Notes From The Writing Raven - Blog Posts

Shout out to Kalim for out-sillying the angry at the world crowd with his kindness

Rollo ending up being best friends for life with Kalim. Listen, call me crazy but I feel like if anyone can get through to Rollo it's Kalim. Kalim has so many great qualities, and keep thinking of how heavenly virtues tie in with Kalim and how Rollo is kind of religious-crazy coded. And Rollo would low-key side eye Jamil for betraying someone as genuinely good-hearted like Kalim. And Rollo ends up being Kalim's grumpy ride or die. Can you tell this stays in my head rent free? Thanks! -Ríe

Oh, I've actually talked about how I think Kalim and Rollo would interact with each other in a hypothetical situation where the casts of GloMasq and Playful Land were swapped! You can read those headcanons here. Even though Idia and Rollo are really strong foils, I think Rollo and Kalim have potential too! They're opposites in so many ways:

Kalim's extroversion vs Rollo's introversion

Not a nefarious bone in Kalim's body, meanwhile Rollo's willing to be so underhanded in order to achieve his goals

Kalim's boundless ability to listen and to forgive vs Rollo's tendency to bottle up his feelings and to blame others while ignoring his own feelings of guilt

Their UMs are also opposites; Kalim has cleansing water that refreshes and rejuvenates others whereas Rollo has flames that literally become stronger the worse he and the people around him feel

They're both big brothers, but Rollo has lost the only one sibling he had while Kalim has like 30-40ish siblings, all of them alive (the irony being that no one's after Rollo's life but a buunch of people would just love to kill the Asim family heir)

Together, I think those two would definitely be like. The Golden Retriever/Sunshine friend and the Black Cat/Grumpy friend dynamic. Granted, it might take Kalim quite some time to break down the fortress Rollo has built around his heart (we've all seen how stubborn that guy is www), but hey, maybe Kalim could eventually get through to him. If anyone can find it in themselves to forgive Rollo, surely it'd be the ONE guy that insisted to everyone else that they listen to what the man complicit in human trafficking has to say (stares at Fellow) 💀

asdlhbveuotfqetovefovy It's kind of funny thinking about Rollo having beef with Jamil... They're both scummy backstabbers 😂 pointing to one another and accusing the other person of being way worse and how Kalim should stay away from him + not trust him...

insane to think about

… Y’all ever think about how 🤡 Ace is probably the physically weakest first year AND the physically weakest in his own extracurricular activity just because his competition is so stiff…

Like how is Ace supposed to compare to JACK and SEBEK with their massive arms 😭 or to Ortho, who has literal laser beams of death...

At first, it seems like Deuce also has kind of thin arms, but I swear he has been progressively beefing up (trust Vargas's training, I guess). He's got that delinquent background going for him as well.

So I guess there's literally only Epel to contend with?? At least it looks like Ace stands a chance against Epel in an arm-wrestling match…

… But then you remember that Epel has probably worked as a farmhand, has a history of beating people up for making fun of his looks, and he busted out of a snow-covered shed as a child. Yeah, Ace is doomed/j

Even if you compare Ace's physique to that of his fellow Basketball Club members, he's visibly the least muscular 😭

JUST LOOK AT FLOYD AND JAMIL'S DEFINITION... Not to mention Jamil is canonically trained as a bodyguard and we all know about Floyd’s penchant to put the “squeeze” on others 💦

Ace, buddy... OTL My condolences... You truly are the real Average Boy representation in the cast... Somehow it isn't Trey/j

Hey Raven, do you think Kalim is stupid?

The short answer to this would be “no”, but because I like to overanalyze things, let me explain why. In this essay, I will--

I believe when people think of “stupidity”, they tend to think of it in a sense of general intelligence or book smarts, or they equate it to a number or a letter grade on a report card. In this case, one can easily point to Kalim’s poor academic performance and say, “he doesn’t do well in his classes, and he needs to study and try very hard, plus get help from Jamil, just to get a mediocre grade.” All of that is true. However, to call Kalim “stupid” just because he doesn’t perform well in a traditional classroom setting would be remiss.

The nature of schools hosting many students forces them to standardize lessons and teach them in the same way to large groups. The truth of the matter is, these same methods won’t work for every student. Some just work better one-on-one, and others need more specialized lessons for them to best learn. For example, some people are more visual learners, while others are more auditory, and some just prefer tactile or hands-on learning. Just because Kalim doesn’t fare well with traditional classroom lectures and studying/memorization doesn’t mean other methods wouldn’t work better for him. As was previously mentioned, he seems to do well when Jamil tutors him, so this may hint that Kalim may prefer to be taught in a more personalized setting. We see similar instances of Kalim performing well when instructed one-on-one in Master Chef and when Azul lends him his help in chapter 4. This doesn’t make Kalim “stupid”, it just means he has different preferences when it comes to being taught.

Remember that Kalim hails from a very affluent family. The Asims’ money and power have essentially shielded Kalim from most consequences and other unfortunate circumstances of life. Kalim won’t ever understand what it feels like to have financial struggles, or to go a day hungry. He’s so used to getting everything he wants, and that has made him not stupid, but naïve and ignorant of how the “real world” works. Ignorance is not the same as stupidity. (You can also say that Malleus is ignorant, since his country is very old-fashioned (to the point where he had never ridden a car until the Scalding Sands Fireworks event), but you wouldn’t call Malleus “stupid” for not knowing things that were beyond his circumstances.)

One last point I’d like to make is that while Kalim is not book smart, he is very emotionally intelligent, especially when it comes to dealing with others. For reference, emotional intelligence is defined as “the capacity to be aware of, control, and express one's emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically”.

Students in Scarabia love Kalim, and it’s for a good reason. He’s very good at understanding them and empathizing with them, even if he’s laid back as a leader. For example, Kalim was able to talk his dorm mates through bouts of homesickness, and he was always willing to support his dorm mates in their other times of need. Furthermore, it was Kalim who was able to placate his angry dorm mates when they were upset with Jamil post-Overblot. The students were willing to give Jamil a second chance, despite all of the terrible things he did, because Kalim convinced them. Who else would be capable of such a feat, if not him?

This carries over to chapter 5 as well. Kalim becomes aware of his own inadequacy (maybe even jealousy?) when Jamil is picked to be a lead performer for VDC instead of him, and Kalim pushes himself to work harder so he can catch up to Jamil. However, he never stops caring about other people. It’s Kalim and Rook that pep talked Deuce and helped him come to terms with his frustration regarding his lack of improvement. It is also Kalim who initially sensed that Vil was going to attempt something heinous to come out on top at VDC. He came running to the scene and knocked the poison out of Rook’s hand, because he knew that something was wrong just from observing Vil. 

We can see several instances of Kalim’s own kind of intelligence, emotional intelligence, especially as he engages with his peers. In conclusion, Kalim may not be the most crafty in a traditional sense, but he has his own insights to contribute, making him fit as the Dorm Leader of Scarabia--the dorm modeled after the deliberation of the Sorcerer of the Sands.