ok ik I already made dis comic in freeform but it was ugly asf so I remade it in ibspaint so even tho I’m still not completely happy w/ it at least it’s nice 2 look at now
here da og explanation/ ramble below btw:
this is kinda about dysphoria and kind of about the burden of being a virtue if that makes sense.
every time he looks in the mirror, it feels like something is wrong or missing. he’s able to recognize that he is uncomfortable with his body, that he doesn’t like the more masculine parts of himself, but salt’s duty as a virtue prevents him from being able to examine *why* that is. his height, his stature, his voice, they all are practical qualities for his mission of protecting the weak, so his feelings over them don’t matter. he shouldn’t have negative feelings over this, because they help him with his mission, the only thing that should matter to a virtue. to salt of solidarity, being a virtue means ignoring your own feelings for others benefit.
[side note: ssc is shown to have a sort of “guilt” for the power he’s been given (wishing all cookies had been given equal strength, his leveling up voice lines mentioning not wanting more power than he already has if im remembering right, ect) so ignoring his needs in favor of others is probably a way to repay the perceived debt he has to cookiekind for being more powerful/ dangerous than them also]
instead, he uses the cookies reactions to him rationalize his own feelings. the cookies he wants to protect are scared of him, and that *is* an obstacle towards his mission, so it gives him a reason to not like himself. even if he on some level knows that this isn’t the real reason y he feels like that, it lets him avoid confronting his more “selfish” desires; what he (or she) might want their body to look like if they didn’t have to be a virtue, if they didn’t have to be a protector.
truly acknowledging n accepting that they have wants & desires outside of spreading solidarity n protecting da weak is the 1st step of giving in to them, and nothing terrifies salt more than giving into selfishness and corrupting. (he literally tells his knights it’s their duty to kill him if he ever turns traitor if yall remember dat)
virtues aren’t allowed to be selfish. virtues aren’t allowed to control their identity. virtues aren’t allowed to want. virtues aren’t allowed to be cookies in any way that truly matters, no matter how hard they try. the virtues are divine emissaries. to deviate from this is to corrupt. and salt doesn’t want to do that.
the helmet is a kinda representation of his burden as a virtue. it physically obfuscates his face from both others n himself (since he’s forbidden to remove it in my hc), and replaces it with a symbol of protection. when u look at salt of solidarity, u dont see his emotions or any part of his identity he chose for himself, u see da mark o his soul jam (his power) and the thing used to prevent salt from seeing himself as he really is to “”””protect”””” him. it removes his identity as a cookie and replaces it with his mission as a virtue. and this dehumanization prevents salt from realizing how screwed up it is for a cookie to be put in this position, to be denied autonomy and the ability to decide an identity for oneself, to the point he’s not event allowed to know WHAT he looks like or why.
it breaking forces salt for the first time to see that he is a cookie. more than he is a virtue or a knight, he’s a cookie, one who needs help. also his face being yknow. like that. is a more tangible representation of how screwed up da virtues creation was, seen in how half o salt’s face is LITERALLY ON FIRE and the best the witches could do was stick a helmet on him n hope 4 da best. [side note 2: the reason y da witches did that btw is cause each virtue used a TON of life energy to bake, so once 1 was messed up like that they couldn’t rlly rebake him, specially since they don’t actually know the exact cause for salt being eternally on fire themselves. still, would’ve been nice to TELL him so they could make some sorta solution 2 dat.]
salt is suddenly confronted with the fact that he has an identity beyond his virtue, one that was hidden from him, one that he is actively terrified and confused by, and then is discovered by one of his closest allies in a moment of crisis. so basically he’s screwed.
in conclusion screw da witches and get salt into therapy yesterday pls he needs HELP.
also da reason y I did all dis yapping is cause I rlly don’t think I got across what I wanted to w/ da comic. it just didn’t hit like I wanted it to, n i felt like I needed 2go into detail for dis 2b understandable. also dis is an au where salt of solidarity finds out what he looks like b4 corruption btw.
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