#lean walhalla

🟣🎮 Genderbent Lain (Lyn)

💬🗣 ABXY, GET OUT OF SIGHT‼️💥💥

guess who has been listening to Silver Wolf lvl999 trailer OST (it's me 😭)

the idea of gamer Lain stuck came after seeing this drawing from @emperor-forneus and Silver Wolf's overall character vibe and aesthetic did NOT help me to dissuade that either (they're lowkey a teensy bit similar...)

(P.S.: I had help on Genderbent HIkaru and Hyuga's hair design from this post, go check it out! 🗣)

so let's get right into it!!

sparking/surge isn't a perfect season and it took many hits during it's production (thanks covid /s). still, it was enjoyable! but the question of what exactly flare is never gets answered. not in a follow up post, not in a qna, hell, not even in the manga if i remember correctly.

on the most surface level possible flare is just the kids going up in flames. though it's not really something we haven't seen before in the series. not as flashy as during surge, but we do have lui with his iconic blue fire for hair, and drum. i think we all know what his hair (or lack of hair /j) does. the characters having something to do with fire isn't new and yet in surge it's much more intense. every scene involving flare is brimming with life, you can almost feel it desperately trying to tell the viewer something but it keeps missing the mark. because i think it's trying to describe something indescribable

and that something is passion!

now this is where we're finally diving into our boy lain FKSKKD he's an incredibly strong and skilled blader and (at first) the audience, alongside shu, are led to believe that the reason for his spiraling is the fact that he can't find someone stronger than him. when looking deeper into this, and overall the message of the whole series, the main cause for his behavior isn't the fact that he couldn't find someone to defeat him. it's the fact that he couldn't find someone to share his passion with.

having a rival. countless of times we've heard of the importance of having a rival. having someone motivating you to keep getting stronger, to keep getting better, to keep going. someone that shares the same level of passion as you. lain had no rival. this is the crucial part shu and the rest of the cast was missing when dealing with lain. shu especially, as someone who's had his rival with him since kindergarten (*cough* valt *cough*). you could say shu was trying to 'emulate' the role of a rival, and while him trying to help lain like that was incredibly kind, it's unfortunately not enough. that realization did hit shu right before the ultimate tag team tournament (and he kick-started a new plan, a better plan) but that was still a long time and a decision that took a toll on lain himself. all along what lain needed was the hizashis.

back to them for a little bit just to put their situations into the perspective of this post. let's start with hyuga. a boy brimming with passion. he was the first brother to properly resonate with his bey, and he was the second one to show signs of flare after lain. however due to his hyperactive nature he had a hard time getting people to understand his feelings towards beyblade and take him seriously, which led to a lot of them (hikaru included in the bunch) trying to change or "fix" the way he approached his battles. so much passion, yet seemingly no one to properly share it with.

now about hikaru. he's the opposite of hyuga. i'll be honest that i still don't know exactly what's wrong with this boy (affectionate). hikaru was the very last to resonate with his bey and also the last one to achieve flare. dare i say that he had to force both of these processes due to him approaching beyblade in an analytical way. using his brain for beyblade when one should mostly be using their heart. still, in his own way, he was very much passionate about everything he was doing. and just like hyuga, people couldn't fully understand hikaru's ways and he got his fair share of misunderstandings due to that (ESPECIALLY with hyuga. typical sibling angst). once again - so much passion, yet seemingly no one to properly share it with.

lain, hyuga and hikaru. three kids that keep getting misunderstood. they keep trying to communicate something, something important, but no one receives the message clearly. conveniently enough they're also the only three characters in the series to ever experience this phenomenon called "flare".

in short, to me, flare is a manifestation of feelings and passions that have nowhere to go. because you have no one to share them with. yet the passion keeps burning. it burns, and burns, and burns, until you drown in this feeling.

lain's interest in the hizashis peaked as soon as they showed signs of their own flare. due to all the walls he had put around himself he couldn't understand why they were making him feel so... different. only a flare user can properly understand what another's flare means. i'm positive that deep down, lain was excited to see proof he was no longer alone in this experience, even though on the surface those feelings bubbled up as anger/fear. (we're gonna get you emotional regulation bro trust)

now, gotta put in a good word about shu's role in all this of course LMAO. as the very first character in the series to have something to do with fire it makes sense to have him here, as a mediator for a fire-based issue. it took him some time, but halfway through the season he realized what he was missing, made a new plan of action, made sure to show lain what having a rival really means (lain watching the battle shu and valt had) and helped lain get to the finals of the tournament, where he could finally face off his brothers in flare - hikaru and hyuga.

this whole season was characters being placed in insane tag teams (best example being lui and drum) yet despite all of them seeming to be so different from one another they work so well. because turns out that deep down? they're not so different after all. the same applies to lain and the hizashis. at this rate they're triplets /j (maybe /hj? "the theme of the season is brotherhood"). i wholeheartedly believe a tag team with lain/hikaru or lain/hyuga would be the most broken combination in all of history.

must be hard being the only one with yellow headlights for eyes in the fam

👁️

Right now it’s Father’s day for me, so who better to draw than Shu? The guy who literally goes around adopting every child he can find in basically all the season. (Delta is included because I SAY SO!!!!!)

In Beyblade Burst, many of the people can be considered as equivalents to people from the Metal Saga or the original. They are also often considered to be weaker than the previous generation bladers. With that, I've made 7 polls of Burst vs. Metal/OG to see who comes closest to defying this. This is the sixth poll - Pitch-Black Flame vs. The Chosen One.