MAPLE

HONG LU!!!!!!!!! YOUUUU!!! I’m sure plenty of people have noticed at this point but these two pieces of dialogue are so good bc he’s talking about how most people in the city aren’t inherently cruel

And most people who ARE cruel and terrible are become of circumstance—I mean—he constantly sees it first hand with the other sinners, some of them becoming so malicious or angry or closed off because of the things in their past having to be faced again.

People choose to be like that because of the world, not because they want to be cruel. In the same way a hostile home breeds hostile children, a hostile world brews a hostile population.

His own experiences with family (xichun being the “nicest” despite verbally diffing him 24/7) allow him to understand that Don Quixotes thirst for kindness justice and virtuous hard work are not delusions. They are how people truly wish they could be. (Sinclair also mentions a bit before that he wants to be like DQ as well.)

Don Quixote is lucid because she understands that the world does not define her own actions, her own beliefs, her own adventures. Maybe they define the adventures of others, but not her. She is the one holding the reins and galloping onward.

Yet with Hong Lu, the same sparkle Don Quixote shares with him in their eyes is starting to dim.

Seeing the world for what it is, trying to learn and understand as much as possible, it’s killing the light inside of him.

Here he is failing to fight for his nature, and letting cruelty and rage crush his way of living. The smoke war, nagel und hammer, T corp, Siegfried, the warp trains, every great tragedy of the world he has witnessed on this grand adventure is another weight to the chain sinking the glimmer in his eye’s jade. He lets it be crushed, so that it can be replaced by malice and hatred like his brothers. Hong Lu cannot possibly shine through the trenches of the city.