Praise The Sun! - Blog Posts

I feel you 😞

Oh boy, time to pull for Kalim. I hope this goes well.

Ace, you son of a bitch-

stuffs

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

KALIM

ANIMATED

HES SO ☹️🫶🏻

HIS FACE IS SO ☹️🫶🏻🫶🏻

HIS INNOCENT LARGE RED ORBS FILLED WITH WONDER

I FELL TO MY KNEES AND SOBBED

KALIM MY KINGGGGGG MY PRINCE THE TWST CHARACTER EVER

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.

I was listening to "No One Mourns The Wicked". I thought of something. Malleus would be a good fit for Elphaba character wise in a fandom fusion for obvious reasons. But someone else who fits the "No One Mourns The Wicked" song specifically is Kalim.

I genuinely believe that Kalim is an unreliable narrator and his family is rotten to the core. There are various instances in the main story, the events and vignettes where Kalim is shown to either flat out deny or overlook the more troubling aspects of his family. The references to poison attempts, frequent kidnappings, use of child labour, highly questionable treatment of their employees (like the Vipers), rampant animal abuse (since Kalim said during the Playful Land event that they keep animals like elephants, orcas and dolphins caged up or in small tanks on property, which is well documented to harm them both psychically and psychologically), his father bribing Crowley to allow his son to attend NRC and the strongly implied presence of a harem in the JP version are massive red flags that something far darker is at play behind Kalim’s idealized image of his family.

The fact that Kalim’s father is involved in politics makes him even more suspect. It's completely possible that he's manipulating the Sultan to make his family richer like Jafar in the movie. Or, worse yet, like Muskrat is right now.

Due to these factors, I think the average person from the country views the Asims like how people view evil American politicians. They see them as evil and the source of trouble and discord in their lives, being out of touch due to their wealth and power. I imagine that there could be a large subsect of people who would CELEBRATE if one of them died, including Kalim himself.

Deep down, I think that's something Kalim actually fears. That hardly anyone would care if one of those poison attempts did him in and would be glad that he died. It would explain why he's so generous. He's doing that because he's trying to win other's favour in order to prevent that from happening.

I was following up until the last sentence.

Kalim doesn't help people to curry favor. He helps people because he wants to be the kind of person he wishes everyone was. He's even said that he doesn't care if people are taking advantage of his kindness, it's the idea of making people happy that he values. So while the rest of this read is spot on, I do have to set the record straight here.

Corrupt family? Yep. Fear for his life? Debatable. Desire to help people and willingness to give everything to everyone on a whim? Geniune.

He's sheltered and privileged and naive so his goodness can come across in bad faith sometimes, but Kalim has no ulterior motives for being a good person and I will die on that hill.

Thank you for your take.

A lot of the people who hate Kalim just dislike him because he's rich.

Character critique is fine but you'd think people could find something less blantantly petty.

about the kalim post -> the amount of people that call kalim a stupid idiot is 😭 he misinterprets people’s actions, words, and facial expressions sometimes and really thinks differently when it comes to his logic, but that’s prolly where his obliviousness ends. he knows Jamil was hurting even before Jamil’s overblot and reveal (magic carpet ride with Yuu where he says he wants Jamil to worry less and loosen up a little), Kalim’s ceremony robes where he says he’s surprised he got chosen as dorm leader and suggests Jamil would be better for the job… I remember it got so bad that people thought he was oblivious to getting poisoned or kidnapped that the EN translations turned his vagueness about it (from not wanting to worry anyone) into something he talks a lot more directly about. The obvious things he might not get, but the smaller things - Vil’s change in expression that reminded him of Jamil before he overblotted, Alab Nariya where he successfully figured at the end what Jamil was thinking as he fired the fireworks (but Jamil brushes off his worries) - are things he notices unpredictably. That’s a part of his character charm! A lot of people have this image of Kalim based on the workload Jamil has from him. Valid, but Kalim worried a lot about Jamil while Jamil was dissuading his worries (not very well, but Kalim doesn’t get sarcasm ww) - now he’s being more stubborn on still doing the work with Jamil even when Jamil says he can handle it himself. Jamil is more open on accepting that help too!! Kalim needs more love TT

Completely agree, Anon!

Kalim is naive and it's understandable that people can find him annoying (especially if you're a fan of Jamil), but he has a lot more depth than a lot of fans are willing to give him credit for. He has the best intentions in whatever he does and his good will makes him easy to take advantage of. As I see it lot of his incompetence stems from him not being allowed to actually do things of his own accord (a lot of which is perpetuated by Jamil's insistance that Kalim can't do anything correctly, therefore he shouldn't do anything that could be remotely dangerous [which is his job so can't blame him for that]). Without being given a chance to fail, Kalim can't see where his shortcomings are and can't improve on them, but that changes after chapter 4 when Jamil stops being quite as overly protective (when they actually compete for the top spot in the SDC performance for example!). Kalim is a very considerate person, but he also tends to take other peoples' words and intentions at face value. He's easy to take advantage of and I can see people being frustrated with that, but his character depth doesn't stop there and he's one of the few characters in this game that actively reflects on past actions and tries to do better.

No one is obligated to like Kalim, but this blog stans the sunshine boy!

(And honestly, I think there are just some people who can't stand that he's nice enough to offer help to anyone who asks for it AND has the money/resources to do it extravagantly. Which in a roundabout way would bring us back to the post this stems from.)

Praise the sun