PALADIN TRAVIS SUPREMACY

this is taking eldest daughter expectations to the next fucking level

could you imagine? Zebani is the head of the family but people will effectively worship Wicander, and Zebani gets none of that recognition, none of those accolades, none of the flowers

it's always going to be Wicander Show while she plots and schemes and does all this hard work in the background, behind the scenes

because for whatever reason, Yanessa Halovar looked at her granddaughter Zebani and decided Zebani can't be the face

and here's where im like, have a speculative explanation as to why that is:

bc yknow i kinda wouldnt put it past Yanessa to set these two kids against each other? we cant have nice, loving sibling relationship. they might end up more loyal to each other than to her. so split them up, make zebani hate wicander, then zebani will make wicander hate her

or, you know, maybe it's just a case of Grandmummy plays favorites and for whatever reason, she adores her little Wiccy

or, zebani isn't an aasimar. if wiccy was doing spells pre-tattoo like lioran is apparently already doing, then yanessa knooooows her experiment paid off. if wiccy was anything like lioran pre-puberty, and already manifesting sorcerous abilities without filament aid, yanessa knew what she was working with

bc lioran explicitly knows that he has sorcerous abilities, not clerical. and even if he didnt know, his lack of tattoos paired with his arcane skills indicates that yanessa would know lioran is sorcerous.

so hey. maybe aetheon's boys bleed true. but his one girl did not.

I would be reluctant to use fridging in this exact context, because this isn't some imaginary scenario to generate manpain for a white hero, this is a much more common experience of Native American and First Nation people, having their wives and daughters and sisters (in particular, but not exclusively) go missing. And never getting answers, never learning what happened, and not being believed that there's a problem in the first place.

This is like how being rescued from a tower by a prince is not particularly empowering or affirming to cis physically able straight thin perisex white women and girls, but can be for basically anybody else. Particularly black girls and women, who do not get a lot of cultural messages that treat them as people who are so valuable and precious, who may not have the strength to save themselves, or may wish that they didn't fucking have to save themselves (and everyone else) all the time.

White men have this story so often happen that we have a trope name specific to one specific and particularly egregious version of this, but you don't often see men who look like Robbie dealing with this type of story in fictional settings, even though it happens for men like Robbie in real life with horrifying frequency.

Fictional small town in the middle of nowhere in real country: par for the course in any genre

Fictional major city in real country: standard fair, but it's usually clearly based on a real city

Fictional suburb of real major city in real country: strange but I can see the application