dilandau brainrot

comic of how i got here:

black and white comic starts with the author staring at a screen with voiceover text. panel one reads 'watch old 90s anime at recommendation of my friend'. panel two reads 'really enjoy evil little guy' and shows the author pointing at the screen with a grin, while the screen shows a shitty little doodle of Dilandau.

the voiceover continues 'evil little guy gets depth.' 'evil little guy gets insane fucked up backstory.' the author is depicted chewing on their desk.

'catch hyperfixation for fucked up little guy' the voiceover says, while the author recreates that meme of the guy on all fours chewing on something and shaking their head like a dog, but the thing they're chewing on is Dilandau.

author is pictured losing their mind while the voiceover reads 'fucked up little guy's sympathetic scenes hinge around his attachment to gaggle of background characters that barely have names.' 'they're the closest thing he has to positive relationships and he's profoundly lonely. its impossible to think about him without thinking about them but its difficult to think about them because they don't exist outside their influence on his arc; they're barely characters, more like symbols that further the show's themes about' the voiceover is abruptly cut off before i can go off the deep end.

the next panel shows the author smiling broadly with unbothered dot eyes and the voiceover says 'make them into OCs about it.' the next panel's voiceover says 'archeology on the old web reveals entire community that did the same thing.' the panel depicts the author trying to fit pieces of stone tablets together, surrounded by the crumbling ruins of a deviantart fan community.

the voiceover says 'study them, iterate, write, study yourself, write, buy figurine, make plushie, write, write, write,' and then continues, fading in and out of the background of a panel depicting the author writing on paper and eating the writing at the same time, surrounded by aforementioned plushies and figurine and also many pieces of paper.

one large panel depicting the author sitting at a desk in a hyperfixation hovel, surrounded by paper with writing on it. on the wall is a conspiracy board but its pictures of dilandau and the dragonslayers and indistinct notes. the author looks at the viewer as if interrupted from a trance. the voiceover says 'remember that the world outside of your mind exists, and you should probably post to tumblr.'

see my dragonslayer shrine for more of my bullshit about the dragonslayers.

Dilandau from Escaflowne took over my life for a solid two years or so. the brainrot is mostly passed now, but it left me with a LOT of writing.

the most structured of that writing is two fanfictions, 1 detailing the formation of the dragonslayers and establishing a lot of my headcanons for them, and the other post-canon, which is about Celena coping with all that's happened by taking up necromancy. you could sort of call it a fix-it fic I guess.

I've been hesitant to post this writing, both because of the hyperfixation trance it was written in, and because of the subject. Celena/Dilandau is very plural-coded, in a way that is both very genuine at times, (the portrayal of amnesia, the traumagenesis, etc) and extremely problematic. (classic good alter / bad alter situation, although the Dilandau side is treated with a fair degree of sympathy.)
I'm a singlet, so obviously I don't really have the expertise to talk about all that. ultimately I took this as an opportunity to use the motivation of my hyperfixation to do a lot of research into multiplicity, reading a lot of articles, (written by systems) reading the DSM, and following a lot of systems on social media to see what they have to say. I used this information to make complicated headcanons around Dilandau and did my best to write it as realistically and respectfully as possible in all of my writing, but I very well probably made mistakes and I'm not sure I want them on the internet.