I have more complaints, probably more brain juice too. But it's mostly me complaining in the vain attempt of making useful criticism.
Then again fanfiction will always be on our side.
Sweet summer child, you were meant for failure by the very tropes that hold you up. It's amazing in a way.
Question of the day: How does one explore the tragedy of power?
meliodas is a cursed man. In the literal and, well, metaphorical?, sense of the word. He's a soldier in a war torn world and to help (or worsen) his case, he's a very strong one at that. So he fights. He fights for his friends. Fights for his father. Fights for his life.
We don't know the misteries of meliodas (and Zeldris) birth, if he was conceived or made or simply found by the corner of the existencial plane without form and consciousness and his father, the king of the "all that is evil and shadowy" clan, simply plucked him from whatever that is and said This is My child, and it will unleash My Will upon the lands! Chandler! (yes my lord?) raise it for me. So whatever dreams and hopes that Meliodas had as a child are of little importance, in the great scheme of things. Because he is a fighter. A warrior. A thing made for war and that flourishes in war. He's a weapon for his King, his father, to use.
I'd would assume that, being a living weapon, lil' blondie doesn't has much use for things like empathy or guilty or a well developed moral code, so he doesn't keep any of those things in mind when doing anything. He does love his younger brother though, so I imagine that he doubled down on his efforts of being best living weapon to ever be as a way of being a good example, probably keeping the kid safe from way too strong enemies. That's the only way meliodas knew how to be for a long time, after all.
Then he mets Elizabeth, gets "taken down a peg" or something, he learns about empathy with her and they fall in love so, sooo deeply that he betrays his father, his clan and his brother for the sake of the dream that they now share together. Y'know how it is with youngsters, they love their "world peace" and their "race equality" and stuff.
I wish I could go in more details about Elizabeth's relationship with meliodas, what he learned with her (be it by her teaching him or they sharing a traumatic experience) and what she meant for him and for his future. Because I know unconditional love IS life changing. I understand that for him especially unconditional love must have seen like a fairytale, some invented dream that isn't true, after all he doesn't even have a mother.
meliodas doesn't have the mercy of having a mother. His storyline is one of someone who was stripped of all comfort in the moment he was born. And then, when that comfort was given for him in a silver plate (a very silvery one) he abandoned everything for that comfort. That moment of peace and pleasure and happiness. He could enjoy himself in Elizabeth's presence, why would he want anything else? So he betrays gods, leaves brothers and teachers alike and forsakes all imposed beliefs... For love. For life. It's so desperate. And it could only be done because he had power.
At the time meliodas has this change of heart, he is one of the most powerful mortals to ever walk the earth. Together with Elizabeth, well, they were a walking bomb. The first power couple to ever do it. So even if not everyone agreed, some considered it a crime and a sin altogether, it wouldn't matter because he had the power to impose himself, the same way his father did to him. So, yeah, screw all this people.
Things change, however, when they get cursed for real by their parents. If before it was the two of them against the world, it was now the two of them against the world, and the divine, and luck, and destiny itself, and maybe against each other sometimes. So most of the time, meliodas finds himself alone with the responsibility of freeing not only his love from a terrible curse, put on her by her terrible mother, but of freeing himself from a life of suffering and loneliness.
To make matters worse, he doesn't have the power to fight this through.
He can't impose himself on a curse, can't fight it to death, can't beat it up until it decides to agree with him. He can't do anything to it. Because he's a warrior, and a fighter and a weapon and he doesn't know how to unmake a decision of the gods. He's a mortal (well, was) and a soldier, and everything he was taught was how to fight. So he wanders around for three thousand years, helpless. He lost everything, he doesn't have anything. All of the stuff that he accumulates over the ways will break and tear and dissapear with time. And the only constant in his life is a woman that is fated to die because of him.
meliodas is, most definitely, terrorized by power.
His father's curse on him isn't to watch his lover die again and again as punishment for treason. The true curse is to make meliodas so miserable, and alone, and powerless, that he has no choice, but to crave power. Power to free himself, power to protect the ones he loves, power to end his own suffering. Because the moment meliodas goes after power is the moment that the King wins.
i find it extremely engaging that meliodas was meant for failure from the start. there was never a future (at least a planned one) in which he was supposed to succeed. apparently, no one in Britannia was capable of undoing the curse by simply being smart about it. it also doesn't help his case that the only other powerful and knowledge person he knows is more than willing to do as the gods say in order to trick them (*cof* Merlin *cof*). so meliodas story is, in a way, a tale about how one relates to power and what one allows themselves to throw away to get power. meliodas allows himself to let go not only of emotion and hope for better days, but of the morals and principles that made him more than simply a weapon for other to use. he has to let go of his humanity for power, to become less than a man, less than a person. because he needs the suffering to end.
so, if i may say so all by myself, one would assume that the depiction of the tragedy of power is very interestingly explored in this story. there are also other things that i would like to talk about (how other characters relate to power; the dynamic of moral and power; how Elizabeth could have been a very interesting counter argument to meliodas, but wasn't because nakaba is a coward incompetent lil--). however time is short and i have already stolen too much of it from you, if you've made to the end that is.
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