When canto 1 finished I didnt really feel anything for Gregor, he genuinely just felt like a everyman, a character that was meant for the tutorial canto because he felt like he didn't have much substance to him. As I progressed through the game, he just slowly faded into the background, especially when compared to the vivacity of other characters like don, heath, rodya, Sinclair and effectively the rest of the sinners. Only until spring cultivation, a full 7 cantos later, did we see some more development for him, other than a short bit of interacting in the lcb checkup, and his class in spring cultivation, that short interaction of making them leave the room so that he cld get a smoke stirred something within, that I especially liked. And when canto 9 part 3 came. And we saw the horror of the smoke war come to light, the roach emperor formed, Gregor shone but I wrote it off as hype moments and aura. But the new intervallo has fleshed his character out so much. The depression. The resentment. The relief at being weaker. GREGOR SAMSA THE MAN WHJCH YOU ARE. AUGH.
He might genuinely be one of my favorite sinners now.
Thinking about Ermine’s relationships with Chetwyn. Yearning the level only seen in Yuri Bible….
So like the reason why Chetwyn hated Ermine to begin with is because she has a higher level of insight than he does, so when he kept trying to protect her, it only made her more annoyed because she clocked his traumas as wanting to save someone else and just projecting onto her.
She only gained a better opinion of him after his Canto, where his saviour complex is addressed and resolved. The joke about Chetwyn saying “if you want me to love you, you better be a woman instead” is like her telling him to actually stoop down to her level kinda. Like stop riding his high horse and playing knight to her, so they can both be damsels yk? But the truth is that she knows she has to be a knight regardless of who it is that she has a relationship with.
It’s complicated. Ermine wants to treat her like a princess, but it annoys her that he won’t see her for what she is. Emotional labour is labour too, and for her to let him love her is a kind of emotional labour for her. So even after his Canto she still ignores him for the most part. Just less antagonistic than before, but she doesn’t consider him a friend.
Contrary to that is her relationship with Othello. Othello already has a low opinion of themselves, so when Chetwyn comes along with her self assured attitude, Othello completely falls for it like “yes Queen you can do whatever you want”. But call back on how Chetwyn thinks you gotta stoop to her level to love her, she doesn’t need to ask that of Othello. If anything, Othello naturally defers to her to be their knight because they don’t want to stir the pot for anything. That’s not really a good thing either because they both fit right in the roles of a play and won’t address any discomfort within that dynamic.
That only changes within Chetwyn’s Canto. Spoilers for Chetwyn’s story below!
She confesses that well, all that act about being superior than everybody is just an act, because she is actually scum and the worst Sinner of all. And then she separates from the group, refusing help from Jericho. They had to play detective and recover all the records pertaining to Chetwyn’s past, because she doesn’t have the guts to tell them herself.
Even when they meet her again, she still puts up a smug façade. But Ermine knew it too well from his mother’s act already, so he confronted her straight up about it, and forces her into the mirror fathoms. It’s only there that they learnt about how Chetwyn actually feels, and who he actually is. They knew of him being a soldier from G Corp, and received biomimetic augmentations, but they never knew what kind of monster he was forced to be.
He left Y Corp as Arkady Kirsanov, a poor student, hoping to get a job in G Corp somehow, anyhow. And met Bazarov, who wanted out of the Nest by any means. Bazarov knew of the upcoming war and wanted OUT of it. So they made a deal to trade places, Arkady would assume his appearance, and Bazarov would do the same, one would infiltrate G Corp as a researcher, the other would keep their promise and go back to Y Corp to take care of his elderly father.
This is where things go wrong. Arkady excelled at academics more than Bazarov had (not knowing he was supposed to keep it low-key), he caught the attention of the Head Researcher Hermann, who had plans to extract the most use out of him. She introduced to the labs where they grew insect subjects, and let him have free access to all of those information. Within just a day, he almost went mad with joy and became obsessed with them. That’s when she proposed if he wanted to create his own “children” the way she has. Knowing how passionate he was, the only answer was an enthusiastic yes.
He received the augmentation of the Lord of the Flies. A gift from her that will unwrap on the fronts of the Smoke War. It’s not too different from the Kaiser. The sky was covered in his flies, it turned into a muddy grey colour. And when they were killed, they turned into clouds of blood spray. And it hurt him to see parts of himself die, but why does it matter? He was making so much more of them, they smothered him, keeping him safe from any intruders. As long as he kept remaining alive, more flies will be born, and it will suffocate anyone who breathes in them. <- inspiration for the Dusting Hare.
When the war ended, she was still intact, and crawled out of the mounds of body that buried her, keeping her safe. The fly genes made sure she could never go sick from being around the rotting corpse, even gaining strength from eating them. G Corp has been nullified, her contract is no more, and there is nobody left to serve. All her children is no more. And Arkady is no more. “Arkady” is safe back home with his father, and Bazarov is dead for all they know. There is no one left from this war.
The fallen battlefield was so empty that she laughed alone above the mounds of body, singing and dancing above them. Would they have disposed of her if they knew she was still alive? That didn’t matter, when she could just kill anything that dares to sentence her to death. This was truly a gift from Hermann herself, and there is nothing she regrets. Nothing… that’s what she told herself to believe.
Nobody will forgive her, and she does not seek forgiveness from anyone. There is no need to feel shame, and yet, she couldn’t bring herself to go home as Arkady. She kept telling herself that she did Bazarov a favour for letting him escape death, while thinking she also did Hermann a favour for being her lab rat. Always pretending. And maybe it’s completely true for them. For Hermann, she was exactly what was needed for the project. For Bazarov, she was exactly where she needed to be. So why would there need to be regrets?
Where the heart sinks, is when she thought of her father, who knew her true self, who had raised Arkady to be this good child that always does what is asked of him. She didn’t want her dad to be blamed for how she was raised, so she kept on living like nothing is wrong. Clinging onto meaningless pride that she was a good child through and through. In reality, she might as well be a mound of rock, letting others step all over her and take what they need. Maybe she did die within that mound of bodies, and what’s alive now is just a zombie, a consciousness planted by Hermann, a completely loyal slave.
But that’s a lie too, it’s an easy escape from agency. She is still alive right now. She clawed out of that mound and did everything to survive. Not thinking about whether she deserved to or not, it was just pure survival instinct that even a single celled organism would possess. She never did stop thinking though. It still haunts her, but that’s alright. She was supposed to share that burden with the people on the Tram, many of whom understand that crippling guilt of being alive while others are not. They would reach out to her this time, and cut through layers and layers of shield no matter how long it takes, so their hearts can connect and they could be human together.
Lucky Chloe is detested by the Tekken fandom because of her aesthetic and fighting style, complaining a lot about her....except she is supposed to be hateable, that's the point!:
-Her Lucky Chloe persona is just that. A persona. She is meant to sound irritating, artificial and insufferable because its a marketing strategy: Kazuya hired her specifically to be the "amiable face" of the G Corp.
-Her actual personality is that of a cold, condescending, rude, selfish and with a difficult personality to boot (as Eddy Gordo finds out the hard way): She despises the Lucky Chloe persona, but loves the power it gives her over the masses.
