tell us about cleopas. :3c
Oh
You know
They’re just neat
I don’t know what happened. One day they didn’t exist. Now they’re all I can think of anymore. They haunt me on the daily. They make me insane. And it all started with a single throwaway line in voice chat: she can fix him.
What’s appealing to me is the fact that Cleo is the immovable object that Pasgard wants to try to push over, but can’t. She’s the pharaoh. What’s he gonna do, keep harassing her citizens and just never get punished for it? Never face scorn and criticism? She’s just gonna yield to his whims and let him have whatever he lost when all power was taken from him when he was exiled from Zontopia?
No. He has two options: to keep being himself, keep charging at everything, keep refusing to examine his behaviour and eventually lose everything she offered him and end up in a cold cell alone, or to finally swallow his pride and allow her to do something nice for him for once, change his ways, and let himself be happy.
Cleo’s character is interesting because on the one hand, she’s the most powerful person in her kingdom, even counting as both a ruler and a deity, but she’s also so benevolent, so human, so nice and sweet and meek, and such a club. That in and of itself is already interesting, but combine that with Pasgard’s character, who is the human equivalent of a lump of coal, and you get such a fun interaction. Someone nice and sensitive with someone abrasive and determined. Someone who isn’t all that dominant but has the power to put anyone she wants in their place and someone who is a domineering jerk but has absolutely zero power and constantly meets the consequences of his own actions. Someone who has everything and who is happy and someone who has been rejected by everything he cares about and who believes that he is doomed.
“But Eli,” I hear from the void. “How is this romantic?”
Simple. It’s hot, therefore it gets to be romantic.
(A tangent: while Cleo is not a very dominant person, her status yields her exactly what she wants anyway. And with Pasgard having possibly been a prostitute before Halberd picked him up from the streets, he’s pretty familiar with letting others set the stage and use him however they please. He wants to act like he’s super dominant, but we all know who wears the pants in this relationship.)
I can’t emphasise enough how important it is that Pasgard is in a mourning process here. He had power in Zontopia—power he earned, that he worked hard to gain and maintain—that was taken from him as a punishment for doing exactly what was asked of him. He thought Halberd was his ally, maybe even his friend, but it was exactly Halberd who scapegoated him to earn his own freedom. The people got to express their hatred towards him: Zontopia’s monster! And then, he was discarded, left to die.
And along comes Cleo, who not only happily lets him inhabit her kingdom, but who also, despite everything, just keeps trying with him. Even at her most pissed off, she still hates to have to hurt him, and she still comes around eventually and considers that second chance despite having done absolutely nothing to deserve it.
She’s the first person who has ever not only tolerated him, but also cared about him. Maybe even liked him. Who the hell likes him? Him? Hateable Pasgard?
It was only a matter of time before he got infatuated with her.
Not to mention on Cleo’s side! She thinks that in every Zontopian, there must be a shred of good, because they all stemmed from the force of sweet wholesomeness that is Zontik (she’s definitely not biased, nope). Then along comes this irredeemable project boy who is immune to every attempt she makes at letting him see how nice it is to be good. Every single one of her advisors tells her to put him in prison for the rest of his time or drop him back in the desert. Her citizens complain that he makes their lives miserable. She loses sleep over the conversations they have.
But he’s interesting. Fascinating, even. She can’t look away from this trainwreck, not when he’s so fascinating, so self-absorbed that she wonders how Zontik even made this evil tantrum creature. But her nurturing side just can’t let go of the idea that there has to be a way to get him to be better. She has to be able to tame this beast. In a way, it’d be a personal failure if she didn’t find a way.
And then she finds him crying, one evening. Of course he instantly yells and refuses to even acknowledge that he is capable of feelings, but it was there: vulnerability. A sense of grief strong enough to make him, when he thought no one was around to notice it, physically let out his emotions.
Pasgard is human. Huh. Who’d a thunk.
She wants to draw this out. She wants to fully explore this side, maybe use it as a way to finally get him to make his life better and accept that he’s no longer there. And she wants to take away that hurt. Because whether he likes it or not, he’s now one of her citizens, and it hurts her so immensely to see her citizens in pain. She’s not stupid: she knows that behind that search for power goes someone who has never had proper control and who now overcompensates. She knows that by making himself unloveable, he perhaps tries to justify why Halberd would’ve abandoned him. Maybe she’s wrong, but she just can’t believe that someone she saw so vulnerable is nothing more than an evil person.
Hard as her motives are to determine, she has a very human core in there: she has a sad little guy, and she wants to make this sad little guy less sad.
And then she got pregnant and needed to make some really big choices in really little time. Interesting stuff, I do believe that Pasgard fainted when she told him the news. Not ready to be a dad at all, let alone a bastard’s father. But that lil tot changed him a lot. Really brought out the best in him.
That aside, that pale-ass tall bastard with his fuck-ass haircut, his permanent bitch face, and his lanky lean body looks so good next to Cleo’s happy-go-lucky plump sun-kissed stature. They can be one hell of a power couple once they’re on the same wavelength. In the real world, I’d imagine that the power imbalance is less there, but Pasgard is also less of a bitch and simply grows infatuated with Cleo to the point where he’ll act as this bodyguard-like thing, maybe even the adopted villain that’s been declawed and who’s now going through his redemption arc. I think they deserve some silliness. As a treat.
Also, their ship name can be telepathetic. If that ain't the name of the century, I wouldn't know what is.
I’m rambling. Ship cleopas for clear skin and good grades.
