Question Meme

[heliokleptic]

I'm not going to go look up the last time I did a question meme because it PROBABLY HASN'T BEEN LONG ENOUGH and I am EMBARRASSMENT TO MYSELF. But whatever:

Question Meme for Luke/Dawn, Sugata/Tide, and Elliot Nightray.

Comments

[heliokleptic]

It's most Elliot's nobullshitometer. It's not that he actually just KNOWS THE RIGHT OF EVERYTHING INTUITIVELY. He fucks up a lot and I imagine he fucked up a lot more when he was younger. But he has this innate ability to just practically hardwire belief into his DNA and it's REALLY hard to shake that.

And it probably STARTED WITH "I am a Nightray and I have to be amazing both because I am already amazing and because I have to live up to my family's amazingness". This is why name and family and identity is SO IMPORTANT TO HIM because it is central to his everything. He is, in a weird way, a perfectionist. Only he's out to perfect HIMSELF instead of, yanno, having pretty handwriting or being super organized. And since he holds himself to the same standards as everyone else he... sees no reason to not hand hold everyone else to his standards. He doesn't go easy on himself so he won't go easy on anyone.

But mostly his self-confidence doesn't come from "I clearly am amazing" as "I am a Nightray and thus I MUST BE AMAZING and you can't be amazing if you DOUBT YOURSELF" so he just, refuses to doubt himself without good reason, and if he FINDS good reason he examines it thoroughly, makes a decision, re-adjusts his life accordingly, but overall just is so HIMSELF about everything.

In a way he's very similar to the Luke with the I MUST KEEP IMPROVING MYSELF, just. Luke has no self worth and Elliot has self worth that is exactly equal to everyone else's worth 8'D

HOWEVER. Elliot is not at all broken. Luke is the one where 'Weirdly being broken made me into a much stronger and more reliable person'. HOW/WHY IS LLOYD BROKEN.

[brotagonist]

I define "BROKEN" as "NOT REACTING LIKE A NORMAL PERSON WOULD TO THINGS" and Lloyd is definitely that. Like he is clearly just... wired weirdly. His DEALING WITH EVERYTHING HE KNOWS BEING WRONG AND THE TRUTH IS ACTUALLY TERRIBLE mechanisms are bizarre in that even when the trauma is attacking his personal sense of identity it takes very little to get him back on track. He doesn't even really lean on his party very much, most of the time when they try to talk to him about his issues it turns into SO WE HAVE ISSUES LLOYD, WE ARE GOING TO PROJECT THEM ONTO YOU SO THEY CAN BE DISCUSSED AND YOU CAN MAKE US FEEL BETTER. I don't know what he does with most of the pressure on him! It goes somewhere mysterious and NEVER COMES BACK. So that's why I say he's broken, because most people would be SETTING THEMSELVES UP FOR A BREAKDOWN WITH THIS APPROACH but no. Lloyd will just keep Lloyding till he dies \o/

Like, in canon, finding out that Kratos was his dad was trauma that'd be comparable to... if Elliot found out that he'd never really been a Nightray, he was adopted and his whole family didn't value him as a Nightray and was using him from the beginning. It was a big thing! And all Colette had to do to get Lloyd totally back in the coping groove was go "but you're still you!" and he was like. Oh. Yep, that's true! I guess I'll just be functional again. PROBLEM SOLVED? And this is what he tells his party all the time, that they are themselves and that's the important thing, so clearly it has a ton of meaning to him.

And he makes decisions for the whole world based on that sense of personal value. Which works out for the world, but most people would have doubts about "is this really okay?" and he... mostly does not. I THINK NARUTO AND OTHER SHOUNEN HEROES HAVE MORE SELF-DOUBT MOMENTS THAN LLOYD DOES. And it's not that he doesn't get that he's talking about a lot of lives here! He totally does take responsibility for them. He's just weird.

He and Elliot are SUPER similar in what you were saying in your second paragraph, with the constant pressure on themselves and others to BE ALL YOU CAN BE and use of moments of "AM I WRONG?" to fuel personal change that just feeds back into that cycle. But Lloyd never really had an I AM A NIGHTRAY circumstance to live up to - he thought he was an orphan for most of his life - so I am not really sure where his fierce sense of personal identity and his reliance on and use of it comes from. It's an interesting contrast to Kratos, who has like NO sense of personal identity but is static in a lot of the same ways, and to Mithos, who has Lloyd's sense of purpose and confidence in his own solutions but whose identity fragments without outside support. I guess the reason Lloyd keeps me coming back is I don't fully understand where he comes from or how he does his thing and that's awesome to me. \:D/

TELL ME WHY SUGATA IS COOL