(no subject)
Nov. 14th, 2025 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kradeelav(crossposting fire emblem meta (mostly zihark, some gunter) from the tumblr ~ )
see i love dissecting zihark for very similar reasons to gunter:
because both of them have their surface level "cute/sweet" ~perfect~ ~palatable~ story - 'oh he's just the northern fortress dad' or 'oh he fights for equality because of his dead laguz lover so tragically romantic ;a;'
and gunter, i've talked about here at length, lol - there is a technical piece of truth to that (he does care for corrin and the northern fortress kids but it is. a teeny part of the actual truth. and man is he deliciously rancid.)
but zihark -
first thing is, there's grieving for That One (and people always will for their whole lives especially if there's a death involved, some folks are just special) - but there's also.... like we have all heard about a Guy Who Is A Little Weird about his ex in a big-ass-red-flag sense, right.
and even if he's not That Kind of Weird about his lover/romantically in general - you start to notice, where's friends for him, where's a home, the plague hit when he was four, did his family die in the plague? how did he survive financially before being a mercenary?
beyond 'where is a single support person/authority figure for you, man' - he's introduced in a constant mindset of being a mole/traitor for vigilantes who would viscerally - hate his guts if they knew the truth about him. (in darker corners of the world, violent thug types who would hunt other living beings for sport get.... really fucking violent about perceived sexual deviance and that is exactly how they'd view it, without mincing words. bleakly, that's assuming if he wasn't found out at least once.)
it takes a not-all-there personality to actually be able to integrate oneself with those thuggish types, survive without being revealed, and hold one's own mindset separate, for what, months? years? he's not mature or particularly well trained before being thrown to the wolves, either.
so you've got that jagged edge, and then curiously, you've got the other extreme where when he is in a position to defect to the laguz army, he .... doesn't.
emotionally paralyzed. he's manipulative and charming enough to survive but there's a curious core of apathy, disassociation, distance, adrift-ness at the smallest sense of conflict. he's not going to lead the charge, but rather weaves in and out of the corners of your eye and wait.
(and between those two extremes i distinctly get the sense he's subconsciously a martyr - do right, yes - but distinctly not giving a real hard damn about whether he's staying on this world or not if things went the wrong way and he fucked up in combat.)
that
that, man - is a hell a lot more interesting to me than that sheen we're given.
see i love dissecting zihark for very similar reasons to gunter:
because both of them have their surface level "cute/sweet" ~perfect~ ~palatable~ story - 'oh he's just the northern fortress dad' or 'oh he fights for equality because of his dead laguz lover so tragically romantic ;a;'
and gunter, i've talked about here at length, lol - there is a technical piece of truth to that (he does care for corrin and the northern fortress kids but it is. a teeny part of the actual truth. and man is he deliciously rancid.)
but zihark -
first thing is, there's grieving for That One (and people always will for their whole lives especially if there's a death involved, some folks are just special) - but there's also.... like we have all heard about a Guy Who Is A Little Weird about his ex in a big-ass-red-flag sense, right.
and even if he's not That Kind of Weird about his lover/romantically in general - you start to notice, where's friends for him, where's a home, the plague hit when he was four, did his family die in the plague? how did he survive financially before being a mercenary?
beyond 'where is a single support person/authority figure for you, man' - he's introduced in a constant mindset of being a mole/traitor for vigilantes who would viscerally - hate his guts if they knew the truth about him. (in darker corners of the world, violent thug types who would hunt other living beings for sport get.... really fucking violent about perceived sexual deviance and that is exactly how they'd view it, without mincing words. bleakly, that's assuming if he wasn't found out at least once.)
it takes a not-all-there personality to actually be able to integrate oneself with those thuggish types, survive without being revealed, and hold one's own mindset separate, for what, months? years? he's not mature or particularly well trained before being thrown to the wolves, either.
so you've got that jagged edge, and then curiously, you've got the other extreme where when he is in a position to defect to the laguz army, he .... doesn't.
emotionally paralyzed. he's manipulative and charming enough to survive but there's a curious core of apathy, disassociation, distance, adrift-ness at the smallest sense of conflict. he's not going to lead the charge, but rather weaves in and out of the corners of your eye and wait.
(and between those two extremes i distinctly get the sense he's subconsciously a martyr - do right, yes - but distinctly not giving a real hard damn about whether he's staying on this world or not if things went the wrong way and he fucked up in combat.)
that
that, man - is a hell a lot more interesting to me than that sheen we're given.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-11-27 03:18 am (UTC)god. tellius has so much going on under the surface. or, it can, if we think about it. there are little hints to things like this but a lot of it is finding the gaps, isn't it, just seeing what wasn't said? little things that don't add up, or situations that would be a lot darker than they appear at first glance...
we're nearly at the end of path of radiance so i don't have all the context yet but Someday.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-11-27 10:37 pm (UTC)