Ylfa’s bottleneck

I’m sure that this will in no way be linked to Jezinka, Krok’s daughter that was manipulated into building a weapon of mass destruction because she builds without thinking of the consequences. The same daughter Ava needles until she starts to consider WHY she makes things and whether or not those destructive things can be made into better, more helpful things.

I was ruminating on how it seems like Krok loves the universe but cares little for its inhabitants, and how Chuck seems to care for all of the things within the universe — to the point of relenting when he was about to kill Clementine despite the fact that she was killing the universe. The thing he is intrinsically linked to which kind of makes it his body I guess. Immediately relented when the people within said universe begged him to stop.

So. If Chuck is Krok’s little brother, Krok’s sentiment would make a lot more sense. Because I don’t know that Krok is lying when he talks about loving the universe, even though to him that means discarding everything within it that will accelerate its demise. I think Krok just operates behind seventeen layers of obfuscation. There are internal motivations he’s had eternity to ruminate on, and simplifying them into half-truths is probably easiest. So like, what if this is ultimately a story about a man who doesn’t want to watch his brother die? A story about grief and letting go?

In much the same way Ava feels like she’s running out of time to know the universe before it dies, Krok must also. He says as much, but not why. Chuck is not the universe but he’s a singular entity tied to the universe, dependent on its laws, and who will therefore die when it dies. And suddenly my thoughts about how Chuck seems unbothered by death while Krok is fixated on it took on a new light.

Chuck didn’t understand death before he almost killed Clementine because he exists in all moments. And for all intents and purposes, it seems like Chuck is what/who got all of Krok’s power. It can create fabricated spaces to speak to people, it can move people (Ava) through time and space effortlessly while Krok had to recreate a machine to do that… Chuck is everything Krok isn’t anymore. But the cost there is mortality. Eons away, sure, but still an inevitability.

I just keep thinking about the relationship between Chuck-Ava-Krok here. Ava acting as a stand-in for “intelligent” life in the universe AKA anything that can communicate with a higher being like Chuck. How Chuck cares for the people on the universe, despite the fact that they are one of many entropic forces rushing the universe to its death, and how if Chuck really is the baby brother that Krok would almost certainly resent the things within the universe that are killing it.

But then there’s the fear component again, and I’m struck by the Adam and Eve allegory that Krok brings up entirely on his own. Two people, one of which sprung into being after a piece was taken from the other. Krok first, then Chuck seems to be a piece cut from Krok given that he’s the inheritor of all the god-like powers. And even though Chuck is mortal, he spans all of time and space which kind of makes that moot — because even if the universe dies, it’s reborn, and whatever happens in between can’t be observed or felt because there will be no concept of observation or feeling.

Except… Krok would be able to. Universal constraints don’t apply to him because he came before, the only reason he’s limited in describing that time is because he’s trying to filter that information through mortal minds whose comprehension is tied directly to universal reality. Not whatever abyssal void reality Krok comes from. So if and when the universe dies, even if it’s reborn, Krok will have to sit there by himself for an indeterminate amount of time because there will be no concept of time, waiting. Waiting to not be alone again.

I refuse to feel bad for this man since he’s a weird poacher whose daughters are a means to an end, but like… it is kind of tragic if you view what’s happening this way.

Also begs the question of who the fuck their parent is. Because Krok couldn’t made a rock instead of a star, and even Chuck is limited in its abilities. Something made the universe spring into being, and if Krok slowly lost his reality warping power then I’m willing to bet that whatever created the first sparks of matter — pulling from [redacted] knows where — also lost a significant portion of its power. But I think that means it retained something else…

Krok got the body and the ability to directly interact with the universe. Chuck got the power to manipulate the universe (within reason and with constraints because: energy). So what’s the secret third thing that someone/thing else got? And what does it mean if it’s with the being that ostensibly created the universe? And why would proximity matter? Why fling it across time and space?

It has to be something you can target, because the weapon is still a gun. It’s not some diffuse grenade that captures everything in a radius. It’s focused and directed. So whatever this thing is, it has something like a body, too. But, it’s limited enough in either thought or ability to manipulate things that throwing it through space and time is a viable way to slow it down.

Like, on some level Spite understands they escaped and that Rook saved them, but Spite’s material reality doesn’t reflect that. For that alone, he could’ve considered the agreement between himself and Lucanis breached and just taken him over. Manifested directly. Instead, if you’re a little fresh with Spite at the beginning of Inner Demons, he says, “I can’t get him out. We’re trapped.”

Him. Lucanis. They’re both trapped and yes that bothers Spite, but by this point he’s given up on “Tell him. Make him,” and has pivoted to, “This is my idiot and I’m not leaving without him even though he has locked me out.” Which is insane, frankly. Especially as you move through Lucanis’ mind prison (or through Lucanis-Emmrich convos) and find out that Lucanis ALSO harbors this secret favoritism for Spite. In so much as he doesn’t want Spite to die. At least not because of him. Which! Equally insane. He’s not a Nevarran, there’s like zero reason for him to work with a spirit, and a deal is not a contract so he can’t even use the crow adage of never abandoning one as an excuse.

I know Spite was fed to Lucanis and it wasn’t a random event that a spirit of determination was what got stitched into his being, but there is something like fate in what happened to them. That a spirit of (now, vengeful) determination got stuck with what may possibly be the closest Thedas will ever get to a cockroach becoming a man in terms of like… sheer will to live despite the odds. In spite of the odds.

By the end of their shared character arcs it’s painfully clear why Spite even deigned to make a deal AT ALL. Because as much of a prison as it was to have been ripped from the fade where Spite was free to do as he pleased, all things considered, being stuck with a man who was essentially a kindred spirit is about as well as that could’ve gone. Spite was torn away from home only to be stuck with the familiar. A mirror of himself. It’s no wonder he just took on Lucanis’ form. That’s THEM. They are both determined and driven by determination, no matter what they do.