more there to play with

"friend of minoth" really is an incredibly useful term, you got (nonexhaustively)
- bisexual
- hispanic/afro-latino
- or
- ambiguously brown
- random scars
- transmasc
- transmasc with ponytail
- ponytail
- horse girl
- cowboy boots wearer
- whiskey enjoyer
- probably not alcoholic but like hey if you want
- recovering catholic
- spiteful protestant
- beatnik type beat
- narcissistic abuse victim
- sarcasm
- daddy issues
- loves babies
- antisocial
- autisticsocial
- writer/poet/librettist
- theater kid
- history buff
- smells nice
- smells like dirt
- eats dirt
- gun

Minoth didn't know what to make of himself. He never had. Rare Blades were, well, rare, in the Praetorium - or, at least, that was what he had been led (by circumstance, if not necessarily by leadership) to believe. Instead, so many Common Blades had made up the populace of his holy environs, until the Aegis was almost ready to make his entrance, and the Auteur made his exit.

Torna's traveling party of 3564 flourished a veritable cornucopia of oddness, from a mercenary's extraordinarily special boon companions to an emperor's beyond-compare imperial treasures. Jin was steely, yet warm. Haze was bubbly, yet cautious. Brighid was regal, yet rude. Aegaeon was agile, yet awkward.

Mythra...Minoth couldn't begin to describe Mythra. She was a world unto herself, chaotic and colossified, emblematic of all the challenges facing their Alrest in one pop-rocket package.

Standing partner to her left Minoth feeling sure that he was no more than a curiosity, compelling to the likes of Addam and none with any greater discernment. After all, Amalthus had made no overtures of coming to find him. He must just have been...normal. Or, well, before he became a failure. Apparently he hadn't become a very interesting one.

What were his defining traits? What could one come to expect, from a gaucho like him?

Well, of course, he had an eye for the gents as well as for the ladies, and occasionally even found some success with it. His battle attributes carried a certain syllabic punch that flowed musically, romantically, or just plain ambiguously.

Speaking of ambiguity, the various scars that dotted and lined his chest and shoulders bore only passing resemblance to the gash on his face. There was intrigue and sex appeal, and then there was skin picking and careless experimentation with the tip of a scalpel, to see which wounds would and wouldn't heal, where an intravenous injection would or wouldn't take.

The top surgery scars, by contrast, were neat, tidy, nearly invisible. Minoth betrayed them with his ponytail, dashing ponytail; with his height and bombastic voice. This was not the voice of a girl, slight and doe-eyed, that tended to a horse, or even to an Armu. But Minoth did love tending to any Armu that presented themselves for the wrangling. He always wore his favorite boots, tread thickness a characteristic secondary to the insignia emblazoned on the uppers and heels as would often peek out from beneath the dramatic flares of his pants - chaps, applied one leg at a time to complement the central leotard-like component.

Within the pockets of these chaps, he usually kept a flask, for its aesthetic and stimulatory appeal. He'd never harbored an addiction, nor anything further than a slight identifiable predilection for the stuff, but the spirit of drinking alone, or in strange places, for lack of better occupation, still usually stuck.

Stuck. What had stuck? His relentless self-criticism, gnawing shame and guilt, taught to him by Amalthus. In response, a sort of spite toward the very idea of self-persecution; a thread of protestation against those who would shout down enjoyment (not that he was ever able to fully liberate himself, of course). At times, Minoth nearly felt like a beatnik, peddling prophecies of freer and freer love, as exemplified by his own freedom of choice in Driver.

Minoth still struggled to exempt himself from the gravity Amalthus had drawn about himself - the gravity that had, in some sense, drawn Malos in. Though Malos and Minoth shared a devilish sarcasm, carrying over from their issues with a shared progenital figure, Malos hated life, while Minoth adored babies. He could come off as somewhat antisocial, and then turn around and demonstrate a capacity for gregariousness that flew full in the face of scripted social norms.

With a love for the written arts, Minoth could style himself an author, a poet, a librettist, a student of history, a patron of the theater... He buried himself in collections of paper, every most archaic form of the stuff derived from every doctrine and discipline. He knew not how to properly consider money vis-à-vis the things it might be most appropriately used for.

And, running alongside that aristocratic air, there came Minoth's personal presentation. Some, from past paramours to current comrades, had told him he smelled nice. It was only natural, considering that he wore cologne (perfume, scent, what have you). Others opined that he smelled like dirt. Knowing that he could be dared (or not) to eat bugs, some, in conjunction, speculated that he also ate the dirt.

Unrelated to all of that, Minoth had a gun. Not one, but two. And he knew how to use them.

i have no idea exactly when i made that/those/these post(s). deleted it on account of no notes (which is to say, that's why and how i let myself make it disappear). we could say summer of 2022 and that will just have to be fine