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yrae
This will be long and rambling and will probably make no~ sense whatsoever. Sorry 'bout that in advance =3;
I was musing over Yan when I finished uni for the day. I barely ever write him, which is most unfortunate, because he's just so much fun when I get it right. I don't know why I don't write him more. Evil bastards are serious fun, and among my charries, it doesn't get any more evil bastard than Yan.
Despite all that tho, I've got a sum total of maybe ten minifics using the Yan!centric icon, if that. I start to make conscious efforts to write stuff focusing on him, but then I get a better idea from one of the other characters, or I decide, "ooh, I really need to get on with characterising ___." Because I know Yan. He was the first one from the Yrae Chronicles to appear in my mind, a good month or two before the twins. Wouldn'a thunk that, would you?
Thing is, he's so freaking complicated. At face value, which is pretty much all you're getting because that's all I can really give you, he's pretty simple. Quiet, lonely kid, found an yrae, used its stone to found Raykin, power/greed/whatever took him over, turned tyrant, got killed, brought back to life by daughters, et voila. Makes sense enough.
First question that came to my mind was obviously, "What the hell was he doing for the 4000 years between being brought back to life and terrorising the twins?" Because honestly, if his aim was to just take the throne back, he coulda done that within his first decade. He wouldn't need four millennia and three yrae stones.
Basically, he's been playing around with history. Every major event in Tsyllaes' history, he's had a part in it. Except maybe the natural disasters. Far as I know, yrae stones can't control mother nature. I don't think. But wars and dethronings and assassinations? He was there. He's taken the Raykinian throne back on a number of occasions, just because he could. He's taken over Kazin a coupla times, Llayad during that brief period when they weren't allied with Tsayth (guess whose fault that was...), even succeeded in ruling Tsayth for a few years here and there.
He has a sense of fun. Maybe a decidedly sadistic sense of fun, but he has fun nonetheless. His fun is in ruling and playing around with the people he controls. He's naturally done the tyrant thing several times, but after 4000 years of experience, he's gone the saviour route as well... only to bring destruction to the country he's been ruling at the time.
Killing people? Not fun. I really need to work on getting this across. Anyone he bumps off, he honestly has a reason for it, and even then he'll do it in the cleanest and hopefully most painless way he can. It may have been four millennia ago, but he's experienced dying and death. Killing people, especially in icky ways, brings back bad~ memories.
Course, this isn't to say he's completely averse to it. If there's no other way of taking over Tsayth than by killing the king, then he'll do it, only he might do it by different means. Manipulate the youngest princess or something.
Because Aeia damnit he's a manipulative bastard. But he doesn't lie. Not even a little white lie. He's just so subtle with it. He plants ideas in your mind so that you don't even know they're there until you start growing them yourself, by which point they've misshapen themselves into something that's clearly your own thought. Uber!smart people might get an incling that he had something to do with it, but of course try accusing him, and he'll just start with the subtle manipulation again.
I keep questioning whether magic has anything to do with it. He's just so damn good at it that there must be some element of mind control in there, either desert magic or yrae. But as soon as I think this it's just bloody obvious that magic doesn't come into it at all. He's been around for 4000 years. He knows people. Knows how to get into their minds, but without getting in there at all, if you catch my drift.
That's what confuses me the most, I reckon. I swear he's good enough that he could convince Raykin to ditch beer if he really felt like it... but he's Raykinian himself, so like hell he'd want to do that X3 So yeah. He's so manipulative that it has to be magic, but he's so subtle and uses his words so carefully that there's no way it can be, but it's clearly mind control, but... ARG. Confusing git ><
He's started to try manipulating me too, which I only just realised a coupla weeks ago. That's just confusing me more.
He's so contradictory--he's manipulative but doesn't lie. He has no sympathy but he won't kill people unless it's necesary. He says he has no need for emotion, but the one thing he wants in his life is to bring his family back, especially his wife.
Somehow this all works in my head, but I'll be buggered if I can put it down on paper, especially since he's so far barely got any presence in SH at all. He's got about six pages of the first 80-odd, two of which are prologue, so before all the confusing character stuff came about anyway.
Just arg, Yan. Very arg ><
I was musing over Yan when I finished uni for the day. I barely ever write him, which is most unfortunate, because he's just so much fun when I get it right. I don't know why I don't write him more. Evil bastards are serious fun, and among my charries, it doesn't get any more evil bastard than Yan.
Despite all that tho, I've got a sum total of maybe ten minifics using the Yan!centric icon, if that. I start to make conscious efforts to write stuff focusing on him, but then I get a better idea from one of the other characters, or I decide, "ooh, I really need to get on with characterising ___." Because I know Yan. He was the first one from the Yrae Chronicles to appear in my mind, a good month or two before the twins. Wouldn'a thunk that, would you?
Thing is, he's so freaking complicated. At face value, which is pretty much all you're getting because that's all I can really give you, he's pretty simple. Quiet, lonely kid, found an yrae, used its stone to found Raykin, power/greed/whatever took him over, turned tyrant, got killed, brought back to life by daughters, et voila. Makes sense enough.
First question that came to my mind was obviously, "What the hell was he doing for the 4000 years between being brought back to life and terrorising the twins?" Because honestly, if his aim was to just take the throne back, he coulda done that within his first decade. He wouldn't need four millennia and three yrae stones.
Basically, he's been playing around with history. Every major event in Tsyllaes' history, he's had a part in it. Except maybe the natural disasters. Far as I know, yrae stones can't control mother nature. I don't think. But wars and dethronings and assassinations? He was there. He's taken the Raykinian throne back on a number of occasions, just because he could. He's taken over Kazin a coupla times, Llayad during that brief period when they weren't allied with Tsayth (guess whose fault that was...), even succeeded in ruling Tsayth for a few years here and there.
He has a sense of fun. Maybe a decidedly sadistic sense of fun, but he has fun nonetheless. His fun is in ruling and playing around with the people he controls. He's naturally done the tyrant thing several times, but after 4000 years of experience, he's gone the saviour route as well... only to bring destruction to the country he's been ruling at the time.
Killing people? Not fun. I really need to work on getting this across. Anyone he bumps off, he honestly has a reason for it, and even then he'll do it in the cleanest and hopefully most painless way he can. It may have been four millennia ago, but he's experienced dying and death. Killing people, especially in icky ways, brings back bad~ memories.
Course, this isn't to say he's completely averse to it. If there's no other way of taking over Tsayth than by killing the king, then he'll do it, only he might do it by different means. Manipulate the youngest princess or something.
Because Aeia damnit he's a manipulative bastard. But he doesn't lie. Not even a little white lie. He's just so subtle with it. He plants ideas in your mind so that you don't even know they're there until you start growing them yourself, by which point they've misshapen themselves into something that's clearly your own thought. Uber!smart people might get an incling that he had something to do with it, but of course try accusing him, and he'll just start with the subtle manipulation again.
I keep questioning whether magic has anything to do with it. He's just so damn good at it that there must be some element of mind control in there, either desert magic or yrae. But as soon as I think this it's just bloody obvious that magic doesn't come into it at all. He's been around for 4000 years. He knows people. Knows how to get into their minds, but without getting in there at all, if you catch my drift.
That's what confuses me the most, I reckon. I swear he's good enough that he could convince Raykin to ditch beer if he really felt like it... but he's Raykinian himself, so like hell he'd want to do that X3 So yeah. He's so manipulative that it has to be magic, but he's so subtle and uses his words so carefully that there's no way it can be, but it's clearly mind control, but... ARG. Confusing git ><
He's started to try manipulating me too, which I only just realised a coupla weeks ago. That's just confusing me more.
He's so contradictory--he's manipulative but doesn't lie. He has no sympathy but he won't kill people unless it's necesary. He says he has no need for emotion, but the one thing he wants in his life is to bring his family back, especially his wife.
Somehow this all works in my head, but I'll be buggered if I can put it down on paper, especially since he's so far barely got any presence in SH at all. He's got about six pages of the first 80-odd, two of which are prologue, so before all the confusing character stuff came about anyway.
Just arg, Yan. Very arg ><
no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 03:16 am (UTC)I mean, I've got Death. But everyone just KNOWS he is not as bad a person as his standoffishness implies, his eyes are more expressive than his voice, etc.
I got WHEvil, who is just batshit insane. No complex there.
And things like that are fine. You know just where you stand with them.
But then you get those complex characters who will think one thing, and then do entirely another. Or who are so damn contradictary. And you kinda know where they're coming from, so you forget to tell others. Or you know where they're coming from, but that's innermost thoughts and you can't write that out. You can't say "okay he's DOING this, but he was THINKING this." because IC-knowledge vs OOC-knowledge.
I'm not making sense.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 03:21 am (UTC)It's so frustrating when you know the character, you know what they're doing, why they think they're doing it and why they're actually doing it, how they came to that conclusion, etc etc la de da... but then they go and do something else that just throws it all out the window ><;
And then they start throwing the manipulating back at you. Which is Not Cool *throws brick at Yan*
no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 03:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-29 03:55 am (UTC)And for the thousandth time, 'narti thinks to herself, "I need to write Yan more..."
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 06:10 pm (UTC)I loikes Yan a lot. (This you may have noticed.) There are a lot of things that hint about a bit of extra complexity about him. The whole notion of how he started out is my favourite, I think - chasing those magical yrae out in the desert. It's absolutely fairytale lovely, which makes it all the more interesting for what he evolves into after that.
I'm a bit curious as to why he enjoys bringing destruction to countries (are we talking famine or conquest here?) if he has that personal aversion to killing. What specifically does he find fun about it? If it's political manipulation, he could arguably do that without overthrowing society/government/civilisation, couldn't he?
*slogans*
Yan - It's The Boots.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-01 06:43 pm (UTC)That~ is what's messing with my mind the most. Either he's not alf as compassionate as he makes out to be (...because he so makes himself out to be compassionate), or~ I dunno. Maybe he's just averse to doing it himself, seeing them die right in front of him, but if someone else does it for him then he can ignore it? Like, Bush seems to have little problem with sending hundreds of blokes off to war, but put him face to face with one of the baddies and stick a gun in his hand, d'you reckon he could do it? Maybe, but he wouldn't want to do it too often.
It's not destruction to the kingdom so much as just ruling it. He really, really has a thing for power, that's about the only thing I'm dead certain of XD; He's played the good king just as much as evil tyrant. If a country's just had some great natural disaster (drought, cyclone, earthquake, whatever) he'd see that as a challenge to get them back up on their feet. Once they're there, obviously everyone would love him, give him an ego boost, then the power would get to his head again and he'd lead said country off to conquer other nations.
This would've been so much easier three years ago when I coulda just said "He's an evil, manipulative, sadistic bastard =D" and left it at that XD;;