#SORRY FOR A WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING

[skunkes]

what kind of accent does talon have? im ashamed to admit ive been imagining a classic dracula accent, im sorry

LMAO its always so funny to hear dis...i get it though his personality is Like That

Talon is totonac, so he speaks one of the totonac languages (i actually havent Decided which specific region bc well i have an idea but at the same time i wanna do more research before i square that away) but obviously any look into the spoken language(s) only comes from people who speak em alongside spanish!

So i have no idea what the accent wld sound like on an english speaker ... But also he's 400 years old and hasnt actively immersed-ly spoken it in forever so i dont think itd be strong, but also also he learned english through reading so I bet he still pronounces some words "incorrectly" whilst falling into pronunciation rules of his original spoken language and if i try hard enough i can kind of imagine what thats like from the videos I've seen especially since he'd surely need to use some connecting words from spanish ... Final answer i dont knowwwww yay dracula

[teaboot]

Any tips for being a suicidal 15 year old?

When I was a suicidal 15 year old everyone told me “it gets better”, and it sounded like bullshit. And frankly, it still sounds like bullshit. Like oh, what, I’m living in hell and you’re not gonna help me or *do* anything or give me any useful advice and I’m supposed to just hang in there on the nebulous, pithy promise that things are just gonna work out on their own? And you can’t tell me how or why, I’m just supposed to take it on the faith that I don’t have that something might change in ways I haven’t considered?

But yeah. It does. And it’s frustrating as hell.

Yes, things are gonna get better, and they’re gonna get better in ways I can’t describe even after experiencing it myself. Things you don’t even know CAN be different WILL be different. One day you’re just going to step outside and realize things got better somewhere and you didn’t even notice it happening.

And there’s really nothing I can say that makes that sound even a little bit believable.

I guess all I can tell you is that you have to want to believe it.

[sir3nsfi1m]

hidden chemistry / paige bueckers

You were nothing if not an honor roll student, rarely skipping classes, head buried between the earthy scented pages of those hefty textbooks, the letters mixing and merging as your eyes would caress the words, blinking harshly as if to unscramble the jumble the mixture.

You weren’t one to be noticed. Forgotten in the back of classrooms, huddled in the dark corner of the hushed library, entangled in the sheets of your familiar bed. You were enclosed in the comfort of your own little corner of the world.

It’s not like you wanted to enclose yourself, cut yourself off with the world. You just didn’t want the technicalities that was arranging a time everyday to devote yourself to every person that you care about. You weren’t rude, you were busy. Stuck between the pages of overfull textbooks with tiny scribbles in the margins, flash cards that you read so many times it almost burned a hole in your irises. You were creating history. Developing new systems everyday to answer the hardest questions the medical field can never seem to answer. Prosthetics, medical imagining systems, bioinstrumentation.

You had no time for anyone else. Not that anyone would devote any of their time to you anyways, from how unavailable you presented yourself, you would be surprised if anyone even dared a glance at you.

But then again, when you aren’t tearing your eyes from those damned pages, you will never see who’s looking your way.

Those bright blue eyes, those furrowed brows, like she’s cutting into you so deep she’s discovering a new meaning to the way you exist. The way you close yourself off, the way you barely glance up as people walk so close to you they brush against the fabric of your fleece hoodie you’ve always got one, whether hot or cold.

She hadn’t meant to notice you. Hadn’t meant to keep drifting towards you as she caressed the dust-covered shelves of the unfamiliar hushed library she barely frequented just a couple months ago.

She was light. Spotlight in the middle of the court, drawing eyes to her even thousands of miles away through electrical devices. Conversations with her name whispered across lips, statistics and pregame interviews, articles and post-game reports. People follow her, no matter where she goes.

She reveled in the spotlight, mostly. As much as she could before her palms got sweaty and her head started to shake with the pressure of millions of eyes dawning on her. She claimed her spot within her life a while ago, but after a while, it became more than just her playing the sport she loves.

It became making a whole new persona. Media training, basically telling her to hold back her emotions no matter how deep they cut wounds into her. Already drawn up answers to the repeated questions she’s asked everyday just rewritten in ways she couldn’t even understand. Criticism she has to roll off her shoulders because she’s stronger than to let someone undermine her life’s work all because she had one shitty game.

It was cliche maybe, but sitting here in the opposite side of the quiet library, a book she knew nothing about laying open to a random page as she snuck glances at you, she felt different. Like she wasn’t being seen for once. Like she had the pleasure of seeing someone else. Not her name lit up on a scoreboard, not her face plastered over the walls.

She didn’t make it creepy, of course. She never took photos, she never stared for elongated periods of time. She was gentle, as if one wrong move and you would disappear from her sights.

She didn’t know what it was about you that just drew her in. Maybe it was the mystery? The not knowing of who you are, what your name is, if you even go to school there. Maybe it was the quiet, like she was looking at a painting among a gallery that just sat out amongst the others.

Some days, she wondered what would happen if she walked up to you and asked you what your name was. Other days, she didn’t even bother showing up to the library because she knew her nerves would never let her unstick her feet from the padded carpet over to your corner.

Some days, she felt stupid pining over a girl who probably didn’t even know she existed.

Ever oblivious, you would show up at the quiet library at approximately 8:30 am almost every day if you could, other days you would camp out in your dorm, your roommates clearing out for morning classes and friend gatherings.

You prided yourself in your work, in the way that you wouldn’t let distractions tear you from your creations, how you stuck with a plan and never once backed down no matter how hard it got.

However, sometimes, you wondered what it would be like to have someone look at you and tell you they were proud of you. Or maybe even just look at you.

You would internally scoff at the pda plastered over love-stricken college kids as you walked past them, you would cringe at the corny Instagram captions with the photos of entangled lips and promises of forever.

But sometimes, you wondered what it would be like.

What it would feel like to have someone look at you. To have someone sit and listen to you drone on and on about biomedical engineering and engineering principles. To have someone see you for more than your work. To have someone say they want to be with you forever.

You were too much to handle for yourself, however, so how you someone else handle you?

Your eyes lock.

It was accidental. The first time you had looked up for your lecture that day. The second she had looked over to you just to get one last look before she decided she felt like she was being creepy and was going to put down her book (the biography of someone?) and head back to her dorm.

But your eyes locked.

Your eyes were quiet, like your aura. Like everything she had seen when she looked at you. Tranquility, silence, peace. Your eyes resembled your soul, shining brighter than any court had in the past 20 years.

Paige thought she was doomed.

Not because you had seen her, but because she never wanted to look away. She wanted to know you, wanted to see you, wanted to talk to you and never shut up.

And as if you had spoke it into the universe, someone was looking at you. Not at the wall behind you, not at the edge of the table, not at the girl giggling with her friends in the corner.

At you.

That hidden chemistry, that fading spark lingering between two souls on either side of that library, finally unraveling in a swirl of emotions.

[rookamell]

Hogfather/A Hat Full of Sky/The Wee Free Men/A Hat Full of Sky/The Shepherd's Crown/Wyrd Sisters/Carpe Jugulum/Thief of Time/Reaper Man

- Sir Terry Pratchett

So since the Glorious 25th of May is today, the last day of Davrin week for @datvcompanionweeks , I thought I'd do a little crossover and use the free day to do it. Hope, Balance, Protection. Roar of a Lion, Heart of a Halla. He's basically a witch. But there's some themes from the Death books that fit really well too.

"Balance. It was all about balance. That had been one of the first things that she had learned: the centre of the seesaw has neither up nor down, but upness and downness flow through it while it remains unmoved. You had to be the centre of the seesaw so the pain flowed through you, not into you. It was very hard. But she could do it!"

P.S. thank you to the incredible people organising these companion weeks!!!!

[kiwisandpearls]

so I saw this post being critical about the whole “traumatized character starts to heal from their trauma but ends up dying for shock value” trope and while I agree with it I saw someone tag that post in the notes with mami tomoe and tbh it’s kind of like…well yes, but actually no. I’d argue Mami Tomoe is an example of that trope executed well, and Madoka Magica’s story just wouldn’t work the way it does without Mami’s death occurring the way it did. And I’m not saying that because it was shocking.

the thing about Mami’s death is that while it’s shocking at first when you sit and think about it is deeply tragic. Mami deserved a much better ending than this but she would’ve never got it. She doesn’t make a contract with Kyubey and dies in the car crash or she makes a contract and gets to live but ends up living alone with no one to turn to. And even if/when she is able to survive charlotte she ends up dying either way, either—for example—by Madoka’s hand or by Walpurgisnacht.

the other thing about Mami’s death is that saying its shock value is implying that it had no reason to be in the story when it truly did. Firstly, it showed a good example that being a magical girl in Madoka Magica is not all fun and games. That isn’t to say it wasn’t made out that way. Mami herself warns Madoka and Sayaka that if they choose to become magical girls they’re going to have to risk their lives to fight witches, but we never see an actual examples of witches posing any serious harm against Mami or the other magical girls. Mami’s death was a good example that her words that actual weight to them, that being a magical girl could get you killed.

not only that but her death had a deep effect on both sayaka and madoka. Before Mami’s death Madoka was sure about making a contract, which gets thrown out of the window the moment she sees mami die. And it’s clear her death sticks with her long after it happens, she constantly worried about sayaka after she makes her contract, and even snaps at homura, telling her to not talk about her that way, after she makes passing comment about mami when madoka asks her to try working with sayaka.

And while Sayaka doesn’t seem to be as traumatized by Mami’s death as Madoka was, her death still had an effect on Sayaka, especially in how she views Mami. If Mami had survived Charlotte’s attack she probably would’ve explained to Sayaka the same things she explained to Madoka, that she felt alone and had no one to turn to. But she never got the chance to, and while I’m not criticizing Madoka for this, Madoka probably didn’t tell Sayaka what Mami told her. So along with turning Mami into a sort of martyr, she also continues to put Mami on this pedestal. Saying that Mami wasn’t like other magical girls like Kyoko and Homura, that Mami was one of the “good ones”, one of the “good” magical girls who were selfless and cared more about being defending justice and saving lives than collecting grief seeds. Causing her to spiral a bit about homura and kyoko, seeing them as being actively malicious, just as evil as witches (which…to be fair to her, kyoko was acting a little malicious in her picking fights with a new magical girl…twice. While for Homura Sayaka doesn’t have the context to understand why Homura is All That). While I do think Sayaka probably would’ve still idolized Mami (which also makes sense as she’s a senior magical girl, she would look up to her), I don’t think she would’ve idolized her as much if she didn’t die.

TL;DR: Mami’s death is actually a well written take on the “traumatized character dies in the end” trope because it wasn’t purely for shock value and had an actual purpose in the narrative.

[vaguely-concerned]

powerful mental image of lucanis expounding passionately about any given one of his limited but extremely deep areas of interest (the wyvern/knives/coffee/cooking/murder continuum of lucanis dellamorte special interests if you will) while rye lounges around and Beholds him with palpable twink boutta pounce energy

[c6jpg]

genshin impact ❖ teyvat storyline, 4/?

[spark-circuit]

recorded some Netzach announcer lines real quick before going to sleep. Netzie buddy i completely understand and agree that everything's really shitty every second but like........ team morale is dipping fast.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

i used to watch bnha and then stopped at some point like two years ago so reading through all of this is kind of insane!!!! i wrote 45k abt dadzawa and it was all a lie……

Oh join me in the devastation. Bnha was actually my first ever anime. I never watched anime growing up. The summer before I went to college, one of my best friends asked me to watch it with her and it was my gateway into the entire industry. We used to watch the new episode of my hero together while on FaceTime every time a new episode dropped. I was a huge fan.

The fucking YouTuber arc was what made me drop it entirely, because that was the moment that I just gave up on waiting for it to get better again, but the start to endeavor’s arc was the beginning of the end for me. I remember watching those early episodes where they started pivoting his character and my friend kept having to pause it because I kept going off on rants about how bad it was.

I feel like I should just expect the worst from this show now and nothing should surprise me but it somehow still manages to catch me off guard. Like fuck it, I guess dadzawas not happening. Not like he cut off his fucking leg or something to keep custody of the kid. Ship her off to the mountains she can visit whenever she’s in the same prefecture again I guess it’s all no biggie

[otaku553]

Luffy Week Day 2: Dreams

https://archiveofourown.org/works/65133733/chapters/167635642

He gathers dreams like the seashells on a beach, tenderly lifted from the sand, husks of beautiful creatures swept up before his path from the unknowable depths of the ocean.

On dreams and their nurturing.

[spacedlexi]

"i could keep going about wellington/alone but then its gonna start getting psychological" ooooh you want to get psychological 🌀🌀🌀 oooooh you want to share wellington/alone clem analysis 🌀🌀🌀🌀

oooohh you know i always want to get psychological anon

i feel like the wellington/alone endings are the two strongest endings for both s2 and clems character. i feel like s2 is about her learning to stand on her own. learning what she wants. learning to let go. to recognize the unstable person kenny has become (and that jane isnt so great either). bonnie tells clem to start thinking about what it is She wants, to not just follow others (who repeatedly let her down), and that maybe theres another way (ie: be the one calling the shots for once). its about clem believing in herself and her ability now that shes spent an entire season carrying the cast on her back, and fighting for respect from those same people who dont give it to her because shes still just a kid (a kid who has proven herself to be incredibly capable)

imo the kenny and jane s3 flashbacks are pretty weak and just feel like we’re dragging out their characters past their expiration dates (plus all the “youre such a good mom, clem” talk they both do really irks me 🙄 theres a difference between a character actively choosing to become a guardian and a character being told what a good guardian they are (when theyre still a child themselves with an actual adult still present). alone clem has no one to rely on but herself and she Wants to look out for aj. she needs him as much as he needs her because he gives her something to fight for. hes all she has left). kenny being so happy and talking about boats is wild to me after everything he does in s2. and so is jane killing herself before even trying to induce a miscarriage. They both still die and clem still ends up alone anyway. why not make her active in that decision? so, can she shoot or not? will she stay with someone she knows isnt completely reliable? or will she stand on her own?

honestly narratively i like the alone ending a lot for s2, because it feels like her fully realized arc for the season. being able to stand on her own, to make the hard choices. knowing what she wants for herself, or at least what she Doesnt want. wellington is just better for her and ajs wellbeing so i consider it the "good" alone ending since the actual alone ending is the hardest position clem is left in. wellington ending kenny knows hes no longer fit to take care of her, recognizing the unstable and violent person he has become, and again clem is put in the position of making the choice to stand on her own. also wellington was what her and christa were looking for since the beginning, so narratively it still feels fulfilling for a clem who couldnt pull the trigger. i think it would be really hard for her to shoot kenny, so while i like the alone ending, i also like her not being able to make the call in time, paralyzed by choice (you dont have to shoot to still get the alone ending, just choose to walk away, but if shes going to walk away id rather her do it at wellington). either way its a choice she'll have to live with, and i do like the idea of her having regrets for not being able to make a choice in the moment, and letting jane die because she just couldnt shoot kenny. and how that perceived failure impacts her decisions in the future (like with the javi david fight in s3, her actions being impacted by her choice in s2)

which all ties in nicely to: the implications in regards to vi shooting minnie to save clem in s4. a clem who couldnt shoot and a vi who could. the fear clem would have in that situation, knowing she herself couldnt pull the trigger on someone she cared about to save someone else she also cared about. i think a clem who shot kenny would still have that fear, knowing the position vi is in at that moment, but a clem who couldnt shoot i think emotionally carries more weight. it emphasizes her uncertainty in what violet might choose (or fail to choose in time. because its not necessarily about choosing not to shoot. its will she hesitate long enough for it to not matter? just like with jane and kenny). which just makes it all the more satisfying when vi IS able to make that choice in time, and is able to save them both in the process (something clem herself only learned after s2)

[smoozie]

Why is every Ever After High redesigner an Apple hater. I just wanna watch some interpretations of the plot and some cute new designs, I didn't come here to hear u complaing abt Apple for 30 minutes.

[analog-autistic]

why is it so rare to enjoy vanilla rainworld, downpour, and the watcher???? why does nobody else seem to genuinely love all three

[the-oracle-of-the-lost]

alas i've been filled with thoughts about Irving Braxiatel for the past few days so here's an.... essay i guess? if anyone's interested. everything's under the cut because i sure did write a lot! also about halfway through i start to talk specifically about my fanfic version of him so like. feel free to jump ship if you don't have any clue what i'm talking about.

to me, Braxiatel has always been a character obsessed with aesthetics. not in that he's a superficial character or that his art interest is only driven by collecting beautiful things, but that Braxiatel is very aware of how things look, how he himself looks, and he knows the aesthetics of power incredibly well.

when he founds his Collection, it is genuinely with the goal of creating a collection of all the knowledge and art in the universe accessible to anyone but art collection in itself involves engaging with and moving within certain hierarchies that are all rooted, deep down, in imperialism and classism. for Braxiatel – to be an art collector (at least on Earth) is to invest in those aesthetics of power. it's a classic trope that a character might not come from money and be broke as shit but as long as they maintain the appearance and aesthetics of wealth and power, they're acceptable. so Braxiatel chooses a first name associated with theatrics and class, he wears tailored suits, he never loses his carefully chosen demeanor, he lives in the goddamn palace of Versailles in an effort to cultivate his appearance and others' perceptions of him. it's even implicit that Braxiatel keeps the same face for multiple regenerations to keep that personal aesthetic he established.

but aesthetics aren't apolitical or amoral. inhabiting the aesthetics of power (at least based in upper class Europe) also means inhabiting those structures of power and over the course of the series you can see Braxiatel get caught up in those trappings particularly in his use of the Collection as a political (and imperial) force post-occupation.

[also just a wider side note for a second – i'm not trying to say that the use of certain aesthetics is inherently immoral, i think that sort of argument is a bit ridiculous and reactionary, but you do have to recognize the political and moral dimensions of aesthetic choices. like irl, it's pretty easy to see how quickly cute ~cottagecore~ aesthetics turned into a pipeline for tradwives and a rise in anti-feminism. same goes for most ~traditional~ aesthetics and whatnot.]

genuinely, i do think that Braxiatel's Whole Deal is a performance and a mask but he's worn the mask for so long that he's embodied its spirit (which, generally speaking, is the cultural role of masks). interestingly, you could say the same for the Doctor as their identity was never (in my view) inherent but something gathered over time because they kept being thrust into the role of 'hero'.

while i started writing this based mostly on thoughts of Braxiatel's role in the Benny series, this also applies to him in Gallifrey. it's really hard to get a sense of his character in Gallifrey because 1) he's still relatively young and hasn't gone through the Everything yet and 2) he's so deeply entrenched in Gallifreyan power structures that he never (or rarely) lets his genuine self through.

his role on Gallifrey is largely based in:

schemes and machinations to carry out various ends usually involving saving Romana: his early season appearances play this straight with him embodying that hero role he set himself up to inhabit, quite literally in the case of him taking the Chancellorship & Presidency which are two things that he personally does not want but is more than willing to cast himself in those roles of power for what he sees as the greater good. in later appearances (Soldier Obscura, Beyond) that illusion of him as the heroic hero crumbles as he doesn't have those power structures (or the aesthetics of power) to rely on.

his "love" of Romana: others may disagree (and no fault to them) but i don't ever see his love of Romana as genuinely romantic but rather him falling in love with the literal embodiment of power (and the embodiment of Gallifrey which in turn represents imperial power). all of his interactions with her are horribly insincere and all based around this constructed hierarchy of the President and her advisor even when that hierarchy isn't real and is only maintained through both of the characters demeanor and aesthetics (the way Romana is consistently referred as President throughout s4 despite in no way holding any rank).

Pandora: this is pretty obvious, i mean Pandora as an entity is power at its very core and it's important to remember that Braxiatel is infected with her throughout almost all of his appearances though it's ambiguous how much she's influencing his behavior. and it's important to remember that Braxiatel is specifically infected with the past and present aspects of Pandora which OH BOY definitely feeds into Braxiatel's worship of the past and how he keeps re-writing the past over and over again without being able to reach a future. but specifically, as i've said before, all of Braxiatel's aesthetics of power come from the past and how he wields history, in the academic & personal sense, as a weapon to control others.

but Braxiatel's investment in aesthetics as a means of power & control has another side too. for a lot of his appearances, Braxiatel is a good or at least a benign person who fights for the greater good. but because most of his identity is constructed, it becomes easier, when necessary, to twist himself into the role of the villain because it's just putting on a new mask, adopting a new aesthetic. at times in the Collection arc, he does become a bit of a mustache twirling Evil Guy but it makes sense to me because he's just leaning further into the imperialist white British man aesthetic (for lack of a more accurate description) that he's already cultivated throughout the years.

and he starts creating these roles, manipulating aesthetics, for other people too. Bev comes to the Collection as an art thief with no intention of staying but Braxiatel manipulates her to work for him and changes her aesthetic (having her dress differently, wear glasses) to be treated as a serious academic and not a thief (which is great until she gains the agency of a leader in Braxiatel's absence). and Braxiatel's manipulation of Jason is probably the most obvious with him editing his history and memories and everything about his life to keep him as a roguish, kind-of-an-idiot guy who's easier to understand and control. when Jason fights back because he is more than some archetype, Braxiatel has him killed in a horrible way to keep asserting power over those he thinks of as family.

it happens to Ace and Danna in Soldier Obscura too! Braxiatel arranges the whole scene as he would have in an early Gallifrey episode to assert power with Danna acting as a brave, self-sacrificial old soldier and Ace as his dutiful student but when neither of them act the way Braxiatel expects them to behave, he kills Danna and erases Ace's memory.

his worship of aesthetics as power and archetypes as identity went so far that when others don't behave as their archetype, their role, dictates, Braxiatel doesn't know what to do so he leaves them in one way or another. it's horribly tragic but it is the end point of a life built around cultivating appearances, managing aesthetics, and devising masks for himself.

[at this point, normal people might want to stop reading, everything after that is specifically about my fanfic And They Became Monsters (the fall of great men) including some big spoilers]

a lot of these thoughts fed into my writing of Braxiatel in ATBM and specifically the way i designed the two different versions of Braxiatel i wrote – the Braxiatel from Act 1 who lived his life without interference from the future and the Braxiatel from Act 2 who led his life being advised by his future self.

Braxiatel 1 played the game with aesthetics and power structures a fair bit – he tried to fit in with other Time Lords by pretending he was one of them and he embodied the 'wealthy patron of the arts' role very well and very purposefully during the St Oscar's years but he was never lost in this difference between the person he presented and the person he was. the only real moment of pretense in the fic is in chapter 9 when he meets the Oracle for the first time and refuses to accept that he has no greater role than to be Irving Braxiatel. so the Oracle instead tells him, (“You are an artist and you paint upon the universe as if it were your canvas. Time is but a medium to her master and you crush her underfoot. You will face war with a book of art. You will preserve history in a bottle. You will write the greatest tragedy in the universe.") which... it is true but only because Braxiatel makes it so, because he refuses to accept being himself and nothing more. and when Braxiatel asks how he will win, the Oracle only says that he must accept his fate. by the end of the story, we know this means Braxiatel can only escape this cycle he made for himself, he can only win, but accepting that he isn't the hero and was never meant to be anyone's savior. he can only win by asking for help. but Braxiatel in the moment takes this to mean that he is a hero and he keeps behaving like one.

Braxiatel 2 on the other hand, was a creation. he was told at age 8 that his whole identity hinged around stopping this ever elusive War and he was explicitly directed to focus all his energy, relationships, skills on reaching this goal. he became a mask. but more than that – he based his notions of power and control on the one person who seemed to have infinite power over him: himself. he becomes interested in art not because of any noble goal but because he knows Braxiatel loves art. he knows that Braxiatel wants to save Gallifrey so he does as well. he's not developing an identity, he's only imitating what he sees and hears about his other self.

and this is reflected (no pun intended) through the mirrors. the mirrors were introduced as a pair with the subtlest difference between them but as the story unraveled, we learned there was only ever one mirror sent down a cycle, reflecting the past and future. as Braxiatel 2 came to learn the truth about the mirror, he came to understand Braxiatel 1 as a liar and an abuser and he himself became villainous because his identity is nothing but a reflection. and in turn he manipulates and controls people the same way he was manipulated by Braxiatel 1. (at least until Act 3 when he starts to be able to break the cycle.)

i also chose to involve Faction Paradox (sort of...) in the fic because 1) it was a convenient way to wave away some of the time travel and paradox mechanisms (yeah sorry the story leans much more towards fantasy than science fiction), 2) the family symbolism worked so well, and 3) because their entire Thing is based in aesthetics. and the truth is (spoiler) Faction Paradox was never involved in the Braxiatel's life or in the creation of his paradox. the Godfather who initiated Braxiatel 1 was Braxiatel 2. they never went to the Eleven Day Empire, they went to a room that Braxiatel 2 and John dressed up to look like the Empire because all that matters is for Braxiatel 1 to believe the ruse and all that really takes is the aesthetics of the occult given how aesthetics have shaped his life. John is probably a member of Faction Paradox but his involvement in all of this is family business for the brother he never knew, not Family business. and when Braxiatel 2 takes off that literal mask (the mask of the man he never was), he is finally free to find his own identity and not live in the footsteps of someone else.

the other thing i wanted to talk about in relation to Braxiatel's sense of identity and relation to power is the title of the fic. the And They Became Monsters part was always pretty set in stone because it really is a lovely summary of how the story goes. but i added the subtitle (the fall of great men) pretty close to when i ended up publishing the fic because i kept thinking that And They Became Monsters is really only part of the story and Braxiatel doesn't end up as a monster, part of the point of the story is proving that dehumanizing someone as "a monster" as a way to explain their cruel actions only ends up causing them to commit more cruelty. it's easier for Braxiatel to play the role of the monster, aesthetics and all, than to be his own person. he may not earn redemption or forgiveness but that doesn't mean he can't do good.

(the fall of great men) is about the end of the story (Act 3 onward). "falling" is used as a repeated motif throughout the whole fic whenever Braxiatel starts to lose control of himself or the situation at hand. "great men" is specifically in reference to the idea of "great man theory", the lens of historical analysis from the 19th century that argues history is shaped by a few Great Men rather than the prevailing historical theories today that focuses on materialism, social environments, and people across classes. (as you would expect, today great men theory is usually peddled by white supremacists, fascists, and imperialists.)

Braxiatel viewed himself as a Great Man; he wanted to be a Great Man more than anything else to prove that he was extraordinary and important whether his ambitions were focused on Gallifrey or Venice or St Oscars or the Collection. and he had the accompanying aesthetics – a love of all things high art, a clean & carefully picked over demeanor, an acceptance of power in whatever form he could find. he literally rewrote history so he could be the Great Man Hero.

and it didn't work, it never worked, because great man theory isn't real and there was nothing Braxiatel could do to make it real and he knows that by the end of the story. he doesn't stop the war, he doesn't even stop himself, he asks for help and that's the only way to win.

And They Became Monsters is a version of great men history by putting Braxiatel at the center of everything, (the fall of great men) is saying that narrative is inherently flawed and not based in reality. great men will always fall because they aren't real, they're a dream for those who buy into simplistic individualistic stories and i'm sure Benny would agree that it's poor historical analysis. speaking of Benny, she literally comes in during the last chapter to say that none of this was Braxiatel's story, the narrative belongs to everyone and i love ending his story/beginning hers with the same "it's the biggest story every told" line from Crystal of Cantus where the line "and they became monsters" also originates. i'm just :) pleased with how i tied it together.

oh and i have (the fall of great men) in parentheticals because 1) i wanted to clarify that it's a subtitle and 2) it keeps up the notation that the Oracle uses whenever she speaks or adds in prose as a part of the narration as she's the only one who knew the narrative from the beginning (and part of a reason she's my screen-name/url at the moment).

anyways, this was incredibly long and rambly so thanks to whoever read any of it tbh but it was fun to actually write some of these thoughts down!

[shakingparadigm]

horrendously sick and twisted btw

[ministerofchaosabsolute]

He's teaching him how to game