Look inside my brain

Anon asked me for a rec list and I've been meaning to put it together for a long-ass time so...buckle up friends this is a long one. I had to break it into two parts because Tumblr apparently has a character limit.

FOUNDATIONAL TEXTS

These are the fics that got me hooked on the pairing. I would not be in the fandom or writing fic if not for these...

Baby, I've been running - freakydeakymoonmagic

God of Nothing - machiavelli

all your stars - lordmarvoloriddle

The Foul/The Great - merrivale

contrapasso - saidcain

Ink - EclipseWing

Too old to be this young - Nadia_Castillo WIP

The Fire, Burning - freakydeakymoonmagic

Kaleidoscope - RenderedReversed

In Your Soul is Sealed a Pleasure - mosiva

CONTINUED ->

This is my first wha animatic, but there should be more to come!!! Also Iguin is so weird to draw he's not necessarily hard, but very strange lmao

Also here's the sketch cause I thought it was rlly funny to see the difference

Something I love about Iguin is how they view and treat Coco specifically. Despite their supposedly violent nature and creepy demeanor, they are never actively cruel towards her. In fact, they're always uncharacteristically soft and gentle with her. Even when they set challenges and tests for Coco in order to make her use forbidden magic, they never command her or force her hand, only manipulate the situation to nudge her towards the direction they want her to follow.

And, even when Coco refuses to use unlawful means to escape the situations they put her in, they don't seem disappointed, but rather impressed by her ingenuity and creativity in finding alternative ways to use magic in her favor, as well as her fierce independence and resolve to make her own choices. If anything, those are all traits they seem to want to nurture in her.

They are also ever so patient with her and they seem more keen to observe her from a distance and allow her to naturally hone her skills than to rush her development. And that prospect seems to bring them more excitement than impatience. If anything, I'd say they're eager to watch her learn and grow, even slowly and gradually, and they seem to enjoy the process just as much as they anticipate the end result, just like a real teacher would.

Even the way they speak to her or about her reveals something akin to pride, or even fondness. They're like a proud mother watching their child grow up, it's almost endearing. It actually reminds me a lot of the way Qifrey talks to and about his students (clone theory real!). And even the way they hold her like she's something precious, something to protect and nurture, is almost motherly, even if in a more obsessive way, and it is also reminiscent of Qifrey's expressions of affection towards his students.

And I feel like if one acknowledges Qifrey's gentle and encouraging behavior towards his apprentices, one must also acknowledge Iguin's twisted version of those similar traits. For as much as people joke about Qifrey being paternal towards the girls, I don't think Iguin is all that different, with Coco at least.

Though, unlike Qifrey, I think this special treatment isn't something they give so lightly to just anyone. And that's what's the most interesting to me. The fact that they genuinely seem to believe in Coco's abilities and judgement and trust that she in particular, despite not being born in witch society and studying magic relatively late, will undoubtedly become a formidable witch one day.

And the interesting thing is that their investment in her happened mostly at random, at least as far as we know. It seems like they didn't have any specific reason to give her specifically the book. She might even be one of many children who received similar magic books by them, so I don't think they even knew that it would be her in particular that would become their child of hope back then.

But I do think that, somewhere down the line, while watching her progress closely, they became genuinely invested in her journey and maybe even in her as a person. Because, while this whole scheme is about some greater cause the brimhats are fighting for, something far bigger than a mere child, I think there came a point when their interest in her became more personal than not, even if they might only have considered her a convenient tool for them to use at first. And I think they genuinely see some great potential in her to be harnessed and explored, something beyond just mere hope for the future of witches.

And I think Iguin's genuine interest and hope for her say a lot about Coco as a person. I love how inspiring and impactful Coco generally is for the main characters and the antagonists alike. I love that both people who doubted her and people who believed in her from the start acknowledged her strength and skill eventually. Or that, despite being a young child without prior knowledge of magic, she uses her creativity and determination to make up for it to the point of leaving such a strong impression on everyone who meets her.

I've always intrigued me how Coco's brimhat design is so much... not really like her? I think we've never seen her wear something like this before. Like I can't really imagine Coco wearing a long dress on a regular basis, I think she would prefer something that allow her to move more freely. Also the color choice. I've seen the author drawing the dress in two main colors: very dark blue and pitch black, which is also no really like her?

Someone else (I think on tumblr or reddit) noted that the dress fabric's pattern is weird, since we know that Coco's specially talented drawing straight lines. I can't help but think that this circular/eye-like pattern may be a reference to Iguin, since Brimhat Coco is implied to also be Iguin's apprentice. We know that the pointed hat apprentices usually wear clothes that resemble their masters', but the same isn't true for the brimhats. It made sense for Coco to want to... continue the tradition? I'm not really sure about that last point to be honest.

It also must be noted that such pattern is not always present in the design. Sometimes the fabric is completely plain with no pattern.

Coco's hat has a row of tassels hanging from her brim. I think that's important since the tassel is strongly associated with Qifrey and being Qifrey's apprentice. But having them hanging from her brim and not from the hat's point (which has no ornament whatsoever) is... a choice.

I know that in the first paragraph of my post I said that this dress is 'not like Coco'. But I just have a thought that... have we ever seen Coco wearing something she choose to wear? Like in the first chapter she's twelve and still lives with her mother, already working and doing chores, so we can assume that her clothing is just the most practical option and not something she really likes that much. And after she becomes a apprentice and wears clothing that would identify her as Qifrey's apprentice. But being the daughter of a seamstress, she would absolutely know how to make this kind of elegant dresses. So, maybe she made it herself?

Iguin is like 'oh, yeah, you can choose whatever you want, I can take you to the tailor tomorrow.' And Coco says something on the lines of 'Oh, I pretty good at sewing, if you have fabric I can make it myself' and Iguin, as manipulative as they're, has already picture this conversation in their head and has a complete stock of different fabrics in their basement or whatever. (They're just that creepy).

So Coco starts sewing that same night because it's something she knows and it's useful to keep her busy and calm. But she also starts with the mentality: 'i'm gonna hate this thing as much as i'm gonna hate being a brimhat, so i'm making sure this looks like the most fairytale evil witch dress in the whole world.' But as she keeps sewing, she keeps adding details that she really likes, and by the end she realizes that she loves this thing. Like this dress is completely and truly hers, her design, the fabric she pick, made by her own hands.

And it's a terrible realization, the fact that being a brimhat has already gave her such freedom.

So I've been thinking about Easthies and the idea of making exceptions.

In Chapter 88, Iguin says "A line crossed...is easily crossed again". That's the brimhats entire motivation. As I've discussed in other posts, the brimhats are using a loose kind of anarchism where any questioning or subversion of the system helps them. It doesn't really matter that, so far, the pointed-cap witches have protected their secrecy or found loopholes. The very act of finding a loophole this time will make them more likely to bend the rules next time, and the time after.

Which, of course, is why Easthies is the way that he is. Easthies and Iguin are in complete agreement: Any exception is a crack in a wall, a pebble in a landslide. They are basically doing this meme:

To Easthies, it does not matter that Vinanna approved it. That doesn't excuse the exception, it just means the Captain is (literally) compromised. That's also why he sees Coco's explanation of the counter-clock spell as her needing to "practice self-control". It's not that he doesn't know that people are being hurt/dying. It's not that he's cackling evilly and wanting people to be hurt on purpose. It's that he sees it as a painful but necessary cost to the greater good of upholding the principles.

And the point of making this post is that Easthie's philosophy reminds me of two popular Discworld quotes by/about Sam Vimes from Thud!:

No excuses. He'd promised himself that. No excuses. No excuses at all. Once you had a good excuse, you opened the door to bad excuses.

And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one.

It tickles me that there's this philosophical line between Easthies and Sam Vimes. To be clear (reading comprehension site) I am not saying Easthies is actually a good guy or is the same as Sam Vimes. In context, Sam is talking about reading to his son and not engaging in police brutality. Easthies is talking about not saving lives. If these two characters ever met, Sam Vimes would have a few choice things to say to Easthies about police not being soldiers of the government.

I just like the idea of Easthies looking at everything in the Silver Eve Arc and seeing the healing spell as a "good excuse". It's not the spell that's harmful, it's the act of making any exception, no matter what the benefit. That's why he can't be logically convinced by Coco or Vinanna. All of their reasons are good excuses, but that just makes them a good trojan horse. It's not about the spell itself, it's about the sanctity of the principles.

so many of my favourite qifrey moments happen when coco has either scared the everliving teacher heart out of him or otherwise confronted him into a moment of honesty haha. 'I don't want there to BE a next time, Coco!!!!!' you have my entire heart you strange little man

(that and the way he shifts from pure fear into a sort of wild-eyed incredulity right before this when coco is like 'well I wasn't trying to get hit...' fhaskj he's so fucking funny......)

Please get out of the deep end if you can't swim, broh.

Feels like a lot of denial tbf. Like I said in one of my first posts, I didn't even ship Rickorty until season SEVEN. I spent my time watching the show beforehand with the mindset of "oh lol incest joke" every once in a while but eventually its literally unarguable.

oh jeez rick its like we're in some sort of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley

hello.

my name is morty smith.

you killed my grandfather.

prepare to die.

The Rick & Morty writers room: ...

The Rick & Morty writers room: "What if we start the season off with incestual undertones?"

The whole room, apparently: