Can You Come Collect Your Freak Of A Man Please. Hes Doing Things

can you come collect your freak of a man please. He’s doing things

The Stymphs' Symbolism and the Storian's Interference

All right, here's our equivalence:

The Stymphs = Fate

Ok, so, with the girls in book one:

Agatha and Sophie are carried off by a Stymph, and they are thrown into their respective schools. No choice. No say in the matter. They've lost their agency, completely.

They are mastered by a Stymph, by fate. Conquered.

Then, the shift happens. They become the masters of their own fate, in riding the Stymph, in steering on top of the Stymph, into the School Master's Tower.

By TLEA, again, their relationship to the Stymphs changes. They're a little beholden to them and fate, in becoming who they are. Fate and the particular Stymph's original actions, its involvement in their kidnapping, I mean, shaped them both, ultimately. The girls are also beholden to the Stymphs for helping them, by not obeying "Rafal" when they help the archer students and Merlin during the second Great War.

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Then, for the prequels:

Who is master of the Stymphs? Rafal, of course.

Yet, Rhian is the "author of own misfortune," or fate.

Rafal is the original master of the Stymphs. In a way, Rafal was destined to become Fate, to become the Balance, had he managed to live long enough to be the One.

Because, he was about to be named the One True School Master, and through the Schools, he would have been master of the Woods' fate, been able to willfully control (or indirectly influence, through the curriculum, the students' educations, and how prepared they would have been, should their fairy tales begin) the fate of all the Woods, all its possible futurities, in theory, to an extent.

But, really, it's the Pen that is Fate, not Rafal himself, when it really comes down to the truth.

However, Rhian disrupted "fate," or the Storian's plans, by being the cause of his brother's death.

And, when he was left with the Stymphs he "inherited," he probably couldn't quite automatically rein them in. I think he had to tame them, or find a literal spell to mollify them with, to get them under his control. Probably symbolically because he was never meant to be Fate or the One in the first place.

And so, of course, Fate's attendants (the Stymphs) wouldn't have followed him willingly, at least, not right away because the ending simply wasn't meant to be, but just so happened to happen nonetheless. (I know the Stymphs' behavior actually must originate from the fact that Stymphs supposedly only like Evers, but I'm looking at this from an angle that's outside of the narrative, and I don't need to rely on the in-universe reasoning at the moment.)

Was there a line after the climax of Fall about this at all? About the Stymphs being disobedient toward Rhian or outright loud and unmanageable, or am I misremembering?

Anyway, Rhian became master of Fate, of the Woods, in becoming the sole School Master. But that only happened when there was no one else left to assume the role. He was the only option, sort of a second-choice. Or, possibly even third, when we consider Pan as the hypothetical third candidate to be the One. Rhian was the default, sadly enough, the lone, surviving one. He wasn't even meant to be School Master, the rightful One, yet he had to be chosen. The Storian was compelled to because there was no one else.

Thus, the "ownership" of the Stymphs and of Fate was transferred over to Rhian.

And remember, once, Rhian was Fate's personal punching bag. He suffered a lot, for his naivete, and from some external causes, like Hook and Vulcan, sort of, even if he was wrongly influenced by the end of it all. And yes, while many events were partly his fault, they also may not have been. The plot could have been the result of very poor happenstance and intersections of the times the brothers lived in, as, we can observe all the turbulence in Rise, during that one particular school year.

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Oh! And I wonder if the Stymphs forevermore missed Rafal, their original master? Did they show any signs of missing him? I'm not sure.

But, I am sure that they knew Rhian replaced Rafal because they can read souls, tell them apart, they way they seemed to instinctually read Agatha's, Sophie's, and Aladdin's souls, to know which Schools they belonged to.

I don't think there's any direct evidence of the Stymphs' mourning though. Did they ever screech, or cry out, as if in pain, like deprived animals? I suppose I could imagine that plausibly happening, with how they were left behind...

The "Good" Donation

For @starsandseajustforyouandme, based on her oc, Sophos.

Happy early birthday??? I couldn't stop thinking about your anecdote about Sophos' childhood, and I just had to do something about it, so I did a little sketch of my interpretation of what you told me though I messed up the proportions/positioning a bit.

And, I wanted to commend you yet again for this ridiculously cute and tragic idea! Seriously, I still really am more invested in him and his stuffed-swan than I ever was in Hort's long-lost, frog pajamas.

I've figured it out! It may be obvious, but as a general rule, I would say:

Ever humor is self-deprecating when it's not posh, pleasant, or complimentary toward others.

Never humor is never self-deprecating but self-aggrandizing and often based in sheer arrogance and grandstanding when it's not absurdly dark.

Rafal would almost never say aloud anything that would make himself look bad, or put himself down. So, take your cues from him, in terms of self-promotion! Take after him to bolster your own self-esteem.

Supposedly, you may have heard being humble is overrated in a world where it's impossible to get noticed. However, being kind is not overrated.

Of course, there are exceptions to the characterization rule, Agatha, for instance: dark/fatalistic humor, Ever. Although, we may have seen Agatha mock her own incompetence as a queen at times, potentially in QFG? Thus, she's probably capable of both sorts of humor.

reblog if you like your blorbo covered in blood

I've just finished a oneshot of an AU I think you never knew you needed, if I've done my job well.