After Roman says ‘I thought I was your hero’ and Thomas says, ‘you are’, Roman looks over to Janus and Janus nods.
Janus just told everyone his real name moments ago in order to prove that he is both capable of sincerity and willing to be honest with the other Sides so they can start seeing eye to eye. His glove is still off and he is currently in an uncharacteristically vulnerable position that he willingly put himself in. He nods to Roman as if to say "Yes, as the person intrinsically in tune with Thomas’s lying, I can confirm he is telling the truth."
But Roman is looking at Janus as the embodiment of Thomas’s deceit. He’s so used to being played and manipulated by Janus’s lies and faux camaraderie and has now become so on edge that he can’t understand how anyone else could possibly trust anything Janus is saying. He sees the nod as a confirmation that c!Thomas was lying about Roman being his hero and scoffs in shock and betrayal.
c!Thomas looks utterly bewildered at this reaction,
and Janus's smile fades as he realizes how Roman interpreted the nod.
And when Patton says 'we love you', Roman assumes that's a lie too. In the Puzzle Song Roman needs to be reassured that no one hates him, heavily implying this is an underlying insecurity of his. Assuming this is the case, it wouldn't take much for him to believe Patton's 'we love you' meant just the opposite.
Roman's self esteem is so fragile that he takes the others listening to Janus personally. Because if Janus was right, that means Roman made the wrong call in sentencing Thomas to the wedding and doomed them all. If Janus was right, that means he let Thomas down- and it was revealed in Am I Original that Roman is terrified of letting Thomas down.
So now he's convinced (and let's be real, Janus's dig at him for making mistakes didn't help) that he isn't Thomas's hero anymore. Devastating stuff :)
Can we take a minute to talk about how the dark sides appear?
Like, we've seen Virgil rise up onto the screen many times with ease, however we've also seen him be summoned in a flash by outside influences.
We've only ever seen Remus flash onto the screen (unless you count his first appearance in DWIT but I don't because he was behind the TV) He clearly has no interest in rising up like the light sides do. He's there to spook you and catch you off guard.
However we've seen Janus ATTEMPT to actually rise up multiple times. Once when he was pretending to be Logan in SvS, and another in the latest Asides. We can tell he isn't very good yet, as he keeps stumbling and has yet to go up smoothly, but he's TRYING. He's trying to fit in and be like the light sides. He's trying to prove to Thomas that he's on his side. HE'S TRYING TO SHOW THOMAS THAT HE ISN'T A THREAT.
Anyway this has been your sporadic "Remy Wont Shut Up About Janus Sanders" post, come again.
Redrawing my Sanders Sides role swap series before I get to drawing Remus' swaps starting with Patton!
He absolutely wears a bell so the others can hear him coming but it's not like knowing would stop them anyway. Good thing he's not very malicious, just a little mischievous.
A new taglist will be created now that I am drawing more, Send an ask if you'd like to be tagged in the next Sanders Sides post!
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