#ive just never bothered to mention his age bc its very obvious to me and i need to remind myself

[alagaesia-headcanons]

I will always defend Orrin with my life and I've elaborated on my love of his character many times, but I realize I've failed to point out a particularly foundational detail regarding all that. I suspect that it goes very unnoticed by most people (unsurprisingly since it's only subtly referenced once) that an important aspect of Orrin is how young he is. He's only a little older than the main cast; during the war he's only 23-24. Orrin goes through all that trauma without that much experience behind him and a great deal of uncertainty ahead of him. I think it really sheds a lot of light on his fear of losing everything he cares about to the Empire when considering how much of his life is left in front of him. He really does have so much to lose, and the weight of all the relentless, compounding grief that he wouldn't be accustomed to or prepared for could so easily break him into despair.

[wickedpact]

your regularly scheduled ttt Thots

first main thought: sad. sad sad sad. poor achilles

second main thought: i was thinking abt this as i went to sleep but the difference in 'what an author wants to communicate with a piece of media' and 'what an audience wishes to take from a piece of media' are two different things that ive never thought of much before.

i mean when i read ttt issues, what i want is Lore. i want to learn about the characters, i want to see what makes them tick, i want to learn about their relationships with each other and see how they grow over the years. but thats not necessarily what the authors want to explore with their stories-- like, the nicky story tells you actually very little about nicky as a person or nicky and joe's relationship (at least it doesnt tell you anything we dont already know), and thats not really seemingly the point of the story itself.

but anyways.

ACHILLLESSSSSS

i was honestly expecting smth very different from this one, primarily bc the blurb mentioned andy 'returning' after leaving achilles and i thought that meant her returning to the squad. and bc booker became immortal around the time andy was with achilles, i thought this story would be about them meeting and the obvious clash they would have over andy mourning her relationship (that ended due to her immortality, that she had to let go of due to her immortality) and booker refusing to end his relationships bc he doesnt have the experience there that andy had.

but 'returning' meant returning to her and achilles' house and her finding out how she died, which. rip. i just kind of assumed he died of old age.

AND IT SUCKS bc she left specifically so he wouldnt get hurt, and all she ended up rlly doing is leaving him to die violently alone

i was kind of upset we didnt rlly learned much abt their relationship (what did andy love abt achilles? what did he love abt her? what did they spend their days doing after they retired?) i did love the little bits showing how the two were different, especially in regards to how his life as a runaway slave affected him (and didnt affect andy)

something something andy's immortality granted her the confidence to set aside her weapons so thoroughly for so long, while achilles' past as a slave and respective mortality didnt allow him to be so hasty

but anyways the fact that andy wanted peace so bad-- i mean, like ive said before, we kind of see some of the worst of andy (well, maybe not the worst worst of her) even within the movie. but regardless of how much andy is tired of humanity's shit and how much she likes to swing her axe, she's still a person who wants peace and quiet and safety at the end of the day like anyone else.

its one of a million things i like abt andy. she can be a vengeful god and a doting mother and a thousands-year-long mourning daughter and a tired mercenary & on top of all of those Layers(TM) she can be Just A Person Who Wants Peace. her multitudes are wild to think abt sometimes, how many lives she's led

'but the older she gets the harder she finds conjuring their love in her memory when she comes here. all thats left is the hate and rage that destroyed this place. and that will last forever' 😭

tbh this issue is kind of a monument to how much the immortals lose to bigotry & hatred

and speaking of, the nicky one was alright. like i said you dont really... . learn much abt nicky or joeandnicky. i mean

1. nicky misses joe when hes gone. shocker

2. nicky kills violent racists. double shocker

3. all the violence and hatred nicky witnesses over this period bothers him. huge shocker!

i mean nothing it goes over is a surprise and (unpopular opinion here) im not usually a fan of shmoopy romantic stuff. joe's speech is a huge exception to me and i think its bc the speech is Romance With A Point. that speech isnt just a bunch of flowery sentiments, but it actually tells the viewer quite a bit about joe and nicky's relationship.

(i remember in one of luca's interviews he mentioned that, while reading the tog script, he wondered what a 900 year long relationship would be like, but the answer to his question was pretty much all in the van speech.)

also i think ive mentioned this before, but i tend not to like joenicky fics where joe or nicky have a Big Speech for the other bc pretty much all other romantic sentiment pales in comparison to the van speech for me. and nicky's letter in this story is the same way for me. you can read the whole thing here if you want (the rest of the dialogue within this story is mostly just confederates being racist and nicky being like 'thats nice' before he kills them lmao)

i dunno the whole thing is like. im so sad and lonely. and im killing a bunch of people and that sucks. and im so lonely. and sad. did i mention i was killing people. the sun is mocking me. these clouds symbolize the storm in my heart. im so lonely. and also sad.

i dunno, it didnt unzip me. tho i like how the wine was spiked with that sweet 'joe as the sun' symbolism, love that for us

its also kind of ironically Another TTT Story dealing with 'nicky is killing a bunch of people and hes having a crisis over it'. ive said before, im not a big fan of nicky angst personally + the fact that there isnt much here to actually learn abt nicky + the fact i wasnt huge for nicky's Poetic Liberties + the lack of a solo joe to match this solo nicky kind of made me 'eh' abt it. it wasnt poorly written or anything! i just wasnt ham for it

like with the other ones (moon landing one for instance) even when there was stuff i wasnt huge for, there was other stuff i liked, like most of us didnt care for the depiction of joe and nicky's argument in that story, but the stuff with andy and joe arguing about the moon was cute, and the stuff with nicky and Booker's Relationship Advice was cute. but for this one it was mostly just the letter. and i wasnt huge for the letter, haha

also. mutton chop man

god did this to me bc i bitched too much abut the goatee. he saw my weakness and punished me for it

BUT HOLY FUCK DID YALL SEE THE SHAKESPEARE SONNET QUOTE IN THERE???? ? SONNET 43 BABEY EVERY DAY WE GROW CLOSER TO GODS LIGHT