#justintaco

Muelsyse in Lone Trail felt, in many ways, like seeing someone diving in a pool, and at first, you're not alarmed. They know how to swim. You don't really think much of it. But then a minute passes, and they are still underwater. Concern sinks in, and you make your way to the pool, and as you're about to jump in, their head surfaces, they are back up. They cough, they tough it out, and are a bit nervous about diving again, but you're going in the pool with them now, and they feel more at ease.

Take this, intensify it a hundredfold, stretch it a hundredfold, and scrutinize it a hundredfold, and you end up with Muelsyse, in her barest form, like a diamond born from a chunk of charcoal that had too much pressure put on it.

I can see Muelsyse's dynamic with Doctor being romantic. I can see Muelsyse's dynamic with Doctor not being romantic. Both are fine interpretations, if you ask me, I mean, her theme song is very much a love song, and at the same time, she feels desperate to find anyone who can just... Empathize in even the slightest of ways to her. Either read is fine, outright discounting either feels a tad disingenuous.

Alienation. Complete and utter alienation, an edge sharper and more injurious than isolation. This is, if you ask me, the main theme surrounding the Rhine Lab arc and cast.

Saria is alienated. She cannot find common ground with anyone else around her for the longest time. She used to have a shared dream with Kristen, but that bridge has burned and frozen and turned to ash all over. Kristen is alienated. She simply cannot see a point to anything except that obsessive doggedly persistent dream of hers, and it has been weighted more important than her humanity. Joyce is alienated. Forever a partial prisoner in her own head, there are few and far between that will ever put up with the unique intricacies of having to deal with someone that talks like her, has sudden Oripathy attacks like her, and falls asleep on the spot seemingly at random like her, fully cognizant of how high maintenance she can be on others. Ho'olheyak is alienated. On borrowed time, without kin or friend to call her own, living for a transcending mission far bigger than her and so, so small in the overarching beats of a world that can't be bothered to stop for her. Silence. Ifrit. Dorothy. Tin Man. I could go on. Alienated, all of them. Not isolated, because isolation would imply the lack of physical company. This is far colder, far darker. It's alienation. It's seeing the other side of the cliff, and no possibility of a bridge to connect it to your end of the cliff. Isolation stings, it's a pain you know is there. Alienation drowns, because you can see the surface, but you are convinced you'll never make it there, and it's a hundredfold worse.

Muelsyse is no different. Muelsyse is alienated, and goodness she has tried and tried and tried, she swims so, so hard to reach the surface, but she can't reach it. Being in Rhine Labs necessarily means you need to resort to some cutthroat cloak and dagger, it becomes routine, all for an ultimate goal, but is that ultimate goal even possible? With every step taken by Muelsyse, it seems two new steps materialized at the end of the staircase. Everyone she's met, for years now, has either been someone looking to use her, or someone she can use for her own advantage. Usually simultaneously. And it's in this context, when the 9 to 5 becomes tricking, blackmailing, snuffing and silencing that by chance, she comes across someone, possibly the sole person, that can actually understand the sheer weight on her shoulders: Doctor, someone who doesn't own their own past, but is shackled by it, someone who has no one to relate to, someone surrounded by sufficiently similar but ultimately infinitely different people to themselves, someone who by all means should be drowning in the same pool as her, but somehow, this person reached the surface. It's very easy to see why she'd become so utterly fascinated by this person, who shares many similarities with her, and yet, who seemingly has it so good, has it so sweet. It could have easily been jealousy, but end of the day, Muelsyse IS a sweet person. Yeah, she plays it up, always so cheerful and whimsical, but end of the day, Muelsyse is playing up something that is already there in the first place. Instead of jealousy, it brought her happiness, because maybe, just maybe, she could enjoy a bit of that je ne sais quoi that Doctor seems to have in spades and she is completely bankrupt of.

The first interactions between Muelsyse and Doctor are telling of this overwhelming rush of emotion: Muelsyse less talks with Doctor and more talks at them. She vomits words, emotion, whimsy, as if trying to put these emotions into words and actions after so long, emotions that was ready to never need to put into words in the first place. It eventually becomes a dialogue between two parties, but Muelsyse's interactions with Doctor are initially extremely one-sided, and they remain one-sided to some degree even moving forward. It was heartwrenching to me, honestly, to see the sheer joy Muelsyse radiated while around Doctor, because that is an almost manic amount of joy simply from possibly finding someone that gets it. Muelsyse has not had a bridge in so, so long, and suddenly, the finds someone that not only resembles her a lot, but also seems to have bridges in spades. Muelsyse and Doctor's dynamic should never be considered in a vacuum just between the two of them: One of the first things Muelsyse saw with her own eyes was that Doctor had a pretty friendly relationship, mutual respect included, with Saria. That, is immediately very telling of Doctor, given that Muelsyse understands exactly how difficult that is. We also know Muelsyse sneaks around Rhodes Island and chats with Ifrit now and then, and Ifrit also expressly has a very high opinion of Doctor. It simply makes sense that Muelsyse would feel as enthusiastic about her Dorothy's Vision brush with Doc, and all that Lone Trail entailed: It's terribly sad, because they don't even know each other, and even then, it's the shiniest ray of hope for herself that Muelsyse has had the chance to bask in: Doctor's essence, Doctor's existence, in and of itself, is a massive beacon of hope for Muelsyse.

And it's so damn sad, that this perfect stranger is the most familiar comrade she'll ever find.

Is this romantic love? Hell, the molotov cocktail of emotions involved might as well be, either now or in potentially in the future. Is it something unhealthily dependent? Yeah... Yeah. It might just be the euphoria of knowing that she can reach the surface, after all, that bridges, too, are possible for her to have, with not underlying motive, with no ulterior motive, without needing to offer something or to extract something. To put in the most basic of terms, Doctor, to Muelsyse, might as well represent the very first person in who knows how long that she can relate to at all. It is an immensely sad emotional starvation, and she finally found something to sink her teeth onto.

This is personal, but the way Muelsyse struck me, it felt to me that when she had even the barest of handles on Doctor, she related to someone for the first time in forever, and it shook her to her very core. It may have been the first time she saw, in someone else, a potentially happy Muelsyse.

It's extremely bittersweet. If you've ever dealt with alienation, think back on the first time you found someone who truly "got you". Add to that the fact that her routine of interacting with people had become to see others as tools, and to always be on the lookout for those wishing to use and expend you as a tool. Then, add to that that there are definitely more Elves, but Muelsyse is so fundamentally different to them that the sheer differences in temperament and culture make it so it's impossible for her to relate to them anyway. What could be lonelier than that? It's called Lone Trail for a reason, because alienation is a main theme for all of these people.

So, the reason Toki has a mech is mostly because story convenience and because it's cool, but I'll explain in a fresh new post because I actually like the story justification quite a bit

So Asuma Toki gets introduced in the second-most recent story update (On global, the JP version is ahead by like two or three updates), point is, she's very new. She's also a member of C&C (The group that Karin (The dark skinned maid girl), Asuna (The big boobie maid girl), Neru (The sukeban maid girl), and Akane (The megane maid girl) are a part of)

Why was she only showing up now when the rest are units that have been in the game forever, you ask?

Well, she answers exclusively to one of the administrators of Millennium Science School, enter

Tsukatsuki Rio, student council president and, as dubbed by Himari, "Big Sister"

This is both a riff on 1984 and calling her the school's oneesan, Rio is obsessed with keeping the various extant threats to Kivotos from harming her school, as such, she both does a ton of surveillance, and keeps a ton of countermeasures in place to isolate/eliminate them. This puts her at odds with the main characters for the arc where she appears but also means she's built like, a fortress meant to contain threating machines/people, she has Himari researching cryptids

And she built and gave Toki a mech suit for when Kivotos Branded Legally Distinct Firearms™ aren't quite enough

Then when the arc is done she formally becomes friends with C&C and, as is tradition, gains a bunny suit

It’s weird, because, like, I grew up with it being super obvious that song was always kind of a jazz fusion sort of thing, but… nobody really does that?

Like I’d say in general the soundtrack to Maverick Hunter X on the PSP is kind of disappointing, but their rendition of Armored Armadillo in particular is never what I thought that song sounded like.

Now, there’s something to be said for interpretation, and I don’t necessarily think Maverick Hunter X is trying to represent an “idealized version” of the SNES soundtrack. I also think that there are a couple of really good tracks on the Maverick Hunter X soundtrack, like their rendition of Launch Octopus.

But a lot of fan remixes also don’t really seem to go for the big band stuff, either. Everyone hears this song either as heavy metal or some form of electronic music and it’s really weird, because I don’t know what they were listening to back on the SNES.

Anyway, I shouldn’t throw tons of shade because I’m sure there’s lots of people out there who could run circles around me on music production stuff, and then some.

5. Karura

4. Anju

3. Aruruu

2. Kuon

1. Touka!!!

1). 54,764 notes - 17 February 2018

Emotional Documentary: Hellshake Yano

2). 37,418 notes - 13 May 2018

3). 18,159 notes - 30 June 2018

4). 16,765 notes - 13 April 2018

5). 16,057 notes - 01 March 2018

6). 14,364 notes - 10 February 2018

7). 8,955 notes - 17 March 2018

8). 6,994 notes - 15 March 2018

9). 6,531 notes - 18 May 2018

10). 6,434 notes - 22 March 2018

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