what do you make of ozma’s motivations given that he initially rejects the god of light’s offer and only takes it once he knows it’s the only way he can see salem again, but then once they’re actually reunited he places the mission from the god of light above being with her? did he aways have that much faith? is it just that salem’s faith was broken so completely that she’s the only one who can see the gods clearly?
ozma's like. fundamental dilemma in TLF is whether or not to trust salem. as much as he dearly wants to be with her… "salem lives, but the woman you hold dear in your memories is gone. heed this warning: where you seek comfort, you will only find pain."
think about what must have run through his mind when he heard the god of light say that to him. he's just learnt that the god of darkness did something so bad that all of humankind was wiped out, and that the brothers have chosen to depart. but light also tells him that humanity will return, diminished, and that he wants to send ozma back into the world to prepare for a day of judgment. "if your kind is unchanged, if you demand our blessings while still fighting among yourselves, then man will be found irredeemable and your world will be wiped from existence."
light doesn't say it in so many words, but the implication that Humans Fucked Up is crystal clear. if your kind is unchanged, you will be found irredeemable and destroyed.
then he tells ozma that salem is still alive, but unrecognizable as the woman he once loved, and that she will hurt him if he seeks her out.
what light's implying here in essence is that salem provoked the god of darkness, causing the "tragedy" that led to the brothers' departure. (and that is what happened, as far as he's concerned.) ozma picks up on that implication, but what he hears is "the woman you love is damned, but there is still a chance for redemption."
after all, why else would the god of light ask him to do this? at this point ozma has no reason to doubt what light tells him, and light presents himself as a benevolent authority hopeful that humanity can redeem itself.
"i'll do it!"—he wants to save her.
notably, ozma does in fact heed the warning for quite some time; he travels for years, hearing whispers of a dangerous witch wherever he goes, before deciding he "need[s] to see what she had become."
but then he sees her again, and… she's herself. physically she has changed, sure, but he recognizes her; she recognizes him. she still loves him. she's overjoyed to see him again—she even still remembers what he said to her on the day they met, and echoes it back to him with tears in her eyes.
so like ???
is it over? has whatever curse or madness befell her broken now they’re together again? or… was the god of light wrong…?
she tells him her story, but there are pieces missing. the gods are to blame for ending the world, she says. it is impossible to miss how much she hates the brothers.
what did she do?
"though time passed and all seemed well, ozma's conversation with the god of light still lingered in his mind. he had found happiness, but humanity seemed more divided than ever before." <- he begins to worry that maybe it's not that salem will hurt him; maybe by choosing to stay with her now, he's jeopardizing the chance for redemption.
but he isn't willing to leave her because, of course, he wants to save her. so he cautiously tests the waters by commenting on how divided humanity is.
and her answer seems really promising! "are you surprised? this world is quite literally godless. these humans have no one to guide them. perhaps that's all they need."
that… actually sounds very much like she thinks the brothers' absence is the source of the strife and suffering, just as the god of light told him it would be. and it catches ozma off guard, because he didn't expect that from her. so he asks what she means.
"we could become the gods of this world; our powers surpass all others. our souls transcend death. we could mold these lands into whatever we want…" <- okay, that's more in line with what he might have expected based on her opinion of the brothers, and it's not great. but then she warms to the idea:
"what you want! create the paradise—" watch how ozma's face changes as she says this. his expression softens. he smiles. he's hearing that—blasphemy notwithstanding—salem really wants to support him in this. that's the part she's enthused about. what you want.
and then she finishes the thought: "–the old gods could not."
it isn't just that she hates the brothers; salem envisions a paradise without them. she doesn’t think this world is damned at all; as far as she's concerned, the brothers' absence is a cause for hope.
(and what does that mean for her?)
this:
is not a "you convinced me" face. this is an "i can fix her" face.
the problem of course is that he can't. salem hates the brothers because when she prayed to them they forced her to watch her lover burn to death in her arms twice over and then sentenced her to eternal suffering to punish her for lashing out. she hates them because she is the sole survivor of their genocide. no matter how long ozma goes along with her, no matter how long he lets her believe that this is what he wants, he's never going to be able to coax her out of that hatred.
which doesn't stop him from trying.
he's able to keep the deception going as long as they're building a following, and establishing a prosperous new kingdom, and having children together. but he told her he wanted to unite the world—end all division and bring everyone together under one creed. salem is, er, right to point out that the only way to do that is by conquest.
and that's the point where ozma has to admit to his ulterior motives, because salem was not kidding when she said she would do this for him. so he pumps the brakes and tells her everything, still hoping to somehow do the impossible and save her.
"don't you see? none of that matters anymore! why spend our lives trying to redeem these humans when we could replace them with what they could never be?"
[obligatory note: i think she means "replace the gods" here, as a reiteration of her extremely longstanding ambition of doing exactly that; the goal of her rebellion was for humans to "destroy their old masters" and "claim the powers of their creators for themselves," she tells ozma "we could be the gods of this world" and that they can "create the paradise the old gods could not" like this has always been what she's about.]
cue ozma:
he really does think about it.
i think this is the point where he faced the reality that he had to choose between joining salem in rebellion or sacrificing her for the world's sake. and… he wants to take her hand, he wants to stay with her, but the consequence of hiding this from her for so long is he's never actually thought about her utter rejection of the gods in a substantive way; he's warped their whole relationship through the lens of that hatred being a problem he needs to solve. it's not that he had faith in the god of light so much as it is he never had faith in her.
if it were ten or fifteen years ago and she was asking him to forget the mandate and stay with her in their cottage, it would still be frightening to take the hand she offered him, to trust that she is right to blame the gods and say these humans do not need redemption.
but now? when he's sunk so much time inching down the road to war in the name of saving her from those ideas, and he has to not only trust that she's right about the brothers but also that she'll be willing to turn away from the tyrannical path they've walked down together? he's done nothing but play along all these years in the ever-fainter hope that one day she'll be more amenable to the mandate; he has no idea how she'll react if he pushes back, and he thinks of her as damned.
so… he can't, in the end. when she confronts him with the choice he falls down the path of least resistance to conclude that he can't save her and that he'll bring the world to ruin if he keeps trying. so he leaves.
and then he's locked into that choice because they murdered each other and killed their kids and destroyed their kingdom about it and even if he could admit the desire to himself how can he possibly make amends for doing that to her? any apology or gesture of reconciliation he made, she has no reason to trust and every reason to see another attempt to deceive her again. the mandate is really all he has left, so he clings to it even as he gradually distorts it more and more into this existential struggle between himself and her.
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@cupcakeslushie 's Sep!au is super cool!!! And I literally adore Three with all my soul he is so freaking amazing!!! So what did I do?
Comic.
(Words underneath each panel, I gen forgot my handwriting is awful, apologies!)
"Donnie, you have to stop hanging out with the purple dragons."
"Why? We're frien-"
"No, you're not! They're using you!"
"What would they have to use?! Come on, April!"
"You're searching for something that isn't even there just to get mad at me!"
"No, *you* come on!"
"I care about you, Dee. I don't want to see you get hurt."
"No, you only pretend to care cause one tries to!"
"Look, I get it. You hate me, and... I hate you too. We don't have to be anything more than that."
---
I had to cut it down a bit to make sure it was only ten panels but I hope you still like it!!! I tried to keep it as true to the characters as possible. I really wanted to include Three's hallucinations in there somewhere but with the limited amount of panels I didn't get the chance. I hope to draw something related to that in the future!
I dont remember if this has been stated or if this was a hc but I honestly feel like even though Three is grateful to be apart of a family, given his faint memories of Draxum actually giving a crap about him prior to being affected with emperium, he'd be afraid that they don't actually care and they're going to rip it all away from him. Also I remember it being said that Three kinda tests the boundaries of their patience to see if that's going to happen? So that plus the purple dragons ask kinda culminated in this! Along with the idea that part of the reason Donnie doesn't get along with April is because since she argues back, she must hate him, so if she hates him then why shouldn't he hate her back? He doesn't see that she's trying to have a (platonic) relationship with him. Also I feel like he totally distances himself from her so what happened to Tim doesn't happen to her cause he knows his brothers care about her and they're already doing enough for him, he can't be even more of a burden to them. (This is all hcs ofc!!)
Also completely unrelated but hc that Three had paint all over his hand and touched the back of his mask but didn't realise and had that stain on there for months until somebody pointed it out to him-
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