beta
The emperor pisses me tf off. He has always been a deadbeat to Etienne. He left his kid under the control of a morally bankrupt rapist (he did not want to marry or sleep with her, so she overpowered him with drugs and pheromones). That’s why she lost her shit about Etienne being an omega, because it was her only chance to conceive.
But he’s also at fault for leaving a child to the mercy of someone like that. He never even tried to teach or mold Etienne into a good son or ruler, just tried to tear him down and replace him with Rishar every chance he got.
Their relationship recently improved, but it was only because Etienne started to conform to what he wanted, and was useful in countering house Herace. He still doesn’t give af about Etienne and is more than happy to abandon/condemn him the second his secret gets out.
This shit fucked me up ╥﹏╥
It’s so beautiful in its exploration of sentience, emotion, and humanity. The gems seem somewhat apathetic to each other beyond matters of their defense against Lunarians. They have these intense, long lasting attachments after a loss, but even that seems to fade over time and they don’t have a particularly supportive social structure. That might make sense since they’re not biologically designed to be social.
We see over and over that Phos has the best of intentions to start with, but we all know where those can lead. They want to help Cinnabar, they want to retrieve their lost comrades, they want to end the lunarian invasion. They are slowly corrupted by memory loss, trauma, and all of the changes to their body. And the whole time, an entire society of ancient beings, including their Sensei have been slowly leading them to an inevitable end of destruction and loneliness. Phos just got such a raw deal. They were essentially raised as a sacrificial lamb.
1. They’re born weak and considered useless, to a species is in a constant war of attrition due to Lunarians trying to torture Sensei into praying (which he can’t do even if he wanted to)
2. they gain enough power to be helpful after several traumatic fights, but all of the people around them that they care about keep dying
3.everyone treats them like they’re nuts for being suspicious of Sensei
4. They are slowly losing their mind between all of this while losing memories and continuing to fight to protect their comrades
5. eventually gets damaged, which causes a head transplant combining them with another gem’s personality, further destabilizing/altering their mind
6. Gets awkward looks for being crazy again
7.labeled a traitor for going to the moon to find the lost comrades
8. Finds out the lost comrades have been turned to dust and can’t be fixed
9. Slowly loses sight of their goals because the lunarians and sensei have been manipulating their entire life to traumatize them enough to become human
10. Finds out that even though lost comrades can be restored, their memories will never return, so it won’t be the same beings
11. Tries to return and talk to Sensei to beg for a peaceful resolution, gets obliterated without hesitation by every gem left on the island, taken apart, and hidden in pieces for 200+ years
12. Gets messed up from being so damaged, then reformed (twice, once by Sensei, once by Aechma, who is implied to have focused on restoring more of their negative memories to cultivate the human emotion, vengeance)
13. Basically destroys Sensei by trying to force him to pray, then is forced to become god in his place
14. Left in complete isolation on Earth for 10,000 years to force them to properly absorb the power of god, even new gems are taken away to prevent them from having anyone to interact with. All of the other gems and sensei are basically partying without a care on the moon this entire time
15. Fulfills the wish and sends all sentient life into the afterlife, being left completely alone for millennia
16. Sentient life finally develops and they are able to interact with them, then the sun explodes and instead of taking the escape capsule with them, they are afraid of the corruption in their human parts and choose to die with the planet