minty ✡︎ #VIOLETFRIDAY

how many times has darcy graves been told she's wasting her potential? she knows what she wants to do with her life. she's talented at necromancy, she's already accomplished an awful lot with it, and she doesn't seem interested in finding something more respectable to pursue. unfortunately, everyone else around her seems to have other ideas. first i'd like to look at the conversation where dynamo brings up her potential, graves immediately asks him to spare her the inspirational teacher speech. he suggests law school, but tells her necromancy is something she can do on the side. knowing both of her parents are successful attorneys, i believe she's heard that suggestion more times than she cares to remember. it must be incredibly frustrating that so many people seem to recognize how capable she is without considering that she might already be doing exactly what she wants with those capabilities. i think her childhood explains why she's so defensive when people question her choices. graves grew up in a home where conversations were arguments, debates, or negotiations. her parents were busy, and she started spending time in cemeteries because the dead were easier to talk to than the living. i wonder what she told them. i imagine a little girl sitting beside a headstone after another argument at home, finally getting to finish a thought without someone interrupting her. maybe she complained about her parents, or school, or talked about something she'd been excited to share with somebody all day. whatever it was, she kept coming back. and eventually, somebody answered. the lich noticed her interest in necromancy and offered to teach her. for the first time graves had someone who wasn't interested in leading her toward another career, who didn't think her fascination with the dead was something she'd grow out of. for the first time, she was being encouraged to become exactly who she wanted. i think there's a reason graves considers her mentor her best friend, and i don't want to overlook that because other characters are suspicious of their relationship. especially when we consider what graves has done with the things she's learned. in her conversation with wraith, graves mentions that she's spoken to people who died because of her. none of them are angry, and graves admits she doesn't understand why they aren't. wraith argues that it's because she treats people fairly, graves doesn't seem convinced, but she still tells wraith what they've said. she also helps other people communicate with those they've lost. grey talon asks if she'll speak to someone for him after the fighting is over, and graves agrees without hesitating. i find that so sweet. graves spent her childhood sitting in cemeteries because she was desperate for someone to listen to her. now she's become the one who listens to people most of the world will never hear again. i don't know whether she recognizes that consciously, but i can't help feeling like she became the person she needed when she was little. i don't think the lich taught her that. her mentor may have shown her how to speak to the dead, but graves was already the sort of person who wanted to hear what they had to say. which makes her conversations about the lich difficult. seven warns graves not to trust her mentor. he tells her that mentors use young people to accomplish things they couldn't achieve themselves, and when graves insists hers isn't like that, he mocks the idea that she's special. graves told seven not to pretend he cares whether she lives or dies. he admits he doesn't. he just hates seeing talent wasted. i don't know what seven expected her to do with that information. he's admitted that he only cares about what she's capable of, and now he's telling her that somebody else might feel the same way. why would she believe him? venator warns her that the lich is using her, too. but when graves tells him that he doesn't know her mentor, his response is that all liches are the same. i understand why that wouldn't sway her. graves knows someone these people don't. she has conversations, lessons, and experiences with her mentor that none of them were there for. that doesn't make anyone warning her wrong, but i think it explains why she isn't interested in hearing what they have to say. grey talon's warning hits me in a different way. he asks graves how long she's had the hand. she assumes he's about to give her another lecture, but he tells her he's trying to work out how much time she has left. i wonder if she ever thinks about that? because graves is intelligent, and i don't think she's incapable of understanding what people are warning her about. she's young, but she's also making decisions about her own life. she chose necromancy, and she chose to trust the lich. i just don't know how much she understood about what she was getting into when she made those choices. i don't know if she'd make them again if she knew. graves is participating in the ritual partly because she wants to make her mentor happy. it's one of the things about her story that bothers me honestly, i wonder what she expects to happen when it's all said and done. does she think they'll go back to the graveyard together? that she'll keep learning from the lich, helping the dead, and spending her life doing something she loves? i hope so, but i wonder whether the lich has imagined graves being part of her future at all. because graves has spent so much of her life being told that she's capable of great things if she's willing to do what somebody else thinks she should. the lich was the first person who seemed truly interested in what graves wanted. but what if she only cared because graves happened to want something that would be useful? i don't have enough information to decide how the lich feels about graves, and i'm not comfortable saying their relationship is entirely sinister. there's a chance she loves graves. there's also a chance she loves her and is still willing to use her. it's worth considering graves might already be afraid of that possibility. i think graves knows what her mentor means to her. i'm less convinced she knows what she means to her mentor. when you've spent years feeling like nobody wants to hear what you have to say, finding someone who does becomes something you're willing to fight until the end to keep. even if people are warning you. even if you've started to wonder whether they're right. loneliness can make us accept things we never thought we would. we can recognize when someone is treating us poorly and still find reasons to defend them, because remembering what life was like before they came along makes the thought of losing them unbearable. i just wish graves understood that she was worth listening to long before the lich ever answered her. i don't think her love for necromancy or the pursuit of it was a mistake. she's found something she wants to do with her life, and she's used it to help people who might otherwise have gone unheard. i want her to have the chance to keep doing that. despite that i can't help thinking about the little girl who used to sit beside a grave, telling someone about her day because she didn't have anybody else she trusted to tell. how happy she must have been when somebody finally answered. i wonder whether she'll ever get to grow old enough to look back on those afternoons, or if she'll spend the rest of her life trying to make her mentor happy. if the lich keeps asking, and graves keeps saying yes, how much time does she really have left? will she really get to go home with her best friend when the ritual is over? or will the little girl who spent her youth talking to the dead become one of them, having spent her last days trying to make sure the first person who finally listened would never leave?