#absolute personal posting

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three choosing to name themselves that in the absence of its one and two is so important to me. like yes i am alone yes there were more and by speaking of me you are ensuring they can’t be forgotten, there were more, there were more

[absoluteabeyance]

another thing i think people are forgetting is that this is a high (moon) elf we’re talking about with rictus ravenwood iv so our scales of age may be way off, but i don’t know how relevant that actually is based off of referenced ages (such as being 7 when wither and bloom manifested: would have to be a really cool baby), maybe races for the most part are just flavor for this season than anything

went back and looked at the transcript of the first episode and there’s just so much laid out for us backstory-wise with rictus, i’m going to have to read-more this for politeness’ sake

1. he’s an only child, the entire future of his lineage rests upon him and the privileges that come along with it must be maintained or destroyed by him

2. he’s been making waves in his family since he first cast his spell, even after they had him practicing for hours on end presumably for days if not longer on end

by breaking the simple expectation of necromancy and death alone, he is inherently muddling the ravenwood name and reputation before he is old enough to truly understand what he’s doing, and he’s urged by his father to keep this a secret

this is distressing to all those elder than him in the family in what’s already a pretty high control environment, which is another thing that seems to be often forgotten or misunderstood (easy to do if you’ve never experienced it) but it’s worth noting that if he had to kill 500 woodland creatures to earn a break

3. we have a brief mention of his grandmother with powers of divination who had no sense of boundaries, meaning he’s frequently faced literal psychic influence from family members from a very young age of unknown qualities; so possibly everything he had ever experienced was accessible to and freely viewed by another person, though we don’t know if this grandmother is still alive or not i guess

it’s sort of implied via bit that this is normal for this world but i can’t help but think of the applications that could have in being shaped into the person a powerful family needs you to be

4. personally i’d consider being in an environment like that for so long a type of arrested development in that he was never able to develop into an individual: he was the thrall of those he bore the name of in any way they could make him, and i’m sure his access to anything other than that was as limited as they could make it so that he wouldn’t, perhaps, run off and join a death game

maybe some of the endless pressure was finally removed when he had an heir, just enough that he could finally look around and think he’s repaid his debt to his family and could finally show the world unapologetically the person he is

there’s a new baby to mold, after all, one they might think could be a better fit for their roles

it’s no wonder he thought something was wrong with him

in this context i think a lot of choices about his character tend to make more sense and i am Deeply excited to see what happens in the next episode

[absoluteabeyance]

i’m seeing a lot of people shocked by the fact that rictus ravenwood iv would have a son plus potentially other loved ones at home and also go leave a game of almost certain death but that makes perfect sense for the way he was raised: this is a man who’s trapped

in any repressive environment where lineage matters, where your parents have unfathomable continued power over your adult life and your access to things that are familiar, meeting parental demands can become an obligation to keep any sort of personal freedom at all

we know rictus had an extremely regimented childhood and has constant(?) supervision from his great x however many grandfather over his shoulder as a guiding force, and he said himself when entering the first trials that subjecting himself to what we get to meet him in is a win-win situation for him: either he dies, he’s freed from his authority and obligations, or he wins and has more glory than his family name could have ever earned him

so of course, after being pressured his entire life to achieve only what plays well with the ravenwood name and repress himself, what’s left to do? given any chance to abandon the life he never wanted to raise the dead he never had, what’s left to do?

[absoluteabeyance]

a less “here’s what the text says” post and more personal dreams on this one

i’m hoping we see a doober sweetleaf heelturn sequence because it would solve all the major complaints about the character so far if he was a willingly babied participant for survival’s sake & would kind of make sense as a strategy

also think it would be awesome if hasty jane won the entire thing she honestly deserves it (and could make rictus regret his kindness in death, kind of thematically fitting) but i do want to see what the hell hellgrammite has going on there’s too much unresolved there for them to let that lie so he’s my realistic pick for final survivor unless somebody finally gets his ass

[absoluteabeyance]

from an old in-character ama before network effect came out

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lucretia adventurezone really hits different after being deeply responsible for what happens to people

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i didn’t realize how many people liked gurathin until i started looking at fanworks it’s kind of nice, the added backstory the tv show put in did a lot for his character for sure

[absoluteabeyance]

it’s crazy that “be kind to children” is an opinion that is disagreed with frequently by people on the internet