oh gosh no itās entirely my fault please donāt feel bad because of the unintelligibility of my thoughts omg youāre perfectly fine and i count myself lucky to have a friend who will traverse my ramblings <333 i think the flu i caught earlier is getting to me too so i feel thatās partially itā
ALSO please donāt feel obligated to comment on anything in spite of its length or anything like i promise you that you already do more than enough like more than i could ever ask for
iām having like extreme trouble putting this stuff into words because itās just getting increasingly garbled but at baseline i think concretely so iām going to try and phrase this that way?? disregard that sentence if it made the minuscule amount of sense i think it did actually. lemme just. okay so
up until this point i have been operating under the assumption that Rai starts season 3 out not remembering anything at all, and semi-slowly recovers fragments as time goes on; specifically, when they become necessary to understanding, like remembering Raz and the general context of his relationship with Raz upon meeting Raz. in this scenario Rai acts closer to his s1 personality, but there are seemingly small but noticeable differences, e.g. the loss of his touch aversion, that make it evident that Rai is not the same as he was. i remember some textual thing that made it clear Raz was deeply affected by this because amnesiac!Rai is effectively an entirely different person, untethered to their history together and the pain of s2. ergo, Raz cannot expect Rai to be the same Rai he always knew, and i seem to remember that those expectations kind of force depression on both their parts, because Raz is trying so hard to treat Rai as a new being (and is always reminded of the previous Rai), but Rai is still upset that he canāt /be/ the Rai that knew Raz so intimately. thus, there are clear undertones of despair. (they never felt forced on your end or anything <3 i promise this is just my silliness)
lately iāve been feeling that it might be better for Rai not to be an amnesiac at the ābeginning of s3ā³ mark, becauseāamong other reasonsāi feel like he would be a more fully developed character, one who has to contend with his memories of the beautiful days he spent in s1 with Raz and his memories of how their time with Anta scarred them both. my understanding of Raiās characterization tells me that Rai could never resent Raz for what happened, but would instead deflect his feelings of confusion and fear/despair onto himself through self-blame, therefore feeling himself partially responsible for the events of s2. this would have to be supported by clearly irrational thoughts (e.g., āI wasnāt strong enough. If I had only protected him like heās protected me so many timesā, āIām not worth his sympathy or his guilt. Why is he staying by my side? Why did he stay by my side?ā, etc). however, these thoughts are never verbalized, as he doesnāt want to put the focus on himself and risk hurting Raz further. Rai would effectively end up putting aside his emotions for Razās sake, and in turn try to shoulder his own scars, but heās not good enough at concealing his feelings and i feel as if sometime Rai /would/ expose his hurt to Raz, if not in words then in the silences in between.
to explain another tangent i went off on, i feel like non-amnesiac s3!Rai would also have some pretty bad psychological damage based on his scars from s2, specifically the torture he went through, and would occasionally wake up from nightmares in the same trancelike state he went into when the worst physiological damage occurred, regarding red-eyed Raz as Thialfi in a state of disorientation and either going limp in order to prepare for the next blow or becoming as rigid and at attention as he was when receiving orders. it would quickly fade, but i feel like witnessing something like that, however briefly, and feeling responsible for it must be as bad as the experience itself. i previously thought that Rai would have an aversion to fire, but i donāt understand Razās demonic fire or the basis for the aversion well enough to support that, so thatās getting scrapped.
finally i feel as if non-amnesiac Rai gives me a way to solidly explain Raz and Raiās first meeting in s3: Rai actively seeking Raz out, as opposed to a chance encounter.
and basically iām kind of ambivalent about this whole thing because iām really reluctant to change the Rai iāve been working with for such a long time so drasticallyāheās so dear to me and there are so many wonderful creations (like the river piece) that center around the assumption that he canāt remember anything significantābut i also feel like it precludes too many possibilities.
gummygunk
stormborns
pixelskylines
vaporwave
jacobvanloon