#also i need to make this enderal group therapy au. been thinking about it for years

[henantier]

thoughts regarding tharaêl and his questline in general. lots of spoilers.

-he and calia would get along a lot better than either of them would care to admit. they’re both mainly distrustful of the world around them. they both have a figure in their life who was the only one to know the truth about them (letho, master tyras). more simply they both grew up as orphans in the undercity. yes yes the whole point is that neither of them want friends but if they both met in like, group therapy, then i think they could make peace with each other.

-i cannot understand why the father’s explanation/justification is in any way convincing.

-on the topic of the father, i don’t like how his gender is handled. it’s obvious that there is something strange about his gender. he doesn’t have the typical skyrim engine male walk and he speaks with an unexpected voice (he has a female voice actor). what i’m saying is that it should have been addressed more, or not obviously shown at all. i think it’s an unexamined element of the rhalâta questline that didn’t feel resolved in any way. it gives me slightly bad vibes as well, as the only character in enderal whose gender is unclear.

-saw this on reddit the other day. it’s a drawing set to various storms and saints by florence and the machine. of course that led me to think about forgiveness as a major theme in enderal, which i had never fully realized before. tharaêl’s story is arguably solely about forgiveness. the only way to talk him out of suicide is to say that qalian deserves to be forgiven, since tharaêl projects himself onto qalian. he cannot forgive the father, and he believes he is unforgivable. calia, jespar, and tealor, and perhaps the prophet, have this theme also.

-this is going to be slightly controversial because i know how some of you are but tharaêl is obviously not interested in a relationship. it makes me incredibly uncomfortable when he is depicted in a relationship, especially with the prophet. a casual relationship also wouldn’t work because of how he most likely feels about his body. yeah, i know he’d have been in a relationship to bring him closer to the father. (come to think of it, doing normally altruistic things for your own ends is another theme in the game.) but afterwards? he needs to rest. i understand that he’s attractive. i definitely find him very attractive. maybe he’d be open to it in time, after many years, and after a lot of platonic support. but the cleansing is coming and we literally do not have time for him to heal.

-the area of tharaêl’s character i have the most thoughts but the fewest words about are his dissociative symptoms. i think some of them are related to the estrangement, but most entirely separate. the first time he took a bath, he probably picked at his skin and cried in the changing room afterwards. the rhalâta’s teachings entirely separated him from his conceptualization of his body, causing him to believe it is disgusting and shameful. also, he believes it isn’t his anymore, especially after he finds out that it is artificial. i think this is where he’d need the most healing, and now i’m picturing him doing a slow stretch in the morning as he gets out of bed and starting to feel again.

-zar’ah is lysia. i have no doubt in it anymore.