#i can see steban and uli in that setting

[yellow-yarrow]

I just got this reference!! Its "under the cobblestones, the beach" from the french 1968 May protests! very fitting

[weepylucifer]

#also i'm bored with the concept of constant repetition. patterns reoccur but it doesn't all have to happen the same way twice#otherwise why bother? not the characters but me why should i bother with any of it

I gotta address this, maybe overly defensively, but like... I don't think the concept of the characters being parallels is purely repetition. maybe it seems that way when making headcanons by looking backwards in time, looking at steban and uli and trying to imagine potential similarities to mazov and nilsen, but then the whole point is that dialectical spiral of history, they can grow and evolve, you have to heal from the past to build the future etc. if it's a spiral that's supposed to be a fusion of cycles (circles) and change (upward motion)

I just want to be clear that there's no inherent conflict with your very good le retour ideas where steban ends up fighting while uli is wounded

ohh i wasn't meaning to imply that you think that! i'm sorry if my tags came across that way. i was more just rambling to myself about what i like to see in a story i guess

(also of course not everyone has to like or yes-and my le retour ideas 😄 what am i, some Fandom Mom type?)

i was referring more to like... the thought that if mazov's death and nilsen's involvement therein happened a certain way, it must automatically follow that it'd go the same way for steban and ulixes. bc even if we're assuming they're straight-up reincarnations, that doesn't mean they'd do the exact same stuff, seeing as their circumstances are different ones, and they have things going on that mazov and nilsen lacked, and vice versa, and also like, that's a bummer, y'know? i mean there are highly interesting ways to pull off a tale of fate and predeterminism where the characters end up re-treading the exact same path as their predecessors, but that's just not to my personal taste most of the time. that's purely a me-issue tho.

for what it's worth i'm completely on board re: the spiral of history. but sometimes i feel like it's Forbidden to even suggest that anything can evolve and grow in that setting