what about five made him ur blorbo…
Man, what made Five my guy.
There’s the surface level stuff – he hits a lot of tropes I love. Asshole with a heart, competent in everything but people, an assassin who gets cool fights to good music, teleports, last man in the world, has a fucked up wife situation. He’s a fifty-eight-year-old man who looks thirteen, that concept right there has so much to work through, all by itself.
All of that is really fun stuff, but under all of that, I think I can sum up why Five hit so hard with just that he has heart. The show could have gone the route of comic!Five – unredeemable bastard of a tiny man. That would have been fun, I love comic!Five, but he works better on a comic book page, where things can be more 2D. The change the show made – maybe on accident – is that show!Five loves an incredible amount, and that’s what hooked me hard. Sure, some of this is fan interpretation, but I think it’s got moments in-show to back it up. One of his first moves he made, when stuck in the apocalypse, was to make Delores – he has her within a few days of landing there. She says so much about him the second we meet her in the show - shorthand to tell us just how bad the apocalypse was, and that, when faced with nothing, Five makes a person he has to take care of. With that, he survived four decades as the last person on earth in dystopian hell before he could get back to save the world – so he says, at least, but he has always prioritized his siblings. They're his world. He’s not great at saying it, but he’s a man of action and his actions speak very loudly.
With all that love, comes a lot of grief, which is actually what keeps me going with Five. I’m pretty open that I’ve had a lot of grief in my life. I’m doing better, it’s been a number of years now, but grief doesn’t go away, and Five is an incredible vehicle for playing with and processing grief. Experiencing it, growing from it, moving on with life around it. And Five has so many layers of grief to play with. There’s the grief for his family who he found dead when he was 13, grief for the world because it all ended, grief for the life he lost, grief for the life he had to live, grief for what he’s had to do, grief for his body and his situation. How do you keep going and move on after experiencing such loss? I find it both cathartic and motivating to think about and sit in that space.
He's a walking tragedy and I adore him for it. Character of all time.
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Ok but just imagine for a sec;
Jed puts his hat on Octavius because he’s talking to Lancelot and Jed is still very protective/jealous abt that and in ACTUAL cowboy culture, putting your cowboy hat on someone essentially means that they’re yours. Not in an “i own you” way but in a “they’re mine/off limits” way. It means you mean a whole lot to them and also that everyone else needs to keep their hands off and their eyes away cause they are yours
like lowkey, its essentially claiming them as your spark publically, and is lowkey a pretty romantic thing to do especially if the recipient knowns the real meaning
however, internet culture only knows one of the very minor options of what it means (as in it rarely means this) which is the “save a horse, ride a cowboy” meaning
So Nicky sees Jed plop his hat on Octavius’s head and he is just flabbergasted
because holy shit Jed that is not appropriate
So Nick takes Jed aside and is like
“Dude you can’t do that”
“Do what?”
“Look, I know about the cowboy hat rule, and it’s cool if you wanna do that, but you can just say you want to go and do that in front of everybody like that, especially if Octavius is in mid-conversation”
And Jed just looks at Nick so confused because what the fuck is he talking about so eventually he winds up asking
“ok, Nick, wait a sec, …what do you think the cowboy hat rule is?”
“You know… ‘save a horse, ride a cowboy’…?”
“…EW NO NICK NO”
“No?”
“NO THAT AIN’T WHAT THAT MEANS AT ALL”
“Wait really?”
“YES! Ok, only on the rarest RAREST of occasions does it ever mean that! Where did you even learn that!?”
“The internet!- oh I see my mistake now.”
Idk that idea is just funny to me
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*Gasp* Can we get 1870! Cowboy Au Valeria??? What would she be??? How would she meet her partner??? Is it slow burn or do they move fast??? Does she try to kill her partner, like enemies to lovers or maybe it's lovers to enemies to lovers?!?!
I don't know what this is, I just want more Valeria....
Can I please have more of her ಥ╭╮ಥ
🐇
Actually yeah you can because I have ideas for her and Los Vaqueros in the 1870 au, I'll do Alejandro and Rudy later, here's Valeria:
El Sin Nombre is an outlaw that no one has managed to come even close to capturing. Their gang is feared and loved in equal measure, both for the safety they provide and the money they take for providing it. It's a large bounty on El Sin Nombre's head, large enough to draw the most desperate of gunslingers, or the stupidest. A bounty that big is basically a warning. You're not one to get involved in squabbles like that. You think in another life being a gunslinger might be fun, but in this one you're a stable hand. A horse trainer on a good day, a muck shoveler on a bad one.
On the best days you get to see Valeria. She's not in town often, only when she's looking to break in a new horse or collect a shipment of some kind, but when she is it's like the whole world holds its breath. You hold your breath, until she tells you to relax. She always looks over your horses with a critical eye, asks you questions about their health, their speed, whether they spook easy, if they've ever been out in the dust. You don't know what sort of work she does, but you know it wears her horse down fast.
The poor creature is always in need of something when she rides into town. It's a lovely chestnut stallion, that you think might be the proudest horse you've ever had the misfortune of trying to care for. You've been nipped by it more times than you can count. Really you should stop accepting its reins, but every time Valeria holds them out to you, you have to take them. You can't ignore an animal in need anyway. Especially when she thanks you every time you hand him back.
"He's just as good as new," she compliments, petting the horse's neck. The animal preens at her touch.
"I called the ferrier and got him new shoes, gave him a bath, he had a small abscess in his mouth but a little salt water'll clear that up quick," you pat the horse's flank and try not to flinch away from the stamp of its foot.
"Play nice, I like this one," Valeria coos to it in Spanish. You don't think she knows you speak her mother tongue, you're never sure how to bring that up.
"Did your, uh, business go well?" You ask, trying to make conversation. Valeria signals for one of the men she's with to pay you and hooks her foot in her stirrup to swing onto the horse's back.
"What do you think, did it go well?" She asks her group, the Spanish lilts off her tongue in a way that drives you half mad. One of the men laughs.
"As well as a bullet through the brain, and more money in our pockets."
Valeria hums, you pretend you didn't hear or understand that. It makes your blood run cold to think about. You do this a lot around Valeria, pretending you don't have suspicions about her work, fearing and loving her in equal measure. She really looks beautiful from the ground, the sun shining behind her head and casting dark shadows over her face.
"Things always go well for me," she tells you in english, and you believe her. You think the earth would quit spinning if she asked it to. All the stars in the sky would line up perfectly straight if she commanded.
"That's good," you nod, taking the money offered to you by her subordinate graciously. It's always smart to be gracious when dealing with people you suspect.
"Do you like working here, this-" She grimaces, "-shithole?"
"I like it better when you're here," you tell her honestly, it's good to be honest with people you suspect as well. You never want to be caught in a lie that could cost your life. Better to be honest, especially when it's complimentary.
Valeria laughs, throws her head back and laughs. You think that's a good sign. When she finishes, she pulls her hat from her head and leans to settle it on yours. "You should be careful with your sweet talk," she tips the hat low over your eyes, "next time I might steal you too."
You push her hat back as she snaps her reins to take off down the street. The sun might be getting to you with how warm you feel. You think something might've just happened, you hope it was something good. Because you're starting to think the man with no name might be a woman, and that is a much more dangerous line of thinking.
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