PAST SEER

kvasir is a goddess of light and seiðr & gullveig's past self. she is killed by seiðr by the end of book vii to end the cycle of the golden seer's curse and prevent the destruction of the world. after her death, she wakes up in fódlan thinking that she has been returned to the past and is eventually enrolled in the officers academy.

she does not know how many cycles have happened. too many, probably. most of her memories from both past cycles and even the present one are relatively foggy (e.g. her lack of memory about meeting the summoner). similarly, though she has some vague recollections of her time as gullveig & seiðr, she cannot recall any of them clearly.

i'm not really going to be touching the time travel aspect of her abilities outside of maybe an occasional drabble and the like for obvious god-modding reasons. that aside, with the curse of the golden seer having been dispelled, kvasir just no longer has the golden serpents. she doesn't actually know this for certain, and she's been scorned by hoping before, so she is excusing the feeling as a difference in realms for the time being. deep down, though, she knows, but she has never been kvasir without seiðr & gullveig as her future so eventually she will have to figure the whole being her own person thing out.

for toa-canon purposes, i am strictly writing kvasir/seiðr/gullveig as kvasir, specifically pulled from the moment following her death. i'm open to writing seiðr & gullveig in aus with some plotting; otherwise, kvasir is my main focus for this blog.

and that should be it! if you'd like to have something clarified, please feel free to let me know and i'll see how i can clear things up for you. i'm excited to write her with everyone!

and here's the rules page very quickly for anyone who wants it haha:

writer — elio, 17, they/he. i also go by the name darcy, which you might have known me by previously and is also still fine! i’m a full-time student so while i will do my best to respond to threads in a timely manner, i do ask for my partners’ patience. if it’s been a bit since i’ve gotten back to you, please feel free to check in! there’s a chance it might have slipped through the cracks.

formatting — the most i’ll really do for formatting is small text. if you prefer for me to refrain or need any other accommodations, just let me know!

communication — if you’d like to talk for whatever reason, you can reach me through a ping in the toa server or tumblr ims. if you prefer discord dms, i don’t mind, but i do request that you ask beforehand because dm notifications tend to make me anxious and i appreciate having the warning.

kvasir, the past ‎ ‎ ‎ ✦ ‎ ‎ ‎ “this, too...was decided long ago...”

my real fascination with kvasir's character is how the endless cycles of the curse broke her down into the fatalistic version of her that we meet in book vii. i do believe that at the very beginning of the cycles, kvasir's personality was something more similar to how seiðr is in the present, but that's something i'll expound on a little later.

kvasir acts with little regard for the consequences of her actions or for her own life. she will do whatever it takes to accomplish her mission, single-mindedly focused on it to a severe degree. she does not want to waste time so she runs, but she also resorts to violence to stop her pursuers without hesitation. and despite the fact that she is slowly injured in the process, she presses on regardless. the only reason she stops is because she is forced to, injured to the point that she is physically unable to keep going.

now, she doesn't have to. we see in chapter 13 that gullveig is more than capable of rewinding the time her body experiences to reverse her injuries in literally no time at all and kvasir and seiðr are presumably capable of this as well. we never see kvasir actually wield the power of time in book vii, but we do see seiðr do it, albeit poorly and without much precision. i think if seiðr and gullveig are opposite ends of the spectrum on their mastery over time, kvasir falls somewhere in the middle, but that's an entirely different topic now.

she does this, not particularly because she does not care for her own well-being, but rather because she has never had to care. i do like to think kvasir tried to resist the cycle at first and help the order of heroes like seiðr does in the present, but a majority of her existence would have still been the set of predestined events we see throughout book vii.

despite this seeming lack of regard for herself, kvasir does not actually want to die. but the first time seiðr threatens her with death, she doesn't even react. because she's been here countless times before, and she has never died. she knows alfonse will stop seiðr before she can.

beyond this, as far as kvasir knows, she can't actually die. kvasir, seiðr, and gullveig are unable to kill themselves because the golden serpents will not allow it. they can kill each other, but kvasir already knows that seiðr always fails to kill her and gullveig has no reason to try and kill her. and, i mean, aside from toa rules, there's a reason i'm not going to touch her time abilities at all. namely, if someone has complete control over time then wtf are you supposed to do?? how do you win if your opponent can just go well actually no. like that's beyond godmodding and not fun for anyone in the slightest lmao

getting us back on track, kvasir's purpose is this: inform njorðr of gullveig's existence, then complete the ritual to lose her memories and become seiðr. though she and seiðr are technically the same person, they are, in her own words, still separate beings. essentially, though kvasir's existence will never really end, ‘kvasir’ as we know her is fated to die. she'll forget everything she knows and turn into seiðr, who is still technically her, but only on a physical level. they'll make different memories, develop different ideals, and so on. because of this, what happens to her is unimportant. at this point in time, she is resigned to accept whatever fate awaits her, which is ultimately her non-existence until the cycle begins anew.

she is always going to die and she is always going to be alone. this is the truth kvasir believes about her own existence and the reason she barrels toward the end of her mission without any regard for herself. but there's always going to be this dissonance between how she views her own future as inevitable but everyone else's as something that can be changed because her purpose is literally to change the future.

as i mentioned, the first part of kvasir's mission is to inform njörðr of gullveig's existence. i find it a bit curious how she refers to this as her “changing njörðr's future” when she seems adamant about how the future cannot be changed, but, well. yeah, saying that she is changing njörðr's future is right. if she hadn't gone to see njörðr, then the golden seer would be little more than a legend to him. njörðr's active involvement in seiðr's life is part of what brings about her transformation into gullveig because he guides her toward it. seiðr kills heiðr because he encourages her to, and this results in the golden serpents making her their new vessel, as well as his death at gullveig's hands.

kvasir's adamance isn't about how it's impossible for the future to change. it's about how it's impossible for her future to be changed. when seiðr is trying to convince her of this, her immediate refusal of the notion doesn't stop at changing the future being impossible. she specifically says, “that is not possible. not for me.” because if she just doesn't speak to njörðr, the entire future of the world could change, but she can't choose to do that. her speaking to him is inevitable and unchanging; the golden serpents will not allow her to stray.

but this is not to say that kvasir is just this apathetic and fatalistic being who goes through life waiting for it to reach its fated end. because, as i said at the beginning, i do think that kvasir used to be like seiðr. all we really know is that to become seiðr, kvasir has to erase her memories. if there's anything more to it, we never really learn, but it does seem that the only evident difference between them is their memories.

seiðr, the present ‎ ‎ ‎ ✧ ‎ ‎ ‎ “as long as we hold on to our hope, its light will not fade.”

so seiðr to me is who kvasir used to be in the very beginning before the cycles eroded her hope. she wanted to believe that things could still change— that she could still change. she wanted to believe in a future where they could all live in peace. but seiðr has the luxury of not remembering the countless cycles in which she has tried and failed to thwart their future. kvasir has to live with this knowledge.

but though she loses her hope, kvasir never loses seiðr's empathy and care. in fact, she craves these kinds of relationships with others. she is perfectly capable of— and genuinely wants to— empathize with and help others.

when the order of heroes is thrown into the past, kvasir really has no reason to help the summoner at all. she doesn't appear to have any recollection of them at this point in time, so when they first meet, they're really just a stranger that suddenly appears before her with no explanation. their recovery has no influence on her ability to carry out her mission, but she helps them anyway.

and her motivations for this are a little self-serving, yeah? while kvasir may have lived through countless lifetimes, she is for all intents and purposes still a child. a solitary and lonely child who simply craves connection with others. she admits to helping the summoner because she was alone. in most cycles, the summoner is the first— and probably the only— person she manages to form a relationship with. it's the reason she, seiðr, and gullveig have a special bond with the summoner, though one-sided or not, i'll leave to any future muns to decide.

but i think she would have helped them regardless because kvasir helps them knowing they're still going to leave her anyway. she even knows exactly how long it will take for their friends to find them. in the long run, it probably hurts more to have finally made a connection with someone and lose it, but she helps anyway. she wants to, even if it only ends up hurting her in the end.

anyway i don't know how to make this segue graceful, so let's just jump into talking about kvasir's relationship with the summoner as a result of feh's awkward player pandering.

gullveig, the future ‎ ‎ ‎ ✦ ‎ ‎ ‎ “you are all that remains. time is cruel, isn't it?”

— i wrote this part before mythic gullveig's release where she just flat out says that she loves the summoner so erm. here's a quick addition to this part to say i simply reject this notion LMAO i thought about rewriting this section but i think the point i've made stands regardless

let's just get this one out of the way quickly: if not for njörðr, seiðr would not have broached the topic of creating a child with the summoner with a ten foot pole. she expressly says she's doing it because she must and at njörðr's request, she's fully aware how absurd and personal the request is, and she doesn't even understand why she's asking them. seiðr chooses the summoner because...who else is she supposed to choose. technically speaking, as seiðr, she's known all of the main cast for the same length of time. but they met when she was still kvasir, even if neither of them know that, so seiðr feels closer to them than anyone else.

but i don't think kvasir (i say kvasir but this does apply to all three) is actually in love with the summoner. what i do think is that her relationship with the summoner is the only one she's really had a chance to develop beyond her trying to kill them or them trying to kill her, and she's attached to them as a result. of course she thinks she loves the summoner instead of random npc 312 if they're the only person to have spent time with her and treated her like a normal person. kvasir, that's basic human decency!! i promise other people can also be kind to you.

sorry, i hope this does not come off as me trying to slander the summoner HAHA but i think the context of her affection for them is important when it comes to. well, everything else.

the summoner is always going to be a significant individual in her life whether she's kvasir or seiðr or gullveig. i think that's pretty unquestionable. if nothing else, they were at least the first person she could have called a friend. but kvasir has never known anything else. she has no other relationships that she can compare it to, because she has never properly interacted with anyone else.

i don't think anyone would want to be loved by someone purely because they have no one else, nor do i think kvasir would actually want to love someone simply for the same reason. above all else, i honestly just think she needs friends and some normalcy in her life.

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