Please please please listen to black hole fantasy by the crane wives, it is such a reinhardcore song!
Thank you for the rec! I listened to it as I was cooking earlier. And yeah, ouch. I see why you say it reminds you of him.
All the talk of "going through the motions" and it being a way to "dull the mind" to avoid thinking too strongly on things he can't work towards...
Assuming we just outright equate the song to his perspective, the black hole seems to both be a perceived threat (At least from his perspective) and a promise for something hopeful? A window to something he could have that may destroy everything he has already, but falling in would bring him some form of joy that he can't understand from his current vantage point (Fitting for his struggles with understanding others). He would have to take the risk, but is he perhaps doomed to fall into it regardless? Maybe because of a certain Royal Candidate that keeps uprooting things around her, including him lol. And on top of that, it's not like he's unaware of how much she's gonna change for him in the future (And has commented on it outright with a rather hilarious degree of bluntness) though I do wonder if he fully realizes what it means for himself as a person.
And that's kinda the heartbreaking part of it all. I don't really know how much Reinhard considers himself as a person outside of being the Sword Saint or even outside of being Felt's knight or an Astrea. Who is "Just Reinhard?"
Reinhard's worst qualities are denying himself and standing by. Though there's still a lot to be questioned on what exactly makes him hold back (And why), but there are a lot of interesting, omnious implications for it that I've seen people talk about (And frankly I shouldn't really know about yet but whoops here I am).
The best part of the song was when it finally broke it down to its bare confession, the root of the problem:
"Even in my fantasy, I can't commit to believing/That I'll get what I want/I'm afraid of what I want."
Reinhard is a dangerous character to make assumptions for because I don't know yet the depth of all his reasons for why he holds himself back, what he knows about the world and people around him, and how well he knows himself. And the answer to that naivete, and characters like him, always seems to be the ever frustrating reply of: He knows more than you think but less enough to surprise you still. And yet, I can't help but feel like he's afraid of what he wants and that there are elements to it he both is aware of and not within himself.
I get the feeling I'm running out of time to question these things about him though. I really need to catch up...
