If
there’s one thing a newly-undead girl needs, it’s someone to guide her through
the unique challenges of being a reaper and the hassles and headaches of her
afterlife. Though George would argue
that it doesn’t always feel like it, Rube is just the ticket. There’s a lot of shouting, a lot of aggravation,
but when it comes down to it, she and Rube care deeply for each other. Under his supervision, she grows as both a
reaper and an undead person, and she gradually finds her way into the regard of
the somewhat-closed-off man.
When
George first becomes a reaper, she’s an absolute mess, no question about
it. She’s furious at a world that let
her die when she was only 18, and the last thing she wants is someone calmly
explaining her new role in society. She
doesn’t want the nine-to-five grind her afterlife turns out to be, she doesn’t
want to take souls from the living, and she definitely doesn’t want to be on
the receiving end of Rube’s homespun, usually food-metaphor-based advice. And so, she acts up and out. She tries to cheat the system, sometimes to
save herself the work or responsibility, sometimes in the mistaken hope of “saving”
someone, and to her, Rube is the quiet-voiced warden forcing her to toe the
line.
This
is, of course, because Rube has already been where George is now. He’s learned what happens when an expired
soul sits in a heart, when someone dies with their souls still in their body, or
when you bend the rules of fate to make someone miss their “appointment.” He knows how important their work is, and he
does whatever he can, not just to get George to do what she’s supposed to, but
to help her understand why she has to
do it. Sometimes, he gives her big,
confrontational “shape up, little girl” moments, which is what the obstinate,
self-centered George often needs. She
gives him lip, and he gets in her face, letting her know exactly how her
irresponsibility or meddling affects people’s lives, and more importantly,
their deaths.
But
that isn’t Rube’s only tactic. He also
realizes that, for all of George’s attitude and defiance, she’s still a
confused dead girl trying to make sense of an impossible situation, and there
are times when she can’t deal with hard truths delivered bluntly. In these moments, he’s surprisingly gentle,
fatherly, with her. They often come
after he’s warned her of the thin ice she’s on and she’s ignored him, causing
the catastrophe he was trying to prevent.
They’re the moments when she most expects the full force of his ire, but
he instead offers her quiet support and concern. I think of when, against his explicit
instructions, she tries to make contact with her mother and gets burned for it,
or his considerate advice to think of everything she likes about being on Earth
and decide if it’s worth sticking around for.
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