Week 274! (Page 460 Script) (Patreon)

THIS MARKS PAYMENT FOR THE WEEK OF 11/3-11/9.

Here's the first script update for the month, for page 460.

Alright, well! Finally getting to the actual "lesson" part of this story arc, which is Lucy explaining how the fighting works in Furthia High. Fighting hasn't really happened in Furthia High for quite a long time, either being the whole thing with Hugo that introduced Lucy to being a part of this in the first place or Fox Kale and Max's fight from WAAAY back. It's gonna start coming up again, though, so I think it's important to properly explain it like it was important to explain how the whole Collective Unconscious and all that worked in this universe as well.

As Lucy states here, and like with pretty much everything else concerning this whole mindscape business, "fighting" within the mind is more just a perceived facsimile representation of something more abstract and unconscious. Literally it's a battle of mental strength and willpower rather than one of actual physical strength or dexterity. It doesn't really matter what you LOOK like, because what you look like is just your own perception of yourself really. Your "strength" comes with how strong your feelings and mind is, which can come from intelligence, cunning, ideals, beliefs, resolve, wisdom, and so on and so forth.

This translates to the weapons we've seen as well. They've always been mildly representative of some such thing or another concerning the person weilding them, even from the beginning. Fox Kale's weapon, which is the one we've seen the most of obviously, is a giant two-handed sword. It was made to be that giant on purpose, not only to fit with his style of swordsmanship (which I'll get into in the notes for the next script page), but also to reflect Fox Kale's immense amount of resolve and determination concerning his goal. Fox Kale is very single-minded and completely focused on his desire for revenge, and I think it's pretty obvious at this point how strongly he feels about it concerning how it's all he ever brings up really when he's not just being reactively snarky, so the size and shape of his weapon thus compliments that, a huge blade to cut down those that wronged him. On the other hand, though, such a huge weapon can very easily become clumsy, slow, and obvious to anyone with a good degree of perception, speed, and calm to them. Fox Kale may have a big sword, but he swings it wide and recklessly, just as he swings accusations and threats all around him, and that tends to be his downfall in a lot of situations thus far.

To bring up the other weapons we've seen thus far (minus Kale's, as, again, that's something for the next script update), Max had a combat knife with a bit of a bomb hidden within the handle. The knife was "small" for a weapon to represent Max's discretion and hidden nature, as you can easily hide the knife away, Max can easily hide away this part of his life. However, for being so small, he was able to easily stop Fox Kale's giant sword, meaning size doesn't always directly translate to power, and also perhaps meaning that Max can concentrate a lot of his willpower into a smaller, more honed state. The ring on the knife admittedly was just something I thought would look cool at the time, so Max could spin it around on his finger, but that extra flair certainly matches up with other aspects of his personality. Finally, the bomb in the handle again lends to Max's true secretive nature, a secret that he keeps close at hand (ahah) and only "reveals" when he desperately needs to, literally exploding outward when released, damaging and hurting both his enemy and himself.

Hugo on the other hand was one who didn't have a "weapon" in the traditional sense; he instead manipulated his own cigarette smoke for various purposes. He used it as a shield, a punching dagger of sorts, and to just plain manipulate and control Kale. The idea and metaphor of "smoke" is pretty obvious, in that Hugo is obviously an extremely scheming and devious sort of person, using the smoke to literally cloud the perceptions of others, to defend himself, and to attack others. This is meant to represent Hugo's ability to charm, persuade, and manipulate others via his charisma for his own protection and to further his own deeply-held beliefs concerning the state of "humanity" and their current forms.

Everything represents something! Makes sense I guess for a person with a psychology degree to do that with stuff literally happening in somebody's mind.