vastarakki

[vastarakki]

Hey, here’s my personal pet theory: the reason why Hunter needed a staff to do magic wasn’t because he was born without magic, but because the brand on his wrist is a special sigil that blocks all nine schools of magic, leaving him with no access to the more typical forms of spell-casting we see in the show.

My reasoning is thus:

Number one, even with the revelation of what he is, Hunter’s lack of magic makes no sense. The whole reason why humans can’t do magic the way witches can is because they lack an internal power source, right? But Hunter has a magic amplifier for a heart, so he should have all the power he needs to cast spells, even if he is partially human. It even says in Belos’ book about grimwalkers that the galdorstone is for “heart & power”, implying that it’s meant to function as an internal power source much the same way a witch’s heart does. So what gives?

Also, Darius’ comment in “Any Sport in a Storm” about Hunter’s predecessor being one of the strongest witches he’d known points to the possibility that having no magic may not have been a problem for the Golden Guard that came before Hunter.

Number two, we don’t ever really see Hunter use any spells from any of the pre-existing schools, even though he should be able to, as long as he has access to an outside power source like a staff. Instead, his spell-casting takes a rather unique form, which seems to be the only kind of magic Hunter can use. Why? The guy's a certified nerd, you'd think he'd have studied up on more spells than just this one trick.

Number three, the show makes a point of not only showing us the brand on Hunter’s wrist, but the lack of said brand on somebody else's.

See, at first glance, it might not seem like anything out of the ordinary. We can just assume that all the members of the Emperor’s Coven have a brand like that, right? Except... Lilith doesn’t.

I can’t find a single picture of her with a brand on her wrist, even though they had her in short sleeves for the whole of season 2. So I think it’s safe to say that the lack of a sigil is too consistent to count as just an animation error.

That’s a bit suspicious, isn’t it? Why does Hunter have the Emperor’s symbol branded on his wrist while Lilith, the former head of the Emperor’s Coven, doesn’t?

It's almost like there's something special about Hunter's mark...

So in conclusion, all of this is just wild speculation on my part, but also I'm right and this is the only thing that makes any logical sense.

[vastarakki]

Ever think about all the stuff that your heart does for you?

A thing worth considering is, like... the fact that our bodies respond to emotional stimuli so fast, faster than our minds can fathom, so we actually react to our feelings before we've even had a chance to comprehend that we're having them. There’s this physicality to emotion, how different parts of the body contribute so much to it: hitching breath, tense muscles, sweating palms, shivering skin, hairs standing on end...

...and, of course, a pounding heart.

It got me thinking about Raven's heart, and how it works: does Raven have a pulse? Is his mechanical heart programmed to regulate itself? Does it speed up or slow down automatically, like a regular heart, or did Raven have to learn how to do that himself? The fact that he can put his heart into overdrive suggests that he has some level of conscious control over it – does that mean he can control the rate at which his heart “beats”?

And if it isn't automatic – if his mechanical heart doesn't react to physical cues the same way a regular heart would – then... maybe part of the reason Raven was convinced that he was dead was because he just doesn't feel things the way he used to? Like, aside from the trauma and the depression, which have their own way of messing with emotions – what impact would it have on him, if his body could no longer react to strong emotions the way it should? Anger, fear, excitement; his heart would just keep ticking along at a steady pace, no matter what he felt.

Dulled physical reaction, leading to a dulled emotional response.

A useful trait for a soldier turned spy and assassin.

It would make sense if Raven's heart wasn't made to respond like a regular heart at all – or maybe it had all the usual responses built in, but those functions got turned off or removed, to make it “easier” on him. Nothing left in there but a shutdown code and a bare bones package of programming to make sure his heart knew what to do when he was physically exerting himself.

Then again, maybe his heart doesn't have even that much autonomy going for it, and he has to consciously switch gears all the time – or he had to, before it became an ingrained habit, and he learned how to turn the dial on his heart without even thinking about it.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking about right now.