#the rfis saga summarized is an entire separate 12 page informational comic that is coming to a blog near you whenever i. um. finish it

[paradoxbeta]

one (1) person wanted to see the enormous tangent spawned from this post and thats good enough for me

i like to meme on my ocs (and all characters) a lot, but nata is one of those guys i just Cant mention without talking at least a little. she's such an incredible tactician, and very good at boiling down complex dynamics and difficult situations into a formulaic science she can master. but then her mentor dies. her friend dies. he goes into a long dwindling insanity spiral, and she watches it all happen powerlessly (and she has NEVER been powerless before, not like this, but that is an entire other story). and goddamnit she was so close to processing her grief like a normal person. BUT THEN FUCKING BESIR had to become public enemy number one and wildly disrespect the dead guy in the process and also all of his friends. no biggie or WHATEVER. so now nata's had the mother of all wrenches thrown in her nicely laid out future plans. she has a daunting purposed organism to design and an entire local group is in a panicked frenzy around her. there's a gaping hole of grief in her chest and her anger makes it feel deeper. she has to be extra extra careful with her words because conversations have become battlefields. she has ONE friend she trusts enough to confide in, and shes hesitating on that too because he's entered the tweakathon 5000 and is flying off the fucking wall. and yeah! with all of this going on, she starts biffing some quick time events! she locks up emotions that Shouldn't have been suppressed. she makes brash and aggressive decisions and even indulges in a couple instances of (gasp) hypocrisy. she struggles to keep her head above water, not because there are no right decisions to make, but because shes in no state of mind to make the perfect best-outcome-possible decisions every damn time. ESPECIALLY considering she doesnt know the full extent her actions could have, because shes not a mind reader or an oracle and can't know what's going on in the brains of her peers. her faltering and losing her trademark flawless functionality and analytic prowess is really just a testament to how Fucking Bad the river flows in spring situation is/was. and most importantly, even though it was her compassion, concern, and alliances that got her into so much mental turmoil, her mental takeaway isnt “kindness and friendship is a tactical weakness”, its “woah besir that was a dick move." and also “greed and insensitivity result in misery and complication for everyone involved”, and also "its important to keep others in mind especially before you fucking ATTEMPT TO TAKE SOMETHING THAT WAS BEQUEATHED TO SOMEONE ELSE and start AN ACTUAL PHYSICAL WAR THAT INVOLVED THE (ATTEMPTED) CONSTRUCTION OF A MISSILE LAUNCHER"

nata is such a perfect blend of machinelike, pristine strategical analysis and overwhelming gentleness for her friends and her community. it makes me physically ill. its the pain of her love that fucking SHATTERS her worldview, and yet through it all... even though she's easily one of the people suffering the most out of the entire RFiS situation, she grits her teeth and narrows her eyes and pushes through. she deals with everyone's bullshit. she makes bad decisions sometimes, but shes one of the few people with the sheer force of will to stand up and be proactive and not let this blow over. she is leagues more virtuous than the people who never did the "wrong" thing because they were too afraid to do anything at all.

after everything is said and done, and everyone is humiliated, grieving and quiet... and iterators are dead, and entire regions are ecologically devastated, and blood has been tracked up and down and there is no place where the filth does not invade: she brushes herself off, huddles everyone together, holds close the little dignity she is left with, and says: "okay, everyone, let's try again."

she has such a specific personality that i have struggled with encapsulating for months because she really does feel like a whole living person in my brain and trapping that complexity and nuance is so hard to do even in thousands of words. shes so.. sharp. intelligent. resilient. intimidating. KIND. watching bereavement and extreme emotion interact with someone who is so good at self control is like watching an unstoppable force meet an immovable object. it is a FASCINATING battle and the fallout is devastating, and this is just ONE CHARACTER in the RFiS related story.

as taken right from the words of the fantastic book, memory called empire by arkady martine: NATA, she whose gracious presence illuminates the room like the edge shine of a knife.

anyway... hi everyone.