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And I find both of those stances so deeply reductive and boring. In a different story by different people they might work, but for C4 and the cast we have it doesn’t set up any satisfying character arcs or plots points, rather it grinds the ones we have to a complete standstill. If we view these elements of these characters and their conflicts with each other as choices made by actors who are trying to tell a story, what richer more interesting interpretations can we come to?

It's been said before and I'm sure it'll be said again, Brennan isn't a subtle storyteller. I don't necessarily know if I think he's incapable of it, but I do think he's not interested in it. There's a reason he keeps looking at the camera and saying "you can't prove this is an allegory!," he tells stories with a moral POV, often centering on class, and he likes it when the audience picks up on that. Which isn't to say he isn't capable of infusing moral nuance into his stories. He definitely is! But it is to say that 31 episodes in, we know what kinds of moral nuance he wants CR4 to be exploring through its NPCs. And I believe we've got four categories of it:

Why don't people act against oppressive systems? We've got a couple different forms of this. There's the people that are comfortable in the status quo and unwilling to recognize the problems with it or summon the will to dive into discomfort. Our "nice" nobility falls into this category, but so do people like Azune's Captain Fazir. There's the people that are too afraid to act in a significant way like Bolaire's fellow curator Makmaz. And then there's people like the various unnamed Magpies, who simply have more immediate concerns, such as feeding themselves and their families.

When do the ends justify the means? What terrible things are we willing to do/accept in order to do a greater good? This is Thjazi! This a major part of Thjazi's role in the narrative and what he symbolizes! This is also Mara, and the fairies in the Hollow. I also think the druids and their historic neutrality fall more into this category than the first one. If the Bolaire-Thjazi conflict is executed well, this is where it will live. And I still have a lot of hope that it will be executed well. I know there've been some concerns about Taliesin's play and bts statements, and I share some of those. But I do think this train is still very much on the tracks and Taliesin, with some assistance from Brennan and Laura, probably, can still very easily bring it safely to the station. For my money, the most likely scenario is "how could Thjazi justify to himself collaborating with a mask that had declared itself judge, jury, and executioner of petty criminals and was gleefully torturing them to build a comfortable life for himself." I think that's already been set up a little with Thimble's "have you considered he might have been afraid of you." But if we want a darker read on Thjazi, it could also be that he knew Bolaire would have to be sacrificed to restore the halfling afterlife and was doing everything he could to create emotional distance for himself about it.

Related to 2, but I want to class it separately because it's contained less in what the NPCs do and more in the options they present to the PCs: When do you align yourself with a lesser evil to defeat a greater one? This is mostly the Einfassens, but it could also be Termina.

How does one reconcile the good an institution can do with the corruption involved in running it? Candescent Creed is a big one here. So are the lingering worshipers of the Shapers. The Penteveral also plays around this idea.

Those are the moral ambiguities Brennan is exploring in this campaign as a DM. The good guys and bad guys are very clear. The abusers in the story look like Primus, Yanessa, Azgra, and Sylandri. There's no ambiguity there. Thjazi is a good man with questionable methods. Nothing about the story Brennan is telling is interested in asking "but what if he were also a bad guy too?" And if it did try to ask that question after more than 31 episodes, it would feel weird and out of place. Brennan would have to suddenly develop a much gentler touch to handle it gracefully, and it would change the entire tenor of the story.

That doesn't mean there's no room for other kinds of moral ambiguity. Julien, Occtis, Bolaire himself is the biggest one. But it's all coming from the PCs. I just reblogged a post that mentioned how we probably won't get to see Ethrand Tachonis grow beyond his abuse the way Occtis probably will by virtue of Occtis being a PC, and yeah, that sums it up. We get to spend a different kind of time with PCs that allows for deeper dives into moral nuance than NPCs do. They are also piloted by different people. Brennan has made clear what moral ambiguities he's interested in exploring with this story, but he's not the only one telling it, and he's happy to facilitate what others want to explore within their own PCs psyche and relationship to the world.

Going back to Brennan's style with this campaign, I've talked before about the fact that symbolism is pretty hard to do in Actual Play because you need player buy-in for it to really work. Which is why all the symbolism Brennan is doing has been with flashing neon signs (think bird hell). And flashing neon signs don't have a ton of nuance. This is what I'm talking about when I talk about Thjazi as a symbol. Brennan set up everything Thjazi was symbolically in the opening scene in as heavy-handed a way as he possibly could. A criminal, accused of theft and murder alongside his more bullshit charges, apologizing for keeping his distance from a friend, being executed under the guardian wall, calling out about the Falcon's Cry. And it has allowed the players to run with him as a symbol. Most recently and beautifully in Liam's ending to Kothar'ai.

Bolaire is a murderer, so Thjazi letting him run around and murder people is an indictment of Thjazi as much as Bolaire. He knew how to safely and harmlessly contain Bolaire. If him being a murderer was a problem, there was a very simple solution.

I can play moral grabass about this all day.

However, I simply don't give a single solitary fuck. I just don't. I wouldn't care if they were both serial killers. I think the idea that Thjazi hurt, scared, and abused Bolaire is great. (I thought the scenes where Bolaire hurt and abused other people were great, too.) I hope we get a scene of Thjazi and Bolaire at some point and I hope it's real fucked up. No, more fucked up than that. I hope Taliesin cries. I hope I cry.

The raw scale of what has just happened is just … It’s incredible. They found an afterlife. They freed the dead. They reached out, through the power of courage and hope and stories and freedom, and they took back the lost afterlife of Azgra, and they freed their dead. The scale of …

We killed our gods. We freed ourselves in life, in this world. And now we’ve gone back, and we’ve freed the dead as well. They can’t have them. The gods. They can’t keep any of us captive anymore.

The sheer implication of this ritual. The raw scale of what they’ve done. Of what they’ve made possible.

And it can be done again. Thjazi was already working on at least two other collections of components. The ones involving the box and Termina didn’t work, they weren’t anchored. That ritual will have to be redone, freeing the halflings. And then the Stone of Nightsong. Freeing the elves. That one’s in progress. All we need are the right objects, and people … people willing to fight this fight. People willing to reach out and reclaim their dead, their afterlives, their hopes, their freedom. To cast off the last claims of the Shapers, and know true freedom, in all its glory and its terror.

Is this what we’re doing? Are we freeing …? Is this what we’re doing?

But. On the subject of those components already collected. On those potential rituals.

It looks like three components are needed per afterlife. The weapon that killed the god. A place of power of that god. And something that bridges life and death, this world and the afterlife of that god, usually a body part associated with a psychopomp of some kind.

And once they are gathered, those components need to be reshaped, to make them into anchors. Swords to ploughshares. They need to break free of their intended use, what the dead Shapers intended for them, and forged into something new and different, present in this world, for the benefit of people, not those who shaped them. And all the components of the ritual need to be transformed this way. Weapons becoming props, blood becoming murals, places of appeasement becoming the rallying grounds of freedom. Each component needs to be reshaped.

The Stone …

I think the Stone has already been transformed. It reacted to the ritual of Kother’ai. And it … I mean, of course it’s been transformed. After what happened with Occtis? How could it be anything but.

With all that we now know about Sylandri. How she viewed her ‘children’. What she wanted from them, demanded of them. To live only according to her design. To be only what she wanted them to be, and go only where she intended them to go, and nowhere else, and nothing else.

Occtis, in the afterlife, just before he grabbed the stone inside his own chest, and was torn apart between two paths, and was only rescued by an act, a miracle, of mortal magic. Just before that.

Occtis: “No, I’m not supposed to go there. Father. I don’t belong to you.”

Father. Mother. I don’t belong to you.

Yeah. I think the Stone has been transformed. No more a tool to guide wayward children to where they’re supposed to go. Now, in the first true miracle of this story, it’s become a tool to give someone a choice. Even beyond death. I think … I think it’s been transformed.

And for the other collection. The halfling artefacts.

Swords to ploughshares. Weapons that aren’t weapons anymore. Weapons that have chosen not to be weapons anymore. Weapons that have become people.

I think Bolaire is a component. I think he is. Or he’s at least a potential component.

It should be Termina. She was the one who dealt the fatal blow, the one who wore Rauwyn as she died. And it … it still could be Termina. It could. But she’s not there yet. Her latest conversation hammered that point home. Termina is still a weapon. All she wants is to be able to do it again, her greatest act, her greatest purpose. She is a weapon. She wants nothing more.

But Bolaire …

He’s still a weapon. He’s still a killer. He still clings to his identity as an object, a thing. He’s so hesitant to think of himself as a person. He’s not there yet. Not him either. He’s not there.

But he’s closer. He’s closer. And he has people, friends, reasons, that Termina doesn’t.

If there was another ritual. A different play, echoing that first and most terrible. What role would Bolaire, do we think, want to play?

But at the same time … Which is more powerful? To claim your personhood for yourself, and in doing so help to free others? Or to teach your family what personhood is. Could be. It might be him. But it could be Termina. Maybe he could save not just himself, but his family.

(It’s so gutwrenching that he didn’t get to witness it. Kother’ai. What a thing. What a thing. If only he could have seen).

This … What this did. This play, this ritual. What it’s done. It’s not hopeless. It’s not predetermined. We can change it, we can fix it. We can find what was stolen. We can bring our dead, our people, our families, back. Not to life, but … To freedom. To choice. To the world, to the Path, to the choice to be something more that what these tyrant gods demanded.

The gods don’t get to keep them. Us. We don’t belong to them. In life or in death. We belong to us.

I just. The raw scale of the thing. The implication. The meaning.

It’s not hopeless. Even in death, it’s not hopeless. Choice exists. Freedom exists. And with just a little help, no matter who you are, no matter where you are, no matter who has laid claim to you, it can be found.

the idea that Bolaire must consume the life energy of people who wear him is fanon. this is not at all established in the show. we do not know that this happens. I didn't realize how widespread and accepted this was when I made that post, or I would have made this one first.

it could be how he works. there is growing evidence against it, at the moment, but that could be how he works. I'm not saying it's for sure not, I'm saying that there is not very much canonical evidence for it, and a lot of people have built (very inflexible) interpretations of the character based on something that is not established fact.

it has not been established that wearing the mask has long term effects in any way, much less that those effects are necessary for Bolaire's survival. it is possible that there are long term effects, but they could also be the effects of wearing a very powerful magical artifact for longer than a certain length of time, and have nothing to do with Bolaire needing to feed off them. it's also possible that there are no effects at all to wearing Bolaire long term, other than the ones that he chooses.

and, I feel the need to point out, the only effects we have witnessed to wearing Bolaire, so far, have been the ones that he chooses- the death and starvation that we have witnessed that he has enacted.

common rebuttals I've seen:

'but what about the state of the body when he took over the other guy?' we don't know what killed that body, and it seems that body had been dead for some amount of time before his meeting with the fence. my interpretation is that using a body that's dead has those effects on the body- and I might be wrong about that, I want to be clear, but we have no more evidence for or against my theory than we do the soul vampire thing. either is equally possible based on this single piece of evidence, and it's the strongest evidence anybody has for the soul vampire thing. which is to say that this evidence is simply not very strong.

'maybe the bodies don't need to eat when he's being worn' (this was a rebuttal against Bolaire starving, but given that Bolaire's choice in how he treats the body is very much part of this conversation, this is included.): Castep's friends were checking on whether he needed to eat or drink, so it seems like they probably do. and also that's completely ignoring what Taliesin was doing in the scene where Bolaire was offering the body a single morsel of food, and another day of existence. like. c'mon. if you're not going to engage with what happens in the show, that's your right, but I'm talking about what actually happens in the show. the strongest evidence we have for the effects of wearing Bolaire on the body are the things Bolaire actively chooses to do to the body. by far.

'we know he traps souls! he needs them to live!' Taliesin made what I took to be a vaguely dismissive statement about the idea that he had souls in there at all. like. sure, it's not impossible, the afterlife is fucked so maybe he is retaining souls. but if so it doesn't necessarily follow that he traps them because he consumes them for existence. I suspect it's more along the lines of, like, memories and impressions of previous wearers, which is why he kind of hand waved that thing- that seemed to be more of a 'not quite, but we'll get there' way to handle that conversation, but hey. I could be wrong. either way, we don't know enough about this to draw any conclusions, because it was a vague hand waved statement that we haven't gotten any further information on.

'but Termina drained enough life from Thaisha in one touch to drop her!'- Termina has had her warranty voided, as it were. Like. She's been very much so altered and combined with a celestial artifact that we have no idea how that works, either. It would be unwise to draw too many conclusions about how Bolaire works from anything she's done. Hell, it would be unwise to draw too many conclusions about how Termina used to work from anything we've seen her do.

there are things that we would probably see if he were draining the bodies and couldn't help it- he'd probably check in on the bodies more often. we saw him do that one time with a body that was either already dead or dying (I suspect dead). but if he was draining those bodies against his will, that'd be something Brennan would be doing to him, and we'd have probably seen him checking in on the body in the same way as he did in the opening of the show a time or two, to establish a baseline. especially during the Schemers arc where a lot of work was done to establish a baseline routine for all of the characters. we didn't see that, we saw him taunt his body with a morsel of food, and otherwise be very dismissive of the needs of the body wearing him, and kill (or have them killed) and discard them without much concern or hesitation.

first of all: at the very beginning of the campaign, i think it's an extremely lopsided relationship. i believe that at minute one of episode one, bolaire cares about hal a LOT more than hal cares about bolaire. hal does still care about him a good amount, obviously, but bolaire is just one of his many friends. i think at this point in the story bolaire serves a very specific function in hal's life: book club buddy, someone i can count on for somewhat bizarre but original takes on plays i also have thoughts on, someone willing to lend me certain props and whom i can consult for historical accuracy. honestly, i don't think bolaire is even his best friend (yet).

hal, however, is also not exactly bolaire's best friend, but only because saying so is incredibly reductive. halandil, from the very start, is bolaire's EVERYTHING. he's his ONLY friend, he's his intellectual partner, he's his psychosexual obsession, he's his idol, he's his pet, he's his rpf crush, he's his teacher and pupil both, he's his director and his favorite actor and his favorite character in his favorite play. i think that some time ago, bolaire came to dol makjar aimless, disillusioned, uncertain of his own existence and desperately looking for something to build his life around, and what he found was halandil fang.

i think bolaire's relationship with hal is, however funny it is to say, parasocial. he has a very specific idea of hal in his mind that hal mostly manages to live up to, since what bolaire idolizes is not anything godlike but instead the very idea of 'mundane personhood', which hal embodies well while also managing, in bolaire's mind, to set himself apart from other mere mortals via his art and his ability to self-reflect; and because bolaire's idea of hal and the actual hal never seriously clash, bolaire's never had any reason to reevaluate this view. but it is, at it's core, inaccurate -- hal is not a paragon of morality, nor of mundane life (he's rich and powerful and has always been protected from the worst of the world by his older brother [who bolaire conveniently hates and, im sure, is jealous of in measure], he lives in a big house in one of the best areas of the city and calls it 'humble'. hal, for all his kindness and good nature, does not represent the masses, but bolaire sure thinks he does, because he's never not been wealthy), and he probably isn't quite the visionary playwright bolaire considers him to be.

we have to be real guys, hal's probably just really good at what he does, which is putting on mass appeal historical plays in a city where every ruling family has their own strong ideas about what constitutes as 'true history'. he's good, probably even great, but i doubt he's the one voice of truth and beauty in a city devoid of both that bolaire sees in him. but bolaire is, to put it mildly, extremely biased. he thinks he fell in love with the acting first and the actor second, but, honestly, i'm not so sure.

anyway, my favorite part of all this is that if you really think about it, bolaire's idea of halandil actively contradicts the existence of their friendship. he wants hal to be moral, truthseeking, unafraid to stand up for what he thinks is right, a man that lives for and protects the people of the city.

he also wants hal to remain his best friend. all while bolaire kills a person [someone he thinks won't be missed, i.e. lonely and poor] every three days.

i think this conflict is ultimately at the crux of their dynamic. if halandil really is the person bolaire thinks he is, hal won't want to be friends with him anymore after he finds out the truth of bolaire's existence. if halandil isn't who bolaire thinks he is, bolaire will be dissappointed and have to face the fact that the person he's built his life around might not have been worth it.

it's a lose-lose, and bolaire, on some level, knows it. he might not exactly register what he's doing as evil, but he knows that hal will probably think so. that's why he didn't tell him about it until he felt he absolutely had to, despite allegedly dedicating his entire being to this man. he knows that as soon as he does, their friendship is a ticking time bomb. he's gonna be walking on a tightrope to maintain it for the rest of his life, and maybe it'll be fine, as long as no wind blows ever.

unfortunately for bolaire, the wind is blowing strong as fuck. so now he's scrambling in a perpetual panic to try and maintain the status quo while at the same time adjusting to the new circumstance of hal-watches-me-kill-people-and-cant-ignore-it. he lets hal stab him in a grand tragi-romantic gesture because he hopes that hal will focus more on his pain and how much it hurts him than on the people he's routinely killing. he's trying to convince hal that he really truly isn't hiding anything from him anymore, because in bolaire's mind hal is first and foremost truthseeking, and this will be a gesture of trust and understanding. he makes it so dramatic because that's all he knows, it's the one thing that's been proven to work for him, it's the thing that connects them, and in distress all bolaire can think to do is fall back on doing the one thing he was made for, which is distract via performance.

[side note, i think that's why bolaire isn't making any move to discuss possible consensual routes of existence with hal. he knows that if they start thinking it over and come to the conclusion that it's not possible, that people have to die, then hal will HAVE to make that moral decision. for now he can still just about look away. and if it IS possible, it's probably significantly more uncomfortable for bolaire, but to keep hal's friendship he'll have to agree. bolaire is very selfless as long as everything goes exactly his way]

hal, on the other hand, is having kinda a rough time. bolaire's problems (before termina) all mostly concern either hal or his job (which would suck to give up, but he'd be able to pick himself back up eventually and the parts he won't get back all wrap back around to hal). but hal has like. kids. he's got a LOT of other people he's invested in. he's been seperated from thaisha again, which in itself isn't so bad but this time he really can't be sure she'll come back. from what we know of thaisha, we can assume she might be something of a grounding presence for him, while also being able to snap him out of more scattered states of mind. and hal can't talk to his daughters about thjazi, because they're grieving just as much as he is and he's supposed to be a guiding figure. he can't talk to them about any of his political schemes, because that puts them at enormous risk. and he definitely can't talk to them about bolaire, because that would mean admitting that for the past (?) years he's been inviting a murderous inanimate object over for dinner. i assume a lot of these same reasons apply to elodie. oh, and thjazi's dead.

so he's been pretty much disconnected from his family, which sucks for family-man-hal. he has friends and colleagues, but like, what can he really tell them? the show opens next week. they need to be locked in. the only people he can really talk to about this are murray and azune. murray seems to be getting along well enough with bolaire but also has no problem expressing her opinion, and i think hal would be worried that anything he whispered to her she would immediately repeat in a louder voice [i don't think this is true, but hal's biased and stressed]. and not only does he see azune kind of like his kid, but i imagine there's something very uncomfortable about the idea of telling someone like azune your struggles over condoning your friend who's probably committed half the murders azune's supposed to investigate.

i think hal is embarrassed. he knows people always thought of him as thjazi's-little-brother, and now that thjazi's gone he thinks everyone's looking at him for what to do, so if he shows any weakness or reveals that he's not nearly as cunning/observant as thjazi was, that he didn't notice his friend was an object that killed people, people will lose faith in him and in the cause thjazi fought so hard to protect. once again, i don't think this is true. bolaire knows this isn't true. bolaire knows that if all their cards were laid on the table, literally everyone is gonna be on hal's side. but then those people are gonna try to push them apart, because they think that bolaire wants to hurt him, but bolaire knows better! he can protect hal! nevermind that he has no idea whats going on and hal probably doesn't want his protection, bolaire's been around for a while, he knows better.

so hal is trying to weigh over the moral implications of bolaire in his mind, while NOT talking to anyone about it, and also speedwalking around the entire city trying to get shit done. he doesn't have time for this shit, but it's always on his mind. the thing is, i don't think hal is nearly as truthseeking as bolaire thinks he is. he's very comfortable sitting in pretty lies until they become so obvious he can't ignore them anymore, and then he feels he has to act. i feel like he's constantly walking around wishing that he could just not think about it for a second, but he can't, because now that he knows the truth he can't un-know it. so his second best option is to sit down and really think it over, but he can't, because bolaire is ALWAYS right there. due to a series of completely insane events, bolaire is now one of three people hal 1) sees every day and 2) can openly discuss things with. and murray and azune are great, but they're mostly hanging out with each other.

also, worst of all: hal likes him. he genuinely likes bolaire. he enjoys his company. he thinks he's funny and he finds a weird sort of comfort in his presence. he's met so many people throughout his life that it's such a relief to meet someone new, unlike anything you've talked to. us-against-the-world with the world's weirdest fucking thing. and he can't distance himself from bolaire to try and get over it. they're spending more time together by necessity. hal's trying to walk backwards on a ramp that's sliding forward, and all he achieves is maintaining the status quo.

so, tldr: hal and bolaire are two parts of an extremely unstable dynamic, the connecting tissue of which got blown apart within the first four episodes of the campaign, but which has still somehow managed to survive by virtue of both participants playing desperate mind games all so they can continue to stand very still and hold hands. the second one of them lets go they're going to fly apart to opposite sides of the room, and the longer they wait the worst it gets, but, like, it's honestly impressive they got this far.

We know this. This is an established fact. This is how he worked up until he gained agency.

This is the context in which he kills.

In order to discuss whether or not he's a serial killer, you have to start with the fact that he deliberately chooses murder over pursuing other options, which he does have.

He can be worn by someone who chooses to wear him. He 100% knows this.

A lot of people have done a lot of murder apologia for Bolaire about how he has to do this for survival, but he doesn't. Like, flat out, he doesn't have to kill to continue to exist. He could choose to work with people and find compatible partners who are willing.

like without going too much into my own trauma i did also have a very unstable childhood that didn't really afford me the ability to be a kid, where a lot of people depended on me without me being able to depend on anyone else, most of which i dealt with years ago. but what's sprung up again recently is the specific kind of betrayal around realising if you are a person like everyone else, then you also deserved to have people around you growing up to help you through stuff, and realising that other kids got that (and other people still get that), where you never did. especially as a neurodivergent person, i know i have a lot of emotional sticking points around teachers and counsellors in particular, who in theory it was their job to support me, but always just ended up treating me like a problem that was refusing to fix itself

which is kinda also where azune's at in terms of the lack of support, like he has a lot of love for both his real parents and thjazi sure, and he knows this isn't exactly their fault, but this kinda thing isn't rational, and ultimately every person in his life who was supposed to protect him failed to do that job. the best his parents could do for him was give him to a company who worked him to near death and then abandoned him when that wasn't good enough. thjazi it seemed at least tried to keep him off the front lines as long as he could, but he still wasn't raising a child, he was training a spy. and then there's the worst part, which is hal - and why azune gets so horrendously jealous in a way he knows isn't really justifiable. because he could have had a parent there! hal would absolutely have done his best to be what azune needed, but there's no way azune could accept that help and be what thjazi needed, it was one or the other. and that's not a fair choice to give to a teenager, but it was a choice azune had to make, so how is he supposed to blame anyone but himself for the path he chose? hell if he's anything more like me he was probably proud of himself for that choice at the time, because he was being responsible and helpful and saving people

(and where does he vent all that anger that eventually builds up once you realise that you're a person who deserved a childhood even if no one let you believe that or have one? thjazi and his parents are all dead. and what we're seeing from him at the moment is it's kinda going everywhere and nowhere at the same time - you can't keep it locked in because now you've noticed it it's unbearable, but it's a useless anger, because you know that no one can give you your childhood back. and it doesn't last long because there's this weird paradox where once having to do everything yourself starts to break you, even the act of being angry for what happened to you feels like just another task you have to do on your own and you don't want to anymore)

what it ends up as is this sort of feeble and frustrated wish, that just at some point in my life, i'd had any kind of mentor, or an older sibling, or a proper parent. someone to teach me literally anything in a way that didn't expect me to do 100% of the work and keep them happy at the same time. (azune did have an older sibling, but obviously she was not capable of being that for him and seeing her again is at least part of the trigger here). and it's a really tough thing to ask for, especially now you're in your late 20s, because you don't really have any right to that anymore! kids can get sympathy (even if you didn't), but where is the grace for saying, as an adult, "i know exactly how to do this myself - i actually know how to do it better than anyone else here - but i can't take that emotionally, i need someone who can take on some of the load and guide me through the process in a way where failing isn't life or death"? even murray still can't offer him that, however much she might want to, that's not the situation they're in. life always gets in the way in a way where you have to be proactive. you're the expert, do the job

and it's kinda why i wanna push back a little against everyone in the fandom saying if you call demodus a kid you should call azune a kid too, bc like. for starters i disagree with the sentiment that 22 and 27 are basically the same age, but regardless of how you feel about that or about demodus, i think azune's breakdown would still be valid and frankly exactly the same if he were currently 40. it's not about him being too young for this, it's about him never having had a time where he was too young for this!

(and since i've seen people wonder about his motives for volunteering occtis as strongly as he did - im sure everyone's had breakdowns where you just want someone to allow you the easy way out, and this just read like that to me. he's been refused demodus bc demodus gets to have the protection that he hasn't been granted, well occtis is an even better witness than demodus, occtis' presence there would have endangered him but saved azune. and azune and occtis may not be best friends but they did know each other before this, through thimble - occtis is the closest person to being in azune's situation here. he knows what it's like to grow up with a complete lack of support and have to do everything yourself, he's also been the kid adopted by thjazi who clearly had a role in mind for him! and also occtis was clearly about to say something in that scene, and while it may not have been "i'll go with you", i think it's entirely reasonable for azune to hope that's what he was going to say - to hope for someone stepping in to save you. so he then answered the unasked question and when he was wrong immediately went back on it, before occtis even had a chance to correct him, don't tell me no i don't wanna hear it. i can't right now, because if you say no then i know for sure i'm alone)

Firstly, I want to caveat this by saying that I believe that Azune genuinely feels what he is portraying in this scene.

Secondly, I want to validate that he has every right and reason to feel the way he feels.

Thirdly, I agree that given his job is to be a cloak and dagger spymaster for the revolution, that from a dispassionate, tactical point of view giving up Demodus to the Einfasen is also a play with sound reasoning behind it.

Finally, I want to disclose that while I am about to use some loaded language to describe Azune’s behavior from here on out, I mean it with the most non-judgmental intent possible.

In light of all this, we also know that…

Azune regularly portrays whatever emotion (even and especially genuine ones) he feels will be most advantageous to his goals in any given situation. We’ve seen this multiple times on multiple occasions. This makes perfect sense given from a young age the people around him have only ever used him for what they need, that this transactional style of interaction would be a natural reaction to that environment, an environment that his comrades continually and intentionally put him in because they know what he’s capable of.

Luis has in interviews talked about how emotionally immature Azune is. In particular talking about how he had to hold himself back from consoling Hal because that kind of reciprocity wouldn’t occur to Azune. How he’s ashamed of how he broke down in front of Hal not because of how unfair that was to Hals own grieving but because he’s afraid it made him look weak in Hal’s eyes.

So I find it fascinating that instead of approaching the discussion around whether or not to reveal Demodus from a strategic standpoint, with reasoned argument and debate with his comrades, Luis made the choice to have Azune come to them with a sob story about how he’s cooked and can’t do this anymore. Each point on their own, divorced from each other, is a perfectly fine and healthy conversation to have. It’s okay to have tough conversations about morally grey and risky strategic moves. And it’s also okay to ask your comrades for help, to divulge when you are feeling overwhelmed and lost and scared. But the fact that Azune approaches a conversation about a strategic play that could put someone’s life in danger, a someone he’s shown to be jealous of, by breaking down and centering how bad HE feels, how cooked HIS goose is, how much he needs his comrades to save HIM by doing this for him…