#just interesting to me and sad jjdjdd

[townofcadence]

What do you think is Artair's best trait - and what would you consider a weakness of said trait?

Likewise, what do you think is Artair's worst trait - and what would you consider a strength of said trait?

Ohhh another good one!!

I think the thing is that his best and worst trait are the same-- it's kindness, loyalty, love, protectiveness. Part of what I enjoy exploring with Artair is taking a trait seen typically as 'good' and showing it both as good and as bad, depending on the situation. It's kind of a reflection of how I feel-- that no trait is ever good or bad in the end, it's just how it effects the situation that can be a benefit or a detriment!

Like-- these traits are obviously good in many ways! It's wanting to help others, to connect to people and love them and want to see the best in them, that can often help others heal and find a way to hold the grief from the countless hurts they've suffered.It's love and loyalty and a desire to protect and comfort that can push people and motivate to acts the really--- save someone from a darker space sometimes. Both physically a danger for them in the literal sense, and a metaphorical emotional one. Kindness reaches people and can really help bring out the best in others. It's a listening ear, a hand in yours when you just need a lifeline, and a gentle touch at the right moment, or a shoulder to hold you when it's too much.

But conversely, that same kindness can go to extremes that-- hurt people. Artair cares SO much about other people and helping them, saving them, that he kills himself to do so, both metaphorically and not. He will take every blow he can, he will antagonize someone so they hurt and focus on him instead, he will get you out of the way. He will not call for your help, because it means putting you in a bad position, one where you might be hurt. He will throw himself into danger after danger, because if he stops it and he deals with it, then no one else has to. Any harm that comes to him feels like harm he prevented someone else from enduring. So he keeps going and going in this desperate need to save everyone, and blames himself and breaks himself to pieces when he fails, or perceives himself to have failed someone in any way.

Love and kindness fail when he sees everyone as so far above himself that his only value is what he can do to make their lives better, at the cost of himself. Loyalty and love are good traits, except when he devotes himself to people so much so that he loses himself in the process. Protection is great, except when always trying to keep someone from harm makes them feel they aren't trusted to handle hard things and they feel infantilized. Altruism and a willingness to sacrifice for others can be good, until he refuses any path that would do little harm to someone else, because they would get hurt at all, when he could take on more and greater suffering just to prevent it. It's also the sacrifice of himself to be the target of aggression and pain and rage because he can take it, and allowing himself to hurt to make others feel better. Hell, eve n offering to endure pain or suffering just to 'help'. Seeing himself as so monstrous he deserves all of it and just accepting it, and choosing it, and even seeking it, because no one but him deserves this pain. It's a senseless martyring.

And dying for people, sacrificing himself over and over.... ?

...it doesn't only effect him. The people he cares about have to deal with his loss, with seeing him destroy himself at every opportunity. With the pain of knowing they're not worth living for, and he's willing to throw himself away at a moment's notice for anything and anyone, until there's just no more of him left and then some. He's too busy playing Atlas with the world on his shoulders and blaming himself for every travesty as if anyone has the power to prevent it all, to realize how his destructive behaviors out of love and devotion and the desire to do good, no matter what, mean that all the people who come to care about him have to watch him destroy himself in their name and others.

He reaches many with kindness and compassion, but he also breaks those hearts he touches. It's the terrible downwards spiral he hasn't chosen to stop yet.