I do find it interesting that Best seems to rank “meaningful” as more important than “glorious,” even though I doubt that he and everyone else in the comic would agree on what qualifies as “meaningful.”
I think it’s been clearly established that Best expected he was going to “save the world”. That’s what the prophecy told him (even though it was actually talking about somebody else).
This is both absolutely glorious and absolutely meaningful.
All of his adventures have been intended as a prelude to that one, supreme adventure that basically gives his life meaning. We saw him laying amidst the sleeping aftermath of a massive orgy following one of his successful rounds of heroic questing, and he’s laying awake in the night asking himself, “when am I going to save the world?”
It’s the entire focus, singular purpose, and only meaningful thing in his life.
Being told he won’t have that…
Well, we’ve seen he has a horribly low self esteem under all that showmanship. Deflating his dreams of glory and meaningful purpose leaves him feeling worthless and pointless.
It’s not too hard to understand why he tends to lash out irrationally at those moments. It’s not justified behavior, but it’s relatable.
But here’s what you’re forgetting. Best doesn’t JUST want to “save the world”, he wants to be the one who saves the world and is catapulted onto the pedestal of ‘GREATEST PERSON EVER’ because everyone KNOWS he saved the world. That’s ALL he really wants: fame, glory, status, women, and most importantly MANY admirers who make him pseudo immortal by singing his praises after his death.
He’s NEVER cared about whether he actually does genuine good for the world or saved others. That’s what makes him a glory seeking selfish asshole, NOT a hero.
Despite his personality I actually think you’re wrong. Not about being selfish, but about what he wants. We’ve seen him after a massive orgy, he has an axe that could probably sell for a fortune or three, he had to have status if he was in, nonetheless the focus of, an orgy and he could and has attained all of these without saving the world. However it all felt empty.
I believe that at one point he did want to save the world for those things and realized that they were hallow. He started to thirst for more. For meaning in his life. He doesn’t want to save the world because it’s the right thing to do, but he will save the world willingly, face any danger to do so, and it is the right thing to do. He just wants to be remembered for it. To be more then what he was. For his life to have meaning.
I actually disagree. I think Best has cared about whether he does genuine good or saved others, but I think that he’s lost sight of that in his all-consuming quest for more and more glory. I think the saddest thing about Best is that he doesn’t recognize his smaller heroic deeds as being important save for the recognition they bring him; nor has he ever thought that he might be saving the world one small step at a time. One of my biggest frustrations with Best 2.0 is that WAV did seem to recognize these things, but Best has completely turned his back on that revelation.
So yeah, part of why I made my original post is because we all hate Best for wanting to be kowtowed to as the GREATEST PERSON EVER, but at the same time I like this acknowledgement that that’s not all he wants, actually not even the most important thing he wants. And I really miss WAV.
(Incidentally, when WAV first appeared I thought he, not Best, was the one who would actually save the world; because he was immune to Arkerran scrying and therefore could defeat Brother Tom’s precognition.)
I think that’s a goof on the artist’s part. Mix-ups with ‘let alone’ and ‘much less’ are common; in both cases, you’re supposed to put the easier or more likely thing first, i.e. ‘I get out of breath walking to the store, let alone/much less running a marathon.’
Enter. Open disk backup software. Make recovery disk from this point. Restart computer when prompted. Burn previous recovery disk (with lighter fluid).
Eh… I don’t know about the “as quick as possible” part. He wants to save the world, but he wants to be known for it, and any bard (or whatever) knows that a good portion of a legendary hero’s story is the backstory… :P
*walking by his unmarked grave* Hmm, I coulda sworn I vaguely remembered the person buried here… some kinda selfish ill-tempered asshole who pretended to be a hero cause of some prophecy… um, started with a B I think…OH! I remember, this is BETH’s grave. Man what a crazy bitch that lame bard Beth was…
Byron’s face in the last panel… Does he feel empathy for Best, if only a little? It doesn’t look like an unqualified “Man, that guy’s an irredeemable asshole” expression.
Since Byron is meant to be a byronic hero, he may know a thing or two about fate, glory and meaningless death – about existential angst, for short.
Also, recently, he died while slaughtering his comrades-in-arms. He knows about having a meaningful life and dying stupidly. Once in afterlife, to be forgotten was something he was wishing for.
So yes, empathy is well possible.
Or to put it another way, Byron is a decent human being who cares about others, even ultimate jerkasses.
“Byronic hero”… You’ve ruined Byron for me. From now on, all of Byron’s fight scenes will be in slow motion, with the Six Million Dollar Man sound effect. Especially when he’s berserker killing only the enemy.
This is where Byron follows Payet, and sits him down and tells him an emotionally laden history of his own town, in an attempt to get him on board with the rest of the party. A real brotherly bonding type of moment. At least that’s where this type of story would suggest it would go next. But this story has been fantastic at defying expectations and turning them upside down. I eagerly await the upcoming updates.
Day-am! Payet is the best at vanity. How can you even start to be disappointed with a life that is “glorious and meaningful.” The only way it would even start to suck is if the afterlife was help and you were regularly haunted by the memories. Dude only seems to care about something he wouldn’t even be around to appreciate and has no appreciation of what he is around to experience. Wonder if that is why his player keeps bringing him back?
I’ve always taken it as a logical problem in his mind. If nobody remembers him, it must mean that he never got the chance to have a glorious and meaningful life. For if it really had been glorious and meaningful, it would have touched people’s lives, and they would perforce remember him.
Showing him a forgotten grave says to him his life had no meaning or glory, no matter what he wants to believe while he’s alive.
This is why you buy the EMPEROR GLORY KING’S BOUNTY LIMITED EDITION with t-shirt Kickstarter package.
They let you name an NPC, build you a statue, and engrave your character backstory into fashionable items.
But I did your Viking mentality Best, I really do.
I hate Best, but I’m actually starting to feel a little sorry for him. He’s an ass about it constantly, but what he wishes (to be remembered after death) seems like a really… reasonable and common desire.
What if… his grave is lonely and it’s because Best somehow dies in the game and never makes it out of the game world? We’ve seen the peacemakers resurrected time and again, and Bandit, too. (?) Not many seem to stay dead in the game world.
If Best dies here and in the end by some freak accident revolving around getting him out of the tubes, everyone else makes it out safely back to sepia world, then I guess it would make sense that his grave site is lonely, but at the same time, if it was kept or put in the game for the rest of eternity, (assuming the game still runs afterward) it’s not anymore forgotten, is it? What if it’s made into a grand landmarker or quest point in the game afterwards? Certainly then he isn’t forgotten, even if only by players of the game. :(
Interesting theory, especially considering your extreme dislike for Best is now being challenged by his current situation. That’s a testament to the writing in the comic, and a credit to you for having sympathy where maybe none is due.
Personally, I don’t have a strong reaction to Best one way or the other, but I enjoy reading some of the commentary on him, specifically your post and The Gorram Batguy’s posts above.
Best saves the world, and becomes famous and loved. Then, his player dies in his tube. Turns out, all records pertaining to Best and his saving the world were stored in his player’s brain. Therefore, Best is effectively retconned out of the game.
Carol buries the body in a shallow, lonely, unmarked grave.
—–
“Remember that time the four of us saved the world? We had the best time!”
“Yeah, We did our best fighting, then. But, I have this weird feeling that it should’ve been the five of us.”
“Well, that must be because Bandit felt it best that she leave us, before that.”
“Maybe? I dunno. I’d best not worry about it too much.”
“Why are we all doing our best to use the word ‘Best’?”
“Pay attention, Frigg! We’re sharing our best memories about our best victory.”
“You know I don’t pay the best attention, Syr’Nj! Go find us another party member who’ll pay it best.”
Just before this, Best yells, “We’re all just pawns in some sadistic god’s twisted game!” That’s rhetoric at the moment, I think… but he’s actually right. If he ever realizes that it is literally true…
He’s seen for himself that there are multiple worlds. So has Byron. So has Gravedust. I think we’re getting near to a point where the characters become aware that in Sepia World, this really IS a game in which their players have been trapped.
Suppose he dies in the process of fighting from within the game to shut it down and escape? Suppose he is the one who does the key thing that makes it possible! That’s a great destiny, all right. Yet his game-world grave would be lonely… because there would be no player characters to visit it. Forgotten? Well, yes, maybe that too. Maybe the escape will involve memory erasures, so that in Sepia World, when the story ends, the players can no longer remember what he did.
That’s a very astute theory! Based on your summary, I think you might be onto something, but the writers have always done a good job surprising me, so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next, as always.
Reality: vast majority of people are forgotten after they die, maybe not immediately – although only their friends and family remember them, but it won’t be too long before even that fades in the face of current events. Within a couple generations, most of us are all but forgotten entirely.
And so what? How does this affect your life? It doesn’t, because you’re *DEAD*.
If you do something significant you may be remembered (although probably not accurately), but if the only reason you do something is for a ‘legacy’, then you’re doing it for the wrong reason.
Best is an arrogant ass. He wants to be remembered for being, something, but that’s *all* he cares about, his legacy. Him. People who only care about themselves are lucky if they are forgotten, because usually the alternative is to be remembered as the tremendous jerk they were.
“You remember Payet Best?”
“Oh yeah, gods damn but that guy was a butt head.”
“Yeah, total asshole.”
Everyone is forgotten after they die, eventually. The best you can hope for is that your name gets attached to a legend that vaguely resembles an exaggerated and distorted account of something you did.
“It’s actually 42. But, I predicted that if I told you that, you’d stab Best with enough sleeping potions to send him into a medically induced coma. So, was I right about that, Syr’Nj? … Syr’Nj?”
On one hand, I understand how for some Best can be antipathetical, his behaviour is less than pleasant. On the other…
Let’s look at things from his perspective. He knows for ceirtan that he is destined for mostly unspecified ‘greatness’. He know that his role in this world is to save it from some grave danger. He knows it for a long time, and he lives in the shadow of this destiny all this time. But pay attention to his first speech bubble in 3rd panel – yes, he wants glory. But more than that, he wanted meaning. What he desired most is to ‘live’, not just exist. He wanted to be someone, and he seems to be aware that ultimately what’s left of you is the impact of your actions made through life. For all his life he was, well, teased. Teased with promise of exactly what he wanted. A life of glory. A meaningdull life. A life that will be remembered, and will be remembered well.
And then he gets metaphorical spit in face. He sees that what awaits him is sacrifice and being forgotten, and most likely, he also saw that his sacrifice would bring no diffrence. To learn that all you hoped and belived in is a lie can break a man. He learned that the utimate goal, the one thing that he worked for all his life, is a lie.
For me, his actions are understandable. I’d be pissed at world too, in his position.
I feel bad for best. he’s the most hated character and yes he is an intolerable ass, but really if you found out you died alone and forgotten wouldn’t you be a little bit bitter and angry
“Never having existed at all”? Wait.
I think I finally get it now; if this is foreshadowing… I think with the corruptor beast might be Best’s final fight. Like Rachel, to Blizzard, it was as if she had never existed.
And it still plays into my theory above from a year ago: Best may sacrifice himself and die inside the game while everyone else gets out, that meaning his grave is only lonely because everyone else gets out safely. That… would be a great destiny after all, I think. Well. Maybe not great, but very noble. And unforgettable.
And I’m betting his attitude all this time was needed to make it happen, and that’s why the basin chose to show him the grave part instead of the heroic deeds part leading up to it. That he is able to reform will allow his endgame to happen; if he only saw the great heroic deeds, he likely would let it go to his head and ego even more, preventing any of those deeds from being truly heroic and paradoxing himself out of his fate.
Is that something called a “temporal causality loop”? In that a thing must happen for another thing to happen later, and that “another” is the only reason the first thing happens? Or is it self-fulfilling prophecy?
A shave, a haircut, and a stiff drink. Not necessarily in that order, or in a sequential fashion.
And he should put on a damn shirt and coat already; what would his mother say.
“Again…?”
No shirt, no shoes, no service.
First rule of Best club is…
Also a swift kick in the gut, and a slap upside the head too.
A shave, a haircut and a stiff drink. And maybe a shirt.
So, Best, you’re all about the glory of your legacy, and nothing else?
What are ya, a lame duck president/congressman/governor?
I do find it interesting that Best seems to rank “meaningful” as more important than “glorious,” even though I doubt that he and everyone else in the comic would agree on what qualifies as “meaningful.”
I think it’s been clearly established that Best expected he was going to “save the world”. That’s what the prophecy told him (even though it was actually talking about somebody else).
This is both absolutely glorious and absolutely meaningful.
All of his adventures have been intended as a prelude to that one, supreme adventure that basically gives his life meaning. We saw him laying amidst the sleeping aftermath of a massive orgy following one of his successful rounds of heroic questing, and he’s laying awake in the night asking himself, “when am I going to save the world?”
It’s the entire focus, singular purpose, and only meaningful thing in his life.
Being told he won’t have that…
Well, we’ve seen he has a horribly low self esteem under all that showmanship. Deflating his dreams of glory and meaningful purpose leaves him feeling worthless and pointless.
It’s not too hard to understand why he tends to lash out irrationally at those moments. It’s not justified behavior, but it’s relatable.
Thank you.
But here’s what you’re forgetting. Best doesn’t JUST want to “save the world”, he wants to be the one who saves the world and is catapulted onto the pedestal of ‘GREATEST PERSON EVER’ because everyone KNOWS he saved the world. That’s ALL he really wants: fame, glory, status, women, and most importantly MANY admirers who make him pseudo immortal by singing his praises after his death.
He’s NEVER cared about whether he actually does genuine good for the world or saved others. That’s what makes him a glory seeking selfish asshole, NOT a hero.
Despite his personality I actually think you’re wrong. Not about being selfish, but about what he wants. We’ve seen him after a massive orgy, he has an axe that could probably sell for a fortune or three, he had to have status if he was in, nonetheless the focus of, an orgy and he could and has attained all of these without saving the world. However it all felt empty.
I believe that at one point he did want to save the world for those things and realized that they were hallow. He started to thirst for more. For meaning in his life. He doesn’t want to save the world because it’s the right thing to do, but he will save the world willingly, face any danger to do so, and it is the right thing to do. He just wants to be remembered for it. To be more then what he was. For his life to have meaning.
I actually disagree. I think Best has cared about whether he does genuine good or saved others, but I think that he’s lost sight of that in his all-consuming quest for more and more glory. I think the saddest thing about Best is that he doesn’t recognize his smaller heroic deeds as being important save for the recognition they bring him; nor has he ever thought that he might be saving the world one small step at a time. One of my biggest frustrations with Best 2.0 is that WAV did seem to recognize these things, but Best has completely turned his back on that revelation.
So yeah, part of why I made my original post is because we all hate Best for wanting to be kowtowed to as the GREATEST PERSON EVER, but at the same time I like this acknowledgement that that’s not all he wants, actually not even the most important thing he wants. And I really miss WAV.
(Incidentally, when WAV first appeared I thought he, not Best, was the one who would actually save the world; because he was immune to Arkerran scrying and therefore could defeat Brother Tom’s precognition.)
I think that’s a goof on the artist’s part. Mix-ups with ‘let alone’ and ‘much less’ are common; in both cases, you’re supposed to put the easier or more likely thing first, i.e. ‘I get out of breath walking to the store, let alone/much less running a marathon.’
If there is a goof to be had, it is not on the artist’s part.
Meanwhile, if there’s a Goof to be had, it’s on the part of a Disney artist.
Oh please, could you never have existed at all? That would be so nice.
Overwrite file Best.exe with Better.wav?
Enter. Open disk backup software. Make recovery disk from this point. Restart computer when prompted. Burn previous recovery disk (with lighter fluid).
Seconded
What he really needs is a bullet behind the ear.
Best is like America, wanting to save the world.
That gives our politicians too much credit.
Not really, Best doesn’t care about saving ANYONE else; he just wants to become a famous legendary hero as quick as possible and reap the rewards.
Eh… I don’t know about the “as quick as possible” part. He wants to save the world, but he wants to be known for it, and any bard (or whatever) knows that a good portion of a legendary hero’s story is the backstory… :P
I know of a certain presidential candidate who could pull the trigger in broad day light and totally get away with it!
Appropriate gravatar.
Lets test that theory *tosses Best off a Cliff*
*walking by his unmarked grave* Hmm, I coulda sworn I vaguely remembered the person buried here… some kinda selfish ill-tempered asshole who pretended to be a hero cause of some prophecy… um, started with a B I think…OH! I remember, this is BETH’s grave. Man what a crazy bitch that lame bard Beth was…
Ooooof course the scene changed. Sometimes I hate writers :P
*starts chanting* bring back Frigg, bring back Frigg!
They do it to harvest your delicious tears!
Byron’s face in the last panel… Does he feel empathy for Best, if only a little? It doesn’t look like an unqualified “Man, that guy’s an irredeemable asshole” expression.
Since Byron is meant to be a byronic hero, he may know a thing or two about fate, glory and meaningless death – about existential angst, for short.
Also, recently, he died while slaughtering his comrades-in-arms. He knows about having a meaningful life and dying stupidly. Once in afterlife, to be forgotten was something he was wishing for.
So yes, empathy is well possible.
Or to put it another way, Byron is a decent human being who cares about others, even ultimate jerkasses.
I’m betting on the second one.
“Byronic hero”… You’ve ruined Byron for me. From now on, all of Byron’s fight scenes will be in slow motion, with the Six Million Dollar Man sound effect. Especially when he’s berserker killing only the enemy.
This is where Byron follows Payet, and sits him down and tells him an emotionally laden history of his own town, in an attempt to get him on board with the rest of the party. A real brotherly bonding type of moment. At least that’s where this type of story would suggest it would go next. But this story has been fantastic at defying expectations and turning them upside down. I eagerly await the upcoming updates.
It really says a lot about Byron that he’s probably going to still try to reach out to Best and help him sort out his issues.
Day-am! Payet is the best at vanity. How can you even start to be disappointed with a life that is “glorious and meaningful.” The only way it would even start to suck is if the afterlife was help and you were regularly haunted by the memories. Dude only seems to care about something he wouldn’t even be around to appreciate and has no appreciation of what he is around to experience. Wonder if that is why his player keeps bringing him back?
I’ve always taken it as a logical problem in his mind. If nobody remembers him, it must mean that he never got the chance to have a glorious and meaningful life. For if it really had been glorious and meaningful, it would have touched people’s lives, and they would perforce remember him.
Showing him a forgotten grave says to him his life had no meaning or glory, no matter what he wants to believe while he’s alive.
I miss Wav. It’s hard to forget him.
ummm… who’s Best anyways… he sounds like an asshole.
And that is how he shall be remembered. He should be glad he is to be forgotten.
Best might need a stiff something else ifyaknowammasayin.
Hyes.
Yes, I know what you are saying. You don’t need to keep asking.
Can we just get him to his lonely, forgotten grave already and be done with it? No point mucking around.
This.
Best needs Frigg to clean his pipes…
This is why you buy the EMPEROR GLORY KING’S BOUNTY LIMITED EDITION with t-shirt Kickstarter package.
They let you name an NPC, build you a statue, and engrave your character backstory into fashionable items.
But I did your Viking mentality Best, I really do.
Best better tell that to Rachel, then.
Oh, wait.
I hate Best, but I’m actually starting to feel a little sorry for him. He’s an ass about it constantly, but what he wishes (to be remembered after death) seems like a really… reasonable and common desire.
What if… his grave is lonely and it’s because Best somehow dies in the game and never makes it out of the game world? We’ve seen the peacemakers resurrected time and again, and Bandit, too. (?) Not many seem to stay dead in the game world.
If Best dies here and in the end by some freak accident revolving around getting him out of the tubes, everyone else makes it out safely back to sepia world, then I guess it would make sense that his grave site is lonely, but at the same time, if it was kept or put in the game for the rest of eternity, (assuming the game still runs afterward) it’s not anymore forgotten, is it? What if it’s made into a grand landmarker or quest point in the game afterwards? Certainly then he isn’t forgotten, even if only by players of the game. :(
Interesting theory, especially considering your extreme dislike for Best is now being challenged by his current situation. That’s a testament to the writing in the comic, and a credit to you for having sympathy where maybe none is due.
Personally, I don’t have a strong reaction to Best one way or the other, but I enjoy reading some of the commentary on him, specifically your post and The Gorram Batguy’s posts above.
Looking forward to seeing how this develops!
Best saves the world, and becomes famous and loved. Then, his player dies in his tube. Turns out, all records pertaining to Best and his saving the world were stored in his player’s brain. Therefore, Best is effectively retconned out of the game.
Carol buries the body in a shallow, lonely, unmarked grave.
—–
“Remember that time the four of us saved the world? We had the best time!”
“Yeah, We did our best fighting, then. But, I have this weird feeling that it should’ve been the five of us.”
“Well, that must be because Bandit felt it best that she leave us, before that.”
“Maybe? I dunno. I’d best not worry about it too much.”
“Why are we all doing our best to use the word ‘Best’?”
“Pay attention, Frigg! We’re sharing our best memories about our best victory.”
“You know I don’t pay the best attention, Syr’Nj! Go find us another party member who’ll pay it best.”
Just before this, Best yells, “We’re all just pawns in some sadistic god’s twisted game!” That’s rhetoric at the moment, I think… but he’s actually right. If he ever realizes that it is literally true…
He’s seen for himself that there are multiple worlds. So has Byron. So has Gravedust. I think we’re getting near to a point where the characters become aware that in Sepia World, this really IS a game in which their players have been trapped.
Suppose he dies in the process of fighting from within the game to shut it down and escape? Suppose he is the one who does the key thing that makes it possible! That’s a great destiny, all right. Yet his game-world grave would be lonely… because there would be no player characters to visit it. Forgotten? Well, yes, maybe that too. Maybe the escape will involve memory erasures, so that in Sepia World, when the story ends, the players can no longer remember what he did.
That’s a very astute theory! Based on your summary, I think you might be onto something, but the writers have always done a good job surprising me, so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next, as always.
They do an especially good job at not doing things discussed in the comments… Just sayin’.
Ego, the name is Best. A legend in his own mind.
Reality: vast majority of people are forgotten after they die, maybe not immediately – although only their friends and family remember them, but it won’t be too long before even that fades in the face of current events. Within a couple generations, most of us are all but forgotten entirely.
And so what? How does this affect your life? It doesn’t, because you’re *DEAD*.
If you do something significant you may be remembered (although probably not accurately), but if the only reason you do something is for a ‘legacy’, then you’re doing it for the wrong reason.
Best is an arrogant ass. He wants to be remembered for being, something, but that’s *all* he cares about, his legacy. Him. People who only care about themselves are lucky if they are forgotten, because usually the alternative is to be remembered as the tremendous jerk they were.
“You remember Payet Best?”
“Oh yeah, gods damn but that guy was a butt head.”
“Yeah, total asshole.”
Everyone is forgotten after they die, eventually. The best you can hope for is that your name gets attached to a legend that vaguely resembles an exaggerated and distorted account of something you did.
9 or 10? Which is it? You’re the oracle Weo!
Both! (The tenth one technically doesn’t exist, shhh….) :P
“It’s actually 42. But, I predicted that if I told you that, you’d stab Best with enough sleeping potions to send him into a medically induced coma. So, was I right about that, Syr’Nj? … Syr’Nj?”
From a distance: “Ow! What the heck, Syr-” *thud*
Weo: “Dang it!”
Next comic, everyone’s eating soup and amazed to find that it’s gotten cold. Again, it is the prophecy!
I actually agree with Best.
But I don’t agree that one has to be a dick about it. :-/
WAAAAAH! SOMEBODY CALL THE WAAAAAAAAHMBULANCE!
On one hand, I understand how for some Best can be antipathetical, his behaviour is less than pleasant. On the other…
Let’s look at things from his perspective. He knows for ceirtan that he is destined for mostly unspecified ‘greatness’. He know that his role in this world is to save it from some grave danger. He knows it for a long time, and he lives in the shadow of this destiny all this time. But pay attention to his first speech bubble in 3rd panel – yes, he wants glory. But more than that, he wanted meaning. What he desired most is to ‘live’, not just exist. He wanted to be someone, and he seems to be aware that ultimately what’s left of you is the impact of your actions made through life. For all his life he was, well, teased. Teased with promise of exactly what he wanted. A life of glory. A meaningdull life. A life that will be remembered, and will be remembered well.
And then he gets metaphorical spit in face. He sees that what awaits him is sacrifice and being forgotten, and most likely, he also saw that his sacrifice would bring no diffrence. To learn that all you hoped and belived in is a lie can break a man. He learned that the utimate goal, the one thing that he worked for all his life, is a lie.
For me, his actions are understandable. I’d be pissed at world too, in his position.
Still the red eyes, and none of the characters have remarked on it.
I feel bad for best. he’s the most hated character and yes he is an intolerable ass, but really if you found out you died alone and forgotten wouldn’t you be a little bit bitter and angry
“Never having existed at all”? Wait.
I think I finally get it now; if this is foreshadowing… I think with the corruptor beast might be Best’s final fight. Like Rachel, to Blizzard, it was as if she had never existed.
And it still plays into my theory above from a year ago: Best may sacrifice himself and die inside the game while everyone else gets out, that meaning his grave is only lonely because everyone else gets out safely. That… would be a great destiny after all, I think. Well. Maybe not great, but very noble. And unforgettable.
And I’m betting his attitude all this time was needed to make it happen, and that’s why the basin chose to show him the grave part instead of the heroic deeds part leading up to it. That he is able to reform will allow his endgame to happen; if he only saw the great heroic deeds, he likely would let it go to his head and ego even more, preventing any of those deeds from being truly heroic and paradoxing himself out of his fate.
Is that something called a “temporal causality loop”? In that a thing must happen for another thing to happen later, and that “another” is the only reason the first thing happens? Or is it self-fulfilling prophecy?