy and impractical, and i wanted them to carry a piece of their early days with them. before regaining their powers and all that, like main reason they still carry around a shitty, old makeshift blade is pure habit. between the sirocco and edun they already have a lot of contrast between their armor and weapons.
and i want their early design to very clearly showcase how they're still kinda mentally stuck in that time (like shortly after escaping duviri, mortal+powerless in the middle of the war) while still distancing themself from duviri, until around post-isleweaver, where they're forced to confront everything with duviri again. like apart from edun+sirocco, they do everything to bury duviri, but they just cant seem to get rid of those two weapons. but all their armor etc is from the origin system. mainly grineer and basically everything that's not duviri.
*insert longer thought piece on their relationship to their weapons and armor and how it mirrors their relationship to duviri vs the origin system here*
but yeah, i think maybe a modified sheev they tinkered with to make it closer to a dagger sized machete could work? like i love the sheev, it looks cool, but the shape just looks so impractical. i get its a plasma blade but still. it looks more slicey and i need it to be stabby. like the machete.
so maybe both then? i could see them still carrying around rumblejack but maybe on their hip, or even hidden in their boot or something. while sheev-machete is strapped to chest for easier access, like the grineer armor has it.
also why is both rumblejack and sheev classfied as daggers... if they're not very dagger-like...
Sometimes you get stuck. Sometimes you go numb. The color drains away. You stop trying, and that just feeds the spiral going down. Maybe you'll get lucky one day. You see yourself in the mirror and snap out of it. But for some of us... it takes more. A friend. A stranger. A story. A helping hand.
1999 höllvania uses the same script as the orokin language if i recall correctly, but language changes over time, especially how we spell things. so while drifter can read 1999 höllvania letters, i think they would really struggle with reading full texts from 1999 at first. which of course they'd do their very best to hide for as long as possible.
now the question is who would realize it first, and then who would sit down and help them better grasp it? between arthur offering to teach them to cook and aoi offering to teach them how to play the piano, im leaning towards one of them. hmmmm.
so torn between which one of them would actually do whispers in the wall.
on one hand, i imagine drifter tries to step up and carry as much of the burden as they can, doing everything in their power for the operator to not have to fight anymore. and on the other, operator was always closer with the entrati family. it would make sense if they were the one contacted, and they just went behind drifters back and went anyway.
however, i find it harder to imagine operator during the actions towards the end of the quest. their relationship with the indifference is different than drifters, and i don't think they have a drop of empathy for it atm, whereas drifter does have some. that, and drifter being older and more nuanced in that regard, having partially worked out/processed thraxs existence being tied to theirs, and their acceptance of that idk duality i guess? existing within them. which i think in some ways extent towards the indifference, due to the way it's tied to to the both of them, but operator especially.
but then, i also love the idea of operator having literally been in arthurs head, so when drifter eventually ends up with him and operator finds out, they're just like wow yikes :/ that guy? like i kinda imagine they have a sibling-ish dynamic? like same person yeah, but with the age difference and divergent paths in life, i think it would eventually evolve into a close sibling like relationship. with moments of them remembering they are technically the same person.
especially with how soldier-like operator is, and how that's something the two of them sometimes clash over. i just think it could be a fun reminder of how similar they still are, and how often we tend to be harsher and project when it comes to out own flaws, since the soldier thing is what drifter and arthur also clash over at first.
the soldier thing being a symbol of blind loyalty in drifters eyes, something i think is both a strength and a flaw for the both of them, but drifter having somehow convinced themself it isn't for them, as they were technically never a soldier but a rebel/insurgent, since they never fought under a banner etc, like operator did. but since they are still the same person, operator still being and acting so much like a soldier, just serves as a constant reminder of one of their biggest flaws.
this was supposed to be a no blending, only visible brushstrokes exercise. which i forgot while rendering their face. instead it became a trying out new brushes and experimenting, so it's bit all over the place, but i havent finished anything since march, and i really wanted to finish at least one of my many, many wips before the new year.
