I'm very firm in my belief that Elara would have at least one brother, and I'm fond of the idea that she has two. Both younger than her to be clear. This is rooted in the fact that Elara cannot be her father's heir, she can't pass down the ability and someone has to! So Elara has younger brothers.
This ended up being pretty long and I've only talked about the first brother, so brother number 2 will come at a later date.
I don't have names for them (yet, maybe one day), so I'm just gonna refer to them as Brother1 and Brother2. I like the idea of Elara and Brother1 having a nearly nonexistent age gap. Elara was born, they realized she was a girl and thus not a suitable heir, and Brother1 was conceived asap. Because of this, they were raised side-by-side, doing everything they could together. This, however, does not mean they were incredibly close or content with one another. If anything, the closeness at which they were raised created insane tension and resentment between them.
Elara was better at everything they both did. Elara took to her father's lessons like a fish in water, she took to everything extremely well. Her father didn't hide to Brother1 that Elara was better than him, and this caused him to look at Elara with disdain and intense jealousy. How could this girl be better than him, how could their father favor her over him? On Elara's end, however, there was this sense of knowing she is everything her father wants in an heir but because she's a girl she will never be considered a true option. For every lesson alongside Brother1, she has 10 lessons on how to be a proper lady, a good wife, a good mother. She is barred from certain conversations, she isn't taught the ins-and-outs of what it means to be the head of the family. Though her father does favor her over Brother1, she's still only his daughter. Elara is painfully aware of the fact that it doesn't matter if she's the better heir, she will never be her father's heir on account of her gender, and she resents Brother1 for it.
His favor for her is more so used in an attempt to spur Brother1 to work harder and get better. He's lectured Brother1 on numerous occasions with the core of what he said being "how are you allowing your sister to be better than you?" Brother1 is incredibly aware of the fact that the only thing making him the heir is that he's the first born son- nothing to do with what he's capable of.
So, when Elara finally "fails" and Tiberias chooses Coriane, a random girl from a lesser house, to be his wife and queen, Brother1 relishes in this. No comforting words from him, no reassurances that Elara still has other uses, nothing except thinly veiled glee that the perfect heir daughter finally failed.
A bit of context for this next bit- I believe Elara was essentially abandoned following Tiberias' choice to forgo Queenstrial entirely. Her father essentially just told her that she had to fix the situation before she could truly return home again. It's why Elara kinda just hangs about within the court in the years between Queenstrial and Coriane's death.
I like the idea that the person behind that relatively cruel decision to basically abandon Elara was Brother1. He finally had an opportunity to fully shut her out and he took it, and to his credit his father was proud of his ability to conjure up and recommend this.
Another major trait of Brother1 is that he is the least receptive to the idea of their father being cruel or unfair. He takes insults to his father much more personally than anyone else in the family, and where Elara takes on many of their father's "best" traits (and look how she turned out), Brother1 takes on his worst traits. I'll go ahead and reveal that I picture Samson as being Brother1's child and he had to learn his cruelty from someone! Brother1 is in this constant state of trying to prove he's better and prove he's truly worthy of being named heir and more often than not it leads him to doing truly stupid and cruel things. Notably, Samson would not be Brother1's successor, hence why he has no issue sending him to live under Elara for certain periods and why Samson is so desperate to assume control over Maven.
I also like the idea of Brother1 kinda hating Maven. I assume that by the time Maven is on the throne, Elara's father has died and Brother1 has become head of household. He resents Elara, more so once she's able to "redeem" herself in the eyes of their family and even more when she does not allow her family to really have much of a relationship with Maven. So when she dies, rather than extend aid to Maven in such trying times, he allows Samson to continue doing whatever he does, but does little else for Maven. Brother1 views Maven as an extension of Elara and thus his success is her success and he won't go out of his way to support that.
We could make Sqq a transformer in his past life. Like optimus prime sorta transformer. Cybertronian.
He'd be the only surviving seeker (winged guy) on the autobots side (I don't know all the canons but I don't think they have, like, any). Pretty young when the war started - unfathomably ancient for humans, the kiddie of the group to them.
And he arrives on earth. Discovers the Internet. Immediately gets hooked on critiquing stupid Web novels in every language, which being a sentient machine he can do at great speed without forgetting anything. Decides to read the final chapter during a battle because he's so close to the end and airplane had better pull SOMETHING good. Is so infuriated (distracted) by the ending he messes up and immediately gets killed by some low level decepticon. After FIVE MILLION years of war he gets offed by some loser over a stupid human story that wasn't even very good. He dies SO furious.
not even joking abt the cognitive decline anymore im actually scared. i saw the tv glow hit too hard for me everything has felt wrong and i don't even know since when, do i have long covid brain fog? residual damage from my concussion this past fall? what about my first concussion six years ago? i feel like there are pages missing. i feel the gaps in my knowledge and awareness and abilities. im scrambling around in the dark
in my perfect world everyone makes so many lesbian muses the men then have to deal with the exact same behavior when every single post ever written isn’t about dick.
Everytime I face a new character limit on a website that didn't have them before/used to have really long ones... AUGHHhhh the modern social media world was not made for people like me (lovers of details, rambling, elaboration, thorough explanation, and nuance)
