more and more quickly

"The idea which such an elevation inspired of his own grandeur completely bewildered him; he was almost ready to adore himself, till, lifting his eyes upward, he saw the stars as high above him as they appeared when he stood on the surface of the earth."

[praecipitanter]

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AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/praecipitanter/works

twitter: https://twitter.com/inevitabilitea

goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/82196006

[praecipitanter]

"Sunsick" Flins/Illuga

fandom: Genshin Impact

pairing: Flins/Illuga #faelight

link: archiveofourown.org/works/83147391

word count: 4966 outline wordcount: 670 outline doc created: Jan 16 2026 drafting doc created: Feb 15, 2026 posting date: April 19 2026

music: San Fermin - Sonsick

POLIÇA - Dark Star

[vivacias]

What's a book written by a woman that changed your life or that you consider a classic? Any genre, any language.

[vivacias]

What's a book written by a woman that changed your life or that you consider a classic? Any genre, any language.

[praecipitanter]

Anaxa/Khaslana magical girl AU

fandom: Honkai Star Rail

pairing: Khaslana/Anaxa

written as part of the #PhainaxaMiniBang !

a modern magical girl au!

link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/79872226

with art by https://x.com/abyss__dweller

[praecipitanter]

rerflins prt 1

fandom: Genshin Impact

pairing: Rerir/Flins

[chaotic-history]

Terra Ignota characters as headlines

Donatien:

Tully Mardi:

Dominic:

Lorelai:

Sniper:

Ganymède:

Ockham:

Mycroft:

Apollo Mojave:

Thisbe:

[gloamses]

more TI because I reread tltl. snipers, vivian/ganymede/bryar, sniper & ganymede, lesley & dominic (I forgot about the part where he anime pins them against the wall), saladin & bridger

[praecipitanter]

Aglanaxa fic

Stats word count:  outline wordcount: 311 scrapped words: 1385+ outline doc created: April 9th 2025 drafting doc created: Apr 11, 2025 posting date: June 21, 2025 written notes: 1 page

music:

   Cathedrals - Ooo Aaa

   Twin Shadow - Castles in the Snow

supplemental reading:

"From the Limbs of the Heart to the Soul's Organs" by Jean-Louis Chretien

- several translations of Ovid's Pygmalion

- On a Grey Thread by Elsa Gidlow (poetry collection)

in particular:

Philosophy by Elsa Gidlow (1923)

Since we must soon be fed As honey and new bread To ever-hungry Death: O, love me very sweet And kiss me very long And let us use our breath For song. Nothing else endures Overlong. 

[nomohmoss]

every night it seems his notoriety grows i wonder if he's even at the parties he throws? the great gatsby au

[desm-doodle]

I'm loving this new style you have with Flins! As a request, if you'd like, maybe Flins meeting other sweet yet emo looking Genshin boys? :3

[praecipitanter]

flamenaxa fic

[music] Superhumanoids - Touch Me

Very portentious title for chikan. I read CLAMP's X/1999 (fantastic) for the first time not too long ago, and I wantd to evoke a similar feeling of outcasts meeting in a peaceful city on the precipice of disaster. It's not "Invitation to THE Eclipse" because I wanted there to be ambiguity about the nature of the eclipse...

There was not a whole lot of room for worldbuilding. 'the smiling statues of the gods at Okhema's gates' was meant to imply the gods had fallen in importance; Kephale doesn't tower over the city holding up the sun, he hangs out with the rest in the tourist spots. Citizens who don't leave the city might never see them. 

the aglanaxa is a childhood friends variety. They've known each other since middle school, when they still had all four eyes working between them. Golden blood is more of an urban legend, not something you want to advertise you have.

One of my favorite poems is Baudelaire's "Invitation to the Voyage". This is an excerpt from William Aggeler's translation, which I stole a bit from. The mythical city Baudelaire reminds me of Okhema at the height of prosperity.

My child, my sister, Think of the rapture Of living together there! Of loving at will, Of loving till death, In the land that is like you! The misty sunlight Of those cloudy skies Has for my spirit the charms, So mysterious, Of your treacherous eyes, Shining brightly through their tears.

There all is order and beauty, Luxury, peace, and pleasure.

[praecipitanter]

Aglanaxa fic

Stats word count:  outline wordcount: 311 scrapped words: 1385+ outline doc created: April 9th 2025 drafting doc created: Apr 11, 2025 posting date: June 21, 2025 written notes: 1 page

music:

   Cathedrals - Ooo Aaa

   Twin Shadow - Castles in the Snow

supplemental reading:

"From the Limbs of the Heart to the Soul's Organs" by Jean-Louis Chretien

- several translations of Ovid's Pygmalion

- On a Grey Thread by Elsa Gidlow (poetry collection)

in particular:

Philosophy by Elsa Gidlow (1923)

Since we must soon be fed As honey and new bread To ever-hungry Death: O, love me very sweet And kiss me very long And let us use our breath For song. Nothing else endures Overlong. 

[starcurtain]

"The Lion Has Its Own Historian:" Parallels Between Gorgo and Aglaea

While re-reading Mydei's "As I've Written" stories recently, I was intrigued again by the (seemingly impossible) section in which Aglaea unknowingly echoed Gorgo's words to Mydei, and this led me down a rabbit hole of thought: The roles of Aglaea and Gorgo--not only in Mydei's life but also in the story overall--form some interesting parallels that are worth looking at in closer detail.

Seize the Means of Control

Gorgo's ascension to a position of authority was predicated on power--not only on her martial prowess, which was expected in her culture (i.e. slaying a lion with her bare hands), but through her courage to meet the existing symbol of authority, Eurypon, in single combat and not concede. In Kremnos, status is conferred and maintained through violence. Though on the surface Gorgo defies this belief, she ultimately remains an active participant in Kremnos's tradition of "might makes right" through the Kremnos Festival, reinforcing rather than rejecting her culture's military-centric social structure.

Although Gorgo originally took part in the Kremnos Festival with the intention of beating Eurypon and seizing the throne of Kremnos for herself (presumably because she thought she could rule better), she ultimately chooses to accept his continued leadership and become queen instead, even granting him an heir to cement his legacy. In this way, despite presumably wishing for a less wasteful (of life) philosophy for the Kremnoans, Gorgo becomes one of the foremost beneficiaries of the very mindset she opposes. She clearly wants to reduce the meaningless bloodshed in Kremnos--she strongly rejects the notion of patricide, for example--but she doesn't (at this point) reject the overall structures of the Kremnoan culture, including the belief that combat ability should determine who leads.

In short, her position of authority was achieved strictly through her ability to oppose her foes.

Despite coming from a wholly different culture, one which (ostensibly) values debate, diplomacy, and the rule of law as the primary tools for establishing status, Aglaea's rise to power was remarkably similar to Gorgo's. The game confirms that the prominence and influence of the Chrysos Heirs in Okhema is no lucky accident--instead, Aglaea has clawed her way to the top, fighting tooth and nail to establish herself as a figure of authority in the Holy City.

We're told she exerts her pressure both through economic means, amassing wealth via monopoly on resources such as Amphoreus's internet, and through literal bloodshed.

The story dances around it, but Star Rail's marketing embraces it: Aglaea represents not just the joy of love but also the "deadliness" of romance, the figure of power in Okhema "pulling the strings" and making others dance to the tune of her vision for the future. She basically rules the roost in the Holy City in large part because of her capacity for violence, because of the literal physical and political power she wields as a demigoddess and the leader of the strongest group of fighters on their entire planet.

This "silk concealing steel" behavior reflects not just how she approaches any who oppose her--the Trailblazer and Krateros, for example--but also how even the NPCs throughout Amphoreus view her:

It's particularly Krateros's view of Aglaea which intrigues me, because the very same things he accuses her of are the things Castrum Kremnos is famous for (being warmongers, usurpers of power, etc.). By all rights, he should admire a "queen" such as Aglaea who rules by force and who is leading her people into the greatest war Amphoreus as ever known. And yet he and the rest of the Kremnoans seem to revile Aglaea for the very same things they saw as virtues in Gorgo.

The context is the key: Gorgo seizing power for herself is viewed as honorable and good because it happened in the context of Kremnos, while Aglaea's power struggle and military dominance occur within the so-claimed peaceful structure of Okhema's democratic society, casting her in the role of a "power-hungry tyrant" for the people living in Okhema, even those who should most appreciate her mindset.

Comparing Gorgo and Aglaea in this way highlights a key double standard in the way the Amphoreans react to women who rise to power, and makes it clear how thin the veneer of Okhema's "peace" really is. Stepping to the top rung of the social ladder through the threat of martial retaliation, Aglaea's battle against the Council and the Flame Chase's foes is no different from Gorgo tearing a lion apart with her bare hands, challenging a king, and taking her place at the top of Kremnos's hierarchy by seizing her weapon and making her stand. All that differs is how violence is received in their contrasting cultures, resulting in two diametrically opposed reactions from the "mere mortals" around them.

With Violence as Your Tool

I think it's important to emphasize that Aglaea and Gorgo also parallel each other not just in their rise to authority through physical power itself, but also in their stances on the necessity of that power: Both Aglaea and Gorgo (at least at first) view bloodshed as a necessary evil, an unpleasant facet of life that one must accept in order to achieve a goal. Violence, for both Gorgo and Aglaea, is a tool.

We see this clearly with Gorgo throughout her flashbacks, both in her initial fight with Eurypon (where she claims she would embrace the notion of death only so long as it is not "unnecessary") and in her other confrontations with Eurypon: Gorgo insists that the tradition of regicide must be broken and makes Eurypon promise not to lead Mydei to that path--yet later, she goes so far as to scold Eurypon when he shies away from his fate, essentially calling him a coward for fearing the prophecy that Mydei would one day kill him. "What prince of Kremnos hasn't killed his father?" she taunts, implying that, even as Gorgo fought to change the violent history of Kremnos, she still believed--at least at that moment--that refusing to face violence when it was foreordained made Eurypon a weak and unfit ruler.

However, we ultimately see this stance change. In Mydei's dream of training with his mother, Gorgo reveals that nearly losing Mydei completely changed her perspective on Kremnos's beliefs, finally killing any faith she had in their system of rule and their constant pursuit of Strife for strife's sake. She rejects the notion of combat being the ultimate test of a person's worth, explicitly casts aside her title and role as queen of Kremnos, and embraces a kinder identity as strictly "Mydei's mother." This is a crisis of faith brought on by experiencing the impacts of Kremnos's faith firsthand--by being forced to experience grievous loss, Gorgo is implied to have grown as a person, from one who is willing to accept violence as a tool to get ahead, into one who solely values peace.

These views, too, mirror Aglaea's pursuit of the Flame Chase Journey and her "hidden" feelings toward its necessary loss. We know already that Aglaea views the threat of violence as her go-to "means to an end" when it comes to achieving the Chrysos Heirs' goals.

She is not at all above putting people into harm's way to pursue the prophecy, such as letting Phainon take the Strife trial even knowing that he would fail, and she tells us players over and over again that her own humanity has nearly vanished, claiming that she now no longer has sufficient empathy for humankind to be swayed away from the path of Era Nova.

This is clearly not true (given how deeply she cares for Tribbie, how kind she is to Castorice, and how unwilling she is to actually bring any harm to Anaxa), but Aglaea insists on this emotionless illusion likely because it makes it easier to tolerate the cruelty required to continue pursuing her goal--she needs it to be true that the last of her humanity has already waned, because this is what makes it easier to accept that the Flame Chase Journey is a journey of "loss," one that is fueled by bloodshed.

It is an unfortunate truth of the prophecy that people will die in pursuit of the dream, that capturing all the coreflames and pushing the world forcibly into its next cycle will cost lives and require cold, rational decisions that will crush people's happiness and freedom. Aglaea cannot hesitate, cannot waver, cannot choose kindness over action.

But, like Gorgo, we know that accepting violence as a tool does not mean that the person wielding the tool is always happy to do so. As Gorgo loses her genuine faith in Kremnos's beliefs and begins to view training Mydei for war as nothing more than a rote requirement, devoid of meaning, Aglaea too struggles to uphold her emotionless facade, a protective cocoon whose cracks reveal the enormous weight she is bearing and how deeply the inhumanity of her own decisions wounds her.

We see this clearly in her character stories, where the actions and then later loss of her maid completely reshape her definition of "beauty":

And we also see it very clearly in her behavior toward Anaxa, where she hesitates at the crucial moment, unable to commit to the course of action that she herself set in motion:

Like Gorgo who longs for a softer world where she can simply be Mydei's mother, Aglaea too (no matter how much she claims) has not lost the part of herself that cares not only for the people closest to her but even for the innocents of the world, the boy who wants to bring his sister something beautiful, the girl who shares her bracelet...

Her nature, no matter how much of it has worn away, is at its core humble and kind--reviling the pain of others.

It's this fundamental conflict between love and what must be done that lends both Gorgo and Aglaea their depth as characters, that grants them both an air of nobility, in the way that everyone good who suffers is noble. Being forced to cause harm without a desire to do so creates quintessentially contradictory characters, making the audience privy to both their external mettle and their internal hesitation, easily humanizing both of them. Aglaea and Gorgo are virtuous women whose cruelty is justified for the greater good. Yet in watching both of them struggle under the immense pressure of that cruelty, we recognize the inherent evil of a world that forces kind-hearted people into positions where bloodshed is their only path forward.

Both Aglaea and Gorgo are not women who normally hesitate to seize the tools available to them, or the kind of women who will shy away from wielding their strongest weapon--the threat of death--with impunity. The reaction to female characters who are willing to exert this kind of power over others (including over the men in their lives) both in-game and in the fandom (where Aglaea in particular is treated poorly for her "coldness") demonstrates how unique this particular type of female character still is, and suggests interesting overall power dynamics in Amphoreus that privilege women willing to utilize violence even above men who choose the same route, despite the strong patriarchal bent one might expect of a story with ancient Greece as its primary influence.

Mydei is not the son of Eurypon, but explicitly and always "the son of Gorgo" even in flashbacks where Eurypon is still alive; in Okhema, both the Chrysos Heirs and the Council appear to be primarily directed by women (Caenis occupies the more visible role of Aglaea's opponent than Lygus does), with all of Okhema's demigods (including Cipher) being female. Gorgo's violence is regarded as honorable; Aglaea is met with disapproval from her peace-loving society but no one ever actually dares to stop her. Perhaps Krateros comes closest, by defying Aglaea's will and entering the Strife trial without her permission, but even he ultimately has to be rescued from Aglaea's clutches by Mydei, who explicitly invokes his mother's name to ensure Krateros's safety. Say it with me: The male character with the highest social status in all of Amphoreus has to rely on the power and reputation of his mother to rescue another man from a powerful woman. Amphoreus really said "Ladies first." 💯

Anaxa's reactions to Aglaea are humorous but are also a perfect example of this overall social structure in Amphoreus which assumes strong women in power have an automatic degree of legitimacy because they are willing to seize violence as their means, despite violence being, in real-world cultures at least, stereotypically the domain of men. In 3.1, Anaxa simply accepts it as a given that he will become Aglaea's prisoner and that she will be able to do whatever she wants to him, because nothing in Okhema's social, political, or military structures would enable him to genuinely oppose her (if he even wanted to).

Even in his (sort of) fake-out "siding with the Council" phase, all Anaxa does is move himself from the grasp of one powerful woman to the next, shifting from being Aglaea's prisoner to Caenis's ace. Cerces even has an entire voiceline where she points out word-for-word that Anaxa is functionally just moving from one woman's cage to the next. Caenis in particular seems to view Anaxa as an object, a biting dog she can keep on a leash until she sics him on her enemy. Anaxa obviously is not so easily manipulated, but Caenis's threat about karma eventually comes true, and he nevertheless suffers the final wrath of the Holy City's society, being judged more harshly than anyone else for his seeming unwillingness to submit to the power of either woman in control of Okhema.

Both literally and thematically, the game tells us players that Aglaea and Gorgo are courageous and effective leaders because they live by the blade, because they are willing to harden their hearts and do whatever it takes, whether that means taking another's life--or their own.

To Usher in a New Era

Of course what really distinguishes both Gorgo and Aglaea's willingness to cause harm from malevolent forces in Amphoreus is their ultimate intent. Although both women are willing to do whatever it takes, they do so only in service to a greater purpose, one that they believe will better their world. In this way, Amphoreus's writers reinforce the underlying impression in Amphoreus's plot that women are more trustworthy and reliable leaders than their corresponding male counterparts. Slight side note on this, but it's kind of funny just how consistent this is--even "outside" of Amphoreus, Welt and Sunday had to turn to Herta to save the day, while inside Amphoreus, Trailblazer is still relying on Acheron's advice to get them through. (When you cater to the incels so hard you somehow loop back around into writing staunchly feminist plotlines...)

The message, repeated and unsubtle, is that there is a link between women's leadership and righteousness, with both Gorgo and Aglaea representing an idealistic desire for a better future for Kremnos and Amphoreus as a whole--one by opposing fate and the other by enforcing it.

Both Gorgo and Aglaea face prophecies that promise to reshape the world as they know it, prophecies which require them to make decisions that will ultimately cost them their lives in a desperate bid to influence history toward the best path. Gorgo rejects the prophecy she is given, determined to protect Mydei despite the destruction the omens claim he will bring to Castrum Kremnos.

Because of the players' predilections for Mydei, this choice to reject fate paints Gorgo as a heroine, an unselfish and moral person who will choose the life of an innocent child over she own safety. Her willingness to fight to the death to prevent Eurypon's atrocity against their son flies in the face of fate itself, attempting to stop an inevitable, self-fulfilling prophecy.

And, in fact, the game even teases us with the idea: What would Kremnos have been like if Gorgo succeeded? When Mydei returns to Kremnos, he either "envisions" or actually experiences (via timelines bleeding into each other), a seemingly parallel universe where Gorgo succeeded in saving him from the Sea of Souls, and where she clearly rallied the people of Kremnos to her cause. The Kremnos we see in that vision is entirely different from Eurypon's:

The people are happy, rejoicing and at ease, talking about pomegranates and writing and playing games with kids, while the sun paints the whole city in a soft and gleaming gold.

Contrast that with the Kremnos that Trailblazer and Castorice find when they travel back into the past where Eurypon betrayed his wife and left Mydei in the sea:

In the seemingly alternate timeline where Gorgo lives long enough to raise Mydei, the Kremnos we're presented with... looks a lot like Okhema. Looks a lot like the peaceful, idyllic Holy City where children frolic in the streets and the people are still full of light and life. By defying fate, we are shown (at least in some fragment of Amphoreus's timeline) that Gorgo achieves what she had longed for in Kremnos from the start, creating a better, gentler future for the people, prosperous and free of the cycle of Strife and meaningless violence that had plagued their kingdom for thousands of years. In this way, we can say that, for that lost timeline at least, Gorgo essentially achieved the Era Nova for Kremnos, ushering in a time of peace for her people. What Aglaea seeks, the game shows us that Gorgo was capable of achieving.

Conversely, Aglaea's path forward involves taking the complete opposite road: Rather than rejecting fate to create a better future, Aglaea seeks to embrace it. She has fully invested herself and her resources in the prophecy of the Flame Chase. She has to, because if there's no Era Nova to look forward to, then there's no hope at all for Amphoreus, and how can it be that something so beautiful is doomed to total destruction? If the Flame Chase Journey will end in a new start, if someone--anyone--will get to live to see the world born anew, then every sacrifice, every burden, every agony will have been worth it.

By embracing her prophesied fate instead of rejecting it, Aglaea is taking the same decisive stand as Gorgo, seizing the future of her world in her own hands and forcing Amphoreus along the path toward what she believes will definitely be a brighter future.

Not only does the description of Era Nova match the idyllic Castrum Kremnos we see under Gorgo's likely rule, but even the moments where both women truly make their stand and reckon with fate reflect each other as well: Gorgo demands her fellow Kremnoans stand with her, hoping they will see the wickedness of Eurypon's decision and reject blind faith in the prophecy they've been given. With her own strength, if even just Krateros alone had stood with her, she easily would have been able to push back against Eurypon's scheme. She lays out her vision for a different future, rejects the notions of the past, and is met with silence.

Meanwhile, Aglaea faces the Council of Elders in Okhema, where the decision about the Flame Chase Journey hangs in the balance, waiting on the final vote of a single person to join up with her cause. Just like Gorgo, the alignment of even one person to Aglaea's cause will make proof of her righteousness, prove the she's right. Aglaea lays down the gauntlet, demands the loyalty of her allies--and her leadership and vision are rewarded when Anaxa joins up with the cause, tipping the literal balance of the scales towards the new era Aglaea believes her efforts will bring to fruition.

(In essence, at the end of 3.2, we get to watch Anaxa do exactly what Krateros failed to--stand on the side of the woman who wields justice.)

Ultimately, through they do it through diametrically opposite paths--rejecting and embracing prophecy, respectively--both women are characterized by their drive to create change, their refusal to accept a quiet descent into cruelty and darkness. Both take a stand, outlining their vision for the right way to go on, for a better, softer, brighter world, seeking the loyalty of comrades to legitimize their causes, and--failing that--willing to make the ultimate sacrifice of themselves to further their truly noble causes.

The strength of both women lies not just in their martial prowess, but in their unwavering dedication to a just cause, no matter the cost to themselves.

Generational Influence

What actually started me off on this whole look at Gorgo and Aglaea as thematic parallels was Mydei's scenes with Aglaea, particularly how he clearly considers her a role model for ideal leadership. While I won't go so far as to say Aglaea perceives herself filling any sort of maternal role for Mydei, I think the connection is obvious on Mydei's end: Having never gotten the chance to truly meet his mother, Mydei is almost certainly projecting "the leader my mother would have been" onto Aglaea. (Or perhaps we should say the opposite: The empty spaces in Mydei's mind when he thinks of "Gorgo" are sutured closed with Aglaea's golden filigree.)

Does this sort of praise sound a bit familiar? It ought to, because this is how Krateros describes Gorgo:

Both women are characterized by their ability to move people's hearts, to inspire hope, and to model ideal strategy for others.

So how could Mydei do anything but link Aglaea's leadership with the life he imagines his mother would have led if she had had the chance to rule Kremnos?

Consider the entire situation from Mydei's perspective: His people have just been (forcibly) rescued from an insane king whose true downfall began with his betrayal of wife, their nation's one genuinely noble leader. If Gorgo had been their ruler, none of this suffering would ever have happened. Fleeing the madness and death Nikador is bringing to Kremnos, the entire surviving host of his people migrate to the "Holy City," the (supposed) last bastion of light and peace and happiness in Amphoreus--which is effectively ruled by a woman so powerful that she knows and sees all.

Seemingly effortlessly, she commands respect and fealty, marshaling her forces to do battle with the might of her own sword, while fighting to maintain the very same values Mydei's mother wanted to bring to her own nation. While being unafraid of bloodshed, she treasures life more than anything else. She's honest, direct, and unflinching, but still, despite everything, kind and dedicated to protecting the world she loves.

Mydei doesn't know his mother but there she is. There's the "queen" that his mother should have had the chance to be. There is the leader that Kremnos needed. There is the powerful woman whose dream for the future could have single-handedly changed the course of fate.

Clearly, for lack of personal experience, the Gorgo in Mydei's mind is less a real person and much more an idealized figure. His only direct knowledge of her comes from one "dream," where she tells him that he's more important than the world to her (undoubtedly leaving Mydei to grapple with the question of whether that is something she truly felt or something he just wishes to be true, by the way). Mydei's only other frame of reference for his mother is Krateros's blind veneration, with Krateros constantly holding Gorgo up as the standard Mydei should meet.

Gorgo is clearly on an achingly high pedestal for Mydei. He shaped his entire youth around the need to avenge her, and then he shaped his entire adult ideology around her vision for Kremnos. In "our" timeline, Gorgo may not have lived to create the change she hoped for, but her goal was ultimately achieved nonetheless, through the inter-generational influence her memory had over Mydei. It was Gorgo's hatred of wasteful bloodshed that helped Mydei to hate it too. It was Gorgo's desire to change Kremnos's traditions that led Mydei to consider tearing down its dynasty. It's his mother's gentle love for her people that echoes in Mydei's same affection.

And through Aglaea, all those views and lessons were enforced. Before joining up with the Flame Chase Journey, the game tells us that Mydei's life was effectively still a hellscape even when he had his friends: They wandered the land with nowhere to call home and were attacked by (or themselves attacked) everyone they met, engaging in endless violence just to keep existing, while he watched his companions be brutally murdered one by one. At the risk of extreme understatement: Mydei was not living the life his mother wanted for him.

After joining the Flame Chase Journey, Mydei becomes one of the "heroes" who dedicates himself to protecting innocents and serving as a guardian; he finds a cause, does his best to create a new home for his people, and works to reshape their views towards the beliefs his mother espoused. Like Gorgo putting down her weapon and taking up the role of "just your mother," Mydei gets to (temporarily, briefly) let down his guard and live as just a person, cooking sweets, roleplaying with kids, and cuddling with chimeras.

He inches closer to the dream of finding meaning in finding peace.

And if it was Gorgo who inspired those choices, then it was Aglaea who made them possible--Aglaea who accepted the Kremnoan Detachment into Okhema, Aglaea who literally put aside her fear of Mydei to accept him as a fellow Chrysos Heir, Aglaea who guided him, Aglaea who modeled transformational leadership for him, Aglaea who gave him the final (if forceful) push he needed to commit to changing his people's future, destroying the bloodstained Kremnos of the past. In all his struggles to move forward, the threads of Aglaea and Gorgo's mirrored ideology lead Mydei through the labyrinth of uncertainty.

All things considered, Gorgo might actually be the character with the single most significant impact on Amphoreus's current plot other than the Trailblazer, because the guidance and beliefs she instilled in Mydei will live much longer than Gorgo and even Aglaea herself--may even live on through the end of the world and the rebirth of all of Amphoreus, because it is her exact ideology that becomes the backbone of Mydei's life advice to Castorice. When Castorice reveals their future, telling him the demigods of today's Amphoreus will become the titans of the new cycle, Mydei looks her in the eye and tells her the exact thing he learned from his mother and Aglaea:

Don't accept defeat--defy despair with everything you have and weave the future with your own two hands.

Perhaps nowhere do we see the parallels between Gorgo and Aglaea more clearly than in the "As I've Written" chapter, where we are told that what ultimately swayed Mydei's decision to join the Flame Chase Journey was when, completely without knowing it, Aglaea spoke the exact same words as his mother.

Though the organization of "As I've Written" is often unclear, making it difficult to determine which passages are actually linked to each other and which are entirely separate, I'm going to personally interpret the quote included in Mydei's third chapter as that special sentence once spoken by both Gorgo and Aglaea:

"The lion has its own historian, and the history of the hunt should not be held by the hunter alone."

Putting aside that all of this is completely impossible in the timeline as we know it (Mydei has no way of remembering the sentences his mother might have spoken to him, and none of the sentences in any flashbacks or her letter to him have anything to do with lions or historians), if this is the line echoed by both women, it is an obviously poignant phrase that would immediately signify to Mydei that Aglaea's ideology matches his mother's.

Although the English translation of "As I've Written" leaves A LOT to be desired (sometimes to the point of being entirely incomprehensible; I legitimately have no idea who okayed those translations, rife as they are with just straight up grammar errors lol), the origin of this phrase is unmistakable. It comes from the African proverb that is normally translated as:

"Until the lion has its own historian, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter."

Essentially, "History is written by the victors."

If we take the English translation seriously, what Aglaea and Gorgo would have been saying is that "the defeated" (which, by the way, is symbolized by the lion repeatedly in Kremnos's history) should have their own historian, and that no one should get to speak for them. That is, of course, that no one should get to speak for Mydei except himself--that he should take charge of his own destiny and write his own history into the books.

Krateros repeatedly insists that Mydei is the hunter, the one who should be controlling the whole hunting ground:

But Aglaea sees through Mydei in the first moment of meeting him--sees that he's not the victor but the victim, not the Kremnoan king-to-be but the "wandering lion" who is at risk of being slaughtered on the altar of Kremnos's glory. Kremnos's history is not the "hunting lion"--it's the lion hunt. Gorgo the founder killed the lion, Gorgo the mother killed the lion... So where does that leave Mydei, the symbolic lion?

This line is saying, Aglaea and Gorgo would both have been saying: I see you. I see that there's an entire unspoken legacy weighing on your shoulders, a horror you're fleeing from like wounded prey, a fierce desire in you to refuse the tale this world is writing for you. And in supposedly echoing Gorgo's words, Aglaea would also have echoed the very core of Gorgo's faith:

Those who have lost everything still deserve the chance to shape their own futures.

Those who have faced impossible odds, those who Fate itself has marked for death, those who would martyr themselves to secure the futures of others can and should still rage against the dying of the light, still fight with every tooth and nail to bring about a different ending.

When no one but (apparently) the ghost of Gorgo in his head had ever said it to him, Aglaea told Mydei:

If you want a different history, you can write it.

Of course he joined the Flame Chase Journey after seeing that its leader carries the very same deep-rooted goodness as his mother.

And while we're here talking about the mirrored ideologies and guidance both women have offered to Mydei, I also want to add a tiny aside about Aglaea's symbolic leadership of the other Kremnoans as well.

Although of course Mydei remains their de facto leader even in Okhema, Mydei himself makes a big deal out of the Kremnoans having submitted to Aglaea's authority, repeating in several places that the Kremnoans have a duty to follow her commands.

This isn't an off-hand statement; for someone who should have already been crowned king to state in his own words that his people should submit to someone else's authority is effectively tantamount to ceding his throne specifically to her--Mydei has essentially handed over the reins of Kremnoan leadership to Aglaea. He's the crown prince, but she's effectively the queen (that his mother never got to be). The promotional materials even label Aglaea and Mydei as occupying the same role ("King"). This is especially clear in how the Kremnoans refer to her. In multiple places, Aglaea is referred to as "the golden-haired usurper."

You don't get called a "usurper" unless people believe you're attempting to undermine their current ruler. In all but flat out saying it, the other Kremnoans perceive Aglaea as usurping Mydei's authority, despite Mydei himself willingly giving that power to her. Mydei isn't careless with the Kremnoans' futures, he doesn't shirk his duties as their crown prince, and he certainly would never surrender his power to a weak, unfit ruler. Undoubtedly, Mydei is comfortable with the idea of ceding authority to Aglaea in part because he recognizes his mother in her, sees the qualities that elevated Gorgo to royalty in Kremnos alive and well in Aglaea's Okhema. In this way, perhaps we could say that another factor contributing to Mydei's hesitance to take up Kremnos's throne might be a subconscious sense that the Kremnoans are already in the right hands, that Aglaea--embodying the ideal leadership Mydei projects onto the memory of his mother--is a better fit than he could ever be to lead them anyway?

Heck, while we're at it, I think it's even interesting that the cities of Okhema and Kremnos mirror each other so much, down to things that honestly don't make sense: We're told the legend explaining the lion heads on the walls in Kremnos, but... why are there are also talking lion heads all over Okhema's walls? Gorgo who tore the head off the Tretos lion is echoed in Aglaea, who rules a kinder, softer city still symbolized by the lion, where the talking lion heads get to be gossips and riddle masters instead of war strategists.

Okay, and the last silly thing I want to say: Aglaea would definitely not call herself a mother figure for Mydei, but after 3.2 reveals Gorgo's tough love methods, Aglaea's attempts at scolding him start to look pretty familiar, from her exasperated chiding to her genuine criticism:

Mydei has it tough, having to meet the expectations of women like these lol.

To Fade from the World

Sorry, that was a bit too light-hearted for me, so time to end this post with some more pain:

A final point I think worth comparing between Gorgo and Aglaea is the ultimate fate that both of them face in the story: Gorgo is already gone, but Aglaea is not far behind.

Gorgo's death in particular is treated as abominable. Kremnoans may be warmongers and Strife worshipers, but they're supposed to be honorable about it. Key to their obsession with combat is the idea of noble combat, between contestants who are each given a fair chance. Despite being Gorgo's greatest ally, Krateros does not stand up and join her in her revolt against Eurypon, likely because of that same "might makes right" mindset that shaped so much of Kremnos's decision-making: If Gorgo's cause was truly righteous, then she should have been able to stand up for it herself and win a duel against Eurypon. If it had been a fair contest as expected by Kremnoan cultural standards, then whoever won would have been considered the "correct" person, and no one could have contested the fair results.

But Eurypon's cowardice drove him completely from the path of Kremnos's sacred virtues, causing him to betray their values by betraying his wife, using poison to deny her her fair chance in the duel. This action--forsaking the core tenets of Nikador's divinity--marks the truest extent of Eurypon's downfall, and cements that he is utterly unfit to rule, lacking both the courage to confront his wife in fair combat and the honor to reject under-handed schemes to ensure victory.

Gorgo's death is treated as a tragedy, an act that entirely shapes the course of the story through Mydei's loss to the sea and his subsequent quest for vengeance. It was cowardly betrayal that took away Kremnos's path to a brighter future, locking the self-fulfilling prophecy of Kremnos's downfall into place.

And this, of course, is a perfect mirror to the prophesied end Aglaea is going to face, possibly sooner rather than later. Upon their ascension as demigods, each Chrysos Heir is told how their life will end. Aglaea's prophecy states: "You shall have your final bath in warm and radiant gold."

As Aglaea is most often seen there, the assumption is that she will literally die in the baths--Mydei states this in-game, saying "If a normal person heard that prophecy, they'd probably just stop coming to the baths." Aglaea effectively dismisses this threat (in a very Kremnoan fashion even, lol) by simply saying "Well, who cares? I like baths!" Whatever will be, will be; if her assassin has the strength to end a demigoddess, then truly, it doesn't matter where she goes in Okhema or across the world--fate will find her.

Of course, there's also the possible interpretation that "final bath in gold" refers simply to bathing in her own golden Chrysos Heir blood...

But in either case, the prophecy, Mydei's comments, and some plot leaks I've seen all point towards a violent and unexpected end--likely at the hands of a betrayal.

Like Gorgo, Aglaea will not live to see the world she wished to create, the softer, golden future she wanted to bring to her people. At the hands of her enemies, either facing it with honor or in an unexpected moment of vulnerability, Aglaea will be eliminated before the final hour, fading from Amphoreus's memory as the survivors succeed--or fail--to usher in the new era she sacrificed everything to create.

Although both unique characters on their own, entirely separate from each other, examining Aglaea and Gorgo's parallel plot points, core character traits, and their roles and influences on others throughout the course of the story reveals yet another incredible "echo effect" in Amphoreus's writing, aligning opposites--Okhema and Kremnos, Beauty and Strife--through eerily similar patterns and revealing the enduring thematic threads that bind together the separate portions of Amphoreus's tale.

More than anything, Amphoreus feels to me like a very Hamilton-esque "Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?" plot, one that hinges on the question of who has the power to shape and reshape the future of their world, who has the power to break through a pre-ordained structure and bring about a better end--who has the courage to sacrifice it all to seize the reins of fate itself.

Through Aglaea and Gorgo, the story reinforces a message about women in power, women who perfectly balance violence (the traditional domain of male figures) with love, with beauty, and with righteousness to shake the foundations of their world. In what they value and how they lead, the story mirrors and mirrors again, mise en abyme, the message that those who are willing to give it all for the greater good are the true crafters of our story.

(Perhaps all this is preparing for the presence of another woman, one just as willing or more to do all that must be done to usher in a brighter future for her world?)

The history of the hunt should not be held by the hunter alone.

The lion has its own historian--and so too does the lioness.

Although Gorgo and Aglaea will both fall before that golden Era Nova can be achieved, the marks they have left on Amphoreus's plot, through their legacies of defiance and grace picked up and carried, torch-like, by other characters, demonstrate just how central both women were to all that happened in the world's past and all that will happen in its future.

[praecipitanter]

myphainaxa fic

Stats

word count: 6884 outline wordcount: 315 scrapped words: 567+ outline doc created: May 31st 2025 drafting doc created: June 2, 2025 posting date: 9/7/2025

music: In the Valley below - Palm Tree Fire

reading Fire From Heaven by Mary Renault

[starcurtain]

One of the possibility you stated with your Amphoreus theory, about the characters being either dead or didn't existed in the first place, reminds me of a twitter post talking about the As I've Written journal. They basically said that Phainon might be writing his own fictional story and Mydei's basically the ideal man he came up with.

Although I'm inclined to pin the blame suggest that Cyrene seems like a probable focal point for the Amphoreus simulation loopy timey-wimey strangeness, the idea that all of this is just Phainon making up a story is both devastating and hilarious.

Just imagine him giggling and kicking his feet while scribbling frantically in his diary: "And then I'll meet a prince. Not just any prince, but a warrior prince with two-colored hair and golden lion eyes and huge tits and he will definitely be able to crush me with his thighs--"

Bullet list squeezed in the corner like:

Educated (but not smarter than me; I have to be able to impress him!!)

Tall (but not taller than me!!)

His culture will be all about fighting (because that's what I'm good at!!)

He'll definitely like pancakes (because I can make them!!)

Sensitive side (TEARS TURN TO CRYSTALLIZED LILIES!! I'm so good at this--)

Shirtless at all times (remember to make up a reason later)

[starcurtain]

Mydei: Legend, Reality, Agency

A while back on Twitter, I saw an excellent thread going around about how so many in-game sources of information on Mydei tell his story as if recounting an ancient myth, an unreal epic tale of a fictional hero, rather than a "real," existing being. (Thank you to @ruby019x for finding the link to the thread!)

Reiterating the point of that original Twitter thread: Unlike the other Chrysos Heirs, whose stories get treated as contemporary "real" events or whose tales are told through their own perspectives, almost everything we know about Mydei is framed through the filter of third party observers, resulting in a character that feels less like a person than a myth made flesh. Mydei's story doesn't come across as the coherent timeline of someone telling us true events--it feels like a jumbled, highly exaggerated account that might spread as rumors through word-of-mouth, or, more accurately:

It feels like storytelling.

The way Mydei's backstory and all of the sources of information we have on Mydei in-game unfurl in contradictory and overwrought manners has the ring of a legend passed down through generations, losing and gaining details over time, being misremembered, aggrandized, and taken out of context, until the heroic figure at the core of the story no longer has a human identity but has transcended to become a mythological figure, real history fading into romanticized narrative.

Mydei isn't a living, breathing "person," he's the untouchable "king of kings," the "greatest conqueror, the mightiest protector."

Overall, this storytelling effect is very apparent, in virtually every source of information we have about Mydei throughout the game:

Mydei's character stories are all third party accounts of his actions and past:

Phrases such as "legends state," "rumors swirl," "the author boldly speculates" etc. abound in Mydei's character stories, making it clear that all of the information contained in them is suspect at best--these are others' perceptions of him and the events of his life, not his own perspectives on what occurred.

Unlike virtually every other character in the game, instead of Mydei's character stories being a chance for players to get to understand Mydei's inner world, to see him from his own perspective, we're given this strange distance, these observations from "outsiders" who clearly fail to grasp who Mydeimos is as a person or real his motivations. In one character story, Mydei's own advisors struggle with their complete lack of understanding, questioning his decisions and rewriting his actions as being "bewitched" by Aglaea and the Flame-Chase Journey, instead of genuinely committed to the cause:

There's even confusion and speculation among fans about who wrote the handwritten notes at the end of each of Mydei's character stories. Are these Mydei's notes, answering the accusations, setting the records straight, and adding his own personal perspectives at last?

While I'm still somewhat inclined to say these are Mydei's notes, the fact that these notes are supposedly from books "in the archive of the Library of Garbaniphoro"--a library this lifetime's Mydei shouldn't actually have had any access to--definitely complicates that reading, not to mention that Mydei doesn't seem to demonstrate the level of self-interest that would drive him to look up and read a bunch of books about himself in the first place...

The fact that we fans can't even fully tell whether these notes were actually written by Mydei or by someone else--such as Khaslana, seeking accounts and histories of the person he cared for, trying to set the record straight even in timelines where his blade would eventually spell the end of Mydei's life--is just another hallmark of the confusion surrounding Mydei's life. In practically every moment, we're still not sure if Mydei is speaking for himself or not.

Mydei's chapters in "As I've Written" continue this exact same trend, giving accounts of his life through third party observations, rumors, and questions:

"They say," "others guessed," "rumors rife," a "wild tale," and literally "the protagonist"--this isn't a first person account of Mydei's backstory, his own thoughts on his situation, or his true life's timeline. It's a dramatized retelling of events through the lens of outsiders looking in, turning a "person" into a "protagonist," making him a fictional character in his own life (this is very meta, by the way).

The mission and journal text throughout Amphoreus's plot, even all the way from 3.1, also echo this, with second person point of view instead of first person, emphasizing Mydei's title as if that were more important than his personhood, and dictating his feelings as if they're "absurd," not earned or valid, while mission text in 3.4 paints Mydei as a completely overblown figure, a larger-than-life myth:

Even NPCs, particularly the Kremnoans, often speak of Mydei in this way, as if he was not a person but a figurehead, a symbol they are rallying behind, rather than a human being with challenges, hesitations, and thoughts of his own:

The end result of all of this together is that Mydei comes across much more like a fictitious character than nearly any of the other Chrysos Heirs. Is he a lingering hero of the Chrysos War one thousand years in the past? Is he the re-embodiment of the spirit of Kremnos itself, son of both "Queen Gorgo" and "Gorgo, the Founder of Kremnos," as the game so likes to conflate? Is he a conquering tyrant, the king of kings, an embodiment of the sea, the Guardian of Amphoreus, the beloved crown prince of his country or the patricidal traitor?

Even in the meta sense, we players struggle to separate fact from fiction, leading to the sensation that all along, Mydei's single "story" has actually been multiple stories, at least two different timelines interweaving into a jumbled, incoherent past full of made-up events that couldn't have occurred, contradictions, and out-of-context plot points coloring even the player's perceptions of Mydei and his past.

And all of this, I think, is very intentional.

If you were to ask me "What's is Mydei's real role in Amphoreus's story?" I think the best answer to that question is: Mydei's role in the story is a commentary on the nature of storytelling itself.

The theme of storytelling is essential to Amphoreus's plot, with the "As I've Written" text being treated as the core model for each character's memory-identity that the Trailblazer is inscribing and bringing with them into the past (and therefore also the future) of Amphoreus. The idea of storytelling and narrative is so central to Amphoreus that the entire plot effectively revolves around it: The Flame-Chase Journey, and therefore the entire core reveal of Amphoreus being a simulation instead of a real world, is tied to Plato's allegory of the cave, itself a story about people who believe facsimile (their shadows cast by flame on the cave wall) is reality--in other words, a moral about mistaking narrative for truth.

It is only by rejecting the false reality--breaking free of Irontomb's simulation--that Amphoreus's people can become "real," escaping the digital unreality to enter the actual universe. In essence:

It is only by escaping "fiction" that one can embrace "true" existence.

But there's a second layer of the moral quandary: If the fiction is more beautiful, more entertaining, and more glorious than reality, would it be better to stay in the story, to turn your back on reality and just be the heroic protagonist of a fairy tale epic?

The game itself asks us to confront this idea:

"Do you care how true a memory is?"

Mydei is a walking, talking manifestation of this exact theme. Are we actually supposed to care how accurate his backstory is?

If Mydei is just meant to be a narrative symbol of kingship, of guardianship, of Strife, then does it really matter if things about his past do not add up?

If Mydei is a pure stand-in for the concept of "the mythological hero," do we really need his timeline to make sense?

Is an aggrandized, dramatized recounting of his past and deeds not perfectly in keeping with the way every mythological hero's past is told?

Consider our real world heroes of yore--Beowulf, Odysseus, Gilgamesh--do any of them feel "real"? Do we think of them as actual historical figures who lived and died like we do, or are they larger-than-life heroes whose actions are all so fictionalized and exaggerated that they never could have happened in real life? Do we understand our heroes as sentient, three-dimensional existences? Do we know their thoughts, their feelings, their struggles outside the narrow confines of their legends?

Or do they exist just to be morals, role models, symbols?

In fact, there is evidence suggesting that many mythological figures like Gilgamesh and Beowulf were real kings who actually lived in our real world--but we will never know the true stories of those men, because their truth has been entirely consumed by narrative.

Fiction eclipses fact.

We take the shadows on the wall to be "truth," and never see the real world beyond the cave.

Mydei's story is a microcosm for what is happening in Amphoreus's plot as a whole, a concentrated example of what occurs when memory becomes "blurry or gets idealized."

It's a pointed commentary on the nature of storytelling, because you never tell the exact same story twice. Over time, as you recall the tale, it changes, minute details being washed away in favor of remembered generalizations, hyperbole, and shifting interests. Every person who retells the story, every new perspective on the original material, brings their own agenda to the table, further altering the original until it barely resembles what really occurred.

As Trailblazer and Co. struggle with the question of how to make Amphoreus real from the memories we have gathered--and whether we want to recreate the world accurately or pen a different, much happier ending--we see that same struggle play out in miniature through Mydei, whose true life and true voice are being subsumed in before our very eyes by myth, by legend, by others turning him into a convenient symbol or source for their own speculation.

Through Mydei, we see the dangers of what can happen when memory becomes "beautified," capturing fiction rather than truth.

But more than its reflection on his overall role in the story, I think there's a fascinating side effect of choosing the concept of "storytelling" as Mydei's central theme: Writing him as a character whose real thoughts and feelings are eclipsed by other people's perspectives puts Mydei in a position normally occupied by female characters in media--the position of having to fight for agency.

(Before I go any further with this point, because the Star Rail fandom has literacy issues, let me doubly clarify: I am not talking about the experiences of actual real world women here [although they do often reflect fictional women's experiences]--I am talking strictly about the roles and struggles stereotypically assigned to female characters in media. If you can't keep that context in mind, stop reading here, because I don't want to deal with pancakes-and-waffles people who think saying "Media frames X as a feminine trait" is equivalent to saying "Real people can't be feminine if they don't experience X." PLEASE.)

Okay, with that out of the way, what I mean is this:

One of the most common experiences of female characters in media, especially in media written primarily by men, is being unable to speak for themselves. The stories of female characters are often told almost exclusively through the lens of their male protagonist counterparts, and female characters are often given less interiority. Even in cases where female characters are able to express their own individual thoughts and feelings, those thoughts and feelings are often dismissed in favor of others' interpretations. ("Oh, so you actually mean ____" or "You don't really feel that way.")

Because Mydei is a character whose role in the story is defined by his truth being eclipsed under mythology (his actual thoughts and feelings hidden behind the game sharing only the perspectives of outsiders), he also effectively becomes a character who does not speak for himself, willingly or not.

Obviously Mydei's character stories are perfect proof of this, locking us out of his own inner world by giving us almost entirely the views of others, one of whom even rejects the very notion that Mydei could be exactly who he is, saying "There's no way such a person could exist," no way this would be real behavior, no way Mydei could be an altruistic and kind person:

The "As I've Written" chapters double-down on this notion, stating multiple times that Mydei is "a man of few words" who rarely conveys his thoughts on any matter. He is repeatedly described as "going silent." Worse, even when he does convey his thoughts, others find his words to be "absurd" and abandon him:

Hell, even Mydei's marketing materials get in on this impression:

But this trend towards silence happens outside of Mydei's written materials too. Over and over again, the game puts Mydei into positions where other people tell him how he should be thinking or feeling. It isn't that other people are always wrong about Mydei's feelings, but that the game consistently frames Mydei's emotions through other characters, rarely letting him be the one to express himself.

It happens with Krateros numerous times, but most clearly in the memory fragment after Mydei kills his father, where Krateros literally tries to tell Mydei what he's supposed to be feeling and how he should react to what just happened:

It occurs with the Chrysos Heirs several times, such as Tribbie telling Mydei how he should feel after Phainon's failed trial (no, I'm not blaming Tribbie here; she didn't do this maliciously):

We even see this happen with Phainon, who ends up interpreting Mydei's feelings on Mydei's behalf:

There's actually a running joke throughout 3.0, 3.1, and Mydei's "As I've Written" about other people (read as: Phainon) acting as historian in Mydei's stead, to speak about his past on Mydei's behalf, instead of Mydei sharing his own perspective on Kremnos's culture:

In 3.1, we get to see a Mydei who struggles to articulate his own thoughts and find the "right' words, and a Mydei who is keenly aware of the many times his thoughts fall of deaf ears, when his words fail to move the people he truly needs to persuade:

And nowhere do I think this futility in speaking for himself is clearer than in Mydei's highly symbolic relationship with language itself. It's no accident that Mydei "rarely speaks his native tongue" and the Kremnoan dictionary is jokingly referred to as "blank":

Since Mydei is synonymous with Kremnos, we can say that the game's refusal to let him speak much Kremnoan--and the game's refusal to let the Kremnoan language speak for itself--is equivalent to Mydei's inability to express his "true" self on his own terms. The emptiness of the Kremnoan language, though played as a joke, also effectively mirrors Mydei's silence as a character. Just as Mydei does not embrace his native language, he's not comfortably able to express the things he wants to say as a whole.

But how are we actually supposed to interpret this silence?

Is Mydei being spoken over or is he just choosing not to speak? Is this solely a case of Mydei making the mature decision not to respond to others' provocations, not to lower himself to deny false accusations? Does he just want to keep all his feelings hidden deep down?

I think you could easily interpret Mydei's constant returns to silence, interpret the game's decision to have all of his story told through others, as an example of classic "manly" stoicism, a male character simply refusing to be vulnerable or speak his true thoughts or feelings out loud. Maybe we could argue that Mydei simply doesn't see the point in telling the truth about himself, because he knows people will invent their own stories anyway.

But... to be honest, I think the framing is a little different with Mydei. He's not actually that stoic or detached from his feelings. In fact, he's frequently rather candid about his emotions, significantly more so than Amphoreus's other primary male characters, Phainon and Anaxa. Although he rarely speaks his own inner thoughts, Mydei readily tells others (namely Phainon) to stop trying to hide their emotions, and in 3.1, he does actually try repeatedly to share his personal concerns, frustrated by the irony that his own language supposedly doesn't even have words for the things he's feeling.

While he is certainly reserved, Mydei does not seem to ascribe to the toxic idea that men should never express their feelings, and he doesn't aggressively hold his cards close to his chest. I don't get the impression that Mydei wants his life to be eclipsed by rumors and others' distorted, biased perspectives--I don't think he really wants to be silent.

In fact, in several moments across 3.0 and 3.1, Mydei tries quite hard to articulate his true wishes and thoughts... only for others to talk over and dismiss what he is saying.

We see this happen even all the way back when Mydei was a child, trying to express his dreams:

As a joke, this happens during 3.0 with Phainon, who "translates" Mydei's lofty way of speaking for the Trailblazer into different (inaccurate) words during their journey through Kremnos, even at one point going "Yeah, to be honest I have no idea what Mydei's trying to say either. Let's just move on."

We see it happen in 3.1 with Aglaea, who (for her own valid reasons) refuses to acknowledge Mydei's feelings about the coreflame of Strife, writing his reservations and fears off as "foolhardiness and indecision."

We see this happen even with Chartonus, who questions why someone like Mydei would be "terrified" of fulfilling his destiny, only for Mydei to struggle to explain the depths of his fear of losing himself to Strife.

"Why wouldn't I be terrified?" he says in 3.1, only for literally everyone to ignore him.

We see this happen with Krateros and the Kremnoan elders, who both explicitly scold Mydei for acting like a submissive (read as: stereotypical impression of femininity) prey animal instead of an dominant (read as: stereotypical impression of masculinity) predator.

I've written about this elsewhere, but this is the direct rhetoric that feeds into Mydei's "As I've Written" story based on the proverb "Until the lion has its own historian, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter." This proverb directly targets the duplicitous nature of storytelling, where one side of the story often gets told and the other is forgotten--clearly intertwined with Mydei's case, where the truth of his story goes untold in favor of the other side's perspective, where predator and prey are switched, and the lion becomes the victim, not the victor.

In fact, Mydei taking this supposedly "prey" role (serving another's cause, where his wishes are a distant second to the wishes of others), becomes one of Eurypon's foremost complaints when Mydei is confronted by his father's ghost: Mydei is the kind of person to quietly support others (a role stereotypically given to female characters), which flies directly in the face of Eurypon's near constant attempts to project himself and his own violent, "kingly" emotions onto Mydei.

So, all together: A character whose actual feelings are dismissed, downplayed as too emotional and not befitting his station, who finds his words falling on deaf ears, who is perpetually projected upon by the men in his life, and is constantly having his thoughts interpreted by others on his behalf instead of getting to be his own "voice"?

It's literally the quintessential fight of female characters across centuries of storytelling, and Hoyo deciding to assign this conflict to what initially appears to be one of their most stereotypically masculine figures in the entire game is fascinating, because it changes what is otherwise a cut-and-dry story of the prodigal son refusing to carry on his father's legacy into a significantly more complex, gendered reading: What if the son is not intuitively an aggressive, commanding man, but someone who struggles to articulate himself, who despite being able to carry the banner of leadership whenever he must, actually seeks the quiet, supportive role for himself when given the freedom to do so?

When people say that they were pleasantly surprised by Mydei's charcter because he wasn't the macho brute they were expecting him to be, I think what they are actually perceiving is this, the incredible dichotomy of taking the most classic masculine story of all time--son surpassing his father, prince becoming king--and assigning it to a character whose central emotional conflict is, historically, feminine. This is cool! This is really, really unique and cool!

But if all that isn't enough to convince you that Hoyo is doing crazy interesting (and surprisingly gender-nonconforming) things with Mydei's role in Amphoreus's story, then that's fine, because I haven't even actually gotten to the wildest part:

Setting aside entirely whether Mydei is able to speak for himself, the game deliberately and constantly goes out of its way to put Mydei into situations where he has no say in the things that are happening to him, once again assigning Mydei a conflict typically given to female characters across centuries of storytelling: the quest to gain agency.

Despite the game initially framing Mydei as powerful leader and strong decision-maker who could never be swayed by others, a warrior who would fight against fate with his very life on the line, drilling down into his story reveals a character who has effectively had no control over the course of his life at any given point in time, both in a conscious sense and in the meta sense of being a simulation in Irontomb's loops.

From the time of his birth, a prophecy dictated the entire course of Mydei's early life, setting his path in stone in a way that he seemingly couldn't have avoided even if he wanted to. He's thrown into the sea, left with no choice but to fight every day for survival--but even inside the sea, despite actively saving fishermen, Mydei never saves himself, simply staying in the ocean he supposedly despises until... what? He achieves a level of power sufficient to fulfill his future prophecy? 🤔 Later, Mydei will go on to describe his destined clash with his father as merely an "obligation to be carried out"--not something that ultimately made him happy or felt like a choice he was making of his own free will, but a moral duty to avenge his mother, done in the service of her honor.

Even serving as Kremnos's crown prince isn't actually portrayed as something Mydei was ever excited about, something he truly wanted for himself. In his memories, it's his closest friends and Krateros constantly urging him to take up the throne, and it's of course the Kremnoan people as a whole endlessly begging him to guide them in their pursuit of Strife and glory...

Outside of just his thoughts and words, the game constantly shows us scenes of Mydei being told, as the crown prince, how he should act, what he must do:

Essentially, Mydei escaped from the sea and in very short order was thrust into the role of stewardship with little (to no) chance to choose a fate separate from Kremnos. This happens despite the fact that Mydei is personally and repeatedly framed as "the least Kremnoan of them all," a boy who seemingly never grasped the faith of his fellow Strife worshippers. In his flashback with his mother, Mydei's very first question is "Why do we have to learn to fight at all?"--not something a "normal" crown prince of Kremnos would ever be asking.

Yes, yes, before you get up in arms: Of course Mydei loves the Kremnoans and has enormous pride for his people, don't get me wrong. I don't think he hates being their crown prince at all. I think he would never give up the position unless he was 110% confident that his people were ready to lead themselves or that someone else could truly and completely rule them better than he could. All I'm saying is that it's also abundantly clear that Mydei never actually had any say in whether he would become the Kremnoans' leader; that the role was something put onto him from the moment he was born, with fate once again dictating the course of his life.

Before going into the events that take place during the game's actual plot, I also think there's one other major aspect of Mydei's overall character that should be read as a denial of his agency, and that's Mydei's "curse of immortality." 3.2 tried to reframe Mydei's immortality in a weird way that frankly makes no sense (claiming that it was Mydei's choice all along, and that he was the one deciding not to die), but literally everywhere else in the game, it's made pretty clear that Mydei's immortality is indeed a curse, one that he can't be rid of unless he is stabbed in his tenth vertebra, and thus even the circumstances of the end of his life are largely outside his control. Phainon remarks on exactly this when Mydei describes losing all his friends, sympathizing with how Mydei was prevented even from joining his loved ones in death no matter how many times life was taken from him, no matter how many times he sacrificed himself on the altar. (This is why Khaslana's parting words to Mydei in the cycles are so meaningful, because Khaslana is actively choosing to view his violence against Mydei as a way of setting Mydei free.)

Okay, now the more recent stuff: The first time we see Mydei seemingly exercise any form of agency is in making the decision to bring the Kremnoans to Okhema, but from the players' perspective, we ultimately know this is no real agency either: The simulation demands that Mydei join the Flame-Chase--"fate" was always going to guide him to Aglaea in some shape or form. Furthermore, the decision to join Aglaea is framed by literally everyone else in the story as Mydei "submitting" to her authority, Mydei giving up his power to a "usurper," and Mydei being "bewitched," all phrases once again implying an inability to make his own decisions.

This ultimately proves true not long later, when, throughout the first portion of patch 3.1, we actively watch Mydei be manipulated, against his explicit wishes, into taking the coreflame of Strife.

Even though he says he doesn't condemn Aglaea and Tribbie for their manipulations, it doesn't change the fact that Mydei was being manipulated, pushed into a corner by Aglaea choosing to use the safety of the person he cared for as a weapon against him. It also doesn't change the fact that Mydei spends the entire first half of 3.1 admitting to multiple people that he's terrified of becoming the demigod of Strife and having that fear continually dismissed by people who basically tell him to just deal with it, because that's his role in the prophecy and his fears that taking on Strife will ultimately lead his people into meaningless death are really not that important in the grand scheme of things.

3.1 was literally "Watch the entire cast strip Mydei of his agency," the patch.

And then the craziest of them all: Finding out that it isn't just Cycle 33,550,336 Mydei who was struggling with a lack of autonomy but seemingly every Mydei, all the way back to Cycle 0, where he's once again put into a situation where he functionally has no choice but to comply:

In Cycle 0, we're told that Mydei brought the Kremnoans to Okhema and then went before the Okheman Council of Elders to sue for civil rights--literally all he asked for was equal rights for his people.

In return, Aglaea pulled the strings on the situation so that Mydei would lose this duel and she could make her demand of him: Join my emo band Flame-Chase Journey. (Again, nothing against Aglaea, she was doing what she thought she had to do, but damn what a cutthroat way to do it.)

Effectively, in 3.4 we get to once again watch Mydei trade himself to ensure the happiness of others, giving away his own freedom so that the Kremnoans could just have basic equal rights. What the fuck, Hoyo?

This was extortion in real time, right before our eyes.

Hell, Mydei not getting to make his own decisions happens even the game's silliest joke media!

Can't even sleep unmolested, constantly getting dragged around by Phainon? Just shaking my head, for real for real. LET MY BOY BE! 😂

Okay, back to being serious: Overall, Mydei's lack of agency is so consistent and so clear-cut, that even Mydei himself seems to be fully aware he has very little freedom amidst the crippling demands put upon him by his station and his prophecy:

This is why Mydei's decision in 3.1, to dissolve the Kremnoan dynasty, is framed so intensely as "taking back agency for himself," as choosing to make a decision that wasn't aimed at trying to make everyone else happy:

Making a decision that isn't to please others? Oh Mydei, you are so "single female protag finding her independence" coded.

This is framed as Mydei finally getting to make HIS OWN decision, his way to make a better future for his people. We're supposed to perceive this as Mydei casting off the shackles of others' perceptions of him to take the brave step forward and do what he believes is truly right. It's not about making others' happy, but about securing the only real way forward to a future, and the game tells us that Mydei only feels comfortable with his own fate after he's able to make this choice on behalf of his people--not with their permission, but by the virtue of finally finding his own voice.

Except thatttt... the moment you actually think about what is happening here, the illusion of Mydei having free will falls apart, and Amphoreus's cruel irony sets in.

Early in 3.1, Krateros says that Mydei is a headstrong person who always does what he wants:

But as we delve deeper into Mydei's story, it becomes clear that even Mydei's most headstrong decisions (such as bringing the Kremnoans to Okhema) aren't done in his own self-interest or simply whatever Mydei "pleases"--all of his decisions, every single one we're shown in the game, are done in the service of others, doing what Mydei feels compelled to do to fulfill his duty to protect the people he loves. He didn't bring the Kremnoans to Okhema just because he personally wanted to--he brought them there because he believed that was the only way to save them. He didn't join the Flame-Chase Journey of his own free will--it was just the only path to secure any future for his people at all.

As I've written before, even this decision in 3.1 (to dissolve the Kremnoan dynasty, take up the coreflame of Strife, and go home alone to fight the Black Tide) wasn't actually for Mydei himself.

In fact, it flat out runs contrary to Mydei's most deeply held personal wishes. Mydei didn't want to become Strife. Mydei didn't want to return to Kremnos's ways and spend every remaining moment of his life at war. Mydei was seeking a home to call his own--a land to finally belong in--and then had to give away all the peace and happiness he'd found in Okhema as his final gift to his people:

The decision in 3.1 doesn't actually represent Mydei gaining complete agency over his own decision-making or finally getting the freedom to pursue his own personal dreams--it's once again a decision he was obligated to make by his own unyielding sense of honor and his (admittedly noble) sense of responsibility for his people.

The fact that Mydei's decision to become the demigod of Strife still doesn't represent agency becomes doubly true with the reveal in 3.4 that all of Amphoreus is a pre-determined simulation, running on rails, with Mydei himself being a programmed figure unable to deviate from his assigned path. Every major decision simply leads down the same exact road that was decided eons ago: Mydei was always going to become the demigod of Strife. He was always going to leave Okhema. He was always going to die to Flame Reaver's blade.

The decision to return to Kremnos and take up Nikador's role is presented initially as Mydei's free will--but all along it was nothing more than playing into the "prophecy," playing on the side of the Black Tide and Lygus's goals. Mydei's character arc in 3.1 revolves soooo intensely around exercising agency, only for us to learn in 3.4 that he never stood a chance in the first place. (If this sounds familiar to Phainon's arc, that's because Mydei's arc is literally Phainon's arc, by the by.)

Ultimately, having the benefit of multiple patches of story now, we can look back over Mydei's current contributions to the plot and see the truly fascinating dichotomy of his character.

On the one hand, Mydei is a hyper-masculine character with a design that unquestionably insists on his identity as a man. A surface-level examination of his character presents a quintessentially masculine archetype: the wayward son, rejecting his father's shadow, growing into a role of stoic, solemn leadership, suppressing his own grief and loss to unwaveringly fulfill his duty as Chrysos Heir, prince, and king.

The obscured, hyperbolic retellings of his past paint him as a "hero of eld," an unmistakably male mythological figure akin to Achilles, Odysseus, or Gilgamesh.

Mydei refuses to be or even see himself as a victim, returning time and time again from death, stronger and more full of the wrath needed to survive in an apocalyptic world. Even when he has no freedom to actually make his own decisions, he does keep trying. He keeps fighting, endlessly, to make himself heard and to try to break the shackles of his fate, situating him firmly in the (traditionally) masculine figure of the "warrior."

But despite all of this exterior masculine trapping, Mydei's core inner conflicts are surprisingly feminine (that is, they're struggles more typically given to female characters in media):

Over and over and over again, we watch others speak for Mydei, rather than Mydei truly getting the chance to speak for himself. We're denied access to his inner world by the "they say"s and the "rumors rife," every single person getting their chance to weigh in on Mydei's story but Mydei.

In real time, we watch other characters dismiss his fears and hesitation as "foolishness," and interpret his feelings through their own lenses, without Mydei stepping up to correct them. We get to see Mydei struggle to articulate himself and make others take him seriously. People constantly tell him what he should do, what he shouldn't do, how he should act and how he shouldn't... His central conflict is explicitly centered on his fears of being unable to please everyone, and his ultimate role in the story is one of sacrifice, giving and giving and giving of himself to aid others.

One of the most common complaints about the roles assigned to female characters in media and one of the core litmus tests used to determine whether female characters have agency is the question "Does the plot happen to this character or do they drive the plot?"

The truth is that, for all his raging against the dying of the light, Mydei is a character who has things happen to him, rather than actually getting the chance to freely exercise self-determination in Amphoreus's plot.

So, so, so much of Mydei's character revolves around seizing back agency in a world that seeks to control every aspect of your existence--and this a story that has been told, time and again, with female characters. That's not to say that it's never been done with male characters before, of course it has, but that there is something incredibly interesting about making "finding your voice in a world that dismisses your feelings" the plot for a (supposedly) hyper-masculine character in a gacha game with a primarily male target audience.

Mydei, by all rights, should be one of the characters with the most power and most agency in all of Amphoreus. He's an extremely strong warrior, a kingslayer, a god. He's ripped, he's got a wicked heavy metal gore-filled trailer... On paper, he's "Man" with a capital M.

But Hoyo chose to do something more complicated with his character. They chose to do some truly interesting play on the question of autonomy, placing a Hero (also capital H) into the stereotypically restricted, silenced role where female protagonists have so often been relegated in the past, then left us players with the disconnect and discomfort of watching a male character be so bound by the expectations of others that even his greatest moment of defiance and free will turns out to just be playing into the hands of yet another person oppressing him.

Like so many female characters have in the past, Mydei doesn't get to be a "real" person with fully examined interiority. The game denies us this by insisting on his story being told almost entirely through the perceptions of others, by obscuring the truth of his past in a fog of confusion, by Mydei making the choices he is compelled to by duty and loyalty, not those that truly match his own inner wishes and dreams.

Mydei almost never gets the chance freely express his thoughts, have his feelings validated, or reclaim his freedom of choice from the systems exerting pressure on his life. The lion doesn't have its own historian, and we only get the truth of Mydei from Mydei himself in brief and barest flickers.

At the heart of Mydei's story lies a fascinating conundrum that creates a truly intriguing and layered character--all-powerful and yet powerless, hyper-masculine and yet voiceless, a myth more than a man.

Say whatever you want about Amphoreus's plot, pacing, etc., but geez, Mydei is a cool character.