(no subject)

[yvannairie]

Played up to where you can get in Iron Kingdom on the first visit, and up to the second movement upgrade of Kaanul, which puts me squarely out of the very, very long prologue to the main game. It bums me out that Qadira's plot will have to wait but I'm already quite impressed with the sheer variety of the areas so far.

I'm tired out on gaming for tonight, so I'm getting started on Oban Star-Racers and there's been at least one moment of "oh! Oh, this is gonna be good :D" visuals, even if the dub is. Hm. I don't exatly dislike it, but it doesn't impress me yet.

Comments

[yvannairie]

Ooooh interesting. That also puts a bit on why Spirit would find giving Eva closure also cathartic themselves -- because not hurting people while being forceful with them is hard, and requires even more skill than hurting them does in the majority of cases. Maya's death could have also been traumatic for Spirit, except Maya went out of her way to go "don't mind, go win, good race" as her last deed, acknowledging that Spirit's principles, while inscrutable, were real and admirable to her.

(Like... that moment alone speaks to what kind of a person Maya was, I feel. She was gonna die, better let the other guy know they should prize their victory in her stead.)

(Also how could the Phils not be genderless with a design like that? x'3c Spirit is wonderfully inscrutable and inventive in design. Good spooky racing ghost.)

[rhodanum]

(Like... that moment alone speaks to what kind of a person Maya was, I feel. She was gonna die, better let the other guy know they should prize their victory in her stead.)

It very much does! We see so little of Maya (tallied up, I don't think she has more than 25 minutes of on-screen time in the entire show, with most of those being in the flashbacks during episodes 11, 18 and 21) and yet, even in those small glimpses we get of her, she's a remarkably well-developed character and we can get a relatively decent reading of her.

This reminds me of a peculiar trend in fandom, of almost always writing her as a sort of simplified 'Eva 2.0' in pre-canon works (usually by giving her a sharp, fearsome temper, like that of her daughter). I never say anything, because I don't want to be That "stop having fun!" Person, but that's never the reading I got of her. She always struck me as a very calm, balanced person, with a warm and playful inclination. That volcanic, mercurial temper Eva sports? Along with being compoinded by her various issues, that comes from her father, not her mother.

[yvannairie]

If Maya has that rage we see in Eva at times, it definitely only comes out in how she, like all star-racer pilots, is an adrenaline hound with quite a cavalier attitude towards her own safety :D But yeah, it's absolutely clear to me that Eva's temperament is a part of her maladjustment and trauma, because it's so consistently retaliatory. You always know why she's angry, you always know why she's yelling, and you always know when she wants to fucking deck you, and whether you think you deserve it depends entirely on to what degree you agree with what the situation actually is.

That's not Maya at all! She's got the same potential, but like Rick, it's honed to a fine point -- and because she's confident, secure and successful, she can keep that thing sheathed when she's anywhere that isn't the track.