#analysis tbt

they're very similar in a lot of ways... different in some. but for those that don't know, the tl;dr is that bellamy is from a show called the 100 where humans are surviving in space. there is a one child policy, but bellamy's mom secretly has another child. bellamy names her octavia. he's forced to help his mother hide her for her entire life, and then eventually she gets found and imprisoned. his mother is executed. the prisoners are sent to the ground to see if it is survivable, and bellamy attempts to assassinate someone so he can get a spot on the dropship as a guard. all so he can protect octavia.

i think a lot of my headcanons for chris unintentionally came from bellamy the more i think about it: the older brother who swears to protect his baby sister. who fails. who gets his first taste of freedom in his whole life and becomes a bit of a frat boy. who then goes through immensely traumatic events and realizes he needs to stay mature and keep a cool head so he can take care of the people he loves (because it's more than just his sister, now).

i don't think chris would be nearly as overprotective as bellamy is and have talked about it before, especially when it comes to claire's love interests. chris also makes sure claire can fend for herself while bellamy tries to keep octavia away from danger.

and do NOT get me started on the parallels of bellarke to valenfield. not the beginning maybe where they hated each other. but viewing each other as equals. each other's strengths. jill is the head and chris is the heart. never giving up on each other. the fact that their love is so enduring that it doesn't even really matter if it's romantic, platonic, or somewhere in between. everyone sees it's there.

rai notices she’s doing it while she’s in his head, and says ‘hey! stay outta my head! i don’t let anything go on in there!’

now hear me out

he noticed. this is the boy who has had his head invaded (and/or been fully possessed, while he was conscious and fighting it!!) not once, not twice, but at least three times by that point in the show (and that’s not counting use of the MRC!). wuya read his mind to get information about the others in S1, she then fully possessed him in S2, and then hannibal fucked with his head in Dream Stalker in S3, reading his mind, turning his thoughts against him and the others etc etc. it’s plausible that raimundo now has a sense of... familiarity to it? a sensitivity to when his mind is being poked at by an outside source, because he knows what it feels like, which was why he was the only monk to notice she was doing it?

anon!! this is a gooood question and you have my respect. i thought about this at length when i first started writing rai, because i got that impression too tbh?

he both is and he isn’t, and from what i figure, it depends on how important the thing is, and how much he thinks he should be good at it

for example, in 1x02, we see the four monks competing in an obstacle course - whoever retrieves the dog in the fastest time wins. when kimiko says omi did it ‘8 seconds faster than raimundo’, rai shows no signs of competitiveness or frustration. instead, he smiles and says ‘yeah! you’re one slippery little dude!’ so... from that, we could say no, he isn’t competitive

but then in 1x06, when everyone is trying to beat omi’s ‘tiger instincts’, he insists that omi is lucky guessing and takes multiple turns to try and disprove the whole tiger instincts thing (or at least prove that his street smarts would beat omi’s tiger instincts).... so he is competitive? 

with the above two examples in mind (and knowing that there are many other examples of rai being both competitive and not competitive), it’s fair enough to be confused! is he competitive or not???

i think it’s a case-by-case basis kind of thing. 

i don’t think rai views himself as the fastest or the strongest of the group, and he’s right, he’s not. but he does value his street smarts, which is something he knows the others don’t have. we see him reference, time and again, that he’s familiar with ‘the bad side of rio’. we see indications that he’s familiar with pulling low-level cons, he’s comfortable with lying and manipulation, he’s able to utilise ‘shadier’ skills. this is behaviour that would fit his poor background - imagine a cute lil’ boy out on the streets of rio, tricking rich tourists with cup and card games so he can help feed his family. that’s a very rai-esque move. my point is, rai is shown to value his street-smart skills and uses them on multiple occasions throughout the series, always with very good results.

so he didn’t get competitive or mind when omi beat him at the obstacle race, because he knows that, while he’s good at speed and stuff, he’s not the best. he knows that. that’s okay. when he does get competitive, it’s because he thinks he should be the best at something. he thinks his street smarts should’ve beaten omi’s ‘tiger instincts’, so he got competitive about it and demanded rematches. it boils down to what he expects of himself, and how he wants others to see him.

also, his competitiveness/desire to win/aversion to any kind of failure seems to be hugely increased in seasons 2 and 3 and... i mean... can you blame him? after what happened at the end of season 1? how his ‘failures’ were handled, what that led to, what he did, how he’s still trying to make up for it and catch up with the others...? of course he’s going to be even more terrified of failure than ever, and of course that’s gonna lead to an increase in his competitiveness. we see it in 3x06 when we get this exchange:

raimundo, irritated: ugh, here we go. another lesson on why getting our butts kicked is good for us!

fung: [...] patience, young monk. a house built on no foundation is a house surely to crumble

rai: we’re not building a house! we’re fighting evil, and we’re losing to the second team! and i don’t like losing! *storms away in A Rage*

sooo... yeah. his sensitivity to losing/failure increases throughout the show until it’s something that he can hardly stand, however big or small. 

THIS GOT LONG AND RAMBLY BUT I HOPE IT ANSWERS YOUR QUESTION!