#madbard rambles

You’re telling me that Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, began his journey from such a place of uncertainty and desperation to prove himself worthy of the title, and ended as the embodiment of everything that tormented him?

You’re telling me that Martin Blackwood, who held so much love for the people around him, unintentionally paved the way for his lover’s desperate martyrdom?

You’re telling me Jon was marked for this from childhood, manipulated by forces older and greater than civilization to bring such harm upon the world that the only solution he could see was to end it?

You’re telling me there was no escape for them?

You’re telling me they could have lived happily together, but they could never have taken that path because it lies contrary to who they are?

You’re telling me Jon and Martin had everything and everyone slowly and agonizingly ripped away from them until they had nothing left but each other, until neither one could fathom surviving without the other?

You’re telling me that Martin and Jon kissed at the center of a collapsing reality, then Martin felt the life leave Jon’s body as he stabbed the only living person he loved?

You’re telling me there is a chance they are Somewhere Else, but that would mean they never escaped the Fears and never will?

They’re nascent gods. They’re the embodiments of change and stagnation, and as such are in constant opposition. They used to be one. They were torn from each other, edges purposefully left bloody and ragged. They feel each other’s absence like a wound. They love each other, because all that is not one is the other. They love each other, because to love the other is to love what once was theirs. They are beyond human comprehension, and yet their relationship encompasses all the brightest and strangest and most grotesque human emotions. They flirt awkwardly with each other. They threaten each other. They trick each other. They have erotic knife fights. They have intense philosophical debates. They make each other better. They mutilate each other. They are the universe itself, perceiving itself, ever evolving and self-immolating and expanding as they discover new avenues of expression and experience. They destroy each other, over and over again. They forgive each other every time.

We see the ways in which Ace changed after losing Sabo, the ways in which he grew to fill the gaps that his brother left (the manners were something he learned specifically to thank Shanks but he also softened considerably, in his way). Similarly, after Ace’s death, Sabo stepped into his role as protector (even as he struggled a bit to draw the distinction between his duties and identity as a revolutionary, and his duties and identity as Luffy’s older brother - even viewing them as potentially contradictory when he said he’d abandon one identity and set of responsibilities for the other), stepping in as a fiery barrier between Luffy and the Marines (just as Ace once did). Sabo inherits Ace’s power, inherits his will, and it’s framed almost as an act of resurrection - that a part of Ace will live on in this way, that Sabo becomes a vessel for some aspect of the brother he never got to know past childhood, the brother he couldn’t protect. He eats Ace’s fruit, and becomes fire, as Ace was. In this way, can it be said that in some way he chose to become Ace?

Sabo is a character who is constantly having his identity torn away from him, who is constantly having other identities forced upon him. He rejects his status as a noble but is unable to escape it except through ‘death.’ He loses his memories as a child and in doing so loses his family; he regains those same memories as an adult and in the process the entire framework of his adult life and sense of self is shaken so badly (in addition to the overpowering grief) that he ends up in a coma. He eats Ace’s fruit and greets Luffy as the powerful and steady older brother he can rely on (and in using that persona to comfort Luffy, Sabo becomes someone who cannot cry in front of his little brother or even hug him back). He tries to save King Cobra, fails, and in his failure he is awarded the title of ‘Flame Emperor,’ which he dislikes but accepts because it is beneficial to his cause. (Even then, his identities as revolutionary and as Luffy’s brother are put at odds with each other - he accepts culpability for killing Luffy’s friend’s father, because it fans the flames of revolution). He continues to reject his noble heritage and yet he dresses as one to better infiltrate them. He ends up caught desperately trying to hold together this mass of contradictory identities, for himself, for his cause, for his brother.

Because there is a lot of fandom overlap, so of course I’ve seen fanart before, but I didn’t have the context for it.

So I entered Gravity Falls with two key pieces of knowledge:

1. There is apparently toxic triangle yaoi.