#shapesmith invincible

omg please oh please tell me your thoughts on shapesmith

full disclosure, shapesmith has never been on my radar as a particularly interesting character for me, like… angst wise. but i’ll give you something because i’m nothing if not capable of making people suffer

shapesmith reminds me, oddly enough, of john doe (joker) from the telltale batman series. i played that shit YEARS ago. but there’s something about the two of them that feels the same to me, and it might be the endearing unfamiliarity with the world around them — in telltale, i think joker had memory problems — and their source of heroic action being a result of mimicking those around them. also their childish naïveté.

“my bed’s a racecar!”

hes also a silly guy. like john doe and oliver, to an extent, he has an incredibly low awareness of how the world functions, what morals really are. thats all well and complicated, but i think the sadder thing about him is that he felt this complete pull away from his people, a fundamental difference between them, and was reckless enough to follow the dream even though it cost his people EVERYTHING. its a common theme in invincible where characters follow their own paths selfishly, setting themselves apart from what’s expected of them (nolan and mark come to mind almost immediately). i think shapesmith takes a lot of blame from the people around him for the sequid invasion and while he does feel guilt, he has no clue how to repent for that in a way that is appealing to humans. unlike nolan and oliver, nobody’s teaching this guy how to be human.

even the way he interacts with powerplex is, i feel, a genuine attempt to understand him. shapeshifting into invincible wasn’t mocking him, i think he just took it very literally and was pretty excited to be able to do something helpful. obviously not helpful, because he misread it. he also seemed gutted that the police didn’t recognize who he was.

he’s not sad in this gut wrenching, overly tragic way. it’s kind of a slow-bleed pity, a knife wound ya didn’t really feel at first, where he’s so funny until you really think about it. then it’s like “oh, this guy didn’t get his dream of seeing the stars bc he got fired from nasa, nobody likes him, he doesn’t understand the world, he’s a piece of utility for the gda, and he has nobody to talk to even though there’s other characters who might get it”

please I need this

Rex is dead, Rudy took Rex’s name and is awful later on, Oliver isnt a silly kid anymore, Powerplex ain’t cool and redeemable anymore (only slightly my Shayla delusional now), Mark is… Mark is Mark, and William is William too.

Shapesmith and his lovely DJ girl 💕