>>55634707On a prose level I genuinely love Eons in Flux and want to spend more time studying it to try and "capture the magic."
To answer the question, I've been thinking more on Lan since my other writing is stalling out. Also kinda wanna add my hat to the Champion-level character discussion earlier. I've always associated him with extremely risky maneuvers and the more I capture the core belief of the character in my mind the more it makes sense.
He doesn't takes risks for the thrill (consciously) but rather from a silent feeling of desperation. For the 4 or so years he spent with the clan heirs he went from being at the top to witnessing their explosive growth as people and trainers. Which was cool! At first.
From the onset his relationship with them was rocky since he thought they were just a bunch of nepobabies that failed as nobility, but the more he spent time with them the more he grew a soft spot for them. The thing he doesn't realize is that he was also a catalyst for their growth, which leads to this sort of tragically ironic situation where he takes every risk imaginable to stay ahead of them (to help /protect them) and cares less and less for his own wellbeing which then they in turn notice and start to push themselves to further heights which leads to a bit of a vicious cycle. Furia as a setting putting a lot of pressure on all of them exacerbates this problem.
This eventually comes to ahead in the actual story, where this self-destructiveness severely damages their relationships and Lan starts trying to seize power beyond his means, which is actually just straight up what the villians have done historically/are doing presently.
After listening to this analysis on Batman recently, I kinda realize that Batman is to Bruce Wayne what being Champion is to Lan: this self-destructive yet also societally beneficial path that they have chosen to walk that they cannot back down from unless they were literally crippled into not being able to continue.
