00. the fool : what are your muse’s thoughts on new beginnings ? does it frighten them or excite them ?
OKAY so I've been thinking about this really hard, I just haven't had the time to get my thoughts down. This is sort of a complicated thing for Ellis because of his limited sense of object-permanence & self. I headcanon that Ellis deals with BPD ( borderline personality disorder ) & has since he was very young, which is very important to some of the things I'll be breaking down in response to this. To Ellis, the concept of a ' new beginning ' is very flexible as he has to reinvent himself on a daily basis in order to fend off any of the heavier parts of his brain or feelings.
Growing up, Ellis always idealized the idea of a big reinvention of himself. he always wanted to become something new & had some kind of idea that it would change him at his core. He always wanted to become someone different. The idealized version of himself was more reliable, kinder, less erratic. This version of himself that he wanted to become was fair & level headed & had his shit together. He was always itching for something to happen to pave the path to that person, he wanted to take that leap of faith to start on that journey. He fantasized about that new beginning, what it could be & who it would make him... It's really what drew him to the idea of being a Grey Warden in the beginning. Every story painted them to be the finest, most selfless warriors in history. It's what drove him to want to go with Duncan so badly where in his main verse, @ocousland's Lily was like ' literally fuck that '. That desire for a ' new beginning ' was so strong in the first 21 years of his life that it dictated all of his hopes, dreams & thoughts of what his future could be.
Obviously, the Fifth Blight changes that hopeful perspective. I could go on & on about it but I have already on more than one occasion so I'll just give the shorter version here: The events that transpire during the Fifth Blight sort of jerk the ability to see any concepts of a ' new beginning ' away. Every day is based around survival rather than the fantasies he entertained as a child & the thought of it being over & having to start again is so far out of reach that he doesn't think of it. He doesn't hope for it, he doesn't fear it, he doesn't acknowledge that by the end of it things are going to change. The world will be different & so will he, but he can't afford to acknowledge that or the wave of emotions that will come with acknowledging that ' new beginning' on the horizon.
This leads me to my next point: that lack of acknowledgment really damages his ability to think decisively during the events of Awakening & Witch Hunt. He still feels like the fight is going, he still feels like he's stuck in the blight & every day is based around survival. He can't acknowledge his new beginning because he can't grasp the concept that it's over, not until Morrigan had already passed through the Eluvian & slipped through his fingertips. It's then, that he thinks that he wasted his new beginning. He spirals out of control following that & really only pushes through with the help of Lily & Fergus or whatever siblings apply to the universe in question. He needs a lot of support during this time because though they won, he feels like he's lost... if that makes sense?
So new beginnings become a constant for him following this. He has to reinvent himself on a daily basis , reflecting those around him in a way that makes it harder for him to recognize himself? He adopts a lot of personality traits from those around him & rebuilds himself in their image to make it harder for him to see the past. He doesn't want to look internally so those ' new beginnings' become associated with the person he becomes each day, knowing that he likely wont be the same person tomorrow. When it comes to big life decisions he usually doesn't process them until they're already taking place, he doesn't see them until they're unfolding right before his eyes.
Very similarly to when he was growing up, he wants to change, he needs change to keep himself going... but it's not as easy as that? In the years following the blight during the events of Awakening & Witch hunt, he's very much stuck in that ' fight' mode where he can't fathom that the greater part of the conflict is at an end. He can't recognize the new beginning as one of the warden-commanders of Ferelden because he's too stuck on the past.
For example: When he goes out into the world in order to seek help with his mental ailments & search for an end to the taint, he doesn't even realize that he's made the decision to do so until he's already on the road. By then there's no time to think about whether or not this ' new beginning' is scary or exciting or anything in between, it's already happening. It's move forward now or let the past eat him from inside out.
So I guess the shorter version of this breakdown is that he used to have a lot of hope stemming from the idea of a new beginning... But when it came, he didn't know how to process it. He still doesn't know how to process change as he walks his path in life & it's hard to recognize it before it comes. He can't grasp the concept of the implications of new beginnings as every day is a new beginning. He has no confirmation that when he wakes up tomorrow that he will be the same person... So he pushes forward & processes it all in hindsight. But when he does, it usually offers him some sort of peace. the past rots inside of him easily so all he can do is push forward & see what happens.
tarot asks || always accepting.