#zanna fun fact hour

[mourningmoth]

20 quebtions

answer 20 questions & tag other 20 bloggers that you’d like to get to know more.

tagged by @mushroomhater420 sgdjghfgf

1. name: zanna

2. nicknames: zanna isnt my legal name so technically its a nickname, just NO ONE EVER calls me my legal name lol but i also get called zenno, zan, zippy, basically many variations of zanna. also voryn

3. zodiac sign: Cancer

4. height: 5' even. MAYBE 5′ 1″?? idk either way short kings rise

5. spoken languages: JHKJHJG OH BOY HHHHH: english and angloromani are my native languages.

i can also speak varying amounts of japanese, finnish, and kalderash romani.

i can also speak itty bitty baby amounts of irish, dutch, spanish, and hawaiian.

in the past ive studied MORE languages, i just didnt retain a bunch of knowledge of them. they are: hungarian, xhosa, mandarin, icelandic

i can also read many many different variants of runic alphabets (diff cultures had difference variations on common runes and some were different entirely!)

i also love conlang and i have a working knowledge of a few fictional languages, depending on how developed those conlangs are (i know small amounts of ayliedoon, aldmeris and dunmeris from TES, quenya from LotR, and darnassian and thalassian from WoW) (i LOVE languages jkhjgjhg)

6. nationality: stinky USA american

7. favourite season: autumn bc im big bitch

8. favourite flower: OOOOOOOOOOOH i like snapdragons, hibiscus, hydrangea, orchids, and bleeding hearts!!

9. favourite scent: mmmm many, i like the smell of fresh bread and rain and trees and leather

10. favourite color: bro im a slut for All colours p much but i LOVE greens and also burgundy and i LOVE dusty, pink-infused purples

11. favourite animal: TIGERS and also MOTHS and CICADAS and MANTIS and CATS IN GENERAL

12. favourite fictional character: HHHH bro i cant decide ok so heres a small sampling: Envy (FMA), Voryn/Dagoth Ur (TES), Almalexia (TES), Vivec (TES), Daryl Dixon (TWD yes i know leave me alone about it), Angel (Borderlands), Amara (Borderlands), Zer0 (Borderlands), Link (LoZ)

13. coffee, tea or hot chocolate: coffeeeEEEE but only cold blended coffees i dont like hot drinks in general. i also like various iced teas, mostly citrus green tea or peach black tea, but ive never been huge on hot choc

14. average sleep hours: 6

15. dog or cat person: kitty..............

16. number of blankets you sleep with: just 1 comforter

17. dream trip: oh dang idk id LOVE to visit a lot of places in europe and asia

18. blog established: august 2011 bc im CRUSTY

19. how many followers do you have: 336 on this blog. 332 on my art blog. 1845 on my TES blog

20. random fact: wow idk uh i have fucked up finger joints, almost all of my fingers are double jointed and i have hitchhiker’s thumbs, and my wrists can also bend so far that i can touch my arm with the thumb of the same hand. i also have the MTHFR gene mutation.

i dont really feel close enough to a lot of people to tag them for this im sorry just yoink this from me and we’ll say i tagged u skjgdjhf

[zannolin]

Juno Steel + gifts (I have a lot to say on the matter)

I’m in a meta mood again so once more it’s your friendly neighborhood Zanna here to cry about Juno Steel....again. Specifically: Juno Steel and his stance on gifts.

Why? Because I spend at least eight hours at work daily listening to The Penumbra Podcast and I spend those eight hours thinking about meta topics to keep my brain from taking a step or three outside my body. And also because I can. Take your seats because this is going to get a little angsty ;)

Anyways. Hello travelers, may I please direct your attention to S2E22: Juno Steel and the Monster’s Reflection (P2). Specifically, the conversation Juno and Ben have about Sarah and the Turbo toys:

[Image text: JUNO: Yeah, well. That was always your problem. BEN: What, giving people a chance? JUNO: Being a sucker. She was buying us. I was four years old and I could tell we were being bought. You really couldn’t? BEN: I don’t remember. You tell me. JUNO: The Turbos. Those Turbo action figures and shirts and sheets and prototype toys she’d steal from the office. By the day it all went down I could always see it coming: every time Sarah Steel flipped at us, the next day she’d come home with another Turbo. Every time. She was buying us off so we’d love her and she could still get away with being...her.]

Well. I was (re)listening to this arc and this scene tickled at my brain, got me thinking. Juno was four. He says that he could tell from the time they were four (four!!! at least) that Sarah was “buying them out” as he puts it, using the toys as her mixed-up form of apology and desperately striving to make them love her in spite of her shortcomings. And if you grow up like that, if you can notice that as a young child...how's that going to affect your worldview? How is that going to impact your development and how you think and act about this sort of thing, if there’s no one there to tell you otherwise? [Please note....I’m not a child psychologist. Or a psychologist at all. I’m just rambling and thinking and headcanoning.]

So, what if Juno grew up with this ingrained idea (be that conscious or subconscious) that all gifts are just attempts to buy your love and your loyalty and your forgiveness? What if, because of how he was raised, he sees gifts as not worth anything because all they are is a bribe?

Yeah, I hear you saying. So what?? Why is that important, Zanna? Have you got any proof? I’m so glad you asked. May I now direct your attention to exhibit B: S1E14: Juno Steel and the Train from Nowhere (P1):

[Image text: JUNO: (SIGH) Fine. I’m on my way. What room? NUREYEV: Oh, one of Mr. Engstrom’s friends will be by to help you any moment now. SOUND: KNOCKING. Ah, that must be her. Don’t keep her waiting. Oh, and do wear that suit I love so much, will you? I hung it in the closet for you. JUNO: You bought me clothes?]

To be quite honest with you the transcript doesn’t quite capture Juno’s annoyance here, and the annoyance is what I want to hone in on, so if you don’t remember or you’d like a refresher, go ahead and click here. All refreshed? Great! So, obviously you can argue that Juno’s just irritated here because he’s not in control of the situation at all and when Nureyev throws him into clothing he has no say over, he’s losing one of the few semblances of control he had left. And that’s valid, it’s something I could honestly sit down and analyze for a while on its own, but for the sake of continuity and my own fun — what if it’s not just that? 

What if he’s so upset and annoyed about it because he already didn’t trust Nureyev (despite the fact that he clearly wants to, despite his conflict and his insistence that Nureyev won’t “get [his] hooks in [him]” again) but his natural instinct when presented with a gift is to bat it away because oh, that means this person is manipulating me and trying to make me trust them and forgive them for the ways they have wronged me. [Note again: I don’t think that’s what Nureyev was doing here at all, in case any of you start to pick up your pitchforks and come at me. You can see this post if you want my general thoughts on what Nureyev himself was doing because op lays it out better than I could.]

And to continue this thought....could that be part of why Juno never even considered how important it was that Peter told Juno his name? Because Nureyev directly refers to telling Juno his name as “a gift” in this exact episode, and it feels like Juno almost recoils from the very idea of it. Certainly he goes to apologize, but he stutters and sounds almost lost for a minute. It’s almost like he can’t understand why Nureyev would give him his name as a gift — maybe because he can’t see how that could be used to manipulate him? Maybe, maybe not. 

And then, exhibit C. S1E17: Peter Nureyev and the Angel of Brahma (P2):

[Image text: (Juno): [...] Because Nureyev was wrong, all those years ago. He said a name wasn’t worth anything, that he’d never have one again...and then he gave me his. A gift I didn’t understand.]

I could talk a lot about Nureyev giving Juno his name (hell I probably will at some point, you all know how I get) but the big thing here is that Juno understands now. He sees Nureyev’s gift for how important it is, and he accepts it. He trusts Peter, hell, he even loves him, and it's shown throughout the entire series, honestly, that he deeply values the knowledge of Peter's real name and will respect and protect it with everything he has.

So Juno comes to understand that gifts aren't always meant as bribes to buy you out, to manipulate you. And if he's slowly shifting into a different headspace — and he absolutely is because you can't come out of a situation like the one with Miasma and not be a changed lady even before you make the decision to work to get better — well, maybe that helped him accept the Theia Spectrum from Ramses. Because Juno needs something to fight for, to care about. Because he wants so desperately to believe in someone else, to trust someone in the aftermath of his leaving Nureyev.

Now yes, obviously the Theia fiasco is clearly tied to his self-worth issues and the fact that most of said self-worth is tied up in his ability to shoot — the Theia literally tells him it's “the only thing [he's] good for” to try to stop him from removing it — but I honestly think that it could have had something to do with this too. He put up so little fight when before he has expressed distaste at the idea of cybernetics (see: Cecil’s arm, that time Nureyev mentioned getting him a cyber eye in the Miasma aftermath). Maybe it’s me projecting and seeing what I want to see but it fits.

Oh, but wow, what do you know....the Theia turned out to be exactly like all of the gifts Sarah had given him and Ben all those years ago. Except this was worse. Because this wasn't just given out of a mother's skewed sense of apology and, yeah, love. This literally caused Juno bodily harm and controlled him and very nearly killed him. And sometimes I quake to think about Ramses not even seeing fit to apologize for that. But alas...that’s not relevant to my meta.

This has gotten quite long and I’m afraid I’ll ramble if I don’t cut myself off now, but tl;dr I think Juno is naturally mistrustful of gifts of any kind and mayhaps that's why he doesn't ever want birthday parties. (See: S2E16.5: The Rita Minute 3).

One last note: Sarah Steel is a tough topic and I’m not sure I’m emotionally equipped to even begin to unpack that right now so please forgive me if I glossed things over or something like that. Juno’s relationship with Sarah is something I can relate to on a really deep, personal level but I’m not ready to go into that seriously any time soon so again, forgive me. It’s a hard thing to address without actually Addressing.

Anyway, thanks for reading my insanely long meta, and shout-out to everyone in the Penumbra server + Ly & Vy for putting up with the early versions of this.