#sorry i have a lot of thoughts about hestio

[microwaving-tesilid-argente]

hestio is a character that tickles me so much. when we get introduced to him he's a tesilid hater and he's like "tesilid is too dumb to come up with a plan like that" and "the instant i get the opportunity to change teams i'm leaving him behind",

and then the next time we see him he's like "if you dont talk to us like your friends then i won't be friends with you anymore!!" and "if you refused to eat then i was considering stuffing the food down your throat",

and then the next time we see him he's like "tesilid, you pathetic idiot! how could you go and just die on us like that?" and "tesilid, you idiot! why didn't you come report to the vatican if you were alive?!?"

the way he went from vocally hating tesilid to actively and vocally showing that he cares is so endearing. and for some reason he hasn't dropped the way he calls tesilid an idiot and that's hilarious, but literally once you look past the name-calling and brash attitude it's like. wow.

"if you refused the food then i would've stuffed it down your throat" -> i know that you have a tendency to neglect yourself for no reason, so if i have to make sure your body is well taken care of for you then i will

"how could you go and just die on us like that? / why didn't you report to the vatican that you're alive?" -> i thought you knew? about how much i care for you? wouldn't you have known how much grief i would feel when i thought i would never see you again? did you not think about how much i would have wanted to know that you were alive and well? why didn't you tell me and cut my anguish short?

like the way that hestio has so little screentime and yet most of it is dedicated to him aggressively shouting that he cares for and supports tesilid is just so fucking much man. falls to my knees.

By this point you can probably tell that I ship them but I don't even mean this post in a shippy way because like. Canon Hestio on his first mission with Tesilette ends it by going wink wonk you two spend some quality time together alright! (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧ Just because he saw Tesilid kiss her hand in the Snow Queen dungeon and off screen presumably went woww I'm going to support my best friend's romantic endeavours!!! (I don't care that legally he's not allowed to have romance!)

Hestio is so fully supportive of Tesilid in all aspects of his life! He cares about Tesilid and he makes sure that Tesilid knows it! They have such a healthy and wholesome and securely attached bond.

I say securely attached because Tesilid trusts him and Ephael unconditionally as well. The instant Tesilid saw Hestio and Ephael he trusted that he could plainly ask them for info and that they wouldn't sell him out. It's remarkable and astonishing that he still trusts them so much when he's gone through so many regressions that he's basically unrecognisable. They must've had a bajillion chances to betray and hurt him and never or almost never did.

And this is So uwarfgrgrhrrgrg when juxtaposed against the way that most of the narrative is focused on Tesilette. On how much Ailette loves and cares for Tesilid unconditionally, and how much Ailette is the only thing that lets him want to live on. What little POV we have from Tesilid never mentions his friends at all. But isn't "how could you just go and die on us like that?" another way of saying "please stay in the 17th with me"? Don't leave me behind, I would be lonely without you.

You can't die so suddenly because we have to live the rest of this life consistently in each other's business and die wrinkly. We have to still be making fun of each other in some retirement home. I'll only accept your death if it's foretold by slowly accumulating signs of old age; if I had the time to see daily the growing hunch of your back and the frailness of your arms and to slowly come to terms with our inevitable parting. Don't you dare leave this world so early, I need forewarning so that I can prepare myself for living in a world without you. How could you just die on us like that?

Obviously I'm filling in a lot of blanks, but like. like. "How could you just die on us like that" is a funny line because Hestio talks about Tesilid's death like Tesilid is just some jerk who betrayed his trust instead of like, being killed against his will. But if Hestio feels betrayed it's because he had taken for granted that Tesilid would remain in his life and is distraught that he is not. I mean there's also the fact that Hestio doesn't know the details of how Tesilid supposedly died, so he can't very well go "he died so painfully im going to cry about that", but it's still very telling that this is how he frames Tesilid's death.

Hestio clearly cares a lot about Tesilid and is really not shy about it. And its so GNGHGNGHGN that this is such a small part of the narrative. Like. This is a big deal!!! This very dramatically changes what Tesilid's experience in the regressions would have been like! If he had someone who so obviously cared for him through both actions and words! And since they were teenagers!!

gnawing at my cage bars. Why is Hestio's obvious and strong friendship not salient in Tesilid's POV and What Does This Tell Us About Him.

Did Hestio's care become unremarkable or even something that he avoids thinking about because it's so closely linked to the trauma of the regressions. Because he's always there. Is Ailette the One thing Tesilid ever really thinks about properly now because it's the only new and refreshing part of his life that isn't weighed down by like All That.

Or maybe people just aren't this crazy about their friends i don't know. But if it were me and I lived in a world where everyone including god was out to get me and I wasn't able to stand up for myself but I had one or a couple of people who consistently and loudly cared for me. I would probably make them the centre of my world and be very not normal about them. i dunno! maybe it's just me.

anyway we stan a man who isn't afraid to wear long hair and to style it in a world where men all have short hair, and who isn't afraid to be extremely vocal about literally all his feelings

[microwaving-tesilid-argente]

Was wondering if you had anything new to share about the genderbend AU? Also I love how you play around with Ailette and Tesilid’s respective roles as protector and damsel sorta and give them a twist/more intensity in this AU.

UEUEUEUEUE thank you for asking about it!!! ive been busy the past 2 weeks so i haven't had time to have any new brainrot about it and what new thoughts i have are very much in their early stages and might get scraped completely.

so i’ll maybe just talk about my conceptualisation of tesilette under cut! and some about reed/ailett too

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One of my favourite parts of s class heroine is how tesilid clearly plays the narrative role of damsel in distress (what with him being constantly saved and dependent on ailette for his safety and social status) but he still nonetheless has a lot of agency in the narrative because of all his secrets. I think I subconsciously tried to include more of this element of Tesilid having his own mind by making Tesilina have a more utilitarian view about her relationship with Ailett. As with canon, she has to work within the constraints of what the world forces her into, but she's still thinking a lot about what she should do and about how much she hates it.

LIKE. I’m a little insecure about how i made tesilett's r/s because it's a LOT less sweet than canon and that was one of the best parts of canon. But I do really like it??

The way I came up with it was:

okay if we're going to do a genderbend and not have it be a boring rehash of canon, then gender MUST have an important role to play

> this means that gender roles and the patriarchy would be terrible, moreso than I assume it is in canon (where gender is never an issue for Ailette and Bianca becoming knights or heiresses)

> sorry Tesilina…. this means worse sexual harrassment and gender roles…

> this means that the way other people view Tesilette would definitely change

and so that's how I arrived at Tesilina leaning way harder into making their relationship seem legit in the eyes of others. In a world where people policed women's behaviour more, people would already make assumptions about her that she can never truly debunk. I think that after so many lifetimes of working within her Restrictions, it's very natural for her to also make the best of this constraint. In canon Tesilid sometimes talks about trying to escort Ailette or living up to the role a knight, because gender roles. Here Tesilina instead goes *swoon* sir knight, sir saint, are you not going to catch me… (pleading eyes).

Tesilina's the girl who pretends to fall wrong and twist her ankle so a certain someone has to carry her. (Except with her luck she actually does twist it. Or maybe she actually twists it on purpose bc what the hell, Ailett can heal her anyway. It's morbidly fascinating to finally have someone who rushes to heal her. Seeing the almost frenzied concern spring on Ailett's face is heady. It's foreign. It's almost like Tesilina is doing this just to check that Ailett is still here by her side and will still heal her.)

((It's not something Tesilina has ever really done with anyone else. Few others have ever prioritised Tesilina's well-being to this extent. And it’s been a few thousand years since she felt the need check if Hestio and Ephael cared for her – she has the opposite problem for them, really, because she's forced to see how much they are willing to go through for/because of her CONSTANTLY throughout her regressions. Ailett had disappeared for all of that long, long time. She has to check if this is still real.))

I'm just like. HGNFHGNGHGNGHNG.

I don't have solid plans for where I'm going with this. I think it's something that would probably write itself out depending on how I actually write their dynamic… in the very unlikely event that I actually try to write fic for this.

But my very vague roadmap after this stage is that Tesilina eventually starts to become more secure in her relationship with Ailett (think the parts in canon where Tesilid starts to refer to her by nickname, and the fountain of life moment). And when she finally leaves crisis mode, she starts being able to realise that hey uhhh maybe that was a little manipulative. haha. nervous gulp. and a lot of guilt.

I think I can't really plan the fallout much because I don't have the blueprint from canon where Ailette finds out about his secrets too. But tbvh I think Ailette would forgive Tesilid for anything. In all worlds. Look at her trying to redeem Reed even after the Magic Republic burst, even though she herself counted the fatalities in i think the thousands and thought to herself that he was now past the point of no return.

But I think I might need to reread canon and try to do an Ailette character analysis 😔 I don't have a grasp on her character voice at all… It's really hard for me to write her.

I think Hestio and Ephael would definitely play important roles, because in this AU their busybodies whose lives are very enmeshed with Tesilina's. It's probably very disorienting for them because it's clear to them that Tesilina is falling for/has already fallen for Ailette, but she's still being very calculative and utilitarian about things and setting their relationship up for failure with all her lies, and they don't even understand why she's lying so much in the first place because (to them) it's so very out of character.

Anyway, in terms of actually new things I cooked up: Reed is now legitimately trying to kill Ailett. Haha. None of the “it’s enchanting how your eyes turn gold” and “i want you to fall to where i am” shit, Ailett and does not get out of this without major injuries. The instant he brought up Hestio and Ephael the kid gloves were off, and the instant he brought them to his frontline division he got on Reed’s hitlist.

Reed is truly going through it though. Unlike canon, Reed is a bundle of raw nerves and is incredibly sensitive because she just wants herself and her friends to stay dead already. Canon Reed turns Ailett down because he wants to burn the world down. Reed here turns Ailett down because he clearly doesn’t understand or align with her priorities, and she does not believe a happy ending is possible.

Please someone give her a hug she is so lonely.

Like she is doing all this for her friends but she can't even talk to them about it. The only person who knows the most about her regressions is now her biggest enemy.

Anyway the huge difference in 117 and 100th’s attitudes towards Ailett just makes me gnhghgnghgnghng because it’s just because Reed is in absolutely crisis mode rn and is unable to let her guard down. The right person at the wrong time. Slides down the wall. Tesilina is trying to put a ring on Ailett's finger and Reed is trying to kill him.

I might change this dynamic development later on bc this is literally at the earliest draft stage. But I like the idea of Reed/Ailett dynamic being like "who the fuck cares about some man I have my friends to worry about" and Tesilette being like "yeah we're going to lean into gender roles to get that bread"