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feroluce · 1 day ago

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Browsing Twitter bored as shit at work and came across a thread about Boothill's motivations for what he did at the Luminary Wardance, and!

Glad to see there were fewer people accusing him of just being evil (he's not) and trying to kill Luka- like no yeah, Boothill is kinda violent, but he's not like, "I'm going to kill this random innocent kid just for getting in my way" violent. He's just the "remember to punch a fascist today! ☆" (and then actually follows through!) type of violent jfkdasljfk but also. A lot of people seem to be swinging in the total opposite direction, with the belief that Boothill was just trying to protect Luka from getting hurt in dangerous fights further in the tournament and like.

That's sweet and all, but that's not quite it either.

Boothill isn't coy or secretive unless he needs to be. He tells Luka and the trailblazer straight up why he entered the tournament- he wants to rub it in the IPC's faces! He wants to stand there and gloat right in front of them while they can't do anything about it, because until their enforcers show up, none of them are actually strong enough (or stupid enough) to try and arrest him! Suck it!!

This is Boothill getting to stand up in front of the faction that ruined his life and flip them all the bird and tell them to suck his dick. Dude lives for almost nothing but revenge, it's important to him. Let him have this!!

(It's also probably a part of his plan to eventually make his way to Oswaldo Schneider, as we see him pull this same tactic in 2.6 with Micah, but that's a whole other essay, anyway-)

And I've even seen it get tossed around that Boothill is A Bad Guy because he should have just forfeited right then and there and let Luka advance, since he had a noble goal. Which... I feel is pretty unfair. That standard isn't held to literally anyone else in the Wardance that I'm aware of, even though most of Luka's opponents know why he's fighting and what he's fighting for. No one else cedes their matches. No one else just lets him through. Argenti was the one with the say so to let Luka back into the tournament or not through the repechage match, and he still made Luka fight for it. Even in the climatic final battle, Yanqing didn't just step aside and let Luka win.

And actually, Luka himself is the biggest offender of this, because we see him up against someone whose situation is much much more dire than his with Samatha, the borisin girl.

Samatha came to the Luofu to plead for help. Her people are being actively hunted. She and Sugata are the only ones that even survived the pilgrimage from their home, the Claretwheel Temple; everyone else with them died on the way. There are thousands of lives on the line, and if she fails here, then that means it was all for nothing. All the family she lost along the way will have died for nothing.

And even with all of that riding on the outcome of a tournament match, Luka doesn't forfeit.

He doesn't even take it easy on her.

He still fights her, earnestly and honestly, and takes the win.

And Luka doesn't do this because he's callous or wants Samatha to suffer or anything- he's the one who convinced Yukong to give her a chance. It's because he has a strong sense of honor. Luka seems to be the type to value a fair fight where both contestants can go all-out meet head-on. A conversation of the fists! A meeting of hearts and iron wills! I'd bet money he'd love shounen anime skzjjzkdjsjs

But the point is that Luka sees bowing out like that as an insult. Luka hates pity like that.

He says this SO many times during the Wardance, too

And so even if Boothill had gone totally out of character, and looked at Luka like "you poor thing 🥺 I feel so sorry for you 🥺 I'll just let you go ahead 🥺" I really don't think Luka would have accepted that. He would have insisted Boothill fight him. He doesn't want someone's pity.

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So, Boothill throwing the match is ruled out. He's under no obligation to do so just because Luka is younger than him and has a noble goal, he's not the type of man to offer pity like that, and Luka wouldn't accept it anyway.

If Boothill wants to advance, he needs a win. And Boothill knows he already has this win in the bag, he can tell just by sizing Luka up. Boothill's confidence in his abilities isn't just him being cocky- he is constantly on the run and fighting the IPC. He lives a very intense lifestyle, filled with a lot of combat, and he has been living this way for a very long time. There is a WIDE difference between him and Luka in terms of skill. And as Dan Heng has said before in defense of his character, Boothill isn't interested in picking on people weaker than him.

So he needs to win, and he wants to win with as little of a physical altercation as possible. Easy peasy, Boothill does this part all day everyday!

Everyone takes empty threats a bit more seriously when they're staring down the barrel of a gun ☆

If Boothill can scare Luka into dropping out, he won't lose his own goals, plus he doesn't have to beat the tar out of some dumb innocent kid who doesn't hardly know how the world works yet. Besides, Luka can always win his way back in through the repechage match.

Boothill intimidates Luka to back out. Luka does not back out.

Boothill threatens Luka to back out. Luka does not back out.

For that matter, he steps forward!

And I have a whole post about it over here, but you can see that like. Yes, Boothill’s goal is to scare Luka off so he doesn't have to beat him senseless. But that doesn't mean he's not proud of Luka for standing his ground and coming after him. Boothill can be very aggressive, and besides, think about his background. Where he came from, what was done to him. Of course he would see having the courage to attack and fight even a hopeless battle as something admirable.

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So, words didn't work. Neither did threats nor intimidation, which are basically Boothill's bread and butter.

But Boothill is pretty optimistic by nature, and he's sure he can still pull this off without having to actually hurt Luka. Besides, there's something in this match specifically that acts as his ace in the hole:

Luka can be shot without taking any damage, or even feeling any pain.

Which is why I really feel like even if Luka hadn't accepted the IPC's sponsorship, things probably would have gotten to this point anyway, because that iron arm makes for a perfect target where Boothill can fire off a shot and scare him, but not cause any injury. Remember, he's decided he's going to win, but he wants to do it with as little lasting damage as possible. If Luka won't back down and forfeit, Boothill's only options left are either a) escalate further and scare the daylights out of Luka so bad that he can't fight back anymore, or b) physically beat him into a knockout (which would have made it much less likely for Luka to be able to win the repechage match).

So the fact that it's an arm from the IPC, and that Boothill gets to tear it to pieces right in front of them, is really just a fun little bonus for him ☆

(((don't get me wrong, I don't think the arm had NO factor in this; when Luka accepted the contract with Topaz, there was a whole launch event, plus billboards everywhere where there weren't before. and Topaz stated that other than Boothill, Luka had been the only contestant not sponsored by the IPC. so Boothill would know this was something that had just happened, and that before, Luka had been standing strong against them.

when the IPC invaded Aeragon-Epharshel, they made traitors of some of Boothill's own fellow tribesmen. so Boothill is very familiar with this tactic, and it in particular seems to piss him off. I don't think what Topaz is doing is even remotely as malicious as what Oswaldo did of course; hers might even honestly come, at least partially, from a place of respect like she says.

but no matter her intentions, the fact does remain that it is generally not advised to trust the IPC while Belobog is in such a precarious position, and I'm sure Boothill was really relieved to see Luka with his old arm afterwards, and that this doubled as a way to strengthen his resolve.)))

And it worked! Of course it did. Boothill is a master marksman. He's been using a gun since his early days on Aeragan-Epharshel, so he was surely already extremely skilled with it, and the cyborg enhancements only aided that further. Not only does he have very precise aim, but these shots were made pretty close up, too, at a target walking straight towards him.

(so much love to @the-astral-express-archive for having this cg in hd so I can stare at it all I want wheeee)

What I mean to say is that the odds of Boothill missing his mark were just about zilch.

And it's hard to tell by the still art, but if you actually listen to that scene, you can count what sounds like six gunshots fired. To insist that Boothill could fire six shots, with all of those factors helping him, and miss his mark all six times, and hit only Luka's arm, completely by accident, is a pretty grave underestimate of Boothill's character, his skill, and it also kinda misses the point from a meta standpoint. Meta? Narrative? Whatever you would call it. Anyway! Boothill is inspired by and based on old wild west films, where the saving grace is often some nigh-impossible shot made by the crackshot hero of the story. Like, that's Boothill's whole shtick. I really don't think Hoyo would let him empty the whole clip and miss every time.

Basically, if Boothill had wanted to kill Luka, Luka would be dead.

He had every opportunity. Iirc, people have been killed in the Luminary Wardance matches before, and it doesn't even count as murder according to Luofu law? If that really is correct, he wouldn't have even been punished for it. Besides, he's already wanted by the IPC for murder and mayhem- what would one more tick on his body count matter?

If Boothill wanted it, Luka would have bled out all over the Sky Splitter's floor before anyone could even stop him.

Instead, all he did was scare him- I mean he scared the absolute crap out of him, to the point that Luka couldn't even stand- but still. Scaring someone shitless is a pretty far cry from attempted murder.

Like, Boothill says it himself- he doesn't give a single shit about honor or other people's morals. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have his own moral code, and it doesn't mean that he's unreasonable. He very much has his own logic that he follows. And that logic would never lead him to completely abandoning his own goals over something as ridiculous as pity, but it definitely wouldn't have lead him to killing an innocent person, either.

tl;dr Boothill is incredible at being terrifying and putting the fear of death in people and this scene was my favorite thing ever and I think he should do it again!!!!!

#ugh I wanna yap about the torture scene in 2.6 too bc oh my god that was hilarious #and it was apparently a fully optional scene! what do you mean people missed out on that!#I stumbled across it without realizing it was optional; I just saw the unpleasant man from outside Jesse's bar and immediately wanted to-#-fuck with him. it was a happy accident BSKZJSKKD

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feroluce · 2 days ago