mirror / you're all over me

(after ep5)

: Legato is being weird.

It's only ever with women.

One instance is his brief conversation with the girls he liberated from the slavers. Though it would, perhaps, be skewing textual evidence to argue that he was motivated by empathy for them rather than personal irritation and hatred for the slavers, Legato still does the girls a good turn by eliminating their abusers. And his misanthropy doesn't turn against them afterwards, either — he simply tells them to make the most of the rest of their lives (before Knives' plans come to fruition).

Then there's also Elendira, who appears in the memory that flashes before Legato's eyes as his last thought before he dies. Whose death he senses, and it makes him think to himself "I'll join you soon". That doesn't seem like the interior monologue of someone who despises the object of his thoughts. Though Elendira is generally rather violent and scornful in her interactions with Legato, his behavior towards her, surprisingly, doesn't scan as misanthropic at all. If anything, I would say he seems to like or at least tolerate her.

Legato hates humans. But whenever he exhibits understanding, civility, or even nostalgia for another human, those positive feelings are exclusively directed towards human women. It's not much of a stretch to extrapolate from this aspect of his characterization that the greater part of the abuse and dehumanisation he suffered at the fortress must have been at the hands of men. The women most likely never helped him, or even tried — after all, Legato attempted to kill everybody at that fortress, he didn't see a single person there as worth sparing — but at the very least they probably tormented him significantly less. This could be why Legato doesn't seem to harbor the same visceral disgust and vitriol for women as he does for men.

Since I'm on the topic, Legato is repeatedly aligned with visual signifiers of feminininity thoughout the text (though how much of that is by his own choice is certainly up for debate). Think of Guernica. Think of the long hair and little gown he wears while enslaved. Think of the giant weapon he swings around in the Double Duel arc — distinctly shaped like a "womanly" figure.

devotion / devotion