#the Exemplars

[halcyon-hero-head]

Halcyon Hero opinion!

Monarch

King Tut

Would it be cheating to ask for all of POLAR? 😅

anon i already did Copycat and Xolaris but i will Absolutely do the rest of POLAR in a bit😊💖💖

Monarch....

King Tut!

[essektheylyss]

One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.

(Buckle in. This is a long one.)

In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.

As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.

Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.

This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.

I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.

But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.

So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.

But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.

But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.

It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.

He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)

So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.

But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.

(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)

[deutsche-bahn]

Es ist mal wieder Montag, und während ich auf der Arbeit einen handwerklichen Nervenzusammenbruch schiebe werde ich an der Familienfront wohl demnächst mit meiner Tante eines dieser leidlichen klärenden Gespräche führen müssen, die schon in Gedanken so unangenehm sind dass totaler Kontaktabbruch gerade doch echt verlockend klingt. Nothing like explaining your supposed lifestyle choices to the headstrong matriarch of the family. Bitte überfahrt mich einfach.

Der Akkordeonspieler nimmt seine Rolle als Ersatzfamilie ernst und fragt, ob er mich zu meiner Tante fahren soll- einfach, weil nach so einem Gespräch drei Stunden einsame Rückfahrt 'ne räudige Aussicht sind. Die roundabout sieben Stunden Fahrzeit die dabei für ihn rauskommen würden klingen aber genauso räudig. Ich bin mit der Gesamtsituation überfordert.

[trechosdeseries]

Garota Exemplar, 2014.

[dispelzine]

Exemplars / Bidder Street, London, England.

[gracebethartacc]

FINALLY. AFTER LIKE. A YEAR I FINISHED MY OCS REFS. YAYYYYYY

anyway woe the Epoch Exemplars be upon ye

[widowkills]

富察·容音 Fuca Rongyin from 延禧攻略 The Story of Yanxi Palace (2018)

TV APPRECIATION WEEK 2024 — free choice: favourite chinese period drama character

[anghraine]

me, to myself: I've been ranting for over 20 years about my gripes with the Peter Jackson LOTR movies and especially their tremendously influential (mis)handling of Gondor, Aragorn, the legacy of Númenor, Elrond, etc, and been consistently annoyed by how much their fans insist on uncritical glorification while also trying to present themselves as fandom underdogs who must defend these inescapable behemoths from the smallest slight. Maybe I should try to focus on other things and put them behind me.

[news: Jackson is making a new LOTR project involving Aragorn and Gollum]

me: alternately, maybe I will never be free

[ljonskart]

Jinaea Reed, Cleric of Erastil -- sketch for a pf2e Kingmaker campaign I'm playing in!

[viserya-firstofhername]

Hear me out, I am not saying anything in particular, yet I am saying some matters which I may elaborate upon in times to come.

[halcyon-hero-head]

Craftman and Uthanizer for the opinion bingo please?

-⭐

of course anon!💖

Craftman :))

Uthanizer!! :))

[essektheylyss]

Honestly, obsessed with the fact that there is a massive fucking tree growing both at the sites of the beginning and end of the Calamity—a horrific reminder of death at the beginning, and a promise of life at the end.

Lord of the Rings ass worldbuilding, and it's INCREDIBLE.

[septemberlikestea]

having fun. messily!

[the-matron-of-ravens]

IS THAT TWIG THE FUTURE ARBOR EXEMPLAR??????

[dispelzine]

Exemplars / Phoenicia, New York.

[thelightfluxtastic]

Pararchetrope -> Exemplar

So in my archetropy essays I've been using "patatrope" (from paratype) to mean "similar trope/archetype/motif" and "pararchetrope" to mean "character that feels like a paratype due to fitting an archetype".

But I'll be the first to admit "pararchetrope" is an awkward mouthful to pronounce, and I was hoping I or someone else might stumble onto something better.

How about the word "exemplar"? Even in it's completely mundane current meaning, it fits the bill. Something serving as an example or model of a particular concept.

To me, Pearl, Gawain and both Sir Carrots are exemplars of the paladin archetype, and thus activate archetrope feelings.