#look. in a cast of fully melodramatique characters she wins by FAR

[liesmyth]

re: the Cytherea Was Faking Her Cancer conspiracy theory

She’s melodramatic. She is, arguably, the most dramatic of a very dramatic cast. She's fully committed to the Seventh House tagline. The Rose Unblown, the Beautiful Death. She lounges dramatically in frilly dresses and a large hat. She met God and didn’t kiss him back because it would smear her lipstick. She swoons. She coughs blood on pale cloth handkerchiefs. She wears lace. She embodies the concept of Romantic, and what she’s romanticizing is death by consumption.

She’s a Lyctor. Yes, ascension didn’t cure her cancer because it froze her body as it was in that instant, but Lyctors are able to manipulate the concentration of cells in their body. Harrow is able to purge her kidneys and thicken her body fat, not to mention shut like regrowing limbs. Cytherea’s body is full of cancer but those cells are just there; they aren’t multiplying anymore. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t be able to just cordon them off somewhere within her own body - and I would bet that it’s what she does, unless she needs to play it up for drama. Imagine Cytherea arguing with Mercymorn, and her coughing blood dramatically when she runs out of comebacks. Then she swoons until Mercy apologizes. This is just Peak Cytherea

Yes, she did say she has ��been dying for ten thousand years”. She has “kept dying all this time” — Yeah, yeah. But this is the same woman who said that the real tragedy is not death, it’s life. “Being left behind by those who pass away... the total lack of control … Once somebody dies, their spirit’s free forever.” I posit, once again, that she was being dramatic. She’s come to resent immortality and would curse it regardless, cancer cells or not.

But Palamedes said she has been in horrible pain for millenia! — Palamedes is very smart but he doesn’t know everything, especially how Lyctors’ bodies work. He thought his trick would kill her; it didn’t. He’d been scanning Cytherea’s body as it currently was, chockfull of cancer cells, and assumed that was always true. These people can regrow limbs! I’m sorry Pal but u wrong.

Speaking of Lyctors, at her funeral no one says “she’s been suffering from cancer all her life”. They’re all “she was funny!” “she laughed too much” “the only good thing Loveday did was kill herself so Cyth could live!” I don’t think you would say that if your cheery serial killer friend had been in excruciating pain every day for ten thousand years.

I rest my case. She was playing it up for THE DRAMA.

EDIT: because I might have not been clear — there’s no questioning she did have cancer, and the “default” mode of her body was very advanced cancer, and she had to actively use her powers to keep it at bay. But I also believe she did keep it at bay most of the time, and it wasn’t nearly as widespread or as painful as it had been when she was alive. In GtN, she does stuff like coughing up blood just at the right moment when she wants people to remember how weak she is or distract from a conversation, and I think this is not a new habit but something she's been doing for most of her immortality.

(On a more serious note I do have thoughts on her playing it up as a sort of coping mechanism, like someone making off-colour jokes about their own affliction. But everything about Cytherea is a performance, and she dramatizes her struggles like she does everything else)