Tl;dr Mega Meme Bonanza

[angermanaging]

THE TL;DR MEGA MEME BONANZA

Comment with a list of your characters, receive questions, or just tl;dr on your own unprompted! Here's some suggestions. ◘ What does your character think of mine? ◘ What goes on during our handwaved CR? How much handwaved CR do we have? ◘ Canon information, for those unfamiliar with your canon. ◘ All sorts of headcanon questions-- sleeping positions, childhoods, past sexual or romantic history, etc. ◘ Would your character date mine? ◘ If they were put under a truth spell, what would come out? ◘ Where do you want to go with your character, story arc wise? ◘ Give an example of their daily routine in Keeliai. ◘ Who do they miss most from home? Would they go back if they could? ◘ What kind of music do you listen to while tagging? What does your character listen to ICly? ◘ Elaborate on what you've been working on improving in your writing style lately. ◘ What would their daemon spirit animal be, as from His Dark Materials? ◘ What have been your favorite threads with me? ◘ What do their dragons look like in Flight Rising? And much, much more! Go wild! I recommend making a plain top level comment with just your list of characters, and replying to yourself to fill out things on your own.

Comments

[heartofgraces]

TRUST AND ASBEL oh boyyy. So let's start off with noting Asbel had nowhere near as traumatic an experience with trust as Richard did! Like not even a little. He grew up with close friends and close to his little brother and Aston kind of spoiled them and the people in Lhant liked them??? He had no reason to ever expect he couldn't trust anyone he met. And while he was protecting Richard that...actually didn't change even though he was told and could see Richard didn't have that luxury! So from the start he has a much better foundation.

He framed Aston's actions, (and later Cedric and Hubert and Malik's) as an injustice, not a betrayal, I think, and it doesn't really damage his outlook on trust. When he comes back home, he comes back to Cheria cold and distant and understandably angry, and he doesn't understand why but assumes it's his fault. Similarly, the people of Lhant are pretty angry with him for fucking off for seven years! This is perceived as his failure, not them turning on him, so even though he's upset and, I think, a little angry at Cheria and Hubert, he turns it on himself. He failed. He betrayed their trust and expectations. So then he turns to Richard! And they're codependent and it's awful but, Richard believes absolutely completely in everything Asbel does.

Richard trusts him explicitly and, to Asbel's mind, unconditionally! That's what Asbel means when he says Richard saved him, and that's what drives him to apply that trust on other people. When he was at his very lowest someone believed he wouldn't fail or continue to betray people or whatever, and that kept him from losing all hope. It's the same principle he applied to Lambda, and it worked, even though it had no real right doing so.

That trust Richard showed Asbel is, I think, the same thing that allows him to endlessly forgive and trust anyone even when it looks like he really shouldn't. He believes in punishing injustice, and I don't think he argued Cedric or Emeraude's deaths, but he doesn't carry any lingering feeling of being betrayed in Emeraude's case, and fairly easily tries to empathize with her afterwards. When given a choice he'll always assume people are good at heart, and so he trusts easily and forgives easily, as well.

tl;dr Asbel thinks trust is neat and everyone should have it!

[depicted]

Oh Asbel. That's really cute. Also kind of sad because Asbel has some serious problems under all the friendship speeches, wow. But it is interesting that it's framed in terms of justice and injustice. It plays into his knight mentality, right?

[heartofgraces]

Yeah. I was really tired when I wrote all this so I'm sure I missed things, but I do remember Asbel never seems to treat anything as a betrayal as his trust, but as a "I did something wrong/Cheria what the hell is your damage/They're just doing what they believe is right". And he recognizes what Cedric and Malik and Emeraude do as wrong, which is why he doesn't argue Cedric and Emeraude's deaths and, I don't think he ever would, but it's telling that in Malik's case he immediately wants him forgiven and let go. After Malik's betrayed and attacked him and Richard, the only stable thing in his life at that time.

But I mean, we also see when things don't fall into the "I fucked up" category, he spends the majority of the game going "Richard the fuck is wrong with you". Because it doesn't add up but they don't teach Possession 101 in the Knight Academy.

But yes in short Asbel is kinda fucked up even if he's basically made peace with that. He's probably aware he's kind of messed up because Lambda's a helper, but he's sort of /kanyeshrug about it.

...oops I tl;dr'd more.

[depicted]

No, I do think you're right on that. It's super telling of how he deals with Malik, yeah. Immediately after. Completely ignoring how treason actually works. Bless. But you make a good point that Malik did attack Asbel's only point of stability at the moment, which I hadn't considered before.

Lambda, don't . . . sigh. Lambda don't mock Asbel for being thoroughly screwed up. OH WELL. He's good at his functional level of messed up.

I love the tl;dr.