SO LIKE. As much as I roll with the Emanator of Elation Sampo theory, I do have. Some doubts about this specific instance of it. Not that I think Boothill is lying, or that I think Sampo isn't an Emanator, but I wonder if the person Boothill actually met was Sampo.
Just! Sampo is so careful. The only reason we even knew he wasn't of Belobog was due to a dialogue-dependent fourth wall-breaking dream sequence that no other character could have seen. It took a missable dream bubble in an out-of-the-way spot that was seemingly left only for the trailblazer at the very end of a side mission just to confirm him as a Masked Fool. Like it's not just the fact that Boothill mentions this person being an Emanator. It's that he knows they're also a Masked Fool, which is also something Sampo is incredibly dodgy about. Sparkle even seems to call him out on this in her party join line fjkdjaskldj
((But also, Boothill, baby. WHY were you trying to get them drunk????))
And regardless of if you believe him when he calls himself an old timer, he obviously has a lot of experience in doing what he does. He knows what he's doing, he's good at it, and he is viciously capable and competent, unfortunately for his victims smhznskdn
So it just. Feels very unlike him, for him to let his guard down enough to not only let himself get drunk in front of Boothill-
a total stranger btw whom Sampo has absolutely no reason to trust, and a dangerous Galaxy Ranger to boot who has plenty of blood on his hands and a significant bounty on his head
-but to get SO drunk that he lets loose the secret that he's an Emanator.
When Boothill brings this up, he mentions that if Emanators were obvious and known at a glance, it would lead to atrocities. And for as much as Sampo is disliked by his victims (there's an entire anti-Sampo organization in Belobog JFDKLASJFDL), it's all for fraud. He's wanted by the IPC as an intergalactic thief. He scams people out of their money, and only rich people at that. That's mostly all that he's known for. Nothing he does is violent, even though Sampo surely has the capacity to inflict a lot of harm.
And I don't mean that he's exactly a pacifist or anything; Firefly comments that Sampo seems like a highly skilled covert fighter. His voicelines make it sound like he enjoys combat- hell, his ult line makes him sound like a hitman. I like to hc him as being a pretty high ranker in the fighting rings at the World's End Tavern, like we see in the Simulated Universe occurrences.
But I don't think he would enjoy being the cause of uncontrollable violence and bloodshed.
Like yeah he's a dick who scams people on the regs for funsies, but he has lines he refuses to cross, which we see a lot of in how he interacts with Sparkle. More than just not enjoying it, I think he would hate it if he were found out and it caused an incident, especially since he seems so endeared to Belobog and her people now and it looks like he plans to return there. He wouldn't want to bring any of that back to them.
So I just can't imagine him carelessly fucking up bad enough to out himself to a random stranger that could easily put a bullet right through his head.
Sparkle maybe could, though.
Because as we find out later the dreamscape had expanded FAR beyond what it seemed, far enough that the trailblazer had been dreaming since the warp jump in. Most people enter it unknowingly, and don't realize they're already dreaming when they think they're still awake. Boothill and Dan Heng should have already been dreaming during their exchange on the Express that started all this.
And as long as someone knows they're dreaming, completely changing their appearance is easy, even for the common layman. We see this with a couple of NPCs and also Sparkle herself, with her (in)famous impression of Sampo.
Thank youuuuu Sparkle
And yeah, the trailblazer and almost all of the other characters wouldn't know about the expansion until near the very end. None of them realized they were dreaming even outside of their dream pools, and surely none of them would think to be suspicious of another person's appearance outside of the dreamscape like that.
But Sparkle has a script from Silver Wolf.
She knew all the secrets of the dreamscape, and she knew them from the very beginning. There would have been nothing stopping her from appearing as Sampo in front of Boothill and spilling all his secrets.
And she apparently has a long-standing history with Sampo, including trying to get him in on her own much more fiery and aggressive version of Elation.
Maybe all Sampo needs is to be outed as an Emanator, and then when all the violence and bloodshed catches up to him, then he'll finally understand! ദ്ദി(。•̀ ,<)~✩
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I have given into peer pressure.
Below the cut is my un-referenced, not proofread, off-the-cuff thoughts on the main JJK characters and their tendencies to have traits that contradict themselves, which not only makes them more rounded characters but also creates a really interesting situation in which characters have mirrors and foils not only with other characters, but also with themselves.
The point of this post is that the characters in JJK are complex. None of them are one-trick ponies and all of them contain multitudes and have, at least once, contradicted themselves and their beliefs.
Might be spoilery? I tried to keep it vague enough that it shouldn't be, but read at your own risk if you're anime only, I guess.
The Obvious One: Gojo
Gojo is "the strongest." It's debatable, I think, whether or not being "strong" is a personality trait, but he makes it his defining personality trait. (And I'm not here to do a Gojo character study, so for my purposes, it will be viewed as one.) Obviously, The Strongest is a title given to him by others, but he fully owns it and believes it. This is his identity; it's how he views himself, how he handles himself, and it is a preceding reputation that he gladly leans into. It's not a mask he hides behind, it's a flag he proudly displays on his ship to warn others of exactly who they're dealing with.
It makes sense, then, that Gojo's self-contradiction is that he has the biggest, most obvious weaknesses of all the characters in JJK. The first of these weaknesses is his knowledge of how strong he is. Toji exploits that weakness in the Hidden Inventory arc, and it almost costs Gojo is life. His second weakness is, very simply, Geto. Kenjaku exploits that weakness during Shibuya. Interestingly, Geto is a victim of Gojo's first weakness (Gojo is so self-assured that he seems to extend that assurance to the people around him, thinking that they are "as gods" like him just for being in his presence, and therefore he does not pay mind to Geto's spiraling), and exploits his second. He, better than anyone else, knows that he is Gojo's weakness, and he uses that knowledge to do everything he does before and during JJK 0 without repercussions.
Gojo is framed by himself and by many characters within JJK as being the "savior" of the jujutsu world, but in many ways he was, in fact, its downfall - because of his strength, and because of his weaknesses.
The Main One: Yuuji
Yuuji is the king of contradictions to me. Not all of it is within himself, and in fact a lot of it occurs because a large part of the plot is happening to him instead of the other way around, but he has one dichotomy that I do think is All Him. Yuuji defines himself as a cog - in his thoughts, he has been used and beaten down for evil already, so why not just be used for good as well. He thinks of himself as expendable and easily replaced; a foot soldier in a war being fought by titans. At some point, his goal stopped being to follow his grandfather's last request and instead turned into the simple act of persevering for as long as he can just in case anyone may have need of him. In a way, his outlook and perspective on everything became rather bleak and inhuman - quite literally, as, again, he views himself as nothing more than a cog.
And yet, for someone who has claimed his only purpose is to be used to kill Sukuna, everything Yuuji does is so achingly desperately human and is born out of his own desires to save people. Every other sorcerer has a CT or a fighting style that disconnects them from their foe - be that ranged attacks or weaponry - but Yuuji uses his fists. It's raw and almost savage in a way that is unavoidably intimate and human. He says, "Use me," (and, don't get me wrong, he is used) but even the act of offering himself negates the connotations that revolve around being used and shines such a lovely warm human light on him.
Yuuji doesn't push people away. The other "strong" characters isolate (Gojo has infinity, Yuuta literally fucks off from the narrative, Geto fucks off from jujutsu society, etc.), but Yuuji hoards people and connections (and yes, those become weaknesses, but the thing is: they become strengths, too). Sukuna takes Megumi away from him, but that just makes Yuuji more determined to kill Sukuna and get Megumi back. Everything he does is out of love, and he has a drive to do what he has to in order to save (or avenge) the people he keeps close. That's not exactly cog-like behavior.
The Fandom Discourse: Megumi
In my opinion, of all the characters (but especially the first-years), Megumi is the logical character. Especially when it comes to his job as a sorcerer (fighting and killing curses). He is knowledgeable about the world of sorcery, the most book-smart of the first-years, and he is smart and methodical when he fights.
He is also the only character who has openly admitted that he really only cares about saving the people he wants to save, as opposed to the general rhetoric of saving everyone. He's selfish, and he's not shy about it. Even he doesn't try to rationalize it; it's just part of who he is. Logical, methodical, smart, but also deeply, truly, selfish when it comes to where and how he expends his energy and efforts.
And yet, he is also the character who is most willing to die. Now, before half the fandom jumps down my throat, I don't mean to say that he wants to die or that he is constantly trying to - I'm just saying that he is willing to. (Obviously, Yuuji is also a character who is willing to die, but Yuuji is only willing to do so if it would also kill Sukuna, and he is determined to stay alive until such a time. Megumi, on the other hand, doesn't have a similar end-goal ultimatum for death). Yes, he comes at dying from a logical point of view, and yes, he only ever brings martyrdom into the equation if he feels he has no other option, but he has no hesitation when he reaches that point. And you (he) can rationalize self-sacrifice as much as you want to, but that is a very emotionally driven response, regardless of the situation. It's a last stand not only for himself, but for his friends, his family, the world. It's the end of the line for him, and it's something he is willing to do if it means taking out his opponent and making the world safer for everyone else - not just for his "select" people.
He is willing to run away from a fight he cannot win, but he is also willing to do something that he knows for sure will kill him if winning and running are no longer options. And I know that not everyone will see these things as opposites or all that detached from each other, but, to me, intelligent and methodical fighting does not naturally go hand in hand with, essentially, grappling your opponent and jumping off a cliff with them.
The Favorite Child: Yuuta
Like Gojo, Yuuta has access to an overwhelming amount of power. There's no doubt that when it comes to raw energy, he is the strongest sorcerer in his generation. He's exceptionally skilled when it comes to fighting and is often able to get by on simply overpowering his opponents (truly, much like Gojo). He doesn't embody being strong, though - he knows that he is, but it's not something that he considers a defining trait for himself. Instead, Yuuta's whole thing is that he has a tendency to shoulder burdens that other people won't (much like Yuuji, actually) (also it's kind of funny because of all the characters in JJK, I would consider Yuuta to be a "cog" way more than Yuuji, but that's a whole other thing). Yuuta is willing to be a monster, to make hard calls and suffer the consequences, because he has internalized what everyone keeps telling him - that, after Gojo, Yuuta is now "the strongest."
Which means that Yuuta also needs an equally large weakness to balance out that power. But where Gojo had arrogance (and his boyfriend), Yuuta has innocence. There's this pure sort of worldview that Yuuta carries with him that completely counterbalances the part of him that is willing to get his hands bloody. He has this youthful sort of hopefulness and naiveté that if he does the dirty work and puts in effort, then things will work out in his favor because they must. If he is sincere, if he shoulders an unbearable mantle, then everything will be fine simply because he chooses to do so. He does things because they are right and just, and he wants to believe that the universe will acknowledge that and be fair - even though he wouldn't have to do these unnamable things if that was true.
The Less Obvious one: Nobara
Nobara doesn't have a lot of screen time compared to the others, and specifically not a lot of time spent planning for/fighting in the "big fights," but she has one thing that the other characters don't have: self awareness. Nobara is the only character who knows what her contradictions are - she even says them out loud.
She wants nothing more than to be a normal girl who is into fashion, who could be a model, who does her hair and her nails and her makeup, who goes on dates, who has a lot of money and spends it freely. That's her ideal, that's her goal. But that's also who she is right now. She dyes her hair, wears makeup, is feminine in all the ways that would mark her as a girl to strangers on the street, goes shopping and buys too much and makes Yuuji carry her bags. She likes being girly and doesn't shy away from it.
But she is also, and I mean this with all the love in my heart, a feral little gremlin who is willing to bash people's skulls in with a hammer. She's brash and rude and loud. She takes up space and is unapologetic about it. She's vicious on the battlefield. She's not afraid to get bloody, and she hates being viewed as a damsel in distress. She's strategic in her fights, and she uses the fact that opponents underestimate her to her advantage. And she knows all of this, too, and she likes it.
She's self-actualized <3 No notes from me; I love my girl.
Anyway, that's it KSJDBVJKLDFVBJKDFVB There's no real point to this. I'm not saying anything profound, I don't think. This was all just a thought that I had, a little thing that I noticed, and I was bullied (affectionate) into sharing.
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