[anyder]

🔥 independent & selective Lahabrea/Hephaistos from FFIV/FFXIV 🔥 this blog will probably be low activity. probably. i'll update this if that changes. We'll See. 🔥 must be 18+ to interact (minors dnf/dni) 🔥 NOT spoiler-free (obviously), big honkin 6.2++ spoilers ahead 🔥 non-rp blogs please dni with my threads 🔥 enkindled by tea 🧋

[anyder]

can hephaistos set me on fire

i dont feel brainy or confident enough in writing his dialogue yet but i feel like he might actually do this because he is. completely goddamn unhinged. no filter. no thought as to the implications of consequences. he is the unwanted hangnail lahabrea removed from his soul that contains all of his instability and impulses, which are exacerbated because you have to factor in that he's inherently athena-flavoured. if you asked hephaistos why he set someone on fire he would look at you with the most convincing deadpan expression ever say "because they looked cold" before laughing. he has every disease and should be stopped at all cost

[anyder]

i eat the tcu (tea cinematic universe) UP

sorry i keep failing to expand my cinematic universe (it will happen again)

[anyder]

hephaistos: lahabrea: who are u hephaistos: i'm u but worse :•) lahabrea: 🧍🏾

[poxinox]

Speaker

[anyder]

the turtleneck on lahabrea's robe (which he's seen wearing when he's older) actually covers not only scars and deformities on his body wrought by numerous bouts of self-experimentation, but also traditional-style tattoos, because hephaistos is half-Macarian. the Macarians (which are an exclusive and integral part of Tea's Cinematic Universe) are a war-like people hailing from desert regions to a continent far south of amaurot. they generally have an innate hereditary affinity for fire magic as a result of genetic evolution and adaptation to their environment over many generations. although Macarian society exists in two parts (there are, in fact, 2 places that call themselves the Kingdom of Macaria; one is very peaceful and espouses the idea of balance, and the other are very war-like and they firmly believe that the way you best serve the star is by proving your worth and the validity of your existence and right to possess and maintain such an existence, which is helf to be a gift from the star itself, through combat.) the Macarians had a faction split/schism long ago due to ideaological differences, with the combat-obsesssed Macarians cultivating their ideas through noticing that suffering and conflict are inevitable and should instead be embrace, adopting a sort of "we beat it and hone our bodies to become and transcend it" kind of stance. they also aren't advocates of planetary destruction, nor do they condone torture or plundering. but they do believe that if you're killed in combat, then it's because you're weak and that it was meant to happen or bound to happen, and hey, you'll reincarnate, so it's no big deal, Better Luck Next Time. although they aren't necessarily advocates of war, their ideas naturally bring them into conflict with others, although it's not quite war in the sense that we know it irl, because while the Macarians want to fight people, it's purely part of their own personal dogma rather than out of spite, malice, or jealousy. (definitely NOT the best comparison but i guess they have sort of a viking-esque view on things, except that their valhalla is on earth?? they like to eat, forge weapons, and fight, just for the sake of fighting.) the balance-loving Macarians are generally much more peaceful and cringe at their siblings, although they do espouse a similar eye-for-an-eye retributive justice system; being that if something is taken, something of equal value must also be given in turn.

the meracydians who worship sophia on the source post-sundering are very similar and are esentially the post-sundering 'successors' of the Macarians, so as you'd imagine, lahabrea was having an absolute Time of It during the allagan-meracydian war.) hephaistos's father fought his countrymen to a standstill and won the right to be king of the warlike half of Macaria, but he decided that he'd had his fill of combat (especially knowing that being a king in Macaria is essentially like painting a target on your back and no, kingship is NOT hereditary and must always be won through a contest of arms) and left for amaurot, where he would meet his wife and concieve bby heph later down the line. certain hobbies heph has (such as forging and metalworking and grilling meat) are very much informed by his Macarian heritage.

[aioniopyr]

hey

[anyder]

hephaistos, who is the personification of laha's 47 undiagnosed mental illnesses and should not be allowed in public Ever under any circumstances my beloved <3

[aioniopyr]

simmer down

[anyder]

very funy headcanon but i do think lahabrea had informal cookouts before his miniature self-sundering. he likes grilling (because fire lol). he absolutely owns the ancient equivalent of the modern irl grill, which he invented himself because he LOVES working with metals. he makes alloys and different types of metals just for fun tbh. a good chunk of the known alloys in existence (especially those used by the allagans, like wootz) were actually originally invented by lahabrea himself, and he later shared this knowledge with them alongside the secrets of summoning.

[sightseeinglog]

[anyder]

woo yeah aaaa (tea criticizes the game's handling of black ancients, part deux)

i'm very much side-eyeing the devs' decision to make erich and lahabrea the sad edgy traumatized hot topic ancients (dont get me wrong, i LOOOVE pandaemonium's aesthetic and i loove erich, laha, and athena VERY MUCH), but i think it's very Telling when a game that has a history of c.olourism and a.ntiblackness in its narrative ends up portraying characters who are arguably the most black-coded ancients (altho i think the argument of interpreting him as nonblack but a different darker-skinned ethnicity is valid, although my arguement abt c.olourism here still stands regardless) with the most screentime in this kind of way.

i will also add that i very much Don't Like the absentee father lahabrea stereotype because it leans uncomfortably close to stereotypes abt black fathers being nonpresences in their childrens' lives for whatever reason (even if it does veers away from the stereotype due to him trying to be responsible instead of him being a gangster or a bum, its still Really Fucking Uncomfy, especially given that it's being written by a group of nonblack people!!!) and him murdering his white wife was already Enough in terms of marks against his character, he is already a villain in general and even pre-sundering laha is Bad Black Rep as it is bc of the whole killing athena and not telling erich thing so i trust youll forgive me in not wanting to make that worse sdhgdjk.

[poxinox]

[anyder]

anyway as i was telling a friend, i love the rancid little laugh hephaistos does thru his familiar during the pandaemonium questline. it doesn't have the endearing and cutsey energy that hyth's little giggle has; it really just kind of has this energy tbh and i love that for hepha honestly. i'm fond of the idea that laha was a little bit Unhinged even well before the sundering and filing off a piece of his soul, but he was so charismatic and commanding that a lot of people either couldn't do anything about it or were happy to overlook it.

[highseraphs]

Lahabrea doodles 🔥

[anyder]

headcanon(s) time owo. *insert kool headcanon graphic i haven't made yet here*:

*cracks knuckles* ok so. wawbwea is a sufferer of severe bipolar-1 disorder (and admittedly, thats me 100% me projecting, haha Oops, but lemme tell u rn, if i was capable of cutting away the parts of me that lead to me being depressive so that i could permanently operate and exist in a manic state, none of you would stop me because i would be more powerful and productive than god himself.) heph then exists in an indefinite state of subdued and mangable mania, in which he requires little food or little sleep. by removing his needs and many of his emotions, is therefore as productive beyond what is arguably humanly possible, even moreso than he was at particularly elevated manic states beforehand. he is the bipolar artist who alternates between makign 99389520395 amazing things that wow people and then having periods of slumpy depression wherein he achieves little. also, since the process of whatever the fuck miniature sundering-tier nonsense laha did with his soul was presumably a new and experimental process that nobody had ever done before, the side effect of him being emotionally withdrawn and distant was kind of a less intentional consequence. he is not overly-aggressive (because We Do Not Like the overly-aggressive black man stereotype in this household), but he is very vehement in how he expresses emotions (at least, he was until we meet him during the pandaemonium timeline, and then becomes that way again due to the sundering and other stuff that i will brain-knit about later.)

i think hephaistos was trying to be responsible by not letting his feelings influence him too much, so he cut them away like one might remove a cancerous tumor, resulting in the creation of hephaistos. he's sort of cutting away the part of himself that isn't the hyperproductive responsible manic superhuman that everyone sees; the hyperproductive responsible manic superhuman that was once nominated unanimously for the seat of lahabrea. athena's death was poison in the well that is his soul and the poison of that grief mixed with the preexisting presence of the chemical that was his depressive states (which he kept carefully hidden from the public for the most part, and btw the phoinix and its 99999 iterations were created as a sort of creationmagic ventdoodle while he was exhibiting a depressive state. the reason he kept tinkering with the phoinix's design is because creation magic is his art and he has the generic crazey artist inability to stop tweaking and reworking his own pieces) which led to a chain reaction that triggered a lot of introspection and self-realization and ultimately led to the creation of hephaistos.

while his decision to do this had many influencing factors, erichthonios was actually one of them. he wanted to be a model father for his son, someone erich could aspire to, and the constant re-examination and self-assessment brought on by athena's death and the surrounding circumstances buried heph up to his eyballs in his own failure. so he took a deep breath, looked at the scrinky little portrait of erich on his desk and said "do it for him" basically

[anyder]

after i study lahabrea under a microscope re-familiarize myself with his dialogue and lore, i'll do a brief starter call for his ancient verse (pre-pandaemonium-questline.) i'd like to build his muse from the ground up in a chronological sense; if i write og heph then i'll be able to write pandaemonium timeline-era heph, and then that will lead into me being able to write post-sundering ascian laha.