#and something else about me calling them faust and mephisto and not sasha and eno

[bungone]

apparently people like it when i rant about things, so

Mephisto and Faust didn't deserve their fate. They didn't deserve to die. Narratively, it makes sense. It's well written. Awful. I love it. The story would not have been the same if they hadn't. I'm not saying they shouldn't have died. I'm just saying, they didn't deserve to.

I see so many memes and jokes and whatnot about how much they suck, how they're pure evil (Mephisto more than Faust), but you have to remember they're children. Literal children.

In canon they're what. 13? 14? They could (should) be in middle school- and the fact they're not in itself is fucked up, because it's not just a normal situation for the world they live in, there's circumstances that were out of their control that prevented them from ever growing up to be normal kids.

Mephisto? he was in school. Then he got assaulted— that's a canon point. And by no fault of his own he now has a terminal illness that makes everyone around him simultaneously terrified of him and hate him on a fundamental level. Guess who was the only one who didn't? Faust.

And that's cool and all but two kids who's ages are in the single digits shouldn't have to rely solely on each other to survive. No buts, no exceptions, they're supposed to have adults care for them.

And guess who that adult was? Talulah. And that was fine, sure, at first, before the whole changing thing. She was the adult figure that they needed and it's no surprise at all that Mephisto refused to leave even after she changed. She was the only one who showed them an ounce of kindness and that was something Mephisto, unlike Faust, had experienced before. So it makes sense that Faust would be less trusting of her and ready to leave.

But they didn't. They stayed, and these 13 year olds, with like, severe developmental trauma, who have been conditioned to be okay with violence and death so long as they achieve their goal in the end, aren't to blame for their circumstances?

I mean sure, Mephisto is sadistic and doesn't care for the lives of all his soldiers. Tell me the fact that they all look exactly the same and wear masks doesn't have something to do with it.

Look me in the eye and tell me soldiers that don't have human faces and all wear uniforms and could easily be perceived as carbon copies to an outsider wouldn't be easy to overlook.

The fact they've been stripped of their individuality makes me think that he��Mephisto, I mean—can't actually handle killing people all that well.

anyway thats that pls get homeboy a res stone and cough drops and a karaoke machine and his silly little snake boy he's in a severely unhealthy codependent relationship with back pls thanks

[mefausto19]

opinions on the relationship of faust and talulah? i remembered your post abt them and i want to know more

OH YOO this is absolutely something that i’m thrilled to talk ab at length.

so the first thing that sticks out to me about their relationship is that it’s rather antagonistic. we can see it from their first interaction to their last, and then even past then to faust’s death and the consequences of it.

here, the first thing that sasha does is try to threaten talu. sasha tends to be really hostile, as it’s likely the best way he’s learned how to keep people away from him (and thus stay safe) on the streets. at first, he only sees her as a threat. talulah, on the other hand, only wants to help him and eno.

this is really interesting. talu is the first person besides eno who has ever been kind to sasha. she also seems to be the first adult that he’s ever had any kind of relationship with. it’s really a shame that this doesn’t quite go anywhere and isn’t expanded on in canon.

sasha and eno, on the other hand, are two children that she is able to save from freezing to death. she says it herself: 

this is what her ideals are all about: saving the infected and giving them a future. sasha and eno, as children, could in a kind of metaphorical sense be the “future” of the infected, as children are often seen as. in saving them, she is able to save two infected children and shape their lives going forward into something less bleak than the last generation. if she can give them a better life, then it is possible for her to give more infected children better lives as well, creating a new generation of infected that doesn’t have to suffer in the same way as the last.

in saving them, she definitively does something that is unquestionably good. in a world and position that’s swamped with uncertainties any moral dilemmas, that seems to mean a lot.

of course, we can’t really bring up these points without talking about what comes after. she completely fails them. the two of them are the people that kashchey, and by proxy her, wrong the most. mephisto becomes completely twisted and warped, and as a result becomes widely hated and abandoned for his crimes. faust is forced to live with all the regrets of what mephisto has become, threatened into staying silent and watching him and his best friend become monsters. in comparison to the other reunion leaders, they really are the two that talulah fucked up the most. in doing so, symbolically she fails the next generation of infected. she turns them into killing machines or soldiers traumatized by bloodshed. she fails her ideals, and she fails faust and mephisto.

and then her meeting sasha and eno is no longer something that can really be seen as good. her presence in their lives does a lot of harm. it could be argued that they would be better off if she hadn’t found them.

on that note, there’s a completely different aspect of faust and talu’s relationship that is extremely interesting to me: honesty.

As two characters that are somewhat defined by their secrecy, it’s incredibly telling that they seem to be somewhat honest with each other. First, the scene from the past:

While talu is talking to both sasha and eno here, she is really only having a conversation with sasha here. she says it herself: they might be too young to understand what she’s saying, but she still wants to tell sasha, specifically (this is kinda more clear in cn skjhnks). sasha can follow along with what she’s saying here for the most part, calling her out and asking her questions (again in the somewhat rude way that he does). eno, on the other hand, admits that he doesn’t get it, and seems scandalized when sasha is rude.

talulah is able to have an honest conversation with sasha. she can’t quite have that with eno, who idolizes her (which is a different kind of connection, tbf!). bar alina, she might be closer to sasha than she is to anyone else. i’m not really sure about frostie, but they don’t seem that close, though they can be friendly: frostie doesn’t even really know alina, as shown by her lines after alina dies.

next, considering exactly what talu is talking about here, it’s very meaningful that sasha is able to understand what she’s saying. what she says here directly contradicts what kashchey does later on. kashchey ends up using her name as a symbol for the infected to follow, expecting that they will follow “whoever has the more important-sounding title.” kashchey wants eno to simply follow his words without thinking them through. the names that they are given, and the names of their friends, end up being a symbol of their ties to reunion and all of the tragedy that brings. these are all things that talu lays out here as things that she clearly doesn’t want.

sasha understands what talulah is saying here; eno doesn’t. sasha ends up directly confronting talu about how she changed, wanting to go against it; eno doesn’t. similarly, sasha seems to understand talu overall on a much deeper level than most people, including eno (tho tbh maybe he does but is just Not Thinking About It)

then, we get to their last interaction: their confrontation after kashchey possesses talu.

in my completely arbitrary opinion this is like the pinnacle of their relationship. this has like everything. there are so many things to unpack here. this is the culmination of all of their trust, and the thing that really drives home all of the tragedy of their lives.

we can see the hostility from faust to talu, because talu has proven herself to be a threat after all. for the first time, we can see talu be a little bit hostile back, threatening him to stay in line.

interestingly, faust is the only person that has a direct confrontation with talu in the wake of kashchey’s possession. THE ONLY PERSON. i think about this every day. frostnova never confronts talulah, even though she knows. neither does patriot. mephisto definitely doesn’t. and then all of the other reunion leaders and grunts are people that didn’t know her as well. faust, then, is the ONLY PERSON who actually talks to her. faust, who is allergic to communication. whose entire life is just one big ao3 “miscommunication” tag. he’s the only one that questions it out loud. he’s the only one that challenges her about it. and talulah--the old talulah--would absolutely want all of these people to question this. she would want these people to fight back against this person who’s going against all of her ideals. she wouldn’t want the people she considers her friends to passively follow someone who stands against everything that she believes in just because they wear her face.

it really ties back into that last conversation. he understands her; he’s close to her. he understands that she’s changed, and that the old talulah would never stand for what the current version of herself is doing. he’s close enough to her to go to her with her concerns instead of whatever patriot and frostnova were doing.

and because of this conversation, there’s this kind of tension between talu/kash and faust. because the two of them are kind of in on this secret that everyone else isn’t really acknowledging. and in that way faust is the only one that “knows” talukash’s secret: and then on the other hand talukash is the only one that knows faust’s secret.

because faust is hiding a lot of things. he’s hiding a lot of things that he doesn’t let the people closest to him know. and talukash is the only one that understands him in turn (albeit because they’re the ones causing all of these problems but skdhnjksh). they know that faust is miserable and wants to run away; they know that he’d do anything for mephisto and that’s why he’s staying; they know that being in reunion is weighing on him and traumatizing him. and they might be the only ones who know. not his friends, not his allies, but his closest enemy. they are the ones who most understand him.

and then, of course--faust dies, and manages to continue their weird ass relationship from beyond the grave. he spites kash by dying and saving mephi and the crossbowmen, going against kash’s expectations of him. in doing so he fucks up kash’s plans and manages to get back at him.

so, yes. faust and talu’s relationship is imo the most interesting dynamic in arknights. i really wish we got to see them interact more. it’s a shame that they dont really focus on it at all :(