<a href="https://possiblyfunny.tumblr.com/" style="text-decoration:underline;">possiblyfunny</a>:
<p>Hey, Starry. It’s me again—here to yap about my theories again! Actually I don’t know if this counts as a theory or if this is just me throwing around my ideas, but it’s like 3-4 am so- Whatever, I hope you enjoy my ramblings anyways!</p><p>SO! As I’m sure you’re well aware, my favorite character here (still) is Fire. I don’t know why that is, but there’s just something about him. He’s got a pull, y’know? He’s neat.</p><p>As a result, like, 80 percent of my thoughts go to him, and the other 20 percent goes to everything else. It’s not intentional, and all the other characters are interesting too, I just tend to hyper-fixate on my favorites because—well, they’re my favorites. He lives in my head rent-free.</p><p>I love picking apart the little details about him. The micro-expressions, the color of his pupils, the color of his speech/text, the messages hidden in his talksprites, all of it. The only thing that gives me trouble with him (and all the other characters, for that matter) are the glitchy moments, flashing lights and the eye strain. Genuinely, for that “I didn’t ask for this” message that was hidden, I saw the red color in the middle of the gif, but I didn’t realize it was actually text. It was only after someone posted the individual key-frames that I could see what it said. That being said, please don’t stop using the eye strain. As much as it makes my eyes burn, it’s fun to pick apart, and is kind of a staple for a lot of the art here.</p><p>But that’s enough of that—onto the actual thing I want to write about: my guesses on Fire’s story.</p><p>Ever since i started really getting into Missing Numbers and learned about Fire and Red, I’ve kinda had this idea in the back of my head about what the core of Fire’s story is—and this is my guess.</p><p>My guess is that <span class="npf_color_monica">Fire</span> is being forced to fill the shoes of someone he’ll never live up to—with that person being <span class="npf_color_joey">Red</span>.</p><p>Fire, as is well known by now, is a replacement. When Red was thrown away and discarded with Gen 1, Fire unwillingly took his place.</p><p>Even since before the “I didn’t ask for this” message, I always got the feeling that Fire never wanted any of his life. He wanted his friends and his family, sure. But the Champion title? The isolation on Mt. Silver? The constant feeling of being hated by everyone around you? He never wanted that.</p><p>I feel like, above all, Fire just wants to live. Red, in a way, got to live his life. Red had a journey of his own, Red got to form his own friendships, Red got to have free will—while Fire never got any of that. Fire was made for the express purpose of being Red’s replacement, and that was it. He wasn’t supposed to have a life. He was supposed to be a puppet. A perfect player character made to ensure that whatever mistakes happened with Red wouldn’t happen again.</p><p>Fire is Red’s Replacement. But who is Fire?</p><p>I don’t think Fire knows himself.</p><p>I feel like, if given the opportunity, Fire would simply (and gladly) give his life to Red. (But seeing what his life is, I don’t think Red would want it either.) Red had his life stolen from him—and Fire never got to live in the first place.</p><p>I feel like Red would either be really happy about that—or really really mad about it. If Fire ever just handed over his place in the world to Red, I could see him having a reaction kind of like, “Oh? So you didn’t even appreciate the life that you stole from me?”, even though that’s not the case. Fire didn’t choose to replace Red. Fire didn’t choose to take on all these responsibilities. Fire didn’t choose to live. All of that was thrust upon him since the moment he was born—and he was never given a chance to enjoy the life and sentience he was granted.</p><p>This also ties into the topic of Red a bit, but I feel like Fire is not the palatable, soulless husk that Red claims him to be. He can’t be.</p><p>We’ve seen that Fire can feel—and that he feels intensely. It just takes a bit to get past the cold, collected walls that I can only assume Arceus put up around his heart. You can see it whenever the emotions get sort of shocked out of him. You can see it when he’s reminded of his past, about Gold or his Pokémon dying. You can see it in his eyes, in the way he tenses up, in the way his eyes well up with tears and the way his breath catches in his throat. Fire is not emotionless—I just feel like Red is so stuck in his own beliefs that he refuses to see Fire as anything other than an emotionless husk, because at some point that’s all he was. Red has been alone for so long with no outside opinions that whatever he’s thought of has sort of become law in his mind. Maybe that view can be changed—but I doubt it would be easy.</p><p><b><i>Onto something a little darker here at the end, so a warning for that:</i></b></p><p>I feel like if Fire had the ability to die—he would have killed himself already. I get the feeling that, deep down, he feels like everyone he cares about would be better off without him. I’m sure he’s not oblivious to his Sisters resentment towards him, nor is his oblivious to the pain and hurt he’s caused her. And on top of that, he probably feels that Blue utterly hates him too. He likely feels like he’s caused so much hurt and suffering that he can’t fix—that it’s better to just remove himself entirely to avoid further damage. But he can’t do that.</p><p>He’s too important to die. God won’t let him.</p><p>Instead, he’s stuck, constantly freezing on the summit of Mt. Silver, trapped and forced to watch his Pokémon slowly freeze and suffer along with him. Maybe he sees the Mountain as a prison—or a punishment. After all, the cold has taken away everything he holds dear. Warmth, his friend, his Pokémon. And now he’s chained in it, unable to leave. I feel like, deep down somewhere, despite knowing that this isn’t fair—he feels like he deserves it.</p><p><br></p><p>Okay, it’s like late 4 am and I’m sort of falling asleep as I’m writing this, but I think that covers all of my ramblings about Fire for now. Does this count as a character study? Probably not, but it did end up being longer than I thought it would be. Anyways, here’s my theories. Or observations? I dunno. How many did I get right? No idea—and I probably won’t find out until much much later.</p><p>Please excuse any spelling/grammatical errors, and of course, disregard this if it’s annoying or too long.</p><p>I want to be Fire’s friend so bad man :( he deserves one. I wanna give him the biggest, tightest bear hug ever and tell him that everything’s gonna be okay. That he deserves to live—just like everyone else. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to get Fire off of Mt. Silver and free him, but if we do, I am tackling that man first thing. And then giving him a blanket afterwards, of course.</p><p>Seeing him breaking down like he did in his latest post really freaking hurts bruh. I want things to get better for him, but I don’t know how to get them there. It really feels like the universe is stacked against him when it comes to achieving happiness—but I’ll be damned if I give up in the face of adversity. I will fight god for this man and win. I want to give him a chance at life—a chance that Arceus seems too afraid to let him take.</p><p>I know there’s no such thing as a “good player”, but I’m going to try my hardest to be one for him—for everyone.</p><p>But anyways, that’s actually all this time. Have a good day, y’all. Keep up the awesome storytelling.</p>
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