#I don't know why I'm even posting this

[skyfallscotland]

The constant "maybe you should have re-read Fourth Wing and Iron Flame before jumping into Onyx Storm, don't blame the author for you being confused" posts are getting on my last nerve.

Stop being a pick me. Do you think we're all over here saying there were "so many people" because we're referring to Lynx & Baylor?

Sorry, I'm upsetti spaghetti. I was fighting for my life with my brain trying to remember all this in the first ten chapters, sorry I thought it was going to be important 🙃

Duke of Calldyr - short blond beard, four different consorts in four years

Duchess of Elsum - dark brows

Duchess of Morraine - high pitched voice, golden-brown skin, ruby earrings and necklace

Duke of Luceras

Queen Maraya - light brown skin, dark eyes, curly hair

Captain Anna Winshire - talkative, strawberry-blond, brown eyes

Captain Henson - female, tightly woven black braids, air wielder

Lieutenant Pugh - male, blue eyes, farsight

Lieutenant Foley - male, agrarian (plant-wielding)

General Tinery - in command of the Southern Wing

Ewan Faber - stocky, sour-faced, Navarrian Fourth Wing wingleader

Iris Drue - wingleader of Navarrian First Wing

Theophanie - long silver hair, high cheekbones and full mouth, pale skin, tattoo on forehead, beautiful, venin sage or maven

They were all introduced in the first ten chapters. Of a 60+ chapter book. This doesn't include description only characters, dragons, or places.

She did a really good job in the last book of introducing the Assembly as "silver beard" or "battle-axe", getting their descriptions stuck in our heads before we moved onto actual names and that, in my opinion, worked really well. That kind of technique can sometimes be greater than throwing a whole bunch of names in off the bat like she did with all these captains and lieutenants, especially if they're not going to be important.

Sometimes giving them a name is giving them significance—to me, it signifies to the reader hey, these people are going to be around a lot, you should know them!

I've also seen people saying "well there's a map and an index" ...these people aren't on there. The Isles aren't on the map. I have no visual for where we're going. If you're worried about spoilers, you can always put the "new" map at the end of the book for those who want to see.

I'm not 'blaming' Rebecca Yarros. She's allowed to make whatever choices she wants, it's her book, but these are choices she's made that she could have made differently, and I don't think it's kind to be calling other people idiots because you think we're all out here forgetting who Tecarus is because you only took in the surface level.

How are we supposed to know who is going to be important? We don't know where the story is going and all of this is getting shoved at us one by one in the opening chapters.

Also, as a generally nice human being, if I were on the other side of this discourse, I would have said "I'm not sure how people are so confused, what are you missing?" Not, "sorry you're too stupid to understand, maybe you should not be reading fantasy" 😃

The internet has made it far too acceptable for people to be rude to others. We're allowed to all have our own experiences and disagree. You can do that without denigrating other people's opinions and gatekeeping fantasy? Ew.

I don't dislike Rebecca or the series in general, I think she did a fantastic job with introductory world-building and introducing characters in the first two books, it's why I like it so much. The techniques she used worked. I just don't think she used them as effectively this time 🤷‍♀️

As I constantly say, if you only read it on surface level, if you're just here casually for the vibes, I love that for you! I wish I was you! But the toxic positivity can fucking go.

[originalartblog]

Apparently much-needed reminder that reposting artists' art (by saving the images or screenshotting them and reuploading them yourself) on other platforms without the artists' expressed permission and without credit is theft and an insult to their passion and craft. You are profiting (in views, in attention, in feedback) from someone else's work and ideas, who do not get that feedback for sharing their creation.

If you are an art reposter, you are a thief and I have no respect for you.

[tempo-takoyaki]

Memories of the past.

[keii]

late morning

[moongothic]

Crocodad AU where immidiately after having left Dragon and his baby boy Crocodile finds an 11 year old Robin. And while he's 100% only recruiting her so they can make a beeline for the Poneglyph and Pluton in Alabasta by the two of them... Crocodile accidentally sorta kinda adopts Robin.

At this point Robin's been running for her life from the Government for three years so her deep trust issues and fear of betrayal are starting to take root in her little heart. Like perhaps they haven't taken fully over yet, and being still a child I'm sure Robin might've still had that genuine hope that she could find a safe place to stay in. But I'm sure the though of "what'll he'll do with me once he gets what he wants?" would be nagging at her at the back of her mind. Meanwhile Crocodile's struggling between the pain and hurt he's already gone through and given him his trademark trust issues, as well as the aftermath of The Dragodile Divorce. But he also has his Fresh Paternal Instincts and probably misses his baby. So when given a small, scared child who is running for her life, being chased by the very same Government that'll want his son dead if they ever find out about him... Yeah that might fuck with your brain a little

You know this post was supposed to be just that first paragraph and just a few footnotes from the following two paragraphs. And then I kept on Having Thoughts. And I kept on writing them down. And oh no what happened when did this post get so long (Look I was going to either kept on writing my Additional Thoughts in the tags or I just put them in the actual fucking post)

Like considder this: based on this one SBS, we can kinda tell that if Crocodile was given a chance to raise a child, that child would be a spoiled little shit, right

So in this scenario, where Crocodile's looking after lil Robin, would he be kind of torn? Unsure how to feel about her?

Because on one hand, this strange child would have the potential to not only ruin his plans, strip him of his Shichibukai Privileges by outing him and his plans to the World Government, but also put his son in grave danger by extension (if she found out about him having been involved with the Revolutionaries and/or having a child). But on the other hand, his paternal instincts could make him want to spoil this poor little girl rotten. But only because he needs to (perhaps literally) buy her trust so she'll behave. No other reason, he doesn't feel sorry for her one bit, no sirree. (But maybe he did feel sorry for her, since his son could very well end up exactly like her. Poor little thing) (Which is why he needs to nuke Marijoa out of orbit as soon as possible, no matter the cost, and this child can't get in the way of Crocodile protecting his son) (But also this is a child. Like how bad could she be. Besides all he really needs to do to win her trust is be nice and make her feel safe, right?)

Of course, while I'm suggesting Crocodile could have some parental instincts, realistically, he hasn't actually spent any time being, you know, a father to a child (looking after his newborn for an unknown though short amount of time aside), so it's possible he wouldn't even know how to parent Robin even if he wanted to, would he? (Like taking care of a newborn and an 11 year old kid aren't the same either) So if he was kind of just emotionally flipflopping between No Trusting Ever and It's Just A Kid for God's Sake, Crocodile trying to be nice to Robin to make her feel safe and then telling himself to stop being so soft and vunerable... Yeah that would make for an absolute mess of a relationship. (Not to mention, let's be real, dude's a scary motherfucker too, and a bloody giant compared to itty bitty baby Robin. He could keep on accidentally scaring the shit out of Robin (who would be On Fucking Edge To Begin With) by just Being Himself. Like for example, can you fucking imagine if he caught Robin trying to cheer herself up with a little "dereshishishi" only to tell her to stop because "it was stupid"? 'Cause I can imagine him doing that, and boy howdy would that make Robin feel bad)

Or who knows, maybe Crocodile was just Born To Be A Dad, maybe he just Fucking Gets It. Like Crocodile is canonically pretty good at manipulating people to do what he wants them to do (see: how he played Vivi like a fiddle), so knowing Robin's position and understanding how she feels, maybe he COULD completely nail how she needed to be treated. Not being too familiar but still making her feel safe and happy, knowing exactly when to be stern and when to spoil her, etc. Dude just goes off and wins the Dad of the Year Award while being a deadbeat dad himself. The only thing Crocodile would have to worry about then would be making sure HE doesn't get too fond of her. And certainly that could never happen, he's so in-touch with his own feelings and so grounded, he's not a softie, get outta here. Or maybe he does but never realizes until it's too late and good luck backpedalling on those emotions now dumbass

Alright so, the reason I went on that whole rmble is just that like. I'm so interested in the relationship Robin and Crocodile already have in canon. I'm so facinated and curious about how the two feel about each other, considdering they did spend 4 whole years of their lives together as criminal business partners, though neither ever trusted the other. A partnership that was only ended because Robin betrayed Crocodile, out of her own trauma. (God, I want to see these two "reunite" so bad, I want to know how they feel about each other now after the timeskip and Robin joining the idiot in flipflops who foiled Croc's plans)

My question here is just that... if they had met 13 years earlier, would things have been different? Especially if Crocodad Real? Because as I mentioned in the begining, Robin would've been on the run for only 3 years by this point, as opposed to 16 years before running into Crocodile. Simultaneously, this would be before Crocodile went onto spend an entire decade all alone, slowly losing his marbles in his emotional solitude. They'd both be emotionally traumatized, yes, but would it have been as bad in this scenario? Like I did start this post kind of joking about Crocodile adopting Robin, and for clarity's sake I don't think they'd have like a father-daughter relationship nececarily. But it would be a strange relationship still, because we'd have two broken people, both struggling to trust anyone. One who had lost her mother and her only friends, leaving her all alone and afraid while running for her life. The other a father who had just given up his son whom he probably missed dearly. Both having these holes in their hearts from loss of family, holes that could not be filled with replacements. But could they find comfort in each other anyway, because they still as people occupy similar roles to their respective loved ones? If they both could just get over those trust issues?

Okay I've been going off on the Emotional Side Of Things for this AU Concept, THERE'S PLOT TOO

So if Crocodile did pick Robin up like 19 years ago, that should be before he set up base in Alabasta, long before he had built is homebase and financial empire etc.

Now the thing is, while we don't know when, where and how Crocodile learned about the Ancient Weapons, Pluton specifically and how the lead on it would be in Alabasta... Considdering Crocodile did once upon a time aim to become Pirate King, it would make perfect sense if he had learned about Poneglyphs during his past adventures, as he would have needed to get the Road Poneglyphs to find One Piece. And while the World Government did bury the truth about why Ohara had been burned down and why Robin had been given her bounty (remember, the WG claimed it was because she had sunken a fleet of battleships, which she had not, it was because she could read the Poneglyphs), considdering this is a Crocodad AU specifically, you could totally make an argument Crocodile could've learned about what actually happened to Ohara from Dragon and co. So, just to make this AU work, you could just assume Crocodile learned about the concept of the Ancient Weapons from Dragon. And who knows, maybe he overheard the truth about why Robin had been given her bounty from Dragon too (maybe Dragon was able to get intel from Garp in secret) or while going to Marijoa himself to attend a Shichibukai meeting or something IDK.

Maybe he learned about Pluton being in Alabasta before finding Robin by accident, and maybe they made a beeline for Alabasta the second Croc recruited Robin. Travelling takes time and the guy would've most likely had to find an Eternal Pose to Alabasta just to get there (also canonically Robin didn't enter the Grand Line until her 20s so they should've met in West Blue probably, since that's where Ohara was) Or maybe Crocodile had to haul Robin around for a few months while looking for That Missing Piece of Information that would lead him to Alabasta. (Imagine the two travelling from like island to island, library to library, Crocodile trying to find that leads while Robin's just so excited about ALL THESE BOOKS (she's helping too with the research) (but to her, research is playtime, so she's just having the time of her life) (Also, notice how Crocodile's Theoretical Child is a fucking loser ass nerd? Yeah Crocodile would encourage Robin reading and studying, surely. And that would be fucking cute))

But like, once they set sail to Alabasta...

Sure, Crocodile could try to do it The Slow Way that we know he tried in canon, building trust and creating his little empire etc. But also, in canon, Crocodile couldn't have jumped into action head first because without Robin, even if he had found the Poneglyph he couldn't have read it and found the location of Pluton. Crocodile choosing to do it the slow way may have been partially because he didn't have much of a choise and it could've felt like the smarter move long-term.

But in this scenario, he already has Robin. Yes, he could do it the slow, secure way.

But what'd be there stopping him from infiltrating Cobra's palace and kidnapping him (in the night, when nobody suspects a thing), demanding Cobra to spill the beans lest Crocodile kills him and/or his pregnant wife* (*Vivi was born 10 months after Luffy so depending on how long it's been between Crocodad leaving Luffy behind and this scenario... Yeah either the wife is there, still pregnant, or there's a newborn Baby Vivi)

Like it'd be a risky move but depending on how ballsy Croc's feeling and how confident he feels in being able to kidnap the king without being noticed... Yeah he could probably do it. And I'm sure he'd have no problem killing Cobra either, if anything it'd be required if he didn't want the Government to find out he was out to find Pluton, and god knows Cobra would tell on Crocodile if left alive. I could see Crocodad being maybe a little iffy about killing Baby Vivi though (it's not like the newborn baby could report him to the WG anyways), but if nothing else, he just needs to be able to pull off the bluff of his life to convince Cobra to do as he's told. And we all know Crocodile's good at convincing people.

The only question is, how would Robin take that?

Watching Crocodile go into Full Murder Mode, hearing him say he'd kill a pregnant woman/a newborn baby if he didn't get what he wanted? Like yeah, I'm sure 11 year old Robin would be fine with that, that wouldn't make any alarm bells go off in her head at all, it'd be fiiiine. IT WOULD NOT BE FINE, SHE'D BE SCARED SHITLESS. That fear of "what will he do with me when he gets what he wants"? Well, Robin may not have found the answer to that question in particular, but she certainly found the answer to the opposite question, and it's not good

So say Cobra, kidnapped (perhaps with Baby Vivi) by Crocodile in the night, guides the two to the Poneglyph under the tombs. Crocodile puts Cobra out of his misery because he's not needed anymore. And he asks Robin to read the Poneglyph for him.

Robin, who has spent the last little while, be it weeks or months with Crocodile, him having become her "guardian", the thing keeping her safe. Crocodile, who has now shown how cold blooded and cruel he can be. Robin, who might be scared out of her mind. Of him.

And the Poneglyph says Pluton, the thing Crocodile wants, isn't there. It's in Wano.

What's she going to do?

EDIT: I wrote a sequel post, enjoy

[royalarchivist]

Tubbo: Can this day get any worse? My two besties started shagging, and all my machines have broken, and my- my- my roof has been replaced–

Tubbo:

Tubbo's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day (aka the day Tubbo discovers Badboyhalo's snow prank). ☃️

[egophiliac]

couple more quickies, because I gotta work through my Shroud-family feelings before I can even begin to process the Diasomnias, please bear with me 🙇

anyway, I couldn't decide which composition I liked better, so I did both!

[pleaseinsertwittyurl]

There are always 2 sides.

The discourse around Louis and Lestat being a victim and abuser and nothing more drives me insane.

Something i don't think enough people remember is that the very same reason the fight began in 1×05 (lestat grabbing claudia by the throat when she tries to "take louis away") we see Louis himself do to her in 1×07 when she tries to get Louis to burn Lestat.

They BOTH would harm her rather than live in a world without the other. They are both guilty of abusing her and each other.

There is an implication that a good deal of time passed between Louis and Lestat meeting and the church. Louis expresses that he shares himself with Lestat in a way he only had with Paul. I would assume that goes both ways, to a degree. We know Louis knows at least enough about Nicki to discourage Claudia poking that wound. He also clearly knows that the threat of leaving is his most powerful weapon against Lestat.

Mental abuse is abuse. And Louis abused Lestat mentally for years. Shaming him, ridiculing him, shutting him out, manipulating him into making Claudia (a traumatic moment for him, whether Louis understands the depths of it or not) by promising to give him what he's being denying him, promising to never put him through what he fears the most.

Louis admits to purposely making Lestat suffer. He admits he was warned that Claudia would suffer and he wanted her anyway because he needed to feel redeemed. He is not innocent. He is not a trapped, weak victim. He made choices to hurt both Lestat and Claudia time and time again.

Does this justify Lestat's actions in 1×05? Obviously not. But we now know Louis was not willing to stop the fight. He taunted Lestat the same way he taunted the Alderman. He was unleashing years of frustrations just as Lestat was. His priority was not to protect Claudia, it was to hurt Lestat, consequences be damned.

I hate the drop scene as much as the next person and Lestat has admitted he will never earn forgiveness for what he did. But if you view Louis as some squeaky clean victim who was manipulated, trapped, and abused by Lestat you are missing so much of what this show is conveying.

We will always tend to paint ourselves as the hero of our own story. It is hard to accept your faults or that you hurt people you love. It is much easier to shift that blame on to someone else, to frame them as the villian. But life is not usually that black and white. Claudia had harsh words for them both in her diary, even before they got to Europe, for a reason. They both made hurtful mistakes with her, both treated her like a pawn in their relationship instead of a person, both harmed her, took away her choice, never prioritized her.

That is the great tragedy. That she never had a choice and was not allowed to be her own person. And in the end, they both are responsible for her misery and her death. That's what makes the reunion scene so important. They have been grieving her and carrying that guilt alone, all the while longing for the comfort of the other for 70+ years. Louis has found clarity in his memories, he has accepted his role in their suffering, he has seen Lestat's perspective more fully. Lestat is broken, totally consumed with that guilt and grief. Both know that although they cannot change what they've done, they can forgive the other, even if they can't forgive themselves. They can love each other despite everything they've done to one another because they cannot stop loving each other. But now they can try to rebuild that love from the rubble.

[atalienart]

✧*:･ﾟArt summary 2024

2014-2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021

[janederscore]

i think the thing that probably frustrates me the most about transmisogyny is that its completely impossible to talk about in a way that expresses how much its woven into the fabric of your whole life. and to point it out is something that is constantly dismissed as pure paranoia or attention-seeking behavior, right. surely we're just overthinking things, reading into malice that's not there, etc.

and its like . i am watched, everywhere i go. people notice me the second i step outside my apartment and they keep an eye on me. when i go to get in the car my neighbors watch me. if there are kids playing outside all conversation Stops Dead until they're sure the threat is leaving. i drive exclusively the speed limit and keep an extremely vigilant eye out for cops bc if i have to interact with one i don't know if the exchange will turn violent. pretty much any exchange feels like it can turn violent, is the thing. i don't go anywhere anymore because people will silently flash weapons to Prove that they could turn it violent, if they wanted. i don't even check the mail.

and you can talk about all of that. and people will still look down at you like you're a three year old infant and coo "aww. welcome to being a woman, sweetheart."

[royaldollybox]

Good day, I bring ye more The heart killer text posts

This time featuring Kant and Style becuase I am facinated by their friendship

I have yet to recover from my madness

Post 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

[bogkeep]

the third draft of an open wound spite poem i wrote a couple years ago, processing trauma in a cool, socially acceptable way at 11pm at a bus stop after yet another work shift at the hotel. i think i've been needing to set it free like a bug i've been carrying in my caged hands

[vaguely-concerned]

do you ever think about how, when we get lucanis' ossuary mind note on what he was thinking during the fireplace scene at the end of his recruitment mission... what's implied to be his instinctive internal reaction as he's saying "you'd have to kill me" out loud sure isn't 'and I don't want to die'. it's '(and spite would die)'. do you think spite's gremlin-y candle-hungering give-me-FIRE! >:D presence has maybe saved that guy's life even more times and in more ways than are immediately obvious at a glance. do you ever. cry.

it's also very. him that the thing that would stay his hand on killing himself partially might be that he just isn't willing to visit the same cruelty or harm on spite as zara, even when accepting his passenger spirit as collateral damage would at least offer a chance to put an end to his own pain, which at that point he seems unable to see any other way of truly escaping or find real relief from than to die. there's so much resentment and fear and other understandable fraught emotions in spite and lucanis' relationship early on, but it's just as clear that deep down lucanis conceptualizes spite as fundamentally innocent in what's happened here -- perhaps, indeed, more innocent than he manages to conceptualize himself until someone else can help him get in there and start to untangle it with him. he's protective of spite in some subtle ways right from the start, taking pains to point out several times on the jog through the ossuary that the spirits here were just as much victims in what was done to them as anyone else. when spite acts out during the fireplace scene... how much of lucanis brushing it off the way he does is about the '*actively bleeding from the eyes* don't worry about me' avoidant side of it all, and how much is him trying to shelter spite from the eyes of people he does not know well enough yet to predict how they’ll react in response — towards himself or spite. (additional idea to really bring on the heartache: do you think he has maybe intervened in pretty much the same way between illario and caterina over the years and that’s how he does it so smoothly and automatically; it’s basically psychological muscle memory. Haha. ow.) 

Between that and the pretty consistent language he uses that frames spite as child-like, even when he means that in frustration/enfant terrible flavoured terms lol, you get the sense that regardless of how much Lucanis is aware of this on the surface, there is a deep instinctive protectiveness in him for spite. I think that even comes across in the scene where lucanis tells you he’ll continue to pursue a way to separate him and spite on the minrathous route. So I was kind of picking up on/working with that already subconsciously, but when I found that note it hit me like a sledgehammer that clearly in some part at least, the reason lucanis is still here is that he knows now that spite would die with him and doesn’t find that price acceptable. Spite thinks that lucanis mentally locking himself in his (torture :() room and refusing to speak to him is an act of rejection or trickery, but to my eyes taken with everything else we know about how lucanis’ brain tends to work… as much as it’s an expression of avoidance and fear and overwhelm and trying to get away from the voice pushing him towards action when the mere prospect of action fills you with despair to even contemplate (“There’s nowhere to go”), I think it’s also a mark of lucanis’ affection and protectiveness of spite. The guards along the way make it very clear that more so than to keep the outside world from coming in, this place is for protecting people from what might break out. 

And that’s why I think this is also such a good case study to look at lucanis' internal freeze logic and why it has been so adaptive for him up until now when faced with completely impossible emotional situations to which there are no good answers or causes of actions available, even though it's inherently and unavoidably one of those 'what's worse, the medicine or the disease' solutions a brain cooks up. lucanis by the point of inner demons is facing this conundrum: 1) I can't live like this, it hurts too much. I've been in pain so long I’ve got screams where my blood should be and it just keeps getting louder, and nothing really touches or helps that. 2) I can't die to escape this, because that would also kill spite (and also I've got a job to do I guess *working 9-5 slowed with reverb and with underwater sound distortion effects is playing in the background*). those are of course not actually his only options, but in the state he's in they are the only options he can conceive of. (that's not infrequently how it works, when the suffering is that intense and unrelenting. Nothing gives you tunnel sight quite like ‘I just need this to stop’ agony that has gone on long enough to add sheer soul exhaustion to the mix)

so what happens in the end? his freeze brain -- honed, I'm sure, through many long years of attachment trauma and abuse and loss for exactly this kind of 'uh-oh. Incoming FUBAR situation alert let’s go' -- kicks into action and makes him do nothing except what's externally required of him, so he can stay just functional and momentarily distracted by a plethora of avoidance behaviours enough to get through his daily life, if like not particularly happily so... and otherwise, as it were, locking himself in his room deep inside where nothing can touch him, where nothing gets in and nothing gets out, no harm allowed to either escape from within nor allowed to pierce through and get inside. numbness isn't actually a cure for that kind of suffering, but it's the closest thing you're likely to get with any immediacy and if you’re desperate enough by god you take those. It’s how he survived his upbringing, and it’s how he survived the ossuary — as he tells Davrin straight out, the trick to just shut down every part of his soul he can to get through intolerable pain, loss or helplessness. I don’t think that mechanism came to him in the ossuary the first time, I think that blueprint was deeply embedded in his neurons and went ‘ah. My time again. Not to worry I’m a bit of an expert at this I’ll get us through this yet (though you may not thank me for it by the end of it all)’. 

In that state he's unable to himself reach out and meaningfully ask for help (and also like... why would his inner world have any framework for that as even being on the table? this has never been an option before in his life, not in any safe or consistent way; he's fucked up the way he is because the same things/people that should have been and partially, comparatively, were the sources of help and relief and safety growing up are also the sources of pain and abuse, that eternal irreconcilable ambivalence, the double edged sword of unpredictable insecure attachment), but it also keeps him from doing anything uh drastic the other way too, on acting impulsively in ways that can’t be taken back. (that seems to be more illario’s role/dubious privilege in the family lol.) at many points in his life and especially growing up, freezing and going numb around the pain is as close to having control of anything as there was any hope of. 'harm will be inflicted on me unpredictably, but fuck you I don't have to truly feel it as long as I shut all this other stuff down as well, that's what I can control' nervous system logic. (it'll get you every time.) for what it’s worth I’m not so sure his nervous system judged that one incorrectly, I think that is the kind of rebellion you would have to cling to while being raised by someone like caterina, because look at illario if you want to know how much she respects and rewards anything more overt or active. (I mean, if you don’t succeed, at least. swing at Grandma Dellamorte you’d better not miss or you’ll meet that cane swinging at you the other way and she will not miss)

I say all this because I think it's as easy to demonize the freeze response as it is to demonize anger, to conceptualize it only as an obstructive force that, as bellara puts it, is one of the purest forms of a heart not seeming to want to let you be happy, or a mindless byproduct of trauma. But in my experience, the brain doesn’t generally come up with ‘stupid’ defense mechanisms. Even in the most maladaptive of coping mechanisms, there is at the core of it some part of you that once meant to save your life, no matter what trouble it is wreaking for you today. when you look at the setup of Lucanis’ soul, as it were, you can see the dual and in some ways genuinely noble and even tender qualities this response has in him, however misguided: it does imprison, but it also protects, and it means to protect; for all the pain along the way it has sheltered all the parts of his soul that are most precious and breakable, the most vulnerable parts that want to live and so so importantly love completely and freely. Lucanis thinks he’s protecting not even primarily himself but everyone he loves by staying where he is. (“It would be better for me to stay here than to risk losing you”) A child’s logic, to be sure, but logic of a kind and clearly one that caterina has encouraged in him because that’s a conception of love it’s been very useful for her for him to have. Freeze looks like utter hopelessness on the surface, but in some ways I think it’s the utmost triumph of hope — a spare and unrelenting winter that exists because it thinks one day spring might still come, and the things too precious and fragile to thrive in your life as it is now might bloom then. 

He is an adult now, and Caterina no longer controls his entire world, physically and emotionally. There’s finally room for other things, other people, himself, in his life, without everything having to defer to the gravitational force of what Caterina wants from him at the end of the day. And while I think her jumpscaring him with the First Talon position is partly her attempt to wrangle him back into the status quo of control she once had, I’m not sure it’s going to work quite the way she might hope — at least in the Treviso saved route, there are just too many fresh spring shoots in his life at that point that could grow into something new, it’s too late to trample all the saplings growing up through the cracks in time (and indeed some of them might also fight back). (The outlook on the Minrathous saved route is um. Perhaps less convincingly immediately hopeful to me and the prospect of actually getting around to healing further down the road, but I refuse to give up on him that’s my little guy and he’s above all incredibly smart and stubborn and not a quitter and all the rest of this still remains true beneath it all, just like. Give him a moment here.) His hopes and dreams have diversified while she had her back turned lmao he suddenly keeps them with so many more people than just her and Iillario now. She doesn’t hold the monopoly of meaning and connection in his life the way she used to. And whether out of love (you know. Hope is every man’s prerogative I suppose) at seeing him really happy for perhaps the first time or sheer pragmatism, I think she’s going to have to accept that and adapt her ways of doing things with him accordingly, or else have him drift even further away from her.

Spite is the urgent impatient voice that starts to break through to go ‘that moment is now it HAS to be now. We need to shake off the shackles and illusions and face what’s actually here so we can learn to properly live now, or this winter will starve us to death as surely as anything Zara could do to us’. And he is right! As crucial as this soul-starvation landscape has been in survival, it has clearly reached the end of its sustainability, you can’t survive permanently on frost alone. I just also want to recognize the credit Lucanis (and his fucked up but valiant nervous system <3 pour one out for a real one) also deserves for stubbornly holding on in any way he had to until Spite’s true escape project is even an option for either of them. Especially since Lucanis seems to harbour a lot of self-loathing and frustration over his own propensity for freeze — “You know him. You can open the door, but he won’t walk through it”  (still one of the saddest most painful things I’ve ever heard. In case you were wondering. He knows. He knows what he’s like, and he despairs of it, he thinks it means it’s his own fault he still feels like this. Augh.) The real point at the end of the day is not that spite saved lucanis or vice versa, but that as traumatic as it was to get there and against all cultural expectations, it is ultimately their enmeshed condition, their togetherness, that saved them both. (which, again, when you consider the cultural narrative of possession and spirits most andrastian nations are working with…what a radical conclusion to come away with haha. Not unprecedented at all, if you look at Wynne and her spirit, but on a deeper and more psychological plane than ever and even more impactful for it, to me.)

[merlins-strawberriesandroses]

The thing no one ever considers while writing up character analyses about Merlin is that. he must have been sooooooo sleepy.

[insertsomthinawesome]

Happy FFXV 8th Anniversary Art compilation (2/2)!! Once again inspired by this Lovely Post which enabled me I'm realizing as of this second post that I'm living back in like, 2022 when the post limit was 10 xD BUT YA KNOW WHAT i'm okay with that HAHAHAHA I'm so freaking proud of that first image? Its rare that I manage to actually draw all the available dynamics I want to, the fact that I managed it (despite as you can see, not finishing the shading HAHA) is wild and really cool to me. The forehead kiss was from a Comfortember I never finished! (or honestly got that far in HAHAHA i had two images) And in the middle, the Ignis and Gladio are from different years (2023 for Ignis and 2021 for Gladio) when I tried to draw on their birthdays, but Ran out of steam. Also i'm still so proud of that Prompto comic SLDKFJLKJASDFLSDFDS

[No Romance Included] Here's a link to post Number 1 if anybody wants to see that!

[kazbiter]

very interested in how the storyline of ronan's sexuality is developed in the dream thieves as a battle between kavinsky and gansey while adam is almost never present in these scenes, which makes it even more interesting that we found out in CDTH that ronan was set on adam the moment he saw him. i think that ronan is attracted on some level to both gansey and kavinsky (you can draw the lines of how much romantic intention you think he hold towards either of the yourself, that's a rabbit hole I would need a whole other post to go down) but more so I think he was attracted to the IDEA of both of them and certain qualities that each possessed, and that the real question wasn't does ronan want gansey or kavinsky because we know he wants adam but rather who's qualities resonate more with who ronan is, or who he is choosing to be at this critical moment in his character development. kavinsky is a dangerous thrill and often comes wrapped in ronan's other favorite self destructive attempts to outrun himself, while gansey is ronan's history and proof of his deep capacities for loyalty and love. he tells kavinsky it was never going to be me and you and that it's not going to be ronan and gansey because that was never the question- maggie was obviously always planning on bluesy and pynch. the answer to who ronan WANTS in adam. the question of who ronan IS- that's what he's trying to decide here. his self hatred is such a heavy weight on him and theme in tdt, and the kavinsky/gansey dichotomy represents the the path he will choose to take to deal with it- keep try to drive faster than his demons or accept that he can still be loved even if he isn't the person he once was. the dream thieves my beloved ronan lynch my beloved