#posting this feels like hitting the denote button on a nuke but whatever

[discjude]

What are your reasons for liking Japeth and hating Rhian II? I'm just curious because Japeth seems to be a hated character in general.

So i pasted what i wrote before into a google doc and it was over a page long so here is a very condensed version, including my original preface. there’s also a tldr at the end if you don't have half an hour

quick preface just in case people get mad at me for this (dovesso stans are gonna hate me after this one):: I am not trying to convince anyone of anything here,,, this is entirely my opinion and I'm absolutely not trying to insult anyone that doesn't like japeth!! I completely respect it if you like rhian, there's a lot of good reasons to like him and as I'm writing this I realise I don't hate him as much as I thought I did. once again this is my opinion and it's alright if you disagree :)))

My reasons for liking Japeth mostly come from how complex his character is and what role he serves in the story. Though rhian is also very complex and i’m a very big fan of him being everything tedros isn’t as a king, liking japeth is mutually exclusive to liking rhian. Other than that, my two other solid reasons for disliking rhian is the way he treats kei (neglecting everyone else who tries to get close to you because you’re prophesied to marry Sophie? Dick move bro) and the fact that he’s ever so slightly homophobic which is neither here or there

Every other reason comes from me liking japeth, which is because::

1) japeth is very very complex and mostly very well written. Chapters like flesh and blood are very clear on what he’s got going on emotionally, he’s got a very solid motivation, and if you’re really looking for it he’s a clear parallel to Rafal. If you have read any of my other posts you will know i am a sucker for parallels

2) also speaking narratively, i think him being the culmination of every other villain in the series is Very Clever!! He’s evelyn and rafal’s child, rhian’s brother, a parallel to sophie and yknow the other one!! It’s very important to me

3) (this is the big one) i think he’s quite misunderstood and i don’t think a lot of his actions were his fault??? Obviously there’s some unforgivable stuff (if you saw what soman posted last week on tiktok you know) and he’s genuinely quite insane by book 6 but it’s made clear in chapters like Rhian and the Real Thing that there is Some Shit Wrong with him, notably issues with anger and becoming too attached to people. Sort of leading on from this, I don’t think that he’s the one solely to blame for his involvement in Camelot years: i think the two main villains of the last half of the series are Evelyn Sader and Aric. 

I Do Not Like Aric and I believe he’s almost entirely responsible for Japeth’s actions: because of Japeth’s over-attachment to him, he internalises a lot of Aric’s beliefs (the misogyny and only referring to them as “friends” are my best examples) and this ultimately leads to some sort of dependency, which kinda fucks japeth up a lot when aric dies.

Similarly the same sort of thing happens with evelyn and rhian. Evelyn forces a lot of prophecies onto Rhian, and that led to his delusions about becoming king which ostracised him from his brother and gives him this idea that anyone who stops him from being king is automatically wrong. 

It’s worth saying that i Do Not Like Everything About Japeth. Some of his writing and dialogue really falls through, and maybe having your first canon queer couple both be absolute psychopaths isn’t a good idea?? While I don’t think the queer rep done through Japeth isnt horrible, it's. Yknow. Not good. It’s also worth saying that i don’t hate everything about Rhian!! I do think he’s also cleverly written and, again, works very well as a parallel to old rhian. 

I think that’s about it and i don’t want to write any more so if you have any further questions (or if you agree with me somehow) please let me know!! It’s also worth noting that i just really like snakes and went a little wild in 2020 when i read about cool snake villain

TL,DR: japeth’s nicely written and i think he’s generally misunderstood, he’s also got some nice parallels going on, I don’t explicitly hate Rhian but i don’t like him because he treats people around him like shit. I also think that Aric and Evelyn are more responsible for the twin’s actions then the twins are themselves. I condensed this all and it's still so long

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