A Little of This Fandom and a Little of That

Rest in peace to the incredible Anthony Stewart Head (20th February 1954 - 1st June 2026)

I just finished the game and i cant get over these two lesbians 😩😩😩

Dr. Melissa King + Dr. Trinity Santos in

“And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.”

Scars: Kassandra, Aloy and Lara Croft

But, Trent is very thin, thus drawing another visual comparison between he and Caleb. Trent played up the father aspect with all of his students, but we’re getting a lot of visual cues that Ikithon was not only trying to supplant Caleb’s parents, but that he succeeded.

A lot of his behavior towards Nott is a slight echo of the nicer parts of Trent’s teacherly side, which is why Beau reacts so strongly to the dynamic she sees between them. Beau is especially aware of abusive and/or toxic relationships between parents and children (and mentors and their proteges) due to her own experiences with Zeenoth and her father, and she doesn’t see the full picture of Caleb and Nott’s relationship like the audience does. She sees a young woman her own age (probably younger) with a heavy dependence on drink who prioritizes the well-being of her older, male companion over herself. When they fight Owelia in Trostenwald, Nott doesn’t attack her—she goes and gets Caleb what he needs, and then verbally seeks affirmation from him about it in front of Beau. Caleb is quick to reassure Nott that she did the right thing—once again, all while Beau is watching.

Despite Nott’s assertions of adulthood and independence, Beau still leaps in to save Nott from the traps in the tunnel, which was—in Caleb’s eyes—an act that was undermining Nott’s skill and agency. But Beau’s actions are less of a reflection of her distrust in Nott and more of a reflection of her distrust in Caleb. Caleb doesn’t like Nott’s drinking (and doesn’t feel that it is his place to ask her to stop) but is nonetheless willing to stand by and let her do it if he feels the situation calls for it. Caleb’s faith that Nott would come out of that completely unscathed reads as callousness to Beau, who is primed to believe the worst about him right now. Dairon’s warnings about Caleb aren’t the only source of Beau’s suspicion and doubt of Caleb; she already distrusted him, not just because he is a Volstrucker, but because she sees so many echoes of Trent’s manipulation in the way Caleb acts.

Consider Celine who spent, what, 20+ years in two incredibly physically demanding fields (professional performer and combatant).

Consider Celine who broke her body and had her body broken time and time again, who always bounced back because of youth and the honmoon.

Consider Celine aging into her 30s and 40s, older than she expected to be if she's being honest, and the damage to her body done in her 20s coming to roost.

Consider Celine relying more and more on the honmoon to reinforce unstable joints.

The Honmoon breaks, a new one is formed, but Celine doesn't have the same bond with this new one. It's almost like this new Honmoon doesn't trust her, is hesitant to accept her, and as a result, it doesn't help her.

At first, Rumi notices in a tightened jaw as Celine hugs her, her body stiffer than normal. But Rumi attributes that to Celine just being out of practice - it had been years since they hugged properly, after all. But then one day she notices that Celine's switched to a digital signature on documents instead of a hand-written one. She hasn't reached out to train together in a while. Rumi goes to confront her, only to be met with her mother mentor Mother relying on a cane to hold her weight (to a concerning degree).

When it looks like even standing is too much for Celine to bear, Rumi reaches out, tries to offer support. But Celine flinches, sucks in a pained breath, her face twisting in agony. She tries to reassure Rumi but Rumi knows

One day, Celine collapses, the pain in her spine burning like molten iron poured directly onto her spine.

The doctor looks at her xrays and is surprised she's able to walk at all. Did she know that she broke her spine years ago? No, she never got surgery on it? Well, she recommends surgery. It should help with the pain but in the meantime, pain medication should help, what does her current pain management look like? Oh, she doesn't have one?

Imagine Rumi asking Celine in the car about what the doctor said.

Imagine Rumi, steps silent enough not even a demon can hear her coming, accidentally overhearing her on the phone one day.

Imagine Rumi, outside Celine's office and just out of view, with her breath growing short and nausea cresting with every word.

"Surgery." "Spine." "Pain." "Walk?" "Pain." "Oh." "Pain." "Lifestyle changes." "Pain."

She leaves.

She can't- she can't.

She tells Mira and Zoey, with gasping breaths and stumbling tongue and tears pressing, burning at her eyes.

It makes no sense, they say, once that initial shock ebbs (not wears off, how could that ever wear off?). The Honmoon's supposed to heal them, take care of them, love them in return for all they give; it's been healing and caring and loving Celine long after they took over its maintenance.

And it's stronger than ever, they say, running fingertips over the strands and hearing it sing brighter and bolder than the old one ever did. Why?

Why why why why why?

They confront her, any anger and frustration they may feel at her hiding this from them tempered by worry and fear and how...frail she looks.

Celine's never supposed to be frail; she's the strongest person they know.

"Isn't the Honmoon helping you?" Rumi asks, wringing her hands and fighting the urge to wrap her arms around her mentor mother and not let go until the pain fades from Celine's body and Rumi's heart and the world is right again.

And Celine just smiles, sadly; looks up at the iridescent strands, then back to her girls.

"It's beautiful girls. But...this one's yours."

Once the surgeries and physical therapy are done and once she's on the right medications, she'll be better.

Her doctors are pretty sure she'll be able to regain about 75% of her previous mobility. It honestly looks better than they expected.

(For once, she's not hiding her weakness)

(For the girls, it's worse that Celine seems to have just accepted that this is her life now.

That she won't be able to train with them anymore, that she'll be lucky if she dance again)

It seems so incredibly unfair.

Celine spent so long protecting the honmoon, training them to protect the honmoon.

(If she hadn't been a hunter, she wouldn't have needed half these surgeries)

She feels especially guilty about the whole thing. She remembers the bitter resentment she felt toward the old Honmoon, toward Celine, when she teleported away from the Shrine on that night.

“If this is the Honmoon I’m supposed to protect, I’m glad to see it destroyed.”

She regrets those words more than ever. She didn’t know. She didn’t fucking know… She never would have… She would have tried something else if she…

She didn’t know.

So she clings. Stays close to Celine, even moving back to Jeju (it’s just for the time being: just until they can fix things). The Hunters’ compound is huge and will need someone who can maintain it, anyway. Despite her insistence otherwise, Celine needs help. And of course the other girls help, too. Three is better than one.

But Rumi clings.

She stays by Celine’s side like a guardian dog, always near and keeping her in her sight line. She’s there to become a living crutch whenever it is needed. She’s there to reach things from the high shelves, help with stairs, just…be near. It’s like an instinct, refusing to let her leave. She can’t fight it, no matter how much Celine tells her she’s fine. (Because it’s so obvious Celine is lying.)

One day she’s nestled close to Celine’s side on the couch. Her eomma is trying to put up a brave front, but it’s a pain flare up. Rumi can feel her trembling slightly, can see her clammy skin and tight jaw, her hands clenched as tight as the arthritis will let them. And Rumi is distressed. She’s keeping it bottled, but it feels a lot like those videos of people putting mentos into Diet Coke. Her heart is racing, her skin feels itchy. She’s just helpless in the face of this and she hates it. She lets out a small huff. It rumbles more than usual.

Then the rumbles continue.

She knows she can purr when she’s happy. But the thought never occurred to her that she could purr to try to calm herself down. And if she could do that, then maybe that thing about cats purring on their humans to make their humans feel better held water.

Months later, Celine makes the decision to move to Seoul. The estate is too big, too rural for her to live there for the moment, even with her three girls helping.

She has specialists, appointments. She needs nurses to care for her while she recovers from surgery. (The girls offer - demand - that she let them do that but they have their lives to live and she'll be damned if she lets herself become a burden on them.)

She'll miss the quiet and the clear night skies; her garden and the mountain forest. (She won't miss the way the honmoon seems to shudder and withdraw from her on the days she's well enough to walk up the steps to the seonangdang.)

And the separation will be good for all of them, Celine thinks.

It's impossible to miss the near contempt, the thin line Rumi's lips make when she sees the honmoon wrapping itself around everything except Celine.

The seonangdang and this estate was the heart of the honmoon; the hunters, merely guests. And it was clear that Celine was no longer welcomed in this most holy of places.

(Everything had been foggy.

Celine thinks it must have been a bad day since she had willingly taken one of her pills for breakthrough pain.

She hated that pill. Hated how she knew the day would progress in snapshots after she took it. Hated that she would open her eyes and it would be hours later.

But this she remembers:

Rumi, pacing in front of her; so upset, her patterns turned bruise-dark against her skin.

"I am going to cut down that stupid tree," she had yelled. "I'm going to rip this stupid honmoon up by the roots and *strangle* it until it stops doing this to her!")

The tree had looked unharmed when Celine woke up again, the next day.

The girls do what they can, to make the Seoul apartment feel...something like a home. Some of the furnishings from the hanok; some pots of flowers of a kind with the garden on Jeju; their presence as many days as they can manage.

But they can still tell: she misses the countryside. The birdsong in the morning, the crickets singing a requiem to the day, the stars twinkling a cantata through night.

And the Hunters graves. And the spirits they all could feel. And Mi-yeong's resting place meters from the door.

She had wanted to live out her days there, Rumi knows. Not here in Seoul, with nurses and aides and cheeks burning red because no matter how much her physical therapist says "she's doing so well" the praise rings hollow.

What is being able to mince five steps to someone who once flew across fields with souls singing beneath her step?

She's not happy. Rumi knows this too, no matter the brave face Celine tries to put on for them.

She hates the pills; she hates the calendar filled with appointments; she hates the patronizing, pitying way the aides look at her; she hates the pain and the limitations its shackled to her wrists.

Rumi hates it all as well.

And she hates the Honmoon.

Celine told her to not; "It's a good Honmoon," she'd say, a wince in her words (the pain is bad today). "Strong. Better than the old. It will take good care of you and your future Hunters."

Celine won't hate it; Rumi's not sure why.

(Celine can't hate it; it was woven from the souls of her girls, and how could she hate that?)

But Rumi's not Celine.

She can hold enough hate for the both of them.

So when she draws her sword and feels a prickling like nettles against her skin, she only sneers.

The Honmoon's mad at her?

Fine.

But Celine watched her daughter kneel at her feet entirely convinced that she had it in her to kill rumi and that she would see it as her duty. A favor, even. The new honmoon was created with a veritable heat sink of shame, a nexus centered on the woman left hollow on her knees under the sacred tree that watches over the resting places of the hunters who dedicated their lives and hers to the preservation of the old honmoon. Celine's whole life, her sense of duty that corrupted the real and deep love she had for Rumi, is here. The duty that caused her to tell rumi to hide, even from those who loved her in ways Celine could never manage - to two thirds of rumi's soul.

She was angry when Celine wouldn't do it. Like it was owed on some level, that if she couldn't have ensured rumi's happiness she could have at least seized on her usefulness.

Of course the new honmoon won't let Celine touch it. She's made of its opposite.

(of course she doesn't blame the new honmoon for rejecting her. It's what she deserves - Rumi came by her self-aggrandizing tendencies honestly.)

And Rumi? She's so, so good at making things her fault. She calls it taking responsibility and sometimes it is, but not this. So yes. The saingeom stings her palm as time goes on.

But these are old patterns, this is a place Rumi has been, locked with Celine in the cage Celine grew up in. And Rumi made it out and now she's knows what's possible AND how to get it.

let’s break it down. so we can see that piltover’s prejudice comes fearful negligence of the monster they created. abuse of resources, labor, then the Day of Ash solidifying that divide. because of this, their opinions are based on rumors of how dangerous Zaun is, not because of what they know. they quite literally fear what they can’t see.

If we analyze Caitlyn’s interactions with all s1 criminals, we see this gentle nature displayed despite what she’s taught against them. First with Gustave on the airship, then with releasing Vi, then with Huck in the sumps, and finally with Jinx, choosing to lower her rifle. Caitlyn gives all these characters the benefit of the doubt, and over the course of the show, all of them betray her (to varying degrees, Vi included).

After the memorial is when Caitlyn decides enough. These criminals have lost the benefit of her doubt. Her guard is up, she’s doesn’t trust strangers anymore. There have been far too many unforeseen consequences because of that, and her mother and other innocents paid the cost.

Caitlyn decides she will no longer give the criminals she encounters the sympathies she once did. As seen by the Hellfire montage and the loyalist spy found in Jinx’s gas trap, that she then sends to jail. She treats them as information sources, not people that deserve to be heard or sympathized with for the choices they make. We see Vi’s concern with this and then the tenderness that resurfaces before they kiss, displaying that gentle nature again as though to prove it’s still there, buried under guilt and revenge.

Then, comes the final betrayal that is Vi. The line “I keep telling myself that you’re different but you’re not” has layers, and while intended to be about “Jinx’s blood in her veins”, that sisterhood, also could reference the way she keeps trusting people that everyone told her to doubt and having it thrown back in her face.

It’s not that Caitlyn believes all residents from Zaun are criminals like Piltover does, out of fear and Ambessa’s abuse of military power and martial law. Caitlyn is shown by her constant checking of Ambessa in Act 2, “Arrests require cause.” She focuses away from Jinx and tries to detach her bias from the investigation, going back to her roots and most importantly herself.

We can feel the benefit of the doubt creeping back and now they’re raising alarms, pointed at Ambessa. But she’s still tangled in her web, unable to prove anything or make any moves. So the investigation continues, it’s all she can do.

Then we see that all roads lead to Singed. The most evil criminal of them all, surely irrational and irredeemable. And we get this beautiful quote, “Why does anyone commit acts others deem unspeakable? For love.”

And it just shoots everything into perspective for her. That she can’t blame or hate criminals for their choices, that everything has Context and we are all just products of our environment, trying our best. Even the worst, like Singed. Even people like Caitlyn. She understands why people make mistakes now but no good deeds can erase them. There’s still damage that demands to be answered.

Now we’ve come full circle. Caitlyn in Act 3 displays this ultimate Benefit of the Doubt™️ that is (in part, trusting Vi about Warwick) but mostly releasing Jinx from her confinement so she and Vi can escape together. There’s no guarantee that Jinx is better, less destructive, any of things she wants to hear. That she won’t orphan another kid. But she trusts in the hope that Vi displays in her, who was once a criminal herself with no record, locked away because no one gave her a chance.

Rumi and Lilith would be studying each other, comparing half-demon notes. "So we can both teleport, but why do you get WINGS?!" "Well I also have fucking scales, but you get to have glowing tattoos so we take our wins where we can get them!"

Mira and Beatrice having a stare down and silently agreeing that they are NOT telling the girls that they were in the same boarding school in Switzerland.