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winterspellsfrozenkit · 2 months

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Floyd and Rook's nicknames

So I was thinking about why our character in Twisted Wonderland has the nicknames of "Shrimp/Koebi-chan" and "Trickster" and I haven't seen anyone point out the obvious reason: It's because we're tied to Mickey.

Floyd's is pretty clear. Mickey's small stature is often pointed out by whoever is his rival, like Mortimer Mouse or Pete, and "Shrimp" is a nickname used for someone small. However, Rook's is a nod to Mickey from the late 20s-early 30s.

If you haven't done deep dive into the beginnings of Disney's Mickey Mouse cartoons, Mickey was more of a trickster character when he was first animated. He was cited in the early 1930s by writers of the time as "scandalous" and an "imp". He was about getting ahead in life and finding the fastest way that served him what he wanted. An example, in one of his cartoons from 1928, "Plane Crazy", Mickey flat out yanks a turkey's tail off just so he has a tail fin for his plane. No asking, no speaking, just sees the tail and TAKES it, ignoring the pain and embarrassment the turkey goes through because of his actions. Later in the same cartoon, while flying his plane, he asks Minnie for a kiss, she says no, so he pulls a series of scary plane maneuvers to try and get her to kiss him when he asks a second time. She says no AGAIN and he forcibly kisses her. Don't worry, he does get comeuppance for this, but comparing the image of Mickey we have now to his old self; there's a lot of cognitive dissonance.

Honestly, Mickey in his original conception before they started to change his character would fit more with the student body of Night Raven College rather than the student body of Royal Sword Academy. Late 1920s Mickey is selfish, mischievous, a bit of a jerk, and all about his wants first. It wasn't till a few short years later they started shifting his character to be more like Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character and lessening Mickey's more jerk behavior. Then, as time went on, he went from being like Chaplin's character to become more of an everyman archetype which is one of the roles we play as in game.

Considering that basis of the nicknames, I wonder if that's part of why we were picked up by the Carriage, but the Dark Mirror can't classify us. The cartoon that Twisted Wonderland (and Epic Mickey as well) references is "Thru the Mirror" which aired in 1936, which is a couple years into that start of his becoming more like a "Little Tramp" based character of being childlike and bumbling, but good hearted at the core. In short, we're tied to Mickey who, at the time of "Thru the Mirror" was in character shift, going from a character who would definitely fit in at NRC, to a more good-hearted character who may mess up, but doesn't really act like a villain at all.

Now this isn't to say we are Mickey, obviously Mickey is in the game and Yana Toboso has made it perfectly clear that all Yuus are valid as 'Yuu' is supposed to be whoever the player wants them to be. I mean, personally speaking, my character is NEVER going to change from what I set her up to be (WHICH IS DEFINITELY NOT MICKEY). I want to keep her the way she is and I have no reasons to change her (I plan to post about her in depth one of these days when I finally have time to get the art for her done and where I'm happy enough with it). I just find it interesting that our nicknames seem to be nods to our connection to Mickey Mouse.