Akyaea22

They aren’t vain, not in the most common, stereotypical definition, but they're self absorbed. They’re self absorbed in their penultimate goal to get home, and why wouldn’t they be? They’re an *alien*. Bureaucratically speaking, they have no birth certificate, no passport, no visa, no ID, or Social Insurance Number, and literally speaking, they’re stranded at Night Raven College, in an entirely different world, and possibly universe. They’re an alien in nearly every definition of the word, with seemingly no way home, but they *must get home*.

So they put up with the facade of school life, blending in as best they can, accepting the insane mandates, disguised as reasonable requests, from Crowley, navigating entirely new cultures, magic-infused technology— magic as a concept— and global history to amass knowledge, money, and most importantly, relationships, because inter-dimensional travel is not cheap, intuitive, or easy, especially with magic as an unknown variable, and if they want to get home, they’ll have to call in a lot of favors.

And yet throughout this entire farce, they can’t tell anyone the truth because best case scenario, no one believes their alien story, and worst-case scenario, they get dissected in the name of furthering science. They’re forced to play the long game and be a “normal student", and as they’re going about this precarious, social, death web, they can’t be brash about making friends, no matter how much they want to expedite the process of going home, because no one likes a utilitarian, self-serving snake that butchers social niceties. They have to be precise and careful with the bonds they make and maintain— a surgeon— but at the end of the day, a surgeon and a butcher are the same, and people can tell when they’re being cut open for evaluation.

——///——

WOAHDIFKFN HEYYYY BIYEARLY POST.

They’re not always like this, trust. Could you imagine if, during an overblot, Grim annoys them just a bit too much and Eve goes “erm, actually, you annoyed me, by my quantitative analysis, 0.2 arbitrary units more than you’re worth, good bye ☝️😬”

It’s a reoccurring idea that mainly shows its face in the later books, when the friends they make— the first years, dorm leaders, etc.— start getting worried about their penchant for getting into trouble (overblots) and settling said trouble by themself, and Eve is *so* confused, because last they checked, they only kept the menagerie around for the sake of looking like a normal, sociable person— so when did the peanut gallery start caring? And did it make Eve a bad person for maintaining these relationships, almost exclusively, for the utilitarian purpose of getting themself home?

Yes, Eve did a bunch of objectively wild favors (everything in the Octavinelle book) and stuck their neck out for their “friends”, but only with an abundance of external factors that all summed up to the idea that friendship, and the help it could provide, outweighed the inconvenience of the favors. This juxtaposition between viewing someone as a tool to use but suddenly learning they care about you enough to cross country/kingdom borders, and an ocean on a two-text whim, is jarring. If they did good things for a selfish reason, were they a bad person? (Lmao, baby’s first existential crisis)

Ok, the VDC takes place in February, right? That means that so far, MC has been dealing with about one overblot a month.

Riddle - September

Leona - October

Azul - November/Early December

Kalim - Late December/Winter Break

Vil - February

(Timeline is thanks to @twstarchives and their wonderful work!)

Therefore, we can assume that Idia’s arc starts somewhere in March or April. You know what else starts in March/April?

The season of Spring.

I hope those of you Greek mythology nerds (I say that like I’m not one myself) are on the same page as me here. If you aren’t, here’s the run-down.

In the myth, Hades, the God of the Underworld, kidnaps Persephone, Goddess of Spring, to be his wife cause he’s lonely. (Ha. Reminds me of a certain someone.) Demeter, Persephone’s mother, objects rather strenuously and refuses to let anything grow until she comes back. The problem is, Persephone ate part of a pomegranate in the Underworld, so she has to stay in the Underworld for half a year, marking the seasons Fall and Winter. The other half of the year, she returns back to her mother, marking the seasons Spring and Summer as she leave the Underworld and Hades.

Now, I assume you’ve drawn the parallels. Idia is Hades, (Winter) Spring is coming, and Persephone is leaving, but who is our version of Persephone? Unless they introduce someone in the next chapter, I think that our ‘Persephone’, is gonna be Ortho.

Who or what else would cause a tangible impact on Idia if they left? Anything material can be easily replaced, but Ortho can’t. This brings me into the Ortho’s dead theory. (It doesn’t really add any evidence to my theory, but it draws a cool parallel.)

So, skimming over it and simplifying many, many things, the theory is basically Idia caused Ortho’s death in some way (or Ortho just kicked the bucket) and Idia took it upon himself to rebuild Ortho. I’m not sure about the specifics of it, so please feel free to scream at me so I can edit this if need be.

What I find ironic is that in the myths, Hades isn’t the God of Death. He’s the God of the Underworld. There’s a very slight difference, but it means that his job isn’t to kill people, it’s to keep people dead and in the underworld, a stark contrast to Idia trying to revive Ortho through technology.

Anyways, that’s about it. Thanks for reading my chaotic ramblings. If you have any thoughts, please feel free to comment or reblog them.