#And sometimes light hearted

[ofekma]

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@Rick Riorden you are SO FREAKING FUNNY, man. SO funny. Why is the show you are the main writer off that's based on your first ever book so gloomy?!

[mienar]

remnants of where we have been

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[imaginariumwanderer]

Actually I haven't been doing so well lately. Maybe these cute beast kitties will cheer someone up in my stead

[artsymeeshee]

one of those nights

[essektheylyss]

One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.

(Buckle in. This is a long one.)

In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.

As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.

Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.

This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.

I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.

But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.

So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.

But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.

But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.

It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.

He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)

So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.

But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.

(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)

[lightningflvsh]

flamebird!jon from my reverse robins au :3 plus dick because cute and silly

[vaguely-concerned]

what would I do without you. indeed illario.

lucanis trust me! indeed illario. the ea-nasir vibes on this shitty little rat of a man (somehow still slightly affectionate despite myself)

I am obsessed with WHERE this letter is found and what we're meant to read into those context clues. I don't have a handy save for this mission right now to double check the details, but from memory: It's the room across from what seems implied to be Caterina's room (Lucanis says these are the family quarters, so Illario has kept her locked in her own room all this time probably?? Oh oh house arrest, house arrest for grandmother for ten thousand years style)? We find the scraps of a letter from Zara to Illario, torn to pieces with one fragment still in the empty fireplace so presumably we're meant to assume he burned it, and this old letter from Illario to Lucanis lying neatly on a table. Whose room is this? Because here's a theory one could put together that has some real crazymaking potential for me specifically at least:

Considering that we're helpfully down to only three Dellamortes to account for, it's likely either Lucanis' or Illario's room. If I'm remembering right/let's for a moment assume that Caterina is being confined to her own rooms -- the fact that Lucanis is her favourite and also heir apparent I'd say tips the scales for me that it's likely she'd keep him closest, whenever he's home. Thus opening for the possibility that all this time Illario has been staying in the room of the cousin he murdered but as it turns out not hard enough that he didn't come back again like a haunting, reading his own old letters to him that Lucanis apparently kept all this time (!!! ow !!!), and sparing them from the spiteful fate he gave Zara's 'aww chin up you'll get 'em next time babe' one, right across the hall from where the grandmother he apparently can't bring himself to kill or seriously hurt even with everything else he's done is imprisoned and i n c r e d i b l y pissed off, if she gets out of there while he's sleeping or something he's fucked. Has he been sleeping in Lucanis' bed since kidnapping Caterina????? (did they ever share a bed, when they were children? for comfort if not ever out of real necessity?) is this some kind of incredibly fucked up way to try to be close to them both somehow even when he is the one who messed it all up to begin with? no matter what I have so many questions here what is WRONG with this family???????? (well I don't think we have time to get into all that right now that's a novel not a text post probably fhsdkj)

[beaft]

they should invent a little treat that is not actively detrimental to your health

[popplia]

Grian to Jimmy this session

[day-colors]

uhh i dont have anything to post have this loose redraw of this

[54625]

Mcyt fans. You can resist. You don't need to do it. You can get over your addiction of making everyone into a bird. I believe in you. You don't need to make qPac with wings into popular fanon just because of a cosmetic in a separate minecraft PvP event completely unrelated to QSMP. You don't have to keep doing this to yourself

[aimseytv]

whenever i post about being a lesbian everyone replies with different flags and i feel like ripping my shirt off and howling at the moon while screaming THIS POST IS FOR LESBIANS THIS IS JUST FOR THE LESBIANS

[flambeaufelid]

The way that people talk about Yugioh really upsets me sometimes.

Is the game overly complex? Yes. Absolutely.

Does it have basically the worst new player experience of all time? Also yes.

But the people who really hate on Yugioh don't tend to actually understand the nature of the problem. Instead they'll be like, "because of these SWEATY TRYHARDS and their NETDECKS I can't win with my favorite deck, that I built mostly for the artwork, two decades ago. Sorry that I just want to have FUN."

(Or they'll see a card like Nirvana High Paladin and just have a stroke.)

And like, how do I respond to that?

People don't want to play (and might not own) a worse deck for the benefit of old-timers who've not kept up. Historical formats wont save you because even those have changed as understanding of them has grown. The game isn't getting simpler because it doesn't have rotation, and if it did it would still mean picking up new decks because that's how rotation works. And Konami wont stop printing new cards until they've wrung every cent they can from us...

The people who tell you your deck is bad and that you need to learn the new ways the game is played aren't always saying it just because they're dicks, sometimes it's because there's really nothing else to be done if you want to play and win. There's no way the game CAN go back to what it was.

And, you know... some of us just like the way the game works now. You can say that we're assholes for enjoying complexity for complexity's sake, but... I kinda do though??? Like, where else can I go to get the experience modern Yugioh provides?

I'm sorry the game you loved as a kid is gone, but a lot of us love what it's grown into, and we shouldn't be made to feel bad about that any more than someone should about loving what it once was.

[ahollowgrave]

-- home sweet home.

I have been thinking a lot about Selenite's apartment and the vibes. She likes to keep the overhead lights off as much as possible, there is almost always some old sappy romance playing on the TV, a door open for friends to wander in and out as they please. She doesn't like to be alone too long!! But it is also her home and she will be comfortable. A bonus shot, just for you:

[keyfolk]

maddie's monolgue in i saw the tv glow was incredible, but it's interesting how so many viewers took her statement about burying herself literally. i think, generally, there are two veins of interpretation of this movie, reflecting which reality the viewer favors. you could believe that the tv show is the true "reality" of the movie, or that it's simply a surrealist backdrop to the story of one person's intense repression. in the latter interpretation, maddie's dialogue feels dangerous -- is she actually advocating suicide? or simply speaking in metaphor for the trans experience of coming out?

i felt that this scene tread the line between those two extremes. but more notably, i thought about acts of "suicide" a closeted or repressed lesbian would feel drawn to. the way that maddie describes the burnout guy she paid to bury him, how he didn't even know what he was doing -- to me, it felt like she was implying an act of sexual self-harm, testing her sexuality, "burying herself" in the emotional pain. the catharsis found in suffocating herself, allowing herself to dissociate and fade away, and then coming free with the understanding of who she really is... while i think her monologue can be taken in many ways, this interpretation resonates with me.

[alackofghosts]

but suddenly love was there