this ain’t revolutionary by any means but what always gets me about laois is his complete alienation from humanity.
don’t get me wrong his friends like him, but… they don’t understand him.
At every turn he’s beset with people who, despite best intentions and efforts, cannot understand laois. That’s a crazy lonely place to be???
- in the village he came from, his parents expected him to grow up and grow out of his odd fixations and into the man they believed he should be, social graces included. obviously laois couldn’t do that— he left to join the army.
- then in the army he faced (from what i gather) a similar derision for his interpersonal deficiencies
- then with the merchants, judging from the state of his clothes when he saw falin, wasn’t much better.
- then, on the island and in the dungeon, he repeatedly struggled with judging character and discerning who he should trust, to his and his sister’s detriment. While he was kind and fair, that wasn’t enough.
- in the previous party with shuro and namari, there was the whole miscommunication with shuro— shuro came from a culture that prioritized unspoken social cues over direct communication and couldn’t understand how laois utterly failed to comprehend something that shuro viewed to be as basic as speaking. Both of them ended up being hurt for it but on laois’s end, this was another instance of his lack of social graces and skills alienating him from humans.
- then even the current party, as much as they do care for laois, finds laois’s clumsy attempts at bridging this gap to be… lackluster at best? like they find his monster facts offputting, esp since he doesn’t realize when is and isn’t appropriate to talk about it, they find his lacking tact to be embarrassing, and it’s played for laughs but it’s genuinely alienating for all your attempts at connection to be mocked, even in a friendly way.
and the kicker is that falin is LITSRALLY THE WXACT SAME AS LAOIS. at least in terms of fascination with monsters, and lacking social graces.
the only differences are that falin keeps quiet about most of the things that laois is loud about, and falin focused a lot more time on understanding why people feel the way they do. it’s not that falin doesn’t make social blunders, it’s that people are more willing to overlook them when it comes wrapped in a pretty, empathetic, and quiet package.
this hurts her too, of course. she clearly wasn’t given much slack in magic school— her classmates called her weird and offputting and ostracized her just the same. her home ostracized her for her personality combined with her magic. and it’s led her to compromising herself and her values more than i think she’d like.
people want falin, but they hate laois for the same things that people love about falin. I have to imagine that’s… disheartening.
people don’t seem to tell laois when he’s done a good job without qualifiers.
it’s no wonder that he feels so distinct from humanity, and feels more kinship with monsters than with his own species.
and while ik the series explores it, it also dumps laois in a role at the end that centers around all of his deficiencies. Ik the takeaway is that he can’t shed his humanity to escape the pressures that it puts on him, he has to face it head on. But i wish there was more emphasis on others… reaching out to laois? or understanding him?
like the same thing applies to kabru too!!! his treatment in his hometown, his fitting in with the elves that raised him, his desire to be listened to shaping his pursuit of humanity.
all three of them are autistic people separated from humanity by shit that they couldn’t control. and they all cope with that isolation in radically different ways.
kabru fights that isolation by obsessively studying humanity until he can make up for his deficiencies with the sheer amount of knowledge he has on human social structures and interactions.
Falin freezes, kind of just… letting that isolation happen. she doesn’t do much to combat it but she doesn’t run away either. she’s just… there. trying to avoid notice or rocking the boat too much.
laois flees humanity in the face of that isolation, finding solace in the one thing he’s always been better at understanding— monsters.
no spoilers but by the end of the story they’re all unable to use that method of coping with their alienation anymore.
there’s a few fics that explore this alienation in any one of the three, but i wish i saw more. Bc it’s a profoundly sad way to live!!!!! how does that affect your perception of love? what it means to be loved? to be understood?
idc abt ships here— it’s just i know that pain. and it’s one of the most dehumanizing things ive ever felt. like there’s something malformed in you that you can never truly fix or make up for. like you’re apologizing for your existence every step of the way— and it’s never good enough.
scene where post canon laois is thinking about this, and watching kabru and falin, wondering what he’s missing that makes their quirks so loved and his so offputting.
or a scene where laois’s parents come visit and, despite laois’s progress in reconciling with his own humanity, it sends him right back to that mindset.
or if laois, falin, and kabru were talking abt that disconnect with humanity and kabru admits that the only reason he feels connected to humanity is bc he constantly fights for it and it’s exhausting. and falin talks about how precarious she feels like the regard others have for her is. and laois talks abt how subhuman it makes him feel, to be treated the way he has been.
like the benefits and consequences of high masking v low masking v people pleasing.
maybe the others get involved? or have some contrived reason for them to be aware of that conversation.
idk, i just want the others to see that deep, unhealed emotional wound in them. it’s not gonna be “fixed” bc that’s the work of years and lots of therapy. but it would be really cathartic to see other people who don’t experience that type of alienation go “yeah. that was fucked up and you didn’t deserve it.” or combat the rhetoric that was historically used to hurt any of the three like, finally getting defended from something they should never have been exposed to.
does this say something about my own unhealed wounds? probably, but it’s nice to see your own situation reflected into characters. feels less lonely, and gives hope that you can be happy too.
i’m hunting for fics with this premise, if not a similar one, and i’ve devoured a handful but i’m so hungry for more.
man i guess the takeaway here is that i need to open up a document and get typing which is so laaaaaame. can’t believe you can’t have an idea and have it unfold into the fic of your dreams on the spot. smh.
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