Wife knife is rife

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 have to preface by saying I hold absolutely no resentment towards marisha for her character choices — murray is without a doubt one of my favorite characters of the campaign. I think it makes total sense to be suspicious and fully think through what might happen at the theater, given that thousands of innocent people would be attending. But I also think the bird watching mission being short-staffed falls heavily on her shoulders, because she was the first person to bring up the possibility of something terrible happening on opening night, and she aggressively defended the idea from the very first moment it was challenged.

It’s that refusal to let go of her theory that really intrigues me, mostly because I’m not sure if it was intentional or not. Brennan dropped quite a few hints that the theater ritual was going to be a positive thing during the last few episodes, but it kinda seemed too little too late because the mindset that the theater was “ground zero” was deeply ingrained in the party by that point, which makes it hard to tell if murray’s insistence was purposeful.

Assuming it is intentional, I think that’s a really interesting character flaw for a character that hasn’t shown all that many glaring flaws as of yet. As an academic, she should know how important it is to consider all angles of a theory, especially angles that could disprove it. However, given the way she grew up and her role at the Penteveral, it stands to reason that murray has had a lot of her ideas shot down by muckety-mucks that didn’t really give a shit about the merits of what she was positing.

In 2013, my Mum and I went to Europe for the first time. 24 hour flight from Sydney to London before we were to transfer to Istanbul, got into Heathrow, absolutely exhausted... and it started snowing, cancelling hundreds of flights, including ours.

I had a meltdown. I was exhausted, halfway across the world, and all of our carefully-made plans had just exploded. Crying, hyperventilating, ended up making a little barricade out of our suitcases so I could panic without getting too many stares while Mum attempted to sort out plans. I was a mess.

As soon as she came back and told me that British Airways would arrange and pay for our accommodation while we waited for our new connecting flight, and that she had contacted the tour we were meant to go on in Turkey, and while we'd probably miss Pamukkale and Ephesus, we could still do Cappadocia and just offset the Istanbul stuff for a few days, and that... it was arranged. It was sorted out. We had a plan.

I was able to calm myself down almost instantly. We had a plan.

Azune does exactly the same thing in Complicated Questions. He's panicking, terrified, the plan he's made has been upturned by Murray's refusal to get Demodus involved. He's having a meltdown. And then he realises that Occtis is a perfect witness (and victim), and therefore he Has A Plan again. He's able to get control of the meltdown and calm himself almost instantly, because - he has a plan.

Almost every point the OP of the Reddit thread made about Azune not being trustworthy can be explained by Azune being high-masking autistic. He has a meltdown, but he's able to switch it off as soon as he has a plan. He feels 'inauthentic', because he's masking like his life depends on it, because it does. Most autistic people aren't quite in the same life-or-death circumstances as Azune, with him having to pull up a mask of the willing child soldier who'll do anything to be useful, to the good house guest and student, to the trustworthy Arcane Marshal, to the trusted man on the inside for both the Einfasens and the Halovars.

But masking for any autistic person is exhausting, and can look inauthentic, just because you're spending so much energy trying to be someone you're not. Doesn't matter if that's the child soldier-turned-Arcane Marshal-turned spy, or Nice Normal Perfectly Average Neurotypical Person. It wears on you, trying to live up to expectations.

Azune is quite an exaggerated case. He hasn't had a solid identity of his own since age twelve. When he gets Alter Self, he immediately uses it to make a version of new version of himself. I suspect he's spent so long masking, and masking that hard, that he genuinely doesn't know who he is underneath.

During that breakdown in Complicated Questions, he needed to hold onto A Plan, any plan, for the sake of his survival. He needs to mask because his life very much depends on it.

I feel like this moment is so underrated in terms of shedding light on Azune's relationship to Thjazi.

It feels like Azune has developed a somewhat biased view of who Thjazi is and what he's capable of. And there's only one "correct" answer.

For Azune to go from "he wouldn't" to "would he?" to "he would", and then the following scene where he pleads with Murray, it seems as if Azune has developed a belief on precisely how far Thjazi was willing to go. And in turn, he is just following Thjazi's footsteps in being his Liar's Blade.

But... Would he? Thimble is adamant that he wouldn't. Thimble should know him best. How could Azune doubt Thimble?

Also, does this mean that even if it took sacrificing 5000 people, Azune would've "followed orders" because he thinks Thjazi wanted that?

in these moments, azune is presenting a deeply emotional side of himself to people he trusts in the middle of an impossible situation. and while that vulnerability and trust may end up swaying perspective or future action or decision from the people he shows it to, that isn’t manipulation.

azune is a man who has never done anything but follow orders. he has never been anything but a soldier at someone else’s command, and he is suddenly in charge of 350 hired swords who are waiting for his word to spark a revolution that will get many of them killed. while he is a skilled liar, he does not enjoy it, and he is now sitting on a throne of lies he had to tell to people to be able to continue on in the wake of thjazi dying and the sundered houses take over. he is wearing a mask that has to remain picture perfect in front of almost everyone around him because they are counting on him to succeed or they will kill him for lying (as brennan said, the einfasen have no yellow zone, and azune is deeply embroiled with their house currently). his noble, extremely powerful boss, looked him in the eye on day one and basically said “you’re doing everything right. i still hold power over you. i will use it whenever i feel like it. be afraid of me.”

his moments of vulnerability are only intentionally around hal, who somewhat raised him, murray, who taught him, and thimble, who watched him grow up (vaelus and occtis were never supposed to see him like that). what’s happening in those scenes is that azune has been wearing a mask desperately in all other facets of his life, and he is finally taking the mask off in front of a few of the people he truly trusts, he’s breaking in front of them, (in a controlled environment, to let them know how badly he is struggling with his new responsibility) so that he doesn’t break later, when his life depends on him keeping it together.

azune’s formative years were spent starving and struggling or at war. this is the closest thing to emotional regulation he knows. it’s not manipulation just because his friends have listened to him beg for help and admit to feeling in trouble, and have possibly changed their course of action to care for their friend. that’s just how community works.

C4 E027 Complicated Questions / C4 E028 Chasing Shadows

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