Hello! I hope I'm not being too awkward in dropping out of nowhere to say this, but I'm the author of TDK and I was really impressed by your essay on Djoseras after someone pointed me to it - I found your analysis genuinely insightful, and I wrote the bastard. Encountering that sort of response is a rare pleasure for any writer, especially one writing about metal skeletons with catastrophic mental health issues, so I wanted to say thank you :)

First of all, Nate, thank you for your necron literature. Ever since I read The Twice-Dead King, it's been sing me, O Goddess, of the anger of Oltyx in my head everyday - tell me about the Nobody-of-Many-Ways (outis polutropos), that poor many-minded boy whose first and foremost sin was being bad at living in bad faith. He speaks to a lot of us, or what I think a lot of us would admit to being if life wasn't frightening. Said metal skeletons with catastrophic mental health issues are some of the most existentially fascinating characters I've read in a while, and I'm grateful for the pleasure of reading them.

And that's Oltyx. For Djoseras - I find him so compelling because bad faith is his total, only faith, to the extent he'd rather die than see it removed and freely admits this is the case. Seeing him unveiled page by page alongside Oltyx, not as an arrogant rival-tyrant but a man killed by glory long since dead and rotted, whose nobility is never compromised for the ugly truth, that was an experience. I like him very much. I was sad about the choices Djoseras never had, frustrated by the choices he had but refused to take, and I pitied him for his loneliness and his inability to go on. He's a wonderful character. Thank you, truly.