send his ass to the mists

[Long description:

Sketchpage of our man Commander Yuri Six-Cants, after he gets a little bit fucked up by the god of war. He abandons his duster and bandana for traditional Orrian wear, a rice straw shawl and woven sarong. His chest is exposed, showing a gnarly handprint-shaped scar over his heart, as well as hand-motif tattoos that cover his shoulders and arms. They connect with the bloody tear-streak markings under his eyes. He still wields a shotel, though it’s haunted by spectral fire now. The war god’s horns are worn as morbid trophies—or perhaps yokes– on his back. He is depicted with and without a cloth mask, which is reminiscent of a Japanese zōmen. This one has a central veil painted with a hand motif, flanked by two longer ribbons that resemble his tear-streaks.

Regarding his change of style (and heart), the reviews from the rest of the gang are unanimously bad. The Lastborn gets down on all fours over Yuri’s bloody, half-dead body, and says “Yuri wake up! You fucked up big time.” Yuri cracks open his eyes and croaks “Lastborn…”

Another drawing shows Yuri sitting with a torch at his feet, which he holds in the reverse, extinguishing it. He is in full regalia, and looks more like a statue than a man. Trahearne lays his head on Yuri’s lap, arms folded over his knees, looking despondent.

In another drawing, Ximone looks similarly dispirited. She and Yuri watch it all unfold in silence.]

send his ass to the mists

March 30, 2024

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2023/9/17 (<- blissfully ignorant of ‘the departing’): playing Path of Fire now. Yuri is having his edgy moment. Flirting with the inverse function of Blighted Trahearne AU, which is Yuri succumbing to his anger and hurt in killing Balthazar, and filling the void left behind as spirit of despair. spirit of revenge? spirit of unfinished business? spirit of the dispossessed? spirit of the vacuous emptiness left behind by war.

One thing about me you GOTTA know: I’m filling in the gaps. I’m extrapolating. I’m doing everything my damn self around here. Poking around at Yuri being Orrian-Ascalonian. Making up a whole Orrian diaspora. Making up reasons for Yuri to go after Balthazar like Junky Janker going after James Charles in Minecraft. Making up AUs and endings I haven’t even gotten to yet.

Yuri identifies with being Orrian and is compelled by the idea of healing Orr because of this, and yet has a fraught relationship with his family, the very people who taught him what that means. Holding up a mirror to that, he’s taught the generational pain that molded the diaspora’s cosmology… This idea that they can’t trust the Six Gods anymore. At best, they abandoned humanity, and at worst, they betrayed them by giving them magic, leaving them to be preyed upon by the Elder Dragons, and quitting the world while they were distracted. The sinking of Orr and Arah is their wound, and also the lens through which they see the world. Their survival as a scattered people is up to them and them alone.

Yuri might have a complicated relationship with his community, but he doesn’t need to be convinced of the Six’s incompetencies. It’s known to him as an urchin on the streets of Divinity’s Reach, and re-affirmed during his time with the Pact, at Orr, at Maguuma, during the ~3 year fallout of his fuckie wuckie with Mordremoth and Trahearne. In particular, he’s no stranger to the banality and evil of war. I think this makes a perfect storm when Balthazar appears—these experiences that otherwise guide him to be big-hearted, compassionate, and non-violent instead drive him to anger.

Rotating this in my head while the game puts that man in a situation. I think it’s fun that it parallels Trahearne’s ~unbecoming in HoT, getting so caught up in the big picture that everything spirals out of control until it reaches its sad, inevitable end. WHO is going to pull Yuri off of Balthazar’s wild ride…………………. I’m still playing lol don’t answer that. in the mean time I imagine The Bad End.

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2023/10/2 (<- hopelessly aware of ‘the departing’):

everything happens so much and i barely have the processing power to talk about the men who live in my brain that aren’t real. this is unacceptable. how is a woman to work under these conditions.

byuuillggghhh i make an effort anyway.

yuri got his shit rocked in the mists. i still cant believe my dumb throwaway idea is canon. i dont think that man ‘came back wrong’ so much as he didn’t come back at all. instead, an entity who has been transformed to the point of being unrecognizable (but still technically a continuation of the same person) came out of the mists. happy pride.
i think the sheer need to kick balthazar’s ass is what brought him back. not just his own desire, but that of everyone and everything around him. he forms around the collective suffering and vacuous emptiness left behind in his wake, and while he DOES recover some memories on the way up, all of them are of conflict and war. which. has some implications for his sense of self and how he relates with literally everyone around him.
he is instinctively drawn to people with unresolved grief, righteous anger, or other wounds related to wartime. For a while, he’s not really a person but a physical force that strongarms the cruel and powerful into paying their moral debts, whatever that means. (the Norn description of the six gods not as persons but as motive forces is bouncing around in my brain.)
inevitably this leads him back to his old gang as they converge on Kicking Balthazar’s Ass. yuri is drawn to their hurt and remembers most of them from his time with the Pact, but only in broad strokes– the great victories and terrible losses. he remembers almost nothing of their actual day-to-day relationships. he is vaguely compelled to learn more, but he doesn’t know how to be anything but a shambling wraith. so. emotional intimacy doesn’t come naturally. that, and everyone else just thinks they’re hallucinating him out of grief.
idk if yuri even GETS to kill balthazar. i think it’s fun if he’s robbed of the chance to fulfill his purpose, and feels anchored to tyria out of this sense of unfinished business. my man is once again embodying the vacuous emptiness left behind by war.
right now, in the aftermath, he’s kind of just orbiting people and trying to be helpful in his narrow, ominous, vaguely upsetting definition of being helpful. he remembers ‘Commander Atropos’ and ‘Marshal Trahearne’ well enough to hold a stilted conversation. The Lastborn is a puzzle to him, definitely knows that guy, definitely has The Long Shadow Of War hanging over him, but cannot for the life of him pin down why or from where. hasn’t met his daughter the vinetooth yet, but when he does, she Will force those memories back into his miserable brain like a square cube into a circular hole. biting him and biting him and biting him
(Of all people the Lastborn is probably handling this the best. he’s like oh we all have those days where we cannot continue to exist without annihilating everything that we were and everything that we could have been. you’re not special. maybe if you eat some soup you’ll calm down.)
something something trahearne finally getting to reciprocate the patience and kindness that yuri showed to him while he was in the pits of his psychic mordremoth prison. at first he’s being dragged kicking and screaming into this but then he picks himself up and dusts himself off and 180’s on it, just like his wild hunt. anyway that’s all thanks for coming to my ted talk.