"Delightful—I'm turning into a real neurotic."

do you ever just

so many misguided metaphors around violence and desire. if the open maw of a panting beast fills you with the want to be devoured, that does not make you prey. while the rabbit trembles in fear, its deepest desire is to run. evolution demands it. in fact, the desire to be eaten does not make you any small animal at all.

Me: scene's just not coherent if they're talking about jester it only even remotely approaches coherency if they're talking about veth

Actually, I'm going to discourse about it. Sorry! And it's very much along the lines of what I said about Murray's doubts over Thjazi's intentions. Thjazi is dead. Yes, he's in Julien's shadow, but he's there as a haunting. He is literally and figuratively haunting the narrative! He is not going to grow and change (maybe a little in his relationship to Julien now, but that's it). It's not his purpose. He is and remains more symbol than character (and while there are avenues open to Brennan to turn him back into a character, I think most of those would be a mistake, because it would very much make Thjazi the main character of the story to bring him back in a significant way.) It is important for Thjazi to be a flawed man. To have been impulsive sometimes, and wrong sometimes, to have hurt people (both intentionally and unintentionally), for him to have used people, and for him to have not had empathy for those still attached to the ways of the shapers/the sundered houses. It's important not for the sake of making Thjazi the character more interesting (that's nice, but it actually isn't necessary to telling this story well), it's important because it complicates his legacy and makes him harder for our protagonist to reckon with. It makes the fact that they are following in his footsteps more complicated because they aren't just blindly following his example. There will be places they diverge from him, for better and for worse. It does not add anything to the story to make him villainous or abusive. It doesn't add anything to the story to say our archetypal freedom fighter actually did have a group of people that he viewed as less than human. That he was cruel to the point where it would actually horrify his family and friends and make them not want to honor his memory. Or make them think less of him. All that does is deflate him as a symbol. He stops being someone whose legacy is being carefully navigated and becomes someone whose haunting of the narrative is a simple inconvenience. He stops meaning freedom fighter to the audience, and starts meaning nothing to them.