oh boy oh boy oh boy it's my favorite time in quests
ie. "I genuinely think every option works and I don't want to give the GM anxiety by making them think that x option sucked but I like x option less than mine so time to take a sledgehammer and a scalpel and try to chisel out an explanation why"
So here's why.
There's something about the juxtaposition of Malfeas's themes and the direction imparted by the one liner that doesn't quite do it for me I think. Ravana is absolutely, like, he's absolutely defined by being a Dalit, even if he's alternated between trying to numb out everything that comes with it and spitefully putting pressure on it, like a rotten tooth, because the moment of clear pain feels better than the constant dull ache of being deemed-classified-and-treated as human garbage and, hey, if he can make someone else feel even worse with it? Gravy. Make the Fantasy Indian Fox News Anchor super fucking uncomfortable. Use it to rub the salt in. Use it to shame and slander and spite people who lose because, hey, he's playing by their rules isn't he? And yet here he is, on fucking top, and here they are, in the dirt.
It's more of...it's Ravana assuming the mantle of all Dalit that kinda- not jars me exactly, but I don't exactly like the taste of as I kinda swish it around my mouth. Not because I think it doesn't fit, but because I'm not super engaged by the momentum it imparts, if that makes sense? Targeting the systemic problems that the caste system supports and exacerbates, the hypocrisy of it all, trying to represent all Dalit across Za-Vant and its moons, all of them suffering and hurt and thrown away together? That's very much Indrajit's thing. That was the position he played. That was who he wanted to be. Ravana stepping into that isn't bad, exactly, even/especially since it's his own like, very Ravana-esque take on it all. But it doesn't really intrigue me in terms of the character. Because "dissolute fuckboi is forced into a position where he has to be less dissolute and less of a fuckboi and rise to meet the responsibilities" feels kind of like a dampener on the parts of Ravana that I like, those vices and appetites and the often-unspoken or unarticulated hunger for contact and connection and the way he somehow manages to drunkenly spin it all into something positive while fucking up but doing his best. Because "Ravana needs to be more like Indrajit" doesn't really grab me when Indrajit is, by and large, seen mostly as a reflection in terms of the people he's impacted and Ravana's got a super distinct style and tone. And because overall I'm less interested in Ravana-Malfeas, the Avatar of the Systemically Oppressed Here to Feed You Your Teeth, with that ego and viciousness and injured spite, and more in Metagaos, and the aspects of Ravana that he embodies and represents, if that makes sense?
The way he's always starving for more, dreaming of more. The way he subverts and flips disadvantages into leverage and has gotten really, really good at cheating the rigged game right back. The way he develops (despite himself) connections with others. And the way that the one-liner is based more around the idea of, like Scorp said:
"You keep treating me like a monster. Well here's the monster you made. What, aren't I everything you wanted? Aren't I
grand?"
Of leaping in, of taking this narrative of eternal victory Rama's created and twisting it until it cuts in the Monitor's hands. Of gleefully being not just everything they ever feared, but better than they themselves could be.
Doing that thing that he loves doing, taking someone's seeming advantage and then beating them to death with it.
