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[starcurtain]

Some Notes on Mydei's Characterization (Part 2)

<- Part 1 is back this way.

I hit the tumblr image limit way before I ran out of things to say about Mydei, so here is the second half of the notes I've been collecting on his characterization. As always, interpretations are my own.

6. Mydei Both Embodies and Challenges Nikador's Virtues

We know that Mydei is regarded, by characters in the game at least, as the perfect avatar for Strife. Repeatedly, the game parallels Mydei and Nikador, and throughout our journey in 3.0 with Gnaeus, we're supposed to see the similarities between his aloof but noble behavior and Mydei's belief that violence without honor is nothing but meaningless slaughter. Obviously the undying king with powers literally based on the spilled blood of legions would be a good match for the warrior god whose conquest plucked the sun out of the sky... (Although I do like the recent discussions I've seen of there being mismatches between the Chrysos Heirs and the titans, hmm.)

But though Mydei reveres Nikador as his people's god, at the same time, he actually reviles what Nikador has come to represent, quintessentially rejecting the the central tenants of his own people's faith. Even as he recognizes the inevitability of the prophecy, Mydei is unwilling to accept the coreflame because he sees his own identity as diametrically opposed to Kremnos's conception of Strife. Mydei doesn't want to become what Strife means for his people; he does not feel fit to be Strife's demigod because he understands that doing so will mean losing himself, a person who is fundamentally different from the Nikador of Amphoreus's current timeline.

So the game is simultaneously telling us that Mydei is a great parallel to Nikador and a terrible parallel to Nikador, and it achieves this interesting contradiction by deliberately examining Nikador's five core traits in comparison to Mydei, who both exemplifies those traits and defies them.

According to the Kremnoans, the five virtues of Nikador are:

Unfearing of blade at the throat, manifesting the visage of courage

Unyielding to conniving treachery, protecting the crown of honor

Unblinking of eyes burning bright, upholding the cornerstone of reason

Unbending from wounds to flesh, forging characters of tenacity

Undaunted of risking life to protect, embodying corpus of sacrifice

Taking only the key concepts--courage, honor, reason, tenacity, and sacrifice--it should be abundantly clear how closely Mydei hews to these virtues and how they've informed his character arc so far, but I think it's particularly interesting: Mydei's story also intentionally refutes the traditional Kremnoan interpretations of those virtues.

I'll talk more about sacrifice later, but the other virtues are very apparent:

"Unfearing of the Blade at the Throat"

I barely have to say anything, do I? I doubt there's anyone who would question Mydei's courage given what we see in from 3.0 to 3.1. Without flinching, Mydei was willing to plunge into single combat against Nikador, despite knowing that he would almost certainly die a countless number of times while trying to hold the god off. Even knowing that Phainon was literally losing his mind in Nikador's coreflame trial, Mydei was willing to jump into the trial himself to save Phainon, again without a single ounce of hesitation. Mydei has lived a life where he has constantly faced death head on, where he has needed to stand up against impossible odds over and over again.

Clearly, he fully embodies the classic Kremnoan notion of charging into battle without wavering, of never backing down from the challenge, and of never shying away, even when loss is imminent. On the surface, we can easily say that Mydei parallels Nikador in this manner, and that Mydei gracefully fulfills his people's expectations for a leader to be absolutely undaunted in combat.

But then the game takes another track and tells us that Mydei is not only what he seems on the surface. With direct confirmation, the game tells us that Mydei is not fearless.

In fact, he's flat out terrified--not of combat, but of history. He is frightened of his own authority, of the responsibility he bears toward others, of choice that has been left in his hands. He is afraid of making the wrong choice, and for both 3.0 and 3.1, we see him do the exact thing a Kremnoan king--an embodiment of Strife--should never do: he wavers. Multiple characters criticize him for this hesitance, even Phainon, who jokingly scoffs at the idea of Mydei breaking his people's traditions, only to backpedal when he realizes Mydei is serious.

The conclusion of Mydei's arc in 3.1 is not the trial with Nikador. It's not Mydei's becoming a demigod. It's not Mydei's battle with Flame Reaver. It's Mydei finally making up his mind and committing both himself and the Kremnoan people to the dead opposite path expected of a blood-stained conquering nation. Mydei's definition of courage directly opposes the traditional Kremnoan definition, and therefore also opposes their interpretation of Nikador's "unfearing" virtue.

Rather than charging into battle without flinching--Mydei's courage demands the Kremnoans surrender the fight instead. Instead of dying, now they have to live. This is what makes it so fascinating that Krateros actually reacts to Mydei's brand of courage with terror:

Kremnoans know how to throw their lives away without hesitation. But asking them to embrace peace? Change? To survive? They are unprepared and entirely out of their realm of experience.

Mydei's courage parallels Nikador's--but also utterly inverts it.

"Unbending from Wounds of Flesh"

Tenacity, too, should be very obvious. Of course Mydei fits the traditional Kremnoan interpretation to a T--he takes every hit and stands right back up again. Very little needs to be said about Mydei's willingness to keep going even if it kills him, then to come back swinging even after dying. In the eyes of the traditional Kremnoan people, who could possibly be a better example of tenacity than someone whose body can't even be stopped by death itself?

The implication of the original Kremnoan virtue, linking tenacity to being "unbending from wounds," is that physicality is what matters. Before all else, to be able to battle without ceasing is the aspiration, while other aspects of the soul, other elements necessary for meaningful lives, are left under-developed or entirely eschewed. You keep going into battle or you might as well not keep going at all.

But Mydei once again challenges this notion, as his character revolves around a central conflict whose answer is "peace"--he doesn't want the Kremnoans to have to show the type of tenacity they most ferociously believe in. Like Mydei's courageous decision to lead his people away from their own faith, Mydei's actual tenacity appears most clearly in his ability to face Amphoreus's cruel world with empathy.

Given everything he has experienced in his life, Mydei is the character in Amphoreus who has the most right to be jaded, to believe that people are inherently cruel, that nothing in their dying world can be improved, and that there's no meaning to life other than to suffer. He was murdered by his father who also murdered the mother who loved him. He suffered ten thousand deaths drifting miserably in the abyss of the Sea of Souls, entirely alone--yet he clung tenaciously to that life that promised nothing but more suffering, dragged himself free of that hell and kept going. He embraced friendship and found himself a family, only to lose every tiny shred of joy he had cobbled together for himself as they died in front of him in horrific ways, one after another. He became the crown prince of a fallen kingdom, leading refugees into a city that hated and mistreated them for years while he served as fodder for battle, all while knowing that his own ultimate fate would be to surrender his remaining humanity to become an avatar for calamity, ensuring his own future would nothing but endless pain and loneliness.

The man had absolutely nothing to live for (except for the fact he can't die, I guess), but instead of surrendering to despair, he's the one joining in on the Flame-Chase Journey, telling Aglaea that he admires her most because she managed to light the flame of hope in people--even in him.

Knowing that only more suffering lies ahead of him, Mydei still ferociously embraces the life he's been given and the heavy honor he bears in guiding others on the right path. Rather than just racing mindlessly into battle, again and again into the same cycle of conquest, Mydei's truest example of tenacity is his ability to "take the first step," moving forward mentally and emotionally toward the future he dreams of for his people.

"Unyielding to Conniving Trickery"

Just as with all of Nikador's other virtues, Mydei clearly embodies the traditional Kremnoan definition of honor: He's honest, straightforward, and reviles those who use trickery to achieve their goals. To that end, we can see his act of patricide as the ultimate example of Mydei upholding the very classic Kremnoan definition of honor, killing a conniving schemer, his father Eurypon, to avenge an honorable warrior, his mother Gorgo.

Yet even as he accomplishes what he views as a necessary act--a duty to his mother's memory--Mydei does not react to the deed as other Kremnoans expect. Krateros rejoices at Mydei's decision to kill his father, but Mydei's only response is silence. Later, as I mentioned above, he discusses the pursuit of vengeance with Phainon and warns Phainon that revenge can never bring joy or closure.

In the ruins of Castrum Kremnos, when Phainon and Mydei debate the intersection of honor in combat, Mydei at first challenges Phainon's soft-hearted view with the traditional Kremnoan definition--but then, when Phainon claims that Mydei doesn't believe in his own people's tenets--Mydei remains silent again, tacitly agreeing with the truth Phainon has revealed.

Mydei is a deeply honorable character. Certainly the Kremnoans would have no scruples saying that about him, if only his surface actions are considered. Yet at his core, Mydei's definition of honor ultimately rejects everything the Kremnoans stand for, seeing absolutely no meaning in their pointless battles or their excuses for bringing harm upon others. Recognizing that nothing is truly gained even during the most justifiable of killings, Mydei's own sense of honor makes all of Kremnos's sacred history look like nothing but a record of historic evils.

"Unblinking of Eyes Burning Bright"

"Reason" is the virtue missing from Nikador, the one that up and wanders away while the Black Tide moves in. We're introduced to Nikador's reason as an entire embodied concept through Gnaeus. Through Castorice's interactions with Gnaeus, we're led to believe that Nikador was once fair and just, capable of staying his blade in respect of worthy opponents and of discerning the schemes of lesser men. The virtue, in the classical Kremnoan interpretation, seems to lie in being judicious, in knowing when to strike to always secure victory.

Mydei, of course, is not an unreasonable person. (He's more reasonable than the cranky/tsundere stereotypes he gets in fandom, anyway lol.) As I mentioned in the first part of this post, when Phainon wants to go charge straight into fight Nikador, it's Mydei who demonstrates this virtue of reason, reminding Phainon that they simply don't have the resources to tackle the fight. In 3.1, it's Mydei who reasons out what is going on in the first coreflame trial and determines how to solve their issue, find Phainon, and safely escape. Tactically, Mydei clearly demonstrates the ability to keep up with his opponents' moves, strategically divide forces, and see through enemy bluffs. By all accounts, he's a perfect picture of traditional Kremnoan "reason" too.

Yet, once again, Mydei's particular sense of reason puts him at odds with Kremnoan beliefs--because he is smart enough to see the bigger picture. What does victory in one, two, three battles mean? What does winning one war mean, if the next war is already on the horizon? What purpose does dying in noble combat even serve in a world that is already ending? Mydei applies his reason not to the short-sighted conquest of prior Kremnoans but to the longer view of the future, recognizing the futility and inevitability of the rise and fall of nations. For this clear view of history, Krateros warns Mydei that the ultimate consequence of his own intelligence will only be more suffering for him:

Like Nikador's reason standing alone, Mydei's reason sets him entirely outside the Kremnoan faith, causing him to recognize the inherent failings of a cultural system of wasteful violence enforced for over a thousand years. Looking at his own people with a discerning eye, Mydei ends up accidentally separating himself entirely from the familiar confines of his people and their traditions--like Gnaeus, struggling but unable to return to the whole.

On the surface, Mydei represents an excellent embodiment of classical Kremnoan virtues. As Eurypon says in the Kremnos flashback, Mydei bears the seeds of all of Nikador's virtues, stepping unflinching into battle, refusing to surrender in the face of death, approaching every duel with honor, and knowing when and where to strike. But at every turn, he also rejects and exceeds the confines of his people's interpretations of those virtues, using courage to stop battles rather than start them, tenacity to take the first step on a journey toward a more peaceful future, honor to reject the cruelty of Kremnos's callous views on death, and reason to grasp the broader context of making meaning in a dying world.

Mydei should be understood, at his core, as a character of extreme contradictions--both the "most and least Kremnoan of them all." Examining the way his character parallels while also wildly deviates from Nikador's perfectly encapsulates the core conflict of Mydei's character arc, the place where who the world expects him to be--crown prince of Kremnos, demigod of Strife--clashes directly with who he wants to be--the revolutionary remembered for freeing his people from despair into a true "Era Nova" of hope.

7. The Person Who Matters Least to Mydei is Mydei

Okay, so wait--what about "sacrifice"? It almost goes without saying, but I left the last virtue to its own point because "sacrifice" is the single most important trait of Mydei's character.

This is true in two entirely different ways: Mydei's life and philosophy were shaped almost single-handedly by the sacrifices of others--first, by his mother fighting to the death in an attempt to avenge him, and then by the sacrifices of each of his five friends in turn, who died insisting that Mydei should live on in their place. Knowing of his mother's sacrifice and witnessing his friends' deaths were clearly the life-altering experiences driving Mydei's departure from the Kremnoan faith.

Even as he tried to fulfill his friends' wishes by taking up his place as the crown prince of Kremnos, it's from these losses that Mydei truly learned the meaningless of the central tenet of Kremnoan belief, "valorous death before glorious return." There was nothing valorous in the deaths Mydei was forced to watch--the people he loved died pointlessly, fighting essentially for a cause and nation that had already rejected them. By watching everyone he cared for sacrifice themselves on the altar of Kremnoan ideology, he--the sole survivor, the one always, always left behind--was forced to confront the real reality of a culture that chooses to romanticize death, that hinges self-worth on a willingness to kill and be killed, that exists entirely as a war machine dependent on its ability to bring pain and suffering to others.

Even as he loved Kremnos for being the nation to birth him, the nation to embrace him, and the nation to need him--I think Mydei must have hated Castrum Kremnos in equal measure. This, I think is core to understanding Mydei's relationship with his own self-identity as Kremnos's prince: He loved what Kremnos could have been, while despising what it had become.

In the sacrifices of his comrades, Mydei found the very opposite cause his friends expected of him--he found his will to tear down their entire nation's thousands-year-old system of wasteful bloodshed.

But, another contradiction: While hating the sacrifices others were willing to make for him, Mydei has also proven himself to be an exceedingly, unflinchingly giving person. There is no aspect of himself, his own happiness, or his own freedom that Mydeimos is not willing to sacrifice if it means protecting the people, the land, and the world. If by giving something of himself, he can improve the lives of those who deserve it, Mydei will always choose to take the suffering of others on himself.

We see this selflessly giving nature from his earliest memories. His first character story impresses that even from his time as a tiny child, he was willing to aid others with no thought of reward, at his own expense even, helping drowning fisherman make it to safety but never seeming to be able to make it out of the Sea of Souls himself. By 3.0, we're told that Mydei and the Kremnoan detachment had become Aglaea's blade, carrying the brunt of Okhema's battle against the Black Tide and the raving titankin. Despite the fact that Mydei has reservations about Aglaea's orders, he follows them essentially without question, even when he knows this will put him at risk of pain and death:

But 3.1, of course, is what truly hammers the extent of Mydei's self-sacrificial behavior home. In 3.0, we see Mydei flat out refuse the coreflame of Strife several times. Mission text for the game tells us that he has "an absurd extent of hesitation and objection to accepting the god's authority," but Mydei also insists repeatedly that his hesitation doesn't have to do with worrying about himself. Instead, he says that his only hesitation is his people. Whether this is true... more in a second, but for now:

Mydei does not want to accept his destiny to become the demigod of Strife because he fears it will bring harm to those he cares for, the Kremnoan people he has fought for and died (many times) to protect. He is afraid he will perpetuate the exact same cycle of needless violence he despises if he loses his self-identity to the soul of Strife. He is, he claims, perfectly willing to sacrifice his humanity and self-identity as "Mydei" to become "Amphoreus's Guardian"--but only if he can do so while still ensuring a real future for the Kremnoans. Sure, this seems like a noble goal, but in all of this, there is no talk of Mydei's life, Mydei's freedom, or Mydei's dreams. It is only ever "what is best for the Kremnoan people" and "what is best for Amphoreus."

In essence: What Mydei wants does not matter, because Mydei's only spoken concern is the needs of other people.

For me as a fan of this character, the first half of 3.1 was viscerally discomforting. As players, we have the oh-so-pleasant privilege of starting 3.1 watching Mydei be systematically manipulated into sacrificing his own autonomy. I absolutely love Aglaea and Tribbie, but I won't sugarcoat it: by word and action, both of Okhema's demigods knowingly stripped Mydei of his agency:

First, Aglaea insults and pressures Mydei, calling him foolhardy and essentially suggesting that if Amphoreus falls, it's going to be because of Mydei's indecision. She essentially drops the responsibility for all of Amphoreus on his shoulders:

Then, Mydei confronts Tribbie about the even harsher truth, that both Aglaea and Tribbie had knowingly gambled with Phainon's life strictly to push Mydei into that corner:

Yet even after all this, even knowing that Aglaea and Tribbie have just doomed him to an end in pain and misery, what does Mydei say? "I have no intention of condemning you for it." He knows the meaning of the Flame-Chase Journey and understands that his autonomy was never going to stand up to the prophecy. He just lost every hope he might have had of living the life he dreamed of--and what does he still say? "It's okay. I don't blame you." Goddamn Mydei, won't you stand up for yourself at least a little?

Then we get to watch Mydei grow desperate. His freedom and future are already bought and sold. He knows he's running out of time, and he still hasn't found a way to protect the people who are relying on him. He practically begs Krateros to help turn the Kremnoans away from their path of bloodshed, and what does he get from the closest thing he ever had to a father figure?

A extremely cutting guilt trip, and, maybe even worse, a thinly veiled threat to withhold regard:

This might as well be a father saying "You have disappointed me."

Mydei has no one to turn to in these early scenes. Again, not a shipping post, but his only genuine ally, Phainon, isn't here to be his back up, leading to scene after scene where Mydei is treated like fate's chew toy. Players get to watch every single character who is indebted Mydei for his service and who has every reason to respect his wishes instead turn on him and push him into doing things he doesn't want to do.

(Okay, I'm lying, this is a little bit of a shipping post: I can't help but laugh, because the plot of mid-3.1 is literally "Phainon comes back for one scene and almost single-handedly solves Mydei's central character conflict by sending him to talk to Chartonus." He really said "I gotchu, man." 😂)

In Mydei's final goodbye to Castorice, we even see this unhesitating self-sacrificial nature when Mydei thoughtlessly offers to let Castorice kill him just so he can help with her own goal of pursuing Thanatos. Castorice is quick to rebuke him because, unlike Mydei, who has come to view his uncountable number of lives as nothing but currency to be spent in service to others, Castorice desperately values life. She chides him for being so willing to sacrifice himself, but he basically deflects, claiming it's an aspect of all Kremnoans rather than reconciling with the fact that, by this point, he's basically given up on trying to have any regard for himself.

In the end, Mydei manages to find his way forward, making the final, devastating difficult call to dissolve the dynasty and end the history of Castrum Kremnos. This is framed as Mydei reclaiming his agency, making the choice that he knows is right over the choice everyone expects of him. This is what Mydei wants for his people.

But what is the final outcome here for Mydei? The Kremnoans staying safe in the holy city wasn't Krateros's wish, nor the detachment's wish--it wasn't even the young Kremnoan children's wishes to stay in Okhema. It was Mydei's wish to live peacefully in Okhema with those he cares about, finally free of the shadow of Kremnos's bloodstained history and the madness of the path of Strife.

The life that Mydei secured for the Kremnoans is the life he dreamed of living.

And now the only Kremnoan who doesn't get to live that dream is Mydei.

Mydei went to Castrum Kremnos knowing he would likely never return. He went knowing his own death was already signed and underlined in future records of history, either at the hands of enemies from the Black Tide or at the hands of the person he trusted his deepest secret to. He knew that he would spend the rest of his life alone, engaged in the very same endless war he wanted to stop, the strife he did everything to spare his people from.

He sacrificed his own humanity, his entire life--everything he fought to claim as his own--all to protect other people. (I.... love this character so much...)

Nikador's last virtue is sacrifice. If you want to understand Mydei's character, just remember: Mydei is the kind of person willing to sacrifice everything he has.

8. But the Fact that "Mydei" Exists Means Something

Okay, but with all of that said, the true tragedy of Mydei's story is that he wasn't completely selfless. If he genuinely had no thoughts for himself and lived only for the happiness of others, his actions in 3.1 wouldn't be framed as a sacrifice in the first place.

Mydei's decision was difficult, and his ultimate departure was saddening, because he did have some regard for his own life. Mydei had dreams that didn't involve becoming the demigod of Strife. There were things Mydei was looking for in the world that now he will never get the chance to find.

And nothing more clearly tells players this than the existence of the name "Mydei."

Unfortunately, the effect of Mydei's name change is a little bit lost from the original Chinese to English: In Chinese, while "Mydeimos" is the same as in English (Màidémósī/迈德谟斯), "Mydei" is actually "Wàndí" (万敌), functionally an entirely different name. This works in Chinese because the use of specific characters allows the meaning of the name to stay the same (the "My" in Mydeimos means "ten thousand" and so does "万") while the sound of the name changes noticeably. In English, just using an abbreviation doesn't have quite the same effect unfortunately, but obviously the English translators didn't have the same options.

Anyway, the point is that in the original text, Mydei didn't just ask the Chrysos Heirs to use a nickname; he literally gave them an entirely different name--almost an entirely different identity. This distinction is reflected in his very first voice line, where he introduces himself as both "Mydeimos, the crown prince of Castrum Kremnos, and Mydei, the warrior of Okhema," as if these are two different people.

Mydei was essentially inventing a different life for himself, a life where he didn't have to be a prince but instead could be just a regular warrior, where he wasn't "of Castrum Kremnos" but "of Okhema."

At the end of 3.1, Mydei's return to Castrum Kremnos is framed as "returning home." The mission description suggests this, and when Mydei returns to Castrum Kremnos, he's greeted by his mother's voice and answers her turn.

But this is actually bittersweet, because the game tells us repeatedly that Mydei has deeply conflicted feelings over whether to think of Castrum Kremnos as his home. In 3.0, Phainon insists that Mydei must be feeling extreme homesickness while exploring the ruins of Castrum Kremnos, but Mydei's conflicting backstories make it unclear whether he ever truly lived in Castrum Kremnos as a child.

Then, in 3.1, Mydei's scene with the children is obviously meant to be an evocative parallel. The children insist that Kremnos is their home, but Mydei pauses and asks them: "Can a place you've never seen be called your home?" This scene is important, because it is clearly intended to parallel Mydei's own situation. Most characters in the story--including all the Kremnoans--view Castrum Kremnos as Mydei's home, but he was thrown into the sea from the time he was an infant. Even if he returned to Kremnos after that, it could only have been under a false name, hiding his existence from his father the king. Is he himself holding on to the notion of Kremnos less for what it is and more for what he feels it's supposed to mean to him? Merely because of tradition and history? Was Castrum Kremnos ever really his home, or has Mydei's home always been the people he loves?

When Castorice asks him if he's returning home at the end of 3.1, Mydei struggles to answer the question, making it clear that he doesn't truly believe that Castrum Kremnos is his home anymore:

But if Kremnos isn't his home, then where is? (Oh, you wandering lion...)

I'd like to point out that Mydei's "About Self" line isn't "About Self: Castrum Kremnos." It's "About Self: Holy City." In this voice line, he expresses his surprise about the new life he managed to create in Okhema, how he never would have dreamed of ending up there as their ally one day. But in the same breath, he laments that "Okhema cannot be a home for everyone," because, as he discusses later in his "Annoyances" voice line: "Castrum Kremnos and Okhema have long been at odds. A spear can pierce the enemy king, but it cannot resolve the deep grudges of the people." Mydei is vexed by the barrier between the Kremnoans and the Okhemans because he doesn't want his two nations to be at odds. He wants Okhema to be a welcoming place for the Kremnoans--himself included.

The game tells us that Mydei was a person who was looking for a home, and that he wanted Okhema to be that home.

Mydei admits to Phainon that he is (they both are) naive, always wanting the best for everyone:

What Mydei believed was "the best for everyone" was a peaceful place. A place his people could prosper, a place where they could live on without needlessly wasting their lives on the battlefield, where, like the Mountain-Dwellers pushed from their homes in Chartonus's story, there would at least be a future for the Kremnoans that wasn't just "valorous death."

But Mydei wanted all that for himself too.

In "As I've Written," the author writes that Okhema was the final gift Mydei gave to his people--but in doing so, he had to sacrifice the chance to keep Okhema as a home for himself.

Mydeimos was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for his people without hesitating. He was willing to throw himself into danger over and over again, even when it would kill him painfully numerous times. He was willing to face his deepest fear and take on the coreflame of Strife to protect Amphoreus, despite knowing that the cost would be his personal happiness and freedom. He did so almost entirely without regard for his own life, unwavering in his sense of duty to others.

But the existence of "Mydei" meant something: a small, secret wish for a different future, to become someone who could live freely in a world without meaningless, endless violence, unchained from the evernight at last, surrounded by the people he cared for and who cared for him in turn.

Many people are worried for the numerous death flags surrounding our favorite prince... but the truth is that "Mydei" is already dead. That hoped-for life died the moment Mydeimos accepted the coreflame of Strife and surrendered his humanity, the moment he returned to the empty darkness of a fallen kingdom, where only a throne of blood was waiting, bidding farewell to any dream he ever had for a softer future.

9. Deeply Affected by Okhema's Discrimination

All right, that was bad. So you know what I'm going to do now? Make it worse.

I truly believe that part of the reason Mydei did not fight harder against his fate is that, even as he made his decree telling all the other Kremnoans to stay in Okhema and adapt to their ways... He didn't know how to do that himself. Even as he wanted to make Okhema his new home, he didn't know how to make the holy city accept him. (He probably doesn't know how to make himself feel at home anywhere, really.)

"As I've Written" says that cruel rumors followed him everywhere he went in Okhema, even though he never raised a hand against anyone in the city:

His voice line "Annoyances" suggests that Mydei is frustrated that he could kill what was likely one of Okhema's greatest enemies, Eurypon, and yet still the city would not forgive the grudges of the past. In 3.0, one of Mydei's first lines to Phainon is to remind him that Okhemans and Kremnoans still don't get along, even as he also says "I'm not in a place where I'm free to change that."

In 3.1, we see that despite serving the city faithfully as frontline soldiers for years, dying for Okhema's cause, the Kremnoans are still so mistrusted that the Council orders higher ranking members like Krateros to be placed under surveillance. In 3.0, the Kremnoan NPC Aeleus basically ends up running off from Okhema (to his implied death) simply because the Okhemans would not accept his relationship with one of their own. At the very beginning of 3.0, one of Phainon's first lines is chiding Mydei for not protecting "Okhema's citizens," but the way the line is framed accidentally excludes Mydei from being counted among those citizens, something which Mydei calls Phainon out for.

In 3.1, what the Kremnoan children tell Mydei is pretty devastating: they're being ostracized so badly, they can't even think of the place where they were born as their home.

At the end of 3.1, Mydei is even shocked to see that people other than the Kremnoans have come to see him off, seeming genuinely surprised that any of the Okhemans would respect him enough to want to say goodbye.

Even more telling, Mydei's own allies, his fellow Chrysos Heirs, admit that they've completely neglected the situation of the Kremnoans, turning a blind eye to the discrimination and hardships Mydei's people have been facing for years.

But all of this really culminates in the first coreflame trial. Although I've seen lots of people talking about how Mydei's fear was losing his friends, including Phainon, I think a lot of people kind of blanked over the fact that Mydei didn't just fear losing his friends--he specifically feared that his people would become the victims of hate crimes. The entire setting of the first trial for Mydei was watching the Okhemans turn on the Kremnoans, hurling slander and literally beating Kremnoans to death in the streets.

(This last one was particularly harsh, as Mydei clearly holds Chartonus in high regard--seeing someone he cares for act frightened of him and tell him there's no place for him in Okhema clearly shook Mydei even more than seeing the shade of Perdikkas die again.)

Mydei confirms for Tribbie that in Nikador's trial, he saw his "greatest fear," something that "terrified him." But Mydei wasn't just frightened of losing his friends--if it was only losing his friends that he feared, then like Phainon was, he would have been transported to the past and relived their real deaths. Instead, we specifically see a new fear: Mydei is terrified of Okhema's xenophobia, terrified that his people (and himself) will eventually be entirely rejected, losing their last refuge in a dying world.

Part of Mydei's greatest fear is the belief that no one wants him, that there is no place in Amphoreus for the "beast spurned by all."

This, of course, makes Tribbie's comment about how she and Aglaea have sidelined the Kremnoans' concerns all the worse--while treating him as a friend and ally, the Chrysos Heirs seem to have largely failed to do anything to address the prejudice Mydei was facing. In fact, we even see this mirrored in the bath scene later; yes, it's light-hearted but also, in the broader context, it isn't the greatest of looks: Even though Phainon is obviously being dumb, everyone automatically believes Phainon when he pins the blame on Mydei, and they confront Mydei as if the whole thing were his fault.

Mydei is an incredibly resilient and enduring person. He has faced the entire world as his enemy and still come out on the side of good. He certainly would not allow the opinions of plebeians to sway him. Nothing others could say or do would force him to bow his head.

But... I don't think Mydei was as immune to Okhema's discrimination as he liked to seem. The fact that he created an entire new name for himself, that he swore his loyalty to Aglaea and kept every promise he made to Okhema and the Chrysos Heirs, and yet still couldn't find a way to make Okhema his home... The fact that dream he had for his people's future was essentially for them to be able to live the exact same lives the Okhemans already do, in peace and prosperity, and yet even while living among them for years, the Kremnoans hadn't been able to reach that level of comfort... The fact that his last wish to Phainon was for him to be the bridge to finally help the Kremnoans adapt to life in their new nation...

Phainon's comments about what happened to the Mountain-Dwellers after they left their homes almost seemed to suggest that he fully understood the dangers of the action Mydei had just taken--like the Mountain-Dwellers, committing the Kremnoans to a future in Okhema does mean exposing them to further prejudice and mistreatment. Mydei accepts this as fact, suggesting that he knows just how much his people might suffer from the choice forcing them adapt to a foreign culture's expectations. And yet Mydei excluded himself from that need, and now will likely never--in this life at least--have the opportunity to grow to fit the place he expects his people to one day call home.

The fact that so much of Mydei's story revolves around this conflict between the two halves of his life, his two nations, suggests that this issue did affect him significantly, likely for years. I think it is actually one of the key reasons Mydei struggled so severely with his decision over the Kremnoans' future--and over his own future. If Okhema had accepted Mydei with open arms, treated him with respect and affection, if the holy city had given him a real home for possibly the first time... I don't think the story would be where it is now. Mydei was so willing to give up his own life and freedom at least in part because he felt like he had no other options, and some of that feeling certainly comes from believing he had no place in Okhema. Mydei was convinced that the other Kremnoans would eventually adapt and be accepted by the Okhemans, but I don't believe he ever thought that acceptance would apply to him.

It wasn't just the prophecy that drove Mydei away to Castrum Kremnos.

I think Mydei's character should be best understood as someone who, even while refusing to ever give in to the hurtful comments and behavior of others, was at least very much aware of, and shaped by, years of discrimination for beliefs he didn't even hold.

10. Stranger Danger/"I Won't Say I'm in Love~"

All right, with those wonderfully depressing points out of the way, why don't I end with some comedic relief? There's one last thing I want to say about Mydei's characterization:

He's kind of shy.

😂😂😂Okay, okay, I'm kidding. Mydei isn't actually shy by the average definition of shy folks (nervous, struggling to assert themselves, cracking under the slightest scrutiny). Mydei isn't going to ever make himself smaller or run away when someone tries to approach him, of course not.

But Mydei is reserved. It seems that he does not usually befriend people easily, is slow to trust, and keeps himself aloof, particularly among those he doesn't know well. It's easy to see this in the flashback from early on in Phainon and Mydei's acquaintance, where his responses to the conversation are exceptionally stand-offish, devolving into just one-word answers to try to free himself from the awkward small talk with a stranger.

One of the places people are most likely to find Mydei in Okhema is withdrawn, keeping to himself all the way up on the farthest corner of the roof. He even flat out asks why the Trailblazer would ignore his obvious wish for alone time. Even in 3.1, when taking a photo with the Trailblazer, Mydei is pretty awkward about it, saying that he doesn't take photos often, which suggests that he doesn't put himself out there much, even on Okhema's World Wound Web. (Maybe he's just hiding behind his cute chimera tiktoks instead; I am a Fig Stew truther lol.)

But I think perhaps the funniest indicator of Mydei's reserved nature are the scenes in Castrum Kremnos in 3.0. Although the Trailblazer is obviously not the most talkative character in Star Rail, Mydei goes almost that entire sequence without speaking more than a single sentence directly to the Trailblazer. Literally, the only line of cutscene dialogue he says to the Trailblazer for an entire two hour sequence of the patch is "Think what you want." Every other line in the entire Castrum Kremnos sequence is instead spoken to Phainon; sometimes he even speaks about the Trailblazer but goes right over Trailblazer's head to talk to them through the medium of Phainon.

Even Mydei's voice lines start with bare bones, one-word answers; his greeting to the Trailblazer is just "Mhm," despite clearly having no issues speaking full sentences to people he knows better.

Mydei really said "I don't talk to strangers."

Which, honestly? Totally fair of him. When you're an exile from your homeland which is ruled by a king who tried to kill you and every single other surviving nation on the planet hates your guts, it's not like a lot of the strangers you meet are going to end up being friendly. Mydei has obvious reasons to be aloof and to withhold his thoughts from people until he's certain he can trust them. He even has reasons to not be that well adjusted; the first nine years of his life were spent with virtually no human contact, and then even after that, he was taken in by the Kremnoan exiles who were already predisposed to support him no matter what his ability to connect with others was like. It's perfectly understandable for Mydei to not be the most talented social speaker and to tend to keep to himself.

But it's also just so humorous in practice--an undying prince of a conquering nation, one of the lead warriors of Okhema, rife with the pride of Castrum Kremnos, refined in both body and manner... And he's just awkward with people he doesn't know well. As much as it might be influenced by a tragic past, it's also a charm point.

Hell, Mydei's a little bit awkward even with people he does know well, at least when it comes to trying to express himself. Of course, the bath scene is the best example of this. Mydei comes up with literally five different options for things to say to Phainon and then ultimately scraps them all because "None of those sound right." (What he goes with in the end honestly isn't any better lol.)

Mydei was clearly trying his best to find the correct words, and the fact that he hesitated over picking the "right" answer tells us that he's not always as confident in communicating with others as he might initially come across. He's not just trying to come up with the first thing possible--he's trying to find the right thing to say because he is considerate and invested in in being understood by those he actually cares about. Krateros accuses Mydei of using words alone to try to end the Kremnoan dynasty, but the truth is that if Mydei were better at expressing himself--more eloquent and more persuasive--he likely would have faced less opposition for his beliefs.

When characterizing Mydei, I think he reads very much as the kind of person who can say the exact right thing in the exact right moment when it comes to, say, earth-shattering duels with the gods--the kind of person who can speak with poise if there's a challenging political or martial situation afoot. But in closer settings? In those personal conversations where he can't assume a distant, military commander stance and fall back on the expected answers of a warrior prince? The places where what he says really matters, emotionally, to the person on the other side? A lot tougher battlefield.

I think Mydei really is someone who comes across as distinctly reserved--not always because he's aloof or untrusting, but because sometimes he just doesn't know what to say or how to say the things he's feeling and thinking. It's cute, okay?

And you know what else is cute?

It's true that Mydei isn't classically shy, but his marketing has shown us that there is one scenario that he absolutely can't handle: Mydei can't even hear the word "romance" without getting flustered. (The gap moe is so, so real; I am not immune to your propaganda, Hoyo...)

In the 3.1 special program, just the rumor that Nikador once had amorous feelings is enough to leave Mydei stuttering, and in his weibo animation, when the "princess" demands that Mydei act charming, he completely falls apart, so much that he can't even get the sentences out straight and blurs them into a nonsensical mess.

Mydei, fistfighting a god: For me, it was Tuesday.

Mydei, being asked on a date: This is how it ends.

I know it's popular to make jokes about Mydei having his harem, but honestly, if just hearing the word "pretty" makes him panic, I'm not sure how he would ever have managed it. 🤣

Of course, this gets even funnier when we remember that Mydei is also the male character who most consistently brings up talks about emotions and the importance of recognizing and embracing them, who chides Phainon for trying to hide his sadness during their goodbye, and who casually drops half of Amphoreus's most romantic lines. Mr. "If there's chance in the next life, you should come visit my library" can't handle "Do you wanna dance together?"

Make of all this what you will; I don't have a deeper meta analysis of this that wouldn't be better put in a ship post, but in terms of characterization, I think the way Mydei communicates, struggles to communicate, and the places where his communication completely breaks down are all great indicators of the overall person the dev team was trying to convey:

Someone who cares for other people, even more than he cares for himself, but who still, and perhaps always, longed to find a place to belong, loved ones to come home to, and those who will listen to both the words he says and the ones he can't quite get out.

Mydei isn't a brawn over brains brute whose temper pops off every single time he gets mildly annoyed, or someone who lives his whole life in the training arena and takes every chance he can to start petty arguments. He isn't especially grumpy, machismo, or repressing his feelings, even when he's not always capable of realizing just how justified those feelings are. He's not unnecessarily aggressive or particularly rash, and he's definitely not dumb muscle. He is self-sacrificial to a fault...

But he is also a character of true extremes, combining an incredible capacity for violence with a longing for peace, a desire to do his duty to others while still wanting to keep something for himself, a pragmatist who understood the futility of fighting fate while still, deep down, harboring the idealized dream of a kinder future. He is the one who always asks to talk, but also struggles to find the right words; the one who embodies every tenet of his people's faith, only to reject everything that faith stood for.

Mydeimos, the crown prince of Castrum Kremnos, and Mydei, just the warrior of Okhema.

The man that you are. ❤️

One of my favorite Star Rail characters, beyond a doubt.

[gazpachoandbooks]

Currently imagining Arthur + Gwen + the knights asking someone (maybe druids?) who this famous "Emrys" is and they proceed to do a version of "We Don't Talk About Bruno" while Arthur, Gwen and the knights grow increasingly more distressed with each line and Merlin hyperventilates in the background

[elodieunderglass]

Derek 📻

(OC musical ask meme - original character Derek, a nice gay American software engineer who probably paints gaming miniatures in his spare time)

Derek doesn't have his own playlist for some reason, and I tried quite hard to direct this to something else. Anything else.

But this guy just doesn't really care about being "cool" or "recent" or "having good performative taste in music." he likes what he likes.

SIGH.

I'm sorry. guy's got no sense of indie cool. "but it's so overplayed, derek," we say sadly, wincing, and he goes Yeah, that was me. It's overplayed because I played it too much.

and we're like "but you're gay, Derek, you can do better," and he's like: Yeah! but I like it. you didn't ask for your musical horizons to be expanded, you asked me for a random song.

The Magnetic Fields - The Book of Love

The book of love has music in it In fact that's where music comes from Some of it's just transcendental Some of it's just really dumb. But I I love it when you sing to me And you You can sing me anything.

I give up. I give up! I wash my hands of him.

[louroth]

All this nervous energy just running off of you as long as you. keep. moving. The adrenaline feels lovely as it surges, past the last set, into another, and a third— you're going for failure, aren't you?

Always.

It is not enough to coast the high of enough. It has to be more. There has to be the tenuous sigh of relief as your body scrambles to survive within the frame you've made for it. Just one more. Another.

The weights fall to the floor with a clatter and your mouth splits into a wide grin of approval as everything— your vision, your limbs, your spirit— trembles, quakes: the good kind of exhaustion. The ceiling is the loveliest view you've ever seen— you did it. The something you can do. Colors dull in comparison to it. As you lay on the mat, tracing worms of fracturing color that twitch with your heightened breath, a face steps in, swirling your vision into whirls of lights and traces of sweat. A smirk, a raised eyebrow— distant, not staring, but aware. He hefts his own weight. Flicks his focus to your red, flushed face. Meets your eyes for a fraction of a second before curling the iron once more.

"A sight for sore eyes."

You, at a lack for words, trace an eye over his form. He rolls his lips. You flick a brow.

And that is all there is to it.

[starssoblue]

"the reason adrien is just instantly good at everything he tries is because he is programmed to be that way as a senti" aside from the fact that i don't think that's how it works (and also while he was decent at everything he tried with marinette he wasn't instantly good at all of them, and what marinette actually said to him was that he could improve in anything with practice but it was a great first attempt) did we all collectively forget about how adrien actually canonically isn't the best singer?

[hitlikehammers]

so maybe steve strikes a bargain with unknown eldritch upside down gods in exchange for eddie’s life, what of it? ♥️ the hell else was he supposed to do, don’t even judge him ✨what’s a hades/persephone kinda deal among soon-to-be-more-than-friends, anyway?✨

✨future fic (because somehow steve signed them up to be 💫star-crossed-adjacent guardians of the seasons ❄️☀️ or some shit)

but they’re canny motherfuckers; they can make the arrangement bearable their own

(kind of.)

They’d been lucky. They’d been lucky that Steve had come back on his own to the boathouse that first night. Had talked Eddie down, made sure he wasn’t alone—held him, a stranger at best, a pariah at worst, and never once shamed him, fucking soothed him when he couldn’t fight tears. They’re lucky that the walk through the woods somehow short circuited any remaining shred of sense in him, or maybe shocked it into overdrive as he’d grabbed Steve behind a tree thick enough to hide from either of their compatriots turning around and catching it, catching them when he carefully—those bats hadn’t been kind—but a little bit crazedly pressed Steve against the fragile-rotting bark, where Steve stilled, stared, and then closed the distance between them.  Eddie’d had his taste on his lips right up ‘til the end. Not even his own blood had taken it from him at the last.  He’d felt death, though, like a limbo, a haze rather than a darkness, a liminal fog and he’d screamed, he hadn’t felt quite alone, even before a voice echoed: “We are freed from him now.” Eddie’d shouted questions long after his throat started stinging for it, before realizing the echoing voice hadn’t been talking to him; most especially when he’d felt warmth in inexplicable places in the form he’d been walking around in that he wasn’t wholly sure was even really and truly a body, but then— “You can’t take him.” Eddie turned, knew it fruitless to try to find the source but it hurt so bad because that voice was absolutely tortured, and it was— It was Steve. Or: of course Steve bargains with the ancient eldritch deity beings of the Upside Down for Eddie’s life. And maybe they end up some ill-defined guardians of the seasons in weird Persephone-style twist as a result. What the hell else was he supposed to do?

rating: m ♥️ tags: post-S4, everyone loves, getting together, magical realism✨, established relationship, future fic, of course steve makes a bargain with the eldritch ancient god being things in the upside down to save eddie’s life, what ELSE what he going to do?, don’t even pretend to judge him, eddie and steve become ✨guardians of the seasons✨, it’s a task they definitely make their own, very Persephone coded, fluff, romance, softness, let me repeat that last one: SOFTNESSSSSS ♥️

for @steddielovemonth day twenty-one: “If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets.” ― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“How can you even stand it?” Dustin whines, his leg bouncing frantically as he tries to hide how he’s scanning the edges of the park for any hint; and sign: “If Suze and I—

“You’re missing him hard, aren’t you?”

Eddie asks it from behind his sunglasses—how bright the glare sparkles off the ice is the outward sign that it could be today, that it could possibly happen today; but for Eddie, there’s no need for the kinds of hints that drove Dustin to his door, bouncy and frantic, anything but the impressive computa-chemical-whatever-nerdy-as-fuck-genius-level professional he’s grown into, with his own mini-brood of Hendersons, no: he’s immediately fifteen years old again asking Maybe today, could he maybe come today, is it close enough, like, not on the calendar but sometimes he shows up unexpected, right, so maybe today—

It would be unexpected; it’s late January. Far too early, by rights. But again: Eddie doesn’t need any outward signs.

Ever since it started, ever since the deal was struck with powers beyond their ken, with sense beyond their grasp or even want of it: they’d neither of them wanted sense if it could have cost them the chance at this, it’s just—

It’s hard, still. Easier every year but: hard. Eddie thinks it’ll always be hard. He loves too deep, like this, for even a breath without to be less than a tiny agony.

But fuck if he’d trade it for anything.

They’d been lucky. They’d been lucky that Steve had come back on his own to the boathouse that first night. Had talked Eddie down, made sure he wasn’t alone—held him, a stranger at best, a pariah at worst, and never once shamed him, fucking soothed him when he couldn’t fight tears. They’re lucky that the walk through the woods somehow short circuited any remaining shred of sense in him, or maybe shocked it into overdrive as he’d grabbed Steve behind a tree thick enough to hide from either of their compatriots turning around and catching it, catching them when he carefully—those bats hadn’t been kind—but a little bit crazedly pressed Steve against the fragile-rotting bark, where Steve stilled, stared, and then closed the distance between them.

Eddie’d had his taste on his lips right up ‘til the end. Not even his own blood had taken it from him at the last.

He’d felt death, though, like a limbo, a haze rather than a darkness, a liminal fog and he’d screamed, he hadn’t felt quite alone, even before a voice echoed:

“We are freed from him now.”

Eddie’d shouted questions long after his throat started stinging for it, before realizing the echoing voice hadn’t been talking to him; most especially when he’d felt warmth in inexplicable places in the form he’d been walking around in that he wasn’t wholly sure was even really and truly a body, but then—

“You can’t take him.”

Eddie turned, knew it fruitless to try to find the source but it hurt so bad because that voice was absolutely tortured, and it was—

It was Steve.

It was Steve and Eddie recognized the warmth, then: his body on the ground being cradled close so his still-cold chest touched a living one, arms around him, and he’d reached with his own version of a hand to trace the feeling.

“We killed Vecna, we set you free. You cannot take him.”

Oh, Steve.

Eddie was right, in all that he’d wondered if he was being fucking insane even by his measure, to think he could love this man, maybe even already was a little by the time they’d parted ways. But after what he hears?

And then piecing it all together, Steve fighting something that trembled otherworldly in the air for the sake of keeping Eddie like Eddie was worth it. Like Steve cared that much.

Time passed, and then the voice had come through clearer; something shook in Eddie’s chest like an echo, and the sick taunt of a pulse to a corpse:

“This nature has been perverted. Abused. It has been tied for purposes indefensible and profane to another realm. You will take guardianship of the tempers of your dimension, in exchange.”

Eddie’d been pretty fucking sure that the words had meant as little to Steve as they had to Eddie himself, but Steve hadn’t let more than a second pass before he was all in:

“Done.”

And Eddie had gasped in a breath more painful than he’d recalled death being in the first place, save that this time it’s soothed by the way he blinks to waking with Steve’s hands on his face, fingers trailing to his neck to check his pulse thrown back to racing—mostly?

Just…Eddie’s coming to find that most things are soothed, made bearable by the fact of Steve Harrington.

Back to the point though: since the very beginning, opening his eyes when he thought he’d never do something so mundane, so human, so alive even again, and to the sight of an angel’s face at that, tear-streaked and staring at him and him alone: Eddie didn’t need tangible proof to know, coiled and warm behind his sternum, that change was on the air.

And they’d both absorbed the terms spoken only to them—a fact they later discovered, annoyingly, in trying to explain to everyone else—that they were in charge of keeping watch of the seasons, and naturally, then, they’d be apart for the work of it most of the year. Steve watching summer, Eddie manning winter—save for the middle-grounds; the overlaps inside the ends of autumn and the beginnings of spring—windows they’d know innately, though how?

Fuck if they understood the mechanics of it all.

It was heartbreak. It was a miracle.

They would have until that year’s autumn equinox to prepare for…for maybe always.

“Like Hades and Persephone,” Robin had said, horrified and marveling in equal measure, gripping hard to Steve’s hand.

“Seems worse, though,” Dustin had chimed in—typical. “Like it’d be less time, depending on what counts as overlap.”

Eddie and Steve had…not disagreed. And had made the most of the embers of what they’d started to feel in the boathouse, in the Upside Down: they leapt without looking, and fell fast—the way Steve did too often, but never like this before; the way Eddie had quietly daydreamed about every so often, all the while knowing it could never be for him.

Eddie—then to now—doesn’t think anyone ever expected the thing they make for themselves, for each other, in those scant months, when they imbued so much, trusted hearts and souls to a word as small as love.

And when the time came, and they parted—they were neither of them ever unoccupied, they realized quick, Steve feeling physically pulled across the fucking equator all the stronger by the day: but when the time came?

Dying hurt worse. Eddie swears it without a fucking ounce of doubt in him, no hesitation.

It’d been a bleak fucking season.

But they’d both known their share adversities, if dressed up different across time. They weren’t…they mourned, for a little while.

But then Eddie, in the dead of his own winter, found a bright bouquet of fresh wildflowers he’d never seen before his doorstep, from fields he’d never set foot upon.

He can remember, just in closing his eyes and breathing in, how his heart had leapt; had hoped, and he’d—

“Why can’t we take a day?”

Eddie can hold his breath and relive it right now, just how that voice had stolen the air from his lungs as he’d stood just past the solstice, so much time left before he could even hope to see the other half of his fucking heart—how he’d spun toward the sound of it but was dizzy already before he moved a single inch, how he’d slowed the distance and crashed into Steve’s waiting arms, the steady strength of his welcoming chest with enough force to shake his own heart into beating with real gusto, with an intent he hadn’t realized so so dimmed, maybe wholly snuffed out in these months without.

He hadn’t questioned the how—plane, just a plane on the credit card he still had from his dad’s account, probably a one-time opportunity but worth it, more than, and proof that they could split the difference of the time, they could find ways, make money, spend all of it on how they needed each other now just to be able to breathe right.

“We have to keep the bargain,” Steve had always held, the steel in his gaze something Eddie knew in his bones not to question even at the start, especially not when it was followed by the kinds of kisses that convinced Eddie that a human soul was a real thing, for how it got teased from his throat, tongue to tongue.

“That can’t possibly mean there isn’t any,” Steve had gasped, just as sure and unwavering, but the steel giving way to a neediness, a softer resolve, if still just as unshakable: “any flexibility.”

Eddie couldn’t have agreed more.

And it hadn’t been easy, especially not out the gate; but they’d learned. They’d both left tokens, Steve leaving flowers, Eddie bringing holly and pine, surprising Steve on hot days with icy hands on his shoulders when he packed snow in a cooler just for the sake of the bit; Dustin had found out further into their working through a balance and had declared that—

“That’s like,” he’d frowned, less from distaste and more from actually to puzzle out something unexplainable: “long-distance flirting but, metaphysical? Meteorological?”

Eddie had been the one to hear that dedication with his own ears and had felt distaste, forbade Dustin on the spot from speculating before he got to—

“Primal-magic phone-sex on steroids,” Dustin had muttered himself and yep. That.

Before he got to that.

He’d shared it with Steve, who was as entertained and appalled as Eddie in fairly equal measures, but had made a point come his own time in Indiana again to impress, in no uncertain terms, that Dustin needed to shut his fucking trap about his and Eddie’s love life, lest Steve cause the temperature of his petri dishes to unfortunately shift by half a degree and spoil his weird ass mold experiment.

That’d been a pretty effective threat, even if Steve wasn’t actually capable of delivering on it without the aid of fire.

Which he wasn’t above employing.

Regardless—

They’d worked hard, built slow, and as they learned that the only cost that time seemed to extract from either of them was missing one another worse than a limb, they had the time to invest in something lasting.

They never let another season pass where they saw nothing of each other, ever again.

Now, though.

Now, they have it down to an art. Eddie makes music—has had all the time in the world to wait until the right someone hears and understands what he’s saying in the notes, and he does. Steve teaches at a community college, flexible enough for his real job, and funnily enough—gorgeouslyenough—sells flowers. Invests, here and there, because it was one thing his father had drilled him into knowing enough about before giving up on him as a lost cause. He picks underdogs, mostly because they’re cheap and the very idea of not spites everything his father stood for. Expected of him that was all so far from everything Steve is.

A couple of those underdogs make them a pretty fucking penny. It makes their ongoing trial-and-error of how to do their jobs—to maintain their end of the agreement, to the minimum viable product, and love on each other to the maximum possible extent in every interim possible—it makes the experimenting of it all easier; quicker.

It has to cut the hurting time in half, at the very least.

They never do hear directly from those voices again, the ones who struck their bargain—but they can feel direction, displeasure, satisfaction. They know they’re kept watch of, in the same way they both somehow know how, and what to keep watch of in doing the work for themselves: they don’t change things, can’t change thing; they’re not…powerful, not that way, just some degree of timeless, ageless—which is a whole other hill to climb, and cross to bear, especially when Steve sees Robin, is part of why they made the exception that is Robin; but then increasingly when either of them see the kids, and now the kids with their own kids—but.

They learn that the winds, the magnetic poles, fucking nature magic: it pushes them when their traveling aligns with the seasonal shifts, rather than their own desires—those have racked them up significant benefits from frequent flyer miles—but if they’re pulled by their callings, the callings they can fucking feel—they could fight it. But if they’re give in to it, assent to it, they can blink and end up where they’re meant to be.

Trippy. But kinda cool.

(Would be way cooler if it’s was just straight-up teleportation but: still neat.)

They’ll feel off a day or two, queasy before they overstay their hemisphere, their season outside the natural overlaps. They both of them push it by design, by their own nature—they come to suspect the powers that entrusted them with this, gifted and cursed with this task while blessing them with each other: they think those entities appreciate their commitment to the task alongside, second only to their commitment to each other. They both assume those eldritch gods are responsible for the minor barometric oddities that crop up if they push the limits too far, not-so-subtle nudges back to what they promised; what they’re bound to.

And Steve never lets them push too far, too afraid even after all this time to risk the bargain being taken back, rendered void, quite literally; Eddie, who never shared that sense of preservation regarding his own self, sure as shit shares it tenfold when applied to what he shares with Steve so: he never argues.

He cuddles Steve harder those last days, always, because while he knows they could have languished an eternity literally split from one another for half a year at least, for always, the way he’s grown to feel differently, to gauge time both as shorter and longer and inconsequential depending on the context: it all fades away against the backdrop of how much bigger his love is, and how an hour is a day and the fortnights are a century in his chest, nonetheless.

But as time passes, as the world changes and technology shifts and he can call Steve easier, he can hear his voice, then when webcams came around—it got better. It gets better all the time.

But still: he always feels less whole, whenever either of them has to leave, no matter for how long.

“Shut up,” Dustin shakes him back to the present with the snippy tone he shoots Eddie’s way—some things truly never change—but Eddie honestly doesn’t remember what the fuck either of them had said, but then he glances over and—

Ah. Still staring at the trees. Waiting.

“Think about how Robin feels,” and it’s a little disingenuous, seeing as Robin sees more of Steve than any of them, but Eddie means it as a sympathy. A commiseration.

Dustin scoffs.

“Maybe Robin flaunts that whole capital ‘P’ platonic soulmate thing left and goddamn right,” he bites out with narrowed eyes; “but that’s my fucking brother—“

“You’ll get to see him all the time, all summer long, shithead,” Eddie flicks his ear fondly—Dustin squawks and again, it’s refreshing. No matter how old they might look in comparison now, they’re still who they’ve always been to each other.

And yes, Steve’s still his brother. Steve didn’t forgetthat, never had for a second. And Eddie’s spent all winter with Dustin and Suzie and their munchkins—Steve’s gonna lose it to see how much they’ve grown in just a few months. Eddie’s excited for it, will go straight there with them if that’s what Dustin wants, will understand if Dustin would rather some one-on-one first, this surprised out-of-season visit quite possibly a fleeting one. Eddie gets it, he’ll—

“But these are the only times I get both of you,” Dustin trains his eyes on the trees more intently, now—less to avoid looking elsewhere than to seek out what might comes out from them; “together.”

Eddie’s throat tightens a little. He won’t pretend it doesn’t swell his heart the way it does to hear it.

He swallows, clears his throat, and tries his damnedest to not trample prominent but also not actually fall into the amount of feeling that’s behind the admission, all the history inside it. He’s never been good at that shit.

Except with Steve.

“It is earlier than usual,” Eddie comments, tries to make it encouraging; “that global warming thing, think we’re both gonna start to linger longer in the overlay as a rule,” Dustin frowns and yeah, okay, maybe that part’s less encouraging.

“Might end up sucking hardcore for you guys, though,” he adds, a little sheepish. “Sorry, man.”

Because seriously: he and Steve, they don’t make the seasons. Just watch over them, as best they can. Conduits for whatever the Upside Down really is—they still haven’t ever understood the powers that had receded under Vecna and returned to make them as them are, and frankly, they don’t mind overmuch, so long as whatever that power isallows for the life they lead that, they’d never had had a chance at otherwise—but they’re mostly messengers. They can’t…fix, what’s looking like it’s happening. And the buzz they both feel from the power that made them this way is concerned, but in a distant way. Like hearing sad story about another life, a century removed from yours.

“We’re working on that,” Dustin says and, yeah. Eddie’s pretty sure somewhere in Dustin’s massive government lab of geniuses, they are. Fuck? But he’s so proud of his little sheepie, all grown up.

And then there’s how Steve feels—

“Hmm,” Eddie hums as he nods; “plus the overlap will work down south, too, so,” he muses, pulls his with his hair across his mouth the way apparent immortality never knocked out of him.

“Down south?”

Oh. Right. Oops.

They don’t flaunt how they’ve made the most of the flexibility—or those long shot investments—and perfected a schedule to live more like businessmen with long company trips every few weeks than quasi-magical beings who traded death for this, and made out so much more the richer. It’s not that they don’t love everyone, the kids, their families, the Party at large. As he made a point to notdivulge before: Robin is the only one who knows, because of course she does, but they keep houses in both halves of the world, not sprawling but not modest, comfortable and welcoming to the two of them plus one occasional platonic soulmate. They can each of them stretch their time away from their own season to near two weeks—it’s too disruptive to switch straight back with whoever is leaving their current home-turf just just returning with a stowaway, they have to rebalance for another two weeks but then, if they switch, of Eddie visits first, they wait, and then Steve makes the journey next? It holds.

And so they do exactly that.

They’re just…Steve committed them to a fantasy life, the bargains of a Labyrinth crossed with the whimsy of the fae, he’d done it without question just to save Eddie’s fucking life, okay, so it can’t be a fucking surprise that when they fell whole-heart in love, it got a little co-dependent.

Eddie actually fucking adores that about them, and Steve does, too—it’s everything they missed out on in the first part of their lives, and ached for worse than they’d realized until the space was filled, then overflowed; now they get to have it in spades, and forever.

“Oh, just musing about the state of the mortal coil,” Eddie rolls his head over to Dustin to give him an answer, even if it’s not a whole one—if he told him the full story of just how often they see each other, he’d absolutely push his way into what Eddie needs as just for him. Maybe it’s selfish.

But Eddie’s not wholly human anymore, so far as he can tell, so he’s gonna just lean into that’s a limitation no longer relevant to my being argument.

He’s honestly grown pretty fond of that argument.

“Fuck off, man,” Dustin shoves him, more than used to giving him shit when he plays high-and-mighty for serving as co-chief chronicler of the weather and still looking 20.

“Let me see him,” Eddie’s voice slips serious, because his heartburn thumping, his nerves are shivering, it doesn’t fucking matter that the two weeks apart has only been two weeks—the same senses heightened to feel his other half approaching on the breeze more than on a round trip ticket: it heightens everything.

And there is something special, unique, in the first natural shift where Steve gets to step into Eddie’s space and be held tight in Eddie’s arms because the seasons will it, because their bargain holds and keeps them.

“Just let me see him for a bit on my own,” Eddie turns to Dustin, pleading him to stay put on the bench where they’ve been waiting, Eddie knowing that this park, along these woods, is where Steve will come if he comes at all—but he has not qualms begging for just a minute alone as feels himself start to rise to his feet because the cells of his body know that Steve’s near, now, and call him to move, to run to his partner, his only.

He sees the unspoken protest in Dustin’s eyes

But you’ll have him forever.

Eddie gets it, sighs; tries to explain.

“When we,” he pauses, tries to find a better word but really there’s only one: “changed, we became something,” and Eddie, see, they were never told the details, the how’s and whys never explained. They just know how it feels.

And how much it feels is more than enough to serve as an explanation, as is.

“My heart’s got this bigger capacity to feel, now,” Eddie tries just being blunt, and not trying to logic out what transcends the concept as a rule; “my soul’s, just,” he shakes his head a bites on a grin in a battle that he’s ecstatic to lose:

“It’s just his in a way I never could have dreamed of before. It was already basically true before but that truth was a,” Eddie sighs, and doesn’t bother fighting the grin this time because it’d be a lost cause before he even starts, the very same heart he’s talking about is stretched to bursting and he, he wants, he needs him to understand that because Dustin’s become his brother, too, in a different but still profound way and Eddie loves him, so he wants him to understand it’s not about shutting him out, or denying him a single thing, but what Eddie knows a normal person can feel, like, not by choice but by design is, is—

“A fuckin’ pittance, man, in comparison.”

Dustin eyes him, and—thank fuck—reads not only what Eddie says but what he means; that Eddie also feels bigger for what they have, for Dustin’s family, for the whole Party and the sun and snow and the trees and then—

Then there’s his whole heart and soul, that he can feel is about to be waiting in those trees—another level. A wholeness he couldn’t put to words if he tried, which is how he knows it’s both real, and other; not what he was or could have been before they were given their duties; gifted their whole fucking lives.

In each each other.

Dustin finally sighs, theatrically in a way that makes Eddie chuckle as he’s shooed away with a sage “Public indecency is still a crime!” —to which Eddie offers his middle finger as he bounds through the tree line and only stops when he finds the clearing that feels right.

Then he waits.

And waits.

He lets his eyes close, reaches inward where his heartbeat’s ramping up; reaches outward to the trees, still barren but never quiet, never dead.

He feels.

Feels something slip behind his ear: a stem, petals tickling his cheekbone when nothing here is blooming yet; when everything is blooming nowunder Eddie’s ribs, blossoming in the smile that stretches across his lips as a warm breath tickles his neck and weight presses behind him, familiar arms wrapping around his waist:

“Gorgeous weather you’re a having, hmm?” Steve teases and the shell of his ear, nips the lobe and turns Eddie around at the hips and fuck yeah.

Fuck yeah

It’s gorgeous.

🌷🌺🌷🌺

✨also on ao3

✨permanent tag list: OPEN (lmk if you want to be added/removed): @ajeff855 @allmyfavoritethingsinoneblog @anthrobrat @askitwithflours @awkwardgravity1 @bookworm0690 @bumblebeecuttlefishes @captain--low @depressed-freak13 @disrespectedgoatman @dragoon-ze-great @dreamercec @dreamwatch @dreamy-jeans137 @estrellami-1 @friendlyneighborhoodgaycousin @goodolefashionedloverboi @grtwdsmwhr @gunsknivesandplaid @hiei-harringtonmunson @hbyrde36 @imhereforthelolzdontyellatme @kimsnooks @live-laugh-love-dietrich @madigoround @mensch-anthropos-human @nerdyglassescheeseychick @notaqueenakhaleesi @ollyxar @pearynice @perseus-notjackson @pretend-theres-a-name-here

divider credit here

[cor-lapis]

[modern-ish au] collei prepares for collei-ge, inspired by kaveh's hangout (which I only just got to)(the fontaine livestream is tomorrow)(I'm not ready to leave)

[nostalgebraist]

Due to recent experiences, I am feeling an urge to make an anti-drug-style PSA except it's warning impressionable machine-learning-curious teens to never, ever try a thing called "Huggingface transformers Trainer"

Not. Even. Once.

[s1lv3rp4w3dc4t]

shout out object shows with canon queer ships. I'm talking on screen kiss or even just verbal confirmation. all things considered it's a bit strange you don't really see them that much when you think about how gay everyone here is. I love you ii but c2bc did what you didn't and I think that's actually really nice.

[autism-swagger]

This was meant to be a single doodle. I don't know what happened. I think I entered a fugue state.

Anyways! AU wherein Hydra gets their hands on Skye right after she goes through Terrigenesis ❤️

Reblogging is better than just liking.

Yes Coulson still lost his hand. Yes that means the Afterlife plot line happened even though Skye wasn't there. Yes that means she never got to properly reunite with her dad before he got his mind wiped or meet her mom before she died. Yaaay I love angst ❤️

Flats ⬇️

[teamsasukes]

Was Itachi's forehead poke to Sasuke a sign of distancing himself and not wanting Sasuke to get involved, rather than just a mere sign of affection? I saw a few people talk about that and how it's weird that Sasuke does that to his family considering the original meaning.

yes, you've got an accurate handle on the original meaning of the Forehead Poke. fundamentally it is an expression of distance that itachi wields at times when he cannot be with sasuke. and it seems to be a throughline of his childhood: sasuke asks itachi to do something as mundane as train together but itachi continually refuses on account of his duties as a shinobi.

it is not a gesture devoid of love -- it's not as though itachi ever delights in dismissing sasuke (on the contrary, he is always regretful). but there's a cruelty in the uncertainty of it all: the most direct translation is "maybe next time", so itachi fails to provide even an assurance that they can, like, hang out next week or something. this chasm between them is then widened by itachi promising, on the night of the massacre, that he might allow a final battle between them if sasuke ever proves competent enough to bother fighting, leaving sasuke in protracted pursuit of the looming specter of his older brother.

this distance is really only bridged (barely) in their final scene when itachi lays bare the truth of his motives, his regrets (which are lacking, to put it mildly, but for sasuke this is nonetheless momentous), and his unconditional pride in and love for his little brother. the Forehead Poke is notably absent here because textually, the enforced distance wrt sasuke is framed as itachi's greatest wrong. (seriously, itachi says something to the effect of: i shouldn't have done All That because maybe you, my 7-year-old brother, could have brought change to our clan... thereby reducing inconvenience for konoha, of course. the paucity of virtue in massacring the uchiha doesn't really register for him even during this reconciliation, and it's deliberate... because the author doesn't see it as much of an issue either!)

anyway, it might seem odd for sasuke to repeat this gesture with sakura in chapter 699, then, particularly because it seems to be invoked in a manner identical to itachi in his neglect. kind of an odd way to signify a happy ending for these characters, right...?

well, it works for me solely because it is not identical! and naruto's english dub is my worst enemy. i would grab a couple of manga panel screenshots in the original japanese to prove it, but it's easier for me to just plug these scenes from the anime. here is an itachi Forehead Poke (0:51) and here is sakura seeing sasuke off at the konoha gate (0:33). there's a subtle but meaningful distinction in the phrasing: "mata kondo da" vs. "mata kondo na". which, in effect, alter the meaning from "maybe next time" to:

(there's an excellent tumblr post from years ago which performs a substantive analysis of the japanese in both contexts, but eludes me now. pls send if any of you have a link to it!)

so personally i adore its inclusion in chapter 699 specifically. it obviously carries a great deal of weight for sasuke and it's meaningful he chooses to express it to sakura specifically despite leaving the entire team behind -- in lots of ways, and more than any other character, i think for sasuke, sakura is the anti-itachi. (that would require another post to elucidate.) so not only is it an expression of regret at unintended distance, but, more crucially, it's a promise of return. i think it's incredibly sweet that sasuke can repurpose the gesture from something soul-rending to something hopeful.

(also deserving of another post lol but this scene also achieves a neat and, crucially, subversive callback to sakura's foundational insecurities... it's like poetry it rhymes)

all that said, i understand why it reads as something different once we are then given the context of chapter 700 and gaiden... i dislike both of these installments, primarily for the implication that distance becomes a love language, so to speak, between sasuke and sakura/sarada. these relationships are ruled by distance and sasuke accepts it. it's disappointing! his journey to learn about more of the world in chapter 699 jibed with the character's arc until that point. this does not.

my unpopular take is i think this has just about nothing to do with sakura or the sasusaku relationship and everything to do with authorial outlook on sasuke's actions in part 2. and for the record, i maintain that these crimes ultimately amount to very little -- violence and death are occupational hazards if one is a shinobi. konoha is also foregrounded by a cold calculus on the worth of human lives; i'm sure sasuke's indispensable role in saving the world outweighs the killing of a few samurai. i just think kishimoto needs sasuke to atone, somehow, forever, via endless service to the village. and he also cannot sensibly write a kakashi- or naruto-headed government that would impose any meaningful punishment, so sasuke is relegated to a state of permanent rootlessness in some dumbass quest. it's a sacrifice on his part, but contrived for a number of reasons, chief among them being that the sasuke we came to know in the original series would literally never internalize konoha's ideals in this manner. so even though the Forehead Poke in gaiden and boruto retains the elements of promise and anticipation of eventual reconciliation, it feels kind of... lame and weightless. there is a superficial signal at growth but materially, for the parties on the receiving end of the Forehead Poke, very little seems to change.

frankly, i think we are meant to view sasuke's love as noble (and sasuke himself as penitent, suggested by the ascetic quality of his life). sasuke is still doing things differently than itachi, insufficient though it may be: he is honest about the reason for his travels, he does not rush to dismiss sarada when she needs emotional support, his motives are selfless rather than selfish (sasuke guards against the threat of the otsutsuki; itachi... wanted sasuke to kill him, in no small part as a desperate ploy to end his own suffering, notwithstanding the subsequent damage that would be inflicted on his thoroughly traumatized little brother). gaiden is surprisingly candid about the distance as a source of distress for sarada, sakura, and even sasuke, but by the end everyone understands why it must be as it is. the state above all! (you'll notice even itachi's apology to sasuke held this precept intact... there is a reason the series closes with sasuke accepting his old hitai-ate.) it is admittedly vexing, considering the totality of evidence here, to see sasuke's nomadic status in boruto pinned on how much he hates his dumb bitch wife and not, you know. the shockingly bad politics underpinning the narrative.

i appreciate the attempts of sasuke enjoyers to explain his distance as natural aversion to konoha, but this isn't canonically backed by any interiority (which seems to be absent in boruto-era team 7 at large) and moreover it requires miscommunication between sasuke and sakura (or even naruto) so great as to be unbelievable. i've accepted that post-pt2 sasuke is an unfortunate victim of kishomoto's nationalist views. his weird takes on how a man like sasuke would behave in a loving relationship and likely desire for a continued revenue stream don't help either. yes i will weep forever...

TLDR: i think the Forehead Poke fits in chapter 699 precisely because it diverges from itachi's. i resent its recurrence suggesting distance from loved ones is an inevitable condition of sasuke's life to which he's stoically acquiescent.

[disposal-blueeee]

VARGASTOBER - day 2 : comfort

[cacospirit]

[saedyne]

the big blues

closer-up(s), a.k.a. from the sea; of the sky

[arbellaart]

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STATUS = SLEEP

LAST_SAVE = 4██M

SYSTEMS NOR█AL

MEMORY DAMAGED

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ME█ORY DAMAGED

MEMORY DA█AGE█

M██ORY D█MA█ED

WAKE = 0

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█AKE = 1

[clowningaroundmars]

i know this has probably been said a million times already before but it really strikes me how asexual hannibal is as a show overall now that i'm on my 4th rewatch

hannibal himself doesn't ever seem to lust after anyone in any way aside from will (and their love for each other is far from the typical amatonormative conventions society likes to impose on ppl)

we only see hannibal have sex with one person and it's only as a means to an end

hannibal clearly favors platonic connections over sexual and romantic ones, or at least shows his attraction in... very different ways than what's considered "normal", but his insistence that will is his friend despite stating multiple times that he loves him is very telling

and in the first few eps, jack asks will why the minnesota shrike would target young brunette girls. he throws out theories and suggests sexual motives, maybe? but there were no traces of semen on the body anywhere and then that's when will EXPLODES and firmly shuts the theory down by stating "no, he wouldn't disrespect her like that!"

will actually got to live the "normal" married life with a wife and a kid for 3 years but that was simply not enough. at the 1st chance he got, he freed hannibal from prison after hopping on a boat to see him in italy

mads himself (in an interview that i forgot the origins of LOL sorry) said will and hannibal most likely would never let their relationship "become physical"

their love and connection and yearning are SO DEEP that it defies typical parameters of relationships not just bc they're gay, but bc their love transcends any need for the dog and pony show that romance and sex often demands. they literally don't even need to have sex to deepen their relationship

in hannibal's words: "the very sight of you nourishes me"