Embryon and comrades
So I've been kinda wanting to essay on this since Kuhn said something a few weeks ago, and it seems pretty relevant to current events with the Embryon anyway. I kinda lost track of the point somewhere along the way in this essay so whatever. Also Kuhn~ Now you owe me two essays :D
In some ways, the Embryon are very simple about comrades.
Comrades are the people they love more than anything. It is absolutely impossible to overstate the importance of comrades to them. Any of them would die for a comrade without hesitation. Without their comrades, they…might survive, but they'd never really be entirely happy. Comrades are the people they fight alongside, the people they expect to die alongside, the people they want to live alongside. If it was necessary to fight God hirself for their comrades' sake, the Embryon wouldn't even hesitate. Literally.
For example, Cielo…honestly doesn't care as much as he might about the world being destroyed. He doesn't think it's good, and he'd fight to protect Fred (who's still alive) because Fred's a comrade and a kid. But honestly he's a little "fuck you you're the ones pissing God off by hurting Sera" about it! But it would never even occur him not to try to save the world, even if it means dying, even if it means fighting God in the afterlife, just because that's what his comrades want to do.
Sera said it best in chan the other day. Individually, the Embryon are these nice cannibal demons with their own interests and friendships and whatever. Individually, they can be defeated. However, when you get them en masse, they do not know how to stop. They came from a world where to end the war, they had to defeat every other tribe in the Junkyard. They had around 15 members. Other tribes ranged from maybe a 1000 to maybe a lot more. They beat them all through a sheer refusal to let their numbers disadvantage them. They then go into the real world. Despite being treated with astonished contempt by most of those they meet, they proceed to basically go to war against the entire real world. The Karma Society has Sera? Well then, we'll eat our way through the entire Karma Society if we have to. Sera accidentally destroyed the world? I guess we have to eat our way through the rest of Karma Society in order to get where we can stop it. Even when the Embryon starts dying one by one, they don't give up. Ever. They just…really they just start using their own deaths as ways to get even further in their goals and to find a death that's to their own satisfaction. Argilla chooses not to leave a dying comrade alone, even though she knows it'll bring her death. Heat uses it to make sure Serph will take care of Sera. Gale uses his to make Angel reach her own form of redemption. Cielo dies to save Sera as he failed to before. Sera dies to fix the things she broke. Serph dies so that Sera won't go alone.
And then they reach the afterlife, Sera and Serph become Seraph the enlightened floating hermaphrodite, and they go off to fight God.
The Embryon are, by any standards, not quite sane in how they regard their comrades. Their love of their comrades is just…so fundamental it's almost hard to essay on.
At the same time, despite the intensity of their love, the actual dynamics of Embryon love can get complicated when you go outside the core six (Serph, Sera, Heat, Argilla, Gale, Cielo). Hell, even within the core six it's not entirely simple. There are complications. Heat loves Sera more than any of his other comrades, and loves Serph about as much as he loves Sera. He loves his other comrades and wouldn't hurt them for anything less than hurting Sera…but even failing to protect Sera would get Heat losing it at them and hurting them badly. (Cielo doesn't blame him for this really because he doesn't think he should have let Sera be kidnapped either. But this probably doesn't help much.) Gale and Heat tend to have personality conflicts. Cielo tends to think that Serph loves him the least. Argilla and Heat are the most awesome odd couple ever and tops Heat awesomely. I'm pretty sure Gale's :| kinda got on Cielo's nerves at first. I always kinda figured that Cielo started off being very willing to accept Lupa partially because hey, anyone who could break Gale's :| face couldn't be all that bad! Heat and Cielo's bff relationship gets complicated sometimes because Heat likes to punch Cielo on occasion and would occasionally like Cielo to punch back, but Cielo hates hitting his comrades. He knows it's weirdly affectionate on Heat's part unless it's because he failed Sera and doesn't mind Heat hitting him that much because well Heat's kinda retarded about emotions sometimes, but Cielo just doesn't want to hit back. I love Gale and Argilla's relationship. Gale and Serph have this awesome a single glance is enough for Gale to know exactly what Serph wants and he'll do it because Serph's his leader dynamic. (Well okay Serph's looks tend to be communicative enough that all the Embryon can sort of tell what he wants.) Etc! I could ramble about Embryon dynamics all day but that is not the point of this essay.
Comrade's comrades get have a great deal of potential for miscommunication, since the Embryon's love of their comrades is so important to them that it leaks over. They all accepted Roland as a comrade, Argilla accepted Jinana as a comrade, Gale accepted Lupa as a comrade, in camp Serph's accepted Canaan as a comrade, and Heat had accepted Kuhn as a comrade (yes this is where it's going to get seriously complicated). But because one of them accepts someone else as a comrade, do the rest of them?
Well, it's complicated. I'm not sure they entirely know how respond. Jinana was the first non-Embryon that one of them fell in love with, and I don't think they quite knew how to respond. Heat in particular was kinda a douche XD ♥ Lupa was the first non-Embryon that Cielo relaxed enough around to tease and probably could have been accepted into the Embryon as a full comrade given some time and his desire. Since there wasn't any time, he'd be in a comrade's comrade position. Roland got accepted as a full comrade, but he's still a little on the outside. Mostly I think by his own not really knowing how to handle a tribe of cannibal demons loving him XD Canaan gets a boost because the person that views him as a comrade is the leader, so he'd probably be accepted by the entirety of the tribe without much difficulty. Kuhn…gets his own multiple paragraphs later.
Basically, the Embryon are predisposed to like their comrades' comrades. They're predisposed to trust them, and if their comrade's comrade would like to become their comrade, there wouldn't be that much difficulty. I'd put the line somewhere between they'd risk their lives for a comrade's comrade, but they wouldn't throw their life away for one. Still that's a pretty substantial sacrifice for someone that they may barely know. The Embryon are used to living hard and intensely and so it doesn't seem out of whack for them.
At the same time, they expect their comrade's comrade to treat them well and help them if they need it. Canaan cared enough to bring Cielo soup post-coma, so he's doing pretty well. Jinana…I dunno have there been any incidents where she's needed to help? Most of the threats they've had in camp came from Bat, and the Embryon would generally just want her not to interfere when they kill Bat. Essentially, a comrade's comrade is at very least an ally, and should generally act as one. Or as a friend. Or as a comrade. The Embryon would accept any of these.
This is where Kuhn fucked up in the CFUW prison! An ally wouldn't basically completely ignore him for an enemy of his. Essentially, Cielo reached the conclusion that Kuhn was Bat's comrade, and presumably still considered himself Heat's comrade, and could not be counted on in a pinch by any other Embryon. The reasons he let Bat pick a fight with him in the CFUW reveal post were…complicated to say the least. There was a lot of frustration, a lot of anger, a lot of "fuck you I am not on your side and you are a traitorous bastard who doesn't deserve to live", but he also figured that it would gauge Kuhn's reaction. Which also means that he knew there was a chance he'd die again in the dream, but honestly he didn't entirely care at that moment. And Kuhn's anger was directed equally at Cielo. Which, well, Cielo was for once the one who transformed first. So you know, from Kuhn's perspective yeah it was justified. From Cielo's perspective, however, it meant he was too close to Bat to be trusted, because it meant that he could well harm an Embryon to keep the Embryon from hurting Bat. Would Kuhn do so? Idk I'm not Kuhn. My impression is that yes, he might if Kuhn thought it was the Embryon's fault for fighting. And that is entirely unacceptable to Cielo, and it's an intensely dangerous situation for the Embryon to have an ally that they would expect to help them, who has helped them with Bat in the past to have changed like that and them not to know it. Which reminds me! Hey Gale if you're reading this has he heard yet?
But this also means that I would guess that they're all looking at comrades' comrades with a new light. Fortunately, Cielo generally has a good relationship with Canaan and Jinana, and he's really pretty sure they're not secretly dating an enemy. He trusts that if Jinana did, she'd understand enough that she'd tell them, because one of the things Cielo did kind of realize though not entirely consciously in CFUW is that there are things that people in the Junkyard understood better than civilians. And that's both a condemnation in his head of Kuhn and most the sheep.
Cielo doesn't tend to accept other people as comrades very easily. It's…kinda weird, because he trusts Pell honestly more than he trusts any of his comrades' comrades. And he trusts Canaan and Jinana a fair amount. And there are a few other people he considers to be good friends. But Cielo ultimately doesn't expect to spend his life with them, and he doesn't expect to die for them (or them to die for him, but really he'd prefer him to die for them generally). He'd risk his life to defend Pell without a second thought. He'd camp die for him without a second thought. But…huh. I just realized that it's ultimately the fact that Cielo would place the Embryon's safety well above anyone else's in camp that keeps him from considering them a comrade. That hasn't historically stopped the Embryon from accepting new comrades. But considering what happened with Heat, and especially now with Kuhn, he doesn't…feel safe regarding as a comrade someone he doesn't place on equal priority as his other comrades. Cielo isn't the most evenhanded about loving his comrades (that's Serph, I'd say, although if Serph wants to make any comments here I'd <3 at you), but he's relatively so. And that's a pretty high bar for anyone to reach and Cielo is in his own way fairly closed off. He'll like people pretty easily but you'll have a hard time reaching past that. And now, of course, anyone outside the Embryon that he might love enough to view as a comrade would…probably have to reassure him that they would support his comrades too in some way before he accepted them fully.
Tl:dr I don't know what point I was trying to make either. In conclusion if I ever have to try to keep track of comrades versus comrades' versus comrade's as much as I have attempted to here, I may shoot myself. And I refuse to try to correct my mistakes in that matter any more.
Edit: Oh right, one more thing!
App Argilla~
In some ways, the Embryon are very simple about comrades.
Comrades are the people they love more than anything. It is absolutely impossible to overstate the importance of comrades to them. Any of them would die for a comrade without hesitation. Without their comrades, they…might survive, but they'd never really be entirely happy. Comrades are the people they fight alongside, the people they expect to die alongside, the people they want to live alongside. If it was necessary to fight God hirself for their comrades' sake, the Embryon wouldn't even hesitate. Literally.
For example, Cielo…honestly doesn't care as much as he might about the world being destroyed. He doesn't think it's good, and he'd fight to protect Fred (who's still alive) because Fred's a comrade and a kid. But honestly he's a little "fuck you you're the ones pissing God off by hurting Sera" about it! But it would never even occur him not to try to save the world, even if it means dying, even if it means fighting God in the afterlife, just because that's what his comrades want to do.
Sera said it best in chan the other day. Individually, the Embryon are these nice cannibal demons with their own interests and friendships and whatever. Individually, they can be defeated. However, when you get them en masse, they do not know how to stop. They came from a world where to end the war, they had to defeat every other tribe in the Junkyard. They had around 15 members. Other tribes ranged from maybe a 1000 to maybe a lot more. They beat them all through a sheer refusal to let their numbers disadvantage them. They then go into the real world. Despite being treated with astonished contempt by most of those they meet, they proceed to basically go to war against the entire real world. The Karma Society has Sera? Well then, we'll eat our way through the entire Karma Society if we have to. Sera accidentally destroyed the world? I guess we have to eat our way through the rest of Karma Society in order to get where we can stop it. Even when the Embryon starts dying one by one, they don't give up. Ever. They just…really they just start using their own deaths as ways to get even further in their goals and to find a death that's to their own satisfaction. Argilla chooses not to leave a dying comrade alone, even though she knows it'll bring her death. Heat uses it to make sure Serph will take care of Sera. Gale uses his to make Angel reach her own form of redemption. Cielo dies to save Sera as he failed to before. Sera dies to fix the things she broke. Serph dies so that Sera won't go alone.
And then they reach the afterlife, Sera and Serph become Seraph the enlightened floating hermaphrodite, and they go off to fight God.
The Embryon are, by any standards, not quite sane in how they regard their comrades. Their love of their comrades is just…so fundamental it's almost hard to essay on.
At the same time, despite the intensity of their love, the actual dynamics of Embryon love can get complicated when you go outside the core six (Serph, Sera, Heat, Argilla, Gale, Cielo). Hell, even within the core six it's not entirely simple. There are complications. Heat loves Sera more than any of his other comrades, and loves Serph about as much as he loves Sera. He loves his other comrades and wouldn't hurt them for anything less than hurting Sera…but even failing to protect Sera would get Heat losing it at them and hurting them badly. (Cielo doesn't blame him for this really because he doesn't think he should have let Sera be kidnapped either. But this probably doesn't help much.) Gale and Heat tend to have personality conflicts. Cielo tends to think that Serph loves him the least. Argilla and Heat are the most awesome odd couple ever and tops Heat awesomely. I'm pretty sure Gale's :| kinda got on Cielo's nerves at first. I always kinda figured that Cielo started off being very willing to accept Lupa partially because hey, anyone who could break Gale's :| face couldn't be all that bad! Heat and Cielo's bff relationship gets complicated sometimes because Heat likes to punch Cielo on occasion and would occasionally like Cielo to punch back, but Cielo hates hitting his comrades. He knows it's weirdly affectionate on Heat's part unless it's because he failed Sera and doesn't mind Heat hitting him that much because well Heat's kinda retarded about emotions sometimes, but Cielo just doesn't want to hit back. I love Gale and Argilla's relationship. Gale and Serph have this awesome a single glance is enough for Gale to know exactly what Serph wants and he'll do it because Serph's his leader dynamic. (Well okay Serph's looks tend to be communicative enough that all the Embryon can sort of tell what he wants.) Etc! I could ramble about Embryon dynamics all day but that is not the point of this essay.
Comrade's comrades get have a great deal of potential for miscommunication, since the Embryon's love of their comrades is so important to them that it leaks over. They all accepted Roland as a comrade, Argilla accepted Jinana as a comrade, Gale accepted Lupa as a comrade, in camp Serph's accepted Canaan as a comrade, and Heat had accepted Kuhn as a comrade (yes this is where it's going to get seriously complicated). But because one of them accepts someone else as a comrade, do the rest of them?
Well, it's complicated. I'm not sure they entirely know how respond. Jinana was the first non-Embryon that one of them fell in love with, and I don't think they quite knew how to respond. Heat in particular was kinda a douche XD ♥ Lupa was the first non-Embryon that Cielo relaxed enough around to tease and probably could have been accepted into the Embryon as a full comrade given some time and his desire. Since there wasn't any time, he'd be in a comrade's comrade position. Roland got accepted as a full comrade, but he's still a little on the outside. Mostly I think by his own not really knowing how to handle a tribe of cannibal demons loving him XD Canaan gets a boost because the person that views him as a comrade is the leader, so he'd probably be accepted by the entirety of the tribe without much difficulty. Kuhn…gets his own multiple paragraphs later.
Basically, the Embryon are predisposed to like their comrades' comrades. They're predisposed to trust them, and if their comrade's comrade would like to become their comrade, there wouldn't be that much difficulty. I'd put the line somewhere between they'd risk their lives for a comrade's comrade, but they wouldn't throw their life away for one. Still that's a pretty substantial sacrifice for someone that they may barely know. The Embryon are used to living hard and intensely and so it doesn't seem out of whack for them.
At the same time, they expect their comrade's comrade to treat them well and help them if they need it. Canaan cared enough to bring Cielo soup post-coma, so he's doing pretty well. Jinana…I dunno have there been any incidents where she's needed to help? Most of the threats they've had in camp came from Bat, and the Embryon would generally just want her not to interfere when they kill Bat. Essentially, a comrade's comrade is at very least an ally, and should generally act as one. Or as a friend. Or as a comrade. The Embryon would accept any of these.
This is where Kuhn fucked up in the CFUW prison! An ally wouldn't basically completely ignore him for an enemy of his. Essentially, Cielo reached the conclusion that Kuhn was Bat's comrade, and presumably still considered himself Heat's comrade, and could not be counted on in a pinch by any other Embryon. The reasons he let Bat pick a fight with him in the CFUW reveal post were…complicated to say the least. There was a lot of frustration, a lot of anger, a lot of "fuck you I am not on your side and you are a traitorous bastard who doesn't deserve to live", but he also figured that it would gauge Kuhn's reaction. Which also means that he knew there was a chance he'd die again in the dream, but honestly he didn't entirely care at that moment. And Kuhn's anger was directed equally at Cielo. Which, well, Cielo was for once the one who transformed first. So you know, from Kuhn's perspective yeah it was justified. From Cielo's perspective, however, it meant he was too close to Bat to be trusted, because it meant that he could well harm an Embryon to keep the Embryon from hurting Bat. Would Kuhn do so? Idk I'm not Kuhn. My impression is that yes, he might if Kuhn thought it was the Embryon's fault for fighting. And that is entirely unacceptable to Cielo, and it's an intensely dangerous situation for the Embryon to have an ally that they would expect to help them, who has helped them with Bat in the past to have changed like that and them not to know it. Which reminds me! Hey Gale if you're reading this has he heard yet?
But this also means that I would guess that they're all looking at comrades' comrades with a new light. Fortunately, Cielo generally has a good relationship with Canaan and Jinana, and he's really pretty sure they're not secretly dating an enemy. He trusts that if Jinana did, she'd understand enough that she'd tell them, because one of the things Cielo did kind of realize though not entirely consciously in CFUW is that there are things that people in the Junkyard understood better than civilians. And that's both a condemnation in his head of Kuhn and most the sheep.
Cielo doesn't tend to accept other people as comrades very easily. It's…kinda weird, because he trusts Pell honestly more than he trusts any of his comrades' comrades. And he trusts Canaan and Jinana a fair amount. And there are a few other people he considers to be good friends. But Cielo ultimately doesn't expect to spend his life with them, and he doesn't expect to die for them (or them to die for him, but really he'd prefer him to die for them generally). He'd risk his life to defend Pell without a second thought. He'd camp die for him without a second thought. But…huh. I just realized that it's ultimately the fact that Cielo would place the Embryon's safety well above anyone else's in camp that keeps him from considering them a comrade. That hasn't historically stopped the Embryon from accepting new comrades. But considering what happened with Heat, and especially now with Kuhn, he doesn't…feel safe regarding as a comrade someone he doesn't place on equal priority as his other comrades. Cielo isn't the most evenhanded about loving his comrades (that's Serph, I'd say, although if Serph wants to make any comments here I'd <3 at you), but he's relatively so. And that's a pretty high bar for anyone to reach and Cielo is in his own way fairly closed off. He'll like people pretty easily but you'll have a hard time reaching past that. And now, of course, anyone outside the Embryon that he might love enough to view as a comrade would…probably have to reassure him that they would support his comrades too in some way before he accepted them fully.
Tl:dr I don't know what point I was trying to make either. In conclusion if I ever have to try to keep track of comrades versus comrades' versus comrade's as much as I have attempted to here, I may shoot myself. And I refuse to try to correct my mistakes in that matter any more.
Edit: Oh right, one more thing!
App Argilla~