#so if this is somewhat incoherent thats my excuse

[aroaceleovaldez]

you're like the first blog i thought about ranting on this to but it drives me up the wall that some people treat any criticism aimed at tsats2 as being anti-ship or avoidable via just "not reading it". i dont think they realize that we're talking about a bigger issue of soulless commercialization and heavy quality downgrade of a franchise, not like. about an indie author publishing a fan book lmao

'i'll read it anyways haters gonna hate' crowd likely largely funding richard's mediocrity is sad.

I think part of it may have to do with a.) a lack of distinction in recent fandom culture between "Fandom" and "Audience" (alongside other recent fandom culture attitudes as well) and b.) so much of Rick's brand is built up exactly on parasocial behavior that a lot of fans get caught up in it. [under cut cause this got long:]

Re: The first, more recent fandom culture tends to treat "Fandom" and "General audience" as wholly equivocal. Because of this, the concepts tend to bleed into each other in a way we haven't quite seen before fandom became mainstream, and as a result we get a kind of Worst Of Both Worlds situation - a bunch of very passionate fans who have no community, create little to no fanworks themselves (only consume), and only engage at a surface level with the source material. Their only "fandom" community hub is the source material and official social media and they don't have a concept of how to exist outside it, unlike folks who are more used to older fandom culture and are self-sufficient. They have the passion and identity of classic fandom, but none of the depth, and so threats to the source material feel like threats to their community as a whole. They also just don't seem to understand that different subsections of the deeper fandom community are engaging with the material on an entirely different level, or they don't understand why they're doing that. They see no need to because they're never actually engaging with the community or source material beyond a surface level. Functionally they don't have a community. And mainstream media is actively encouraging this because it's profitable for them - they're reaping all of the rewards of fandom, minus the fact that because of the lack of actually community and support structures the entire "fandom" will only have a shelf life the same length of the source material. But at the same time this means they don't have to worry about quality or etc, because this extremely passionate side of their audience will just take anything thrown at them and it'll phase out almost immediately. It doesn't need to be good, it just needs to elicit some kind of reaction on social media. Any publicity is good publicity type stuff.

This lack of true community plus the parasocial emphasis the RR company has tends to make these types of fans double-down. Rick and co. are explicitly advertised as being both part of the "community" and integral to it. And when they've built Rick (and co) up as this moral paragon critical to both part of their identity they're very passionate about and what little of a community they have, any attack on him feels like an attack on themself. Particularly when so much of the publicity and marketing surrounding Rick right now is about his alleged activism when a lot of the criticism about him and the series is actively calling that into question with his unaddressed internalized bigotries. Acknowledging that what Rick is saying and promoting himself as versus his writing and actions don't always line up and pointing out the bigotry present in his work forces people to acknowledge and think about performative activism, which can make a lot of people very uncomfortable! It's forcing them to acknowledge "Oh, even if I'm saying all the right words and calling myself an ally, I am not immune to being bigoted if I don't address my internalized biases. My actual behavior matters." and that especially can feel like a personal attack. Especially in today's western landscape of media consumption being viewed as a moral act in itself.

I suspect this is why a lot of the retaliation against criticism of Rick and the franchise right now is "Why can't you just have FUN? You're just trying to hate for views. Don't take it so seriously! It's not that deep!" - they not only have no interest in engaging deeper in the material, but don't understand why others would, and doing so jeopardizes the foundations of what they consider the fandom. They can't fathom anybody legitimately having these criticisms (particularly not anybody who would ACTUALLY consider themself a "fan" - because their perception of "fan" is themself) because they're so resistant to digging deeper into the media/source material or the concept that anyone would for any legitimate reason (because as long as they keep it as "it's not that deep!!! it's just fun! just enjoy it you wet blanket!!!!" and take things at their word, they can feel secure in that performative aspect and not have to unpack it), and acknowledging that those criticisms exist and are valid means they have to acknowledge the franchise is flawed and imperfect, so they presume the claims are entirely superficial and the individual has ulterior motives rather than, yknow, doing what fandom does: diving deeper.

[ganondoodle]

as i was awake in the middle of the night for like 2 hours bc i felt sick i had more somewhat random totk thoughts

one being that i really hate how raurus response to concerned zelda is, after sonia died in that almost funny how little impactful it was way, "im sure you are here for a reason" (actually, i hate how often this sentence is used in general to .. idk i guess its supposed to be inspiritational???)

bc what does that mean actually? him saying that to someone who got there absolutely by accident really just sounds like "i dont care go figure it out yourself bc i dont want to think about anything concerning you or your troubles lol" i guess its meant to sound like OOOOH fate has BROUGHT you here bc you have to furfill a role you dont know yet (spoiler its being a sacrifice girl with no personality) and besides me hating the 'inescapable fate' trope in general (at least the way its usually done in these games, which is not to struggle against it but willingly accept whatever you are told and pretend thats good) its really jsut goddamn boring and is really only an excuse to well .. ignore her and her trouble; shouldnt you, if you were actually such a cool guy like the game wants me to believe so bad, do everything in your power to get zelda back to her own world before shes pulled even further into the war you caused now that her only ""mentor"" that could help her get more use of her pretty much useless sudden powers is gone too?? i know shes basically dead wife sonia replacement (can of worms ugh) but it still grinds my gears whenever i think of that cutscene, bc i cant help but hear it as the lamest excuse in existence to not care about her and just kinda .. see what happens which in this case means leave zelda completely on her her own since both rauru and mineru die as well (honestly shouldnt rauru have thought about like .. any plan to defeat gan besides dying himself, given hes the oh so cool and goodest guy king whos only mistake was not stabbing gan the second he stepped into their kathedral castle thing, like even if you had a plan it can still fail but it seemed like he just kinda went in with a handful of people that didnt seem to know each other at all, never got names or faces -or unique voices for that matter- to fight gan face to face inlcuding the girl that came from a different time and had nothing to do with any of this conflict and couldnt even really control her sudden new powers just seems pretty stupid)

thought 2

how totk really feels like botw but for the people who didnt like shiekah tech, its not a sequel, its botw again, but version of only sonau, its like a pokemon game that had two versions but one has weirdly incoherent story and acts like the other never existed jsut as a whole its like retreading the same points but worse, all shiekah tech that was so integral to the world and had such a long history just vanishing and no one caring about any of it like it never happened, HELL the titans were called divine beasts in english but i guess they werent divine or important enough to keep around LOL champions WHO and isntead a never before seen or even heard of race for that matter showing up and planting their ass in every place the shiekah were before, dare i say it feels weirdly manipulative, like either them or some outside force erasing every fact about the ancient shiekah and replace them with sonau stuff bc they are the hot new shit now

this is a point that just doesnt stop bothering me, how the shiekah tech seemed so carefully designed and integrated into botws world and story, its a difficult to keep balance after all, integrating high tech stuff into a medieval setting, but they made it work! and then totk comes around and throws a bunch modern day tech into it puts some vague greenish stone filter on its exterior and call that even better more ancient tech; why did they even bother to make pottery inspired laser shooting spider legged robots so well integrated when they throw a car and rockets into the next game without a thought and call it a day, what was the fucking point

it feels like someone was dead set on having a set of legos thrown into the game it had no place in, if you want players to build whatever they want make a building game instead!! especially if you are just gonna throw it in with seemingly no consideration how out of place it feels togehter with the fACT THAT YOU ALREADY HAD AND ANCIENT HIGH TECH CIVILIZATION WITH A VERY DISTINCT AESTHETIC THAT WAS ALREADY WELL INTEGRATED INTO THE WORLD YOU ARE PLANNING TO REUSE WITH ALOT OF MYSTERY AND UNKOWN STUFF ABOUT THEM TO EXPLORE FURTHER YOU COULD HAVE USED!! but i guess they just "didnt want to play with you anymore" and that so much so that they went out of their way to erase every trace of it, i dont think the words shiekah tech are ever used in the game, and the purah pad and her towers just drive me more isnane bc they are the same shit but called different and also much worse, liek the purah pad isnt some more developed shiekah stone, no its a glorified camera with a teleport function and thats it

(i know i said this before but i really cant stand how obsessed every single NPC is with sonau shit, you get told to your face every second line of dialog that they are so cool and are so mysterious that it just makes me annoyed of them even more, the game is obsessed with shoving them everywhere and telling you over and over you too should obsess over them, they werent weird like that about the shiekah stuff in botw?? the biggesst talking point in botw was calamity ganon ..... which makes sense and in totk its like ... gan is mentioned what, in a newspaper article??? once???and then not even by name i think???)

aside from that big point which will never let me go, its also just .. its not moving forward anything, it actively walks BACK the progress that was made in botw, call me dumb but i dont really count moving one step up in the social roles of each race as a character development (for the side characters like the champions desc- ahem SAGES) but mainly zelda ... god how dirty she was done, totk pretty explicitely makes her regress any development she made in botw aside from she likes link uwu and some people like her too, but also not enough to notice that that weird zelda being all evil and weird isnt her (INLCUDING THE CHAMP- SAGES WHO YOU ARE SUPPOSEDLY FRIENDS WITH??? you dont have to be a genius to pick up on that my god, were you all given the mc dumbo potion or what)

she gets put back to square one, back into the little itty bitty princessy maiden role forced upon her by her royal parentage, this time rauru edition, back into a white little dress, back into the scared puppy eyed teenager, back into a situation she cant handle, back into losing everyone around her (tho honestly botw made me care more about rhoam than totk did about rauru), back into being forced to do a big sacrifice- but worse actually

in botw she went to FIGHT AND HOLD GANON IN THE CASTLE SO LINK HAD TIME TO RECOVER AND IT WOULDNT DESTROY THE LAND!! and you are telling me in totk rauru takes up her botw role and she bascially killed herself to ... restore the mastersword.

......... she ... she did that only to be a glorified version of the stone pedestal in the forest. and then she gets returned to normal itty bitty girly no problem via magic sparkle beam at the end and

DOESNT

EVEN

REMEMBER.

it really is just botw but worse, you even get yet another ghost king of hyrule to guide you around (rhoam did it better fight me ... we dont talk about the questionable choice to make himself darker skinned when posing as just some guy)

i honestly dont think i was ever truly taken aback by anythign that happened in botw, while in totk, the further i played, the more i had to fight with myself to keep the feeling of unease, disappointment and betrayal down

its such a god damn shame, totk should have stayed a DLC, i will forever mournfully dream of a game that explores more of the ancient shiekah, doesnt erase integral parts of the world, developes characters more instead of making them regress back and make them end up even less developed than at the start of the game, dives into buried secrets and mistakes of dark pages of history without giving into a weirldy nationalist(imperalisitc?) narrative and lets characters have some agency for once

if it werent for the yiga i might have actually considered refunding the game, just to be at peace with myself

anyway, aboslutely incoherent word vomit.

[cleromancy]

i ran out of steam earlier but i do think the "why *now*" question is really significant. and part of the answer to that question has to be "because it was the last issue of red robin before the fjucking reboot" (and tim is unfortunately one of those characters that had been on an interesting trajectory that he will probably never get back on; without the conditions that lead him to that place over 7 irl years hes not gonna be the same guy), but i also think that tim deciding to kill a man under these circumstances (essentially, because he wanted to, because he thought he could stomach it, and because the timing was convenient), is different than if tim really thought it needed to be done, or if there is ever any element of urgency or something tim thinks this will prevent. those conditions were specifically explicitly not met.

i said in my original post that i think the endgame of the attempted murder was the confrontation with bruce, but it also ends with some somewhat incoherent narration from tim which. i mean, whether you want to interpret it as "fabnic is not really so good at the part of writing that involves stringing words together in order" or tims continuingly disorganized speech and thought patterns (<- which is also backed up by his occasional forays into grandeur, and he has one on this page, a baffling assertion that gotham is his city. Timothy where is tjis coming from).... where was i going with this.

tim: [almost murders a guy]

tim: [lies to his favorite person in the world about it]

tim: [gets yelled at by his mentor]

tim: i am doing so great the future is looking so great the city belongs to me maybe if i want the world is my oyster actually i can do anything everything's coming up red robin

like .... yeah baby. sure, okay.

what i was getting at here is that i do think in tims garbled half formed intentions lurking underneath his meticulously plotted *murder scheme* tim was thinking his endgame--which, again, he knew dick and bruce would find out about and he only ever intended to have enough plausible deniability to *justify*--he was probably trying to leave gotham, or rather get kicked out. what he lands at instead is this:

which is when bruce essentially gives tim the warning that hes on thin fucking ice and--to my reading--any casualties that *bruce* thinks he should have been able to prevent that he fails to prevent, bruce will hold him as personally responsible for as he would for *premeditated first degree murder* (or, at the very least, i believe thats what tim hears bruce saying). and then bruce leaves tim alone on that rooftop.

and i am 100% one of those people that believes there were casualties in his little exploding the league bases thing, or at least it was too strong of a possibility to completely discount. no matter how he tried to clear them out beforehand, there was no way to account for all the variables, which tim would know. in fact he knows it firsthand bc towards the end of robin theres an explosion tim couldve prevented but doesnt, that kills 2 children that were only there in the first place bc of tim. anyway this is conjecture more than analysis here, but i do think hes aware the casualties of the league scheme were a possibility, but isnt willing to look into it any deeper. plausible fucking deniability!

but he does know Bruce wouldn't accept "this was the only way out i could see except dying" as an excuse for potential casualties and most likely bruce is going to eventually find out. he is pretty much on borrowed time already, so why not just... like... stop waiting? and at least kill somebody on purpose this time that he at least also kind of wants to kill? force that confrontation now, burn that bridge now, and maybe at least get a consolation prize (murder) out of it? do it on his own terms? control it?

except he couldn't do it.

anyway im just going to drop this panel from robin 178, for no reason in particular

he is just doing. so great. hes doing so great

an underexplored aspect of red robin 26 (the one where he sets up a weeks-long rubes goldberg scheme to kill captain boomerang only to choke at the last minute) to me is the impact tim thought this would have on his place among the bats. like what he thought would happen *next.* because he absolutely did consider it and wasn't at all surprised by dick and bruce showing up afterwards to talk to him about the choices he made that day.

to start with. why now? there was no particular event that made him decide to do it. tim does say he heard harkness was trying to regain lost power, but in context its not reasoning behind his decision, it was an opportunity to kick his plan off.

and i think its fair to say tim was never gonna be able to go through with it. that was never gonna happen. but he *thought* he could, and he decided he was going to, despite repeatedly questioning what the hell he was doing. he explicitly makes the points that he thinks its wrong, he knows his dad wouldn't want him to, and he doesn't believe itll even be more emotionally satisfying than bringing harkness to justice. and yet thats still the plan! for weeks!

and he does set up an emotional failsafe for himself which he calls plausible deniability, where all he did was manipulate events so that he expects harkness to be killed by victor fries by the end of it.

except ofc when it comes down to it tim cant let fries kill a guy, which he takes to mean he wants to do it himself. any interesting moral questions here about who would potentially be at fault are very tidily sidestepped as irrelevant. bc i mean to tim they kind of are. his veneer of plausible deniability was always an excuse. the interesting thing here for the character is that this means he's willing to do away with that plausible deniability, and intends to follow through regardless. (i went back to delete some images bc i ran out, but he does explicitly say theres a change of plan and he's gonna kill harkness himself.)

this is the point he dispatches dr fries, which he calls in to 911, and follows harkness. bla bla confrontation bla, and harkness fuckin trips off the edge of the roof.

the implication here to me, with the way tims flashback is framed as an interruption and the way harkness goes from saying he has no idea who the hell tim is to saying tim doesn't have the stones, is that harkness was babbling this whole time, and that's just what actually makes it through to tims ears. and i also think the implication here is tim being like ".......heartbreaking: the worst person you know just made a great point." hes like shit! hes fucking right! i *dont* have the stones to do this!

anyway. the next page we have dickie and damian show up. hi boys!!

so to recap. tim decided he was going to murder harkness himself rather than using a proxy, *called 911 knowing the other bats would hear it,* and went off to do the deed.

i have a lot of thoughts about whats going through dicks and tims heads here lol. but i want to get back to the point. this is the segue into the reveal that bruce was also there the whole time, he knows what tim had been planning to do, and now hes yelling at him for thinking about killing harkness at all.

(side note its always dickie loving hours in this house and. you just know dicks thinking of blockbuster here. oughe.) .....i also get the impression that dicks "timmy down the questionable-choices-well" senses were tingling somehow from the 911 call (which, i cannot stress this enough, only even mentioned fries), and i think him and damian most likely fucking hauled ass to get there, which is also fun to think about hehe

AND THE COWL COMES OFF WHEEEEEEE :elmofire:

(ok actually i am going to derail here for a minute i gotta spell it out. tim kept it on when he was talking to dick bc he was lying to dick by omission. he wanted dick to think well of him, and he doesn't believe he earned the praise--most likely thinks dick would think less of him if he knew the extent to which tim had planned the whole thing. the end result--not killing harkness--does not, in tims mind, count. what dick was saying was "I understand how hard it was to not let him die, and i love you," and what tim heard was "i know you were always going to make the right choice, because you care about doing the right thing." and when you interpret it the way i do--that the deciding factor for tim was actually that he *couldn't* do it, not because he changed his mind? yeah, tims not gonna be looking dick in the eye anytime soon.)

but anyway. buce:

and the thing is that if you don't look at it from the *batshit* bruce-and-tim-mutual-god-complex perspective... tims actual non-thoughtcrime actions began and ended with a series of misdemeanors, no matter how successfully he arbitrated the end results. again any actual moral questions around hand crafting a bespoke scenario tailored to end in a mans murder by inciting another to kill him are completely sidestepped, bc to both tim and bruce its cut and dry; its just murder using another person as the weapon. tim never once actually believed the plausible deniability thing and there was no tangible difference to him btwn manipulating an intermediary, doing it himself, or even *just letting harkness go splat.* it was all fucking talking points for the sake of argument, he was preparing to play devils advocate against bruce to defend his own choice bc. this was always the endgame.

and

which like. i cant help but think of batman 424 bc, well, im the jason todd think-abouter:

and im officially out of images for this post but what happens next for tim is bruce flying away vs in jasons he tells bruce "i guess i spooked him. he slipped." and flies off in the back of a big silent panel of Angst Buce. i love how completely fucking opposite these scenarios were for the both of them but ykw actually thats its own fucking post.

all this just to say tim planned to murder a man in cold blood *fully knowing* dick and bruce would find out. tim can't even face dick when dick tells him he did good, and the confrontation with bruce feels almost like tim did the whole damn thing just to prove a point to bruce which is. hilarious bc it WORKED to that end even though tim did not actually kill anybody at all. like that was a pretty significant thing that happened. tim very much did not kill digger harkness.

(i also think its significant that this issue is like immediately after tim tries to give cass her batgirl outfit back and shes like "...No." and hes like "please i miss you so much 😭 just come back to gothammmm i dont care what name you go by you could even be black robin if you want that would be fun right cass we could be red robin and black robin together? no? what if we put your name first? ....no? .....okay just promise youll think about it... bye............" [paraphrased])

anyway. *holds tim drake up under the arms like simba* Perceive him

[creacherkeeper]

im getting a little too in my family feels today and so INSTEAD of feeling those im just going to ramble for a second about why i fucking love paladin!aelwyn because. im. just like this i guess im coping leave me alone

cw for discussions of child abuse, maladaptive coping, drugs and alcohol, self harm, destructive tendencies, basically everything we see in canon and the implications

aelwyn is ... SO interesting to me because for as much of her interiority as we see, as much of her as we think we understand, as much as i could ramble about her character for hours, we know ALMOST NOTHING about her in actuality?? (besides ... one key thing)

(this is like 2k and probably incoherent someone please stop me)

okay. listen. almost everything we see aelwyn do in s1 is maladaptive rebellion against her parents and home life. the drinking, the drugs, the partying, perhaps some of kalvaxus (though i dont think we fully understand how much of that was forced on her as well, kalina WAS watching her when she was talking to adaine about it). you can say like, oh aelwyn is a party animal, she's impulsive, she makes risky decisions, she's bitchy and rude, and its like. okay but IS SHE ACTUALLY. because under her parents thumb she had an EXTREMELY limited amount of freedom, and usually when people are suffering from very little control over their life, they WILL act destructively over the tiny bit they can, either harming themselves or their environment or people lower than them in the pecking order, because in a way, that feels like a reclamation of autonomy. saying "you have so much power over me but can you stop me from hurting myself and destroying what you havent managed to claim yet?". its just like, kind of what human brains do and frequently has little to do with a persons actual personality or impulses, its just. desperate brains trying to control SOMETHING because autonomy is a fundamental human need and when thats taken away we get. very bad off. (this is one big reason eating disorders are SO common with abused kids.) so i think a lot of the s1 aelwyn we see is like. this is a very desperate, abused teenager "acting out" in the only way it is possibly somewhat safe for her to do so because, on a psychological level, the self destruction is weirdly the only emotional tether and its either this or just dissociate all the time (something we do see she has problems with in canon)

and yes, she did treat adaine horribly in s1. she fully did. obviously what we get in canon is what happens but a moment thats interesting to me is in episode 1 where adaine has attacked aelwyn several times, who either does nothing or just bounces it back, when she says "i never cast spells at you" and siobhan immediately retcons it and says "yes you do, all the time" (i havent gone back and watched this bit so i might be wording this wrong). obviously its an improv show and the canon is built between performers as they go, but that was interesting to me. that brennan hadnt intended for her to have fought back in that way. she definitely feeds into the emotional abuse from their parents and participates in all the toxicity there, but we know in canon that she did that because of overwhelming fear and self preservation. and that her self hatred because of it just fed back into the cycle and made her feel like she wasnt good enough to even try to break free from it. this is very common in golden child/scapegoat sibling relationships where the golden child SEES what the parents are capable of and becomes a participant in the abuse out of fear for their own standing. in any way siding with the scapegoat child not only directs abuse at themselves as well, but frequently makes things WORSE for the scapegoat because the parents will take out the challenge to their power on them even more. so, if aelwyn DID ever try to defend or help adaine when they were small, she would have VERY QUICKLY learned that made things worse for everyone. and just. sectioned that part of her brain off, as she's done with so many other things. (and i dont think im reading too much into the forest scene with the abernants to say their parents were VERY QUICK to turn abuse towards aelwyn if she stepped out of line even a little. like, you dont flinch when a hand moves unless. you know. dont need to say it just something to think about. as far as we saw in canon, she had done everything they asked of her leading up to the forest, and we DONT KNOW what happened in it but we do know brennan specifically called out how in broken spirits she was when adaine was summoned, even though they did the ritual to avoid all of the nightmare bullshit)

(the house party is literally a whole separate post but i think its fair to point out that 1) she was super under the influence when that was happening which DEFINITELY is in no way an excuse for her behavior but worth remembering when trying to analyze that 2) her losing that fight did canonically have DRASTIC consequences for her and even if she didnt know exactly how that was going to turn out, i think she knew how bad it might be. and she did not know adaine or any of the bad kids were going to be there in the first place)

all that said, it feels in some ways counterproductive to say that aelwyn is an extremely devoted and protective person (yes we're getting to the paladin shit i know i've been rambling a while) but i think that thats strangely ALL WE ACTUALLY KNOW ABOUT HER. because we've established that her self-destructive and abusive behavior in s1 is almost entirely psychologically scripted for her by her parents, we dont know how much of her villain shit in s1 was LITERALLY UNDER THREAT OF DEATH because we know at least killing the oracle was and we dont know how much of the rest of it was mandated by either her parents or kalina other than that she probably was under orders not to tell adaine the truth, and we know participating in all of this caused extreme self loathing in her that she refused to show to anybody and was too terrified to act on in any way

so, like. what does that actually leave us?

here's what we do know about aelwyn:

- of all the schools of magic, she went into abjuration

- the entire bbeg plan from season 1 hinged on aelwyn's complete faith that her level 1 sister was the most prodigious diviner in the world

- right after (?) the house party, she locked her memories where only adaine could find it with a note basically saying "theres so much bad blood between us but i know only you could find this"

- she desperately wanted to protect adaine and the fact that she was too afraid to do so made her hate herself (and her knowing that adaine now knows this is the turning point in their relationship)

- despite everything, even in the nmk forest, she still loved her parents

- the SECOND she is shown genuine love and affection and care from adaine, and adaine says whatever you do, i am here with you, all her actions from there forward are just about protecting adaine from their father, very nearly at the cost of her own life

- with what she probably thought were her last words (and would have been if adaine hadnt given her the tincture), all she wanted to communicate was how to help adaine and the bad kids, and how despite everything she had always believed in her

- at five levels of exhaustion, unconscious, she used her first spell slot after nine months of torture to build a shield around adaine

NOW we get to paladin!aelwyn. because, once everything is stripped away, the abuse and the control and the maladaption and the threats and the torture, EVERYTHING we ACTUALLY can glean about aelwyn's personality and inner core is that she's protective and devoted. and of course classes arent locked by personality, but that just screams paladin to me. its her WHOLE THING. adaine even says "wizards dont have heals, we dont care about other people" and of COURSE that isnt true for either of them, but? mechanically? aelwyn chose the wizard school that DID let her protect, and DID let her help, but i dont think, at this point, going forward, thats really going to be enough for her (and we could also talk about the parallels between them, how often adaine uses her portents to help other people)

i think a lot of the different reads on aelwyn come from this fundamental disconnect between her actions and displayed personality vs who she actually is and what she actually wants. and i think there are very different interpretations of what thats going to look like for her going forward. but i think, for a girl who's most hated characteristic about herself was her self preservation at the detriment of others, her perceived selfishness, and her fear ... isn't choosing to be braver and more selfless and more protective and shedding that self-preserving instinct for the betterment of others ... and MECHANICALLY being able to act on all those things ... the logical next step? i think its going to be a LONG TIME before aelwyn can love herself, but what other way is there to try? if adaine loves her, and adaine believes she can be better, isnt being better because she trusts adaine kind of a form of self love? saying, i dont believe in myself, but i believe in the person who believes in me, and maybe, in a roundabout way, thats the same thing. she was never able to TRY to be better before, because trying to improve even a little, even when people arent watching, when a harmful force has so much power over you and your actions ... like, the mental dissonance is honestly TOO much to even try, thats WAY more terrifying than letting yourself be bad, to the point where thats psychologically impossible for a lot of people. but now she actually has space and freedom and CHOICE and she CAN embrace the instincts she always had to shove down, she CAN be the person she knows her sister needed her to be

i dont know, i think theres an inherent love letter to yourself in wanting to be better and wanting to improve, even if you justify it by saying its for someone else. and now aelwyn actually CAN improve, and thats probably going to be extremely awkward and scary and there will be set backs and backslides for sure. but. i dont know. i think she wants to make up for lost time. because she never wanted the time to be lost in the first place. and if a protector is who she always wanted to be, whats stopping her from being that now?