#SACRIFICED EVERYTHING

[monophobix]

the real MVPs of arcane

[draxofoy]

did someone say paintedspirit as rujinu 👂🏼

when i saw that one post on twt I knew I just HAD to bring that vision to live but i can't draw for shit 😭 and it's such a coincidence that I saw @intrlight 's tiktok post of their OCs in KPDH universe and I KNEW it was fate 😌 Immediately contacted them for a commission and that's how these babies were born 🧎🏻‍♀️

[inkskinned]

despite pages of poems and the entire book i wrote you - you only ever wrote me two songs. the first has the lyric coming up on 7.13, the date we first started really flirting. it's been three years from then, and my life has been utterly ruined. we haven't spoken in a month. i oscillate between being a wreck and being wildly, manically happy. i go long periods without thinking of you - and then i keep myself up, tortured by memories.

i think it's important to note we had been friends for years first. that i had learned to trust you, to think better of you. that you knew who i was - and you still fucking broke me. you knew all the ways i had worked to be okay with myself. all my independence, my hobbies. you could have left me alone, is the thing. you could have let me just keep fucking living.

i keep writing paragraphs on paragraphs about what you did, what you said - who you were. how it escalated so slowly. how i am still scared to admit the truth of things, fearing your response. you taught me that fear. it's only been a month, but still - already, how strange to think of who i was while i was with you. that was a husk-girl, cowering, servile. i can't believe let you in my fucking house.

three weeks before you discarded me; you took me ring shopping. you would tell me so many times i was the love of your life, someone that you "couldn't live without."

the last thing you sent me was that second song - a new one, finally. it's about how i'll never get what i want. about how miserable the idea of a life with me is.

my mother was furious. i had to call her - i was sobbing on the floor of my bathroom about it. She knows it kills me that i can't have kids, i said, breathless, silver and shaking with anguish, Why would she make a fucking song about how sad that is.

you know her, and you know how gentle and forgiving she is. how rare her anger is. her response was slow, deliberate. sweetheart, she said, she can write any song she wants. i know my girl. you are going to write a book instead.

i hiccupped a laugh, but she was still talking. she dropped her voice low, almost scraping through the phone and onto the floor with me. it was a strange tone, almost like feeling a storm coming when there's nowhere safe to be.

i want you to rip her apart, she said. do you think you can you do that for me?

[corvus-frugilegus]

The real tragedy of the Dellamortes is how inevitable Illario's betrayal was.

Caterina's refusal to really see either of her grandsons for who they are sets all three of them on this path. Lucanis's mother was Caterina's favourite, she was probably the person Caterina had in mind to succeed her. That loss, the loss of so much of Caterina's legacy had to have been devastating. She'd built so much and it was all torn away in a single conflict. All she has left in the wake of it is two young boys and this tenacity that will not allow her to give up on what she's built.

So she puts it all on Lucanis. The son of her favourite (bonus angst if he looks like his mother). She's unable to see this sweet boy who loves wyverns and just had his life ripped apart for who he is. She just see's her legacy. The daughter she lost. She puts it all into him, he's pushed into the role of favourite.

Lucanis responds to this by shoving down the parts of himself she doesn't want to see- his gentle heart, his love of wyverns, the little boy who needs to be loved. If he's good enough, strong enough, the perfect crow, the perfect granson- then and only then will she love him, will he be safe.

And then you have Illario! There isn't as much to go on in the text about his family or what he was like as a boy but there's a few things we can pretty confidently infer. Like Lucanis, Illario violently loses everything he has at a very young age. All he has left are the other two Dellamorte's.

But he isn't the child of Caterina's favourite. She isn't automatically putting all of her legacy on his shoulders the way she does Lucanis. He still gets the training, and what we do see in the wigmaker job and the wake and even in the codex entires in the game is that Illario does become a comptent and capable crow. He has a level of skill that I suspect is broadly expected of house Dellamorte, he was trained by the first talon herself. But the Illario we meet as an adult has this laissez-faire affect and presents himself as a seducer and a bit of a peakcock. He also very overtly refers to himself as Dellamorte-the-lesser and at the end of the wigmaker job when they're discussing the title of first talon you can feel the resentment below the surface.

For Illario it's not about the power and the prestige that comes from the title of first talon. It's not even about having the title itself. It's about FINALLY earning Caterina's love and respect. Things he undoubtly never felt as a boy.

How could he? When he's a child the only two people he has left in the world have this special bond that he never gets to be a part of. His only caretaker has a clear favourite and she shows it. He's lived his whole life in Lucanis's shadow, and a shadow that Lucanis never wanted to cast! Which if anything just adds insult to injury for Illario.

Lucanis has everything Illario wants and he doesn't even want it.

I imagine as a boy Illario tries SO HARD to win her love, her favour, he'll do anything to feel like he's loved and wanted and valued. And when after YEARS it doesn't work even though Lucanis clearly doesn't want the role he's been forced into? Illario gets resentful, he gets angry, he starts acting up. He becomes the suave peacock, the grandson who fucks up sometimes- probably not because he's bad at being a crow but because at least Caterina's ire is attention. It's a scrap of love.

Illario and Lucanis love each other. They're brothers. Illario resents Lucanis for being loved and favoured. Lucanis wants nothing more than to give it all to Illario. Illario doesn't want that he wants Caterina to love him on his own merit. At the same time (pre-inner demons) Lucanis will never actually give the title up because it means he's loved, he's valued, he matters.

The title of first talon has been synonymous with emotional safety and love for these two for their entire lives, and it's twisted them up so badly.

The real irony of it all is that this whole time Illario is so much more like the person Caterina wants Lucanis to be. Her heir, the Dellamorte best suited to be the next first talon has been right there infront of her all along, but she's so caught up in grief and legacy she misses it. She never really see's either of her grandsons for who they are.

I actually suspect that when it all comes to light, even though she's furious with him, Caterina finally starts to see what she's been overlooking in Illario all along. And Lucanis who's started to heal... well I think she's starting to see him too, and the truth of who he is is something she'll struggle to face.

When the day finally comes that Lucanis tells her he doesn't want the job, when him and Illario both accept that their lives have meaning outside of Caterina's opinion of them, is the day that the Dellamorte's can maybe start to really see each other.

[arcanegifs]

ARCANE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS: 2x03 - “Finally Got The Name Right”

[kindaasrikal]

Jay becomes a snake. Zane is a nindroid. Nya merged with the ocean. Lloyd becomes an oni. Cole becomes a ghost.

Every single ninja has become a ‘monster’/an inhuman being physically.

Kai is only one who hasn’t.

Instead, in Ninjago Monstrosity, he will become a monster mentally. Losing all sense of self as he hopes desperately for survival. For the feeling of love to fill his heart once more.

Kai is shown to be actively clinging to his humanity and sanity in the trailer, as his voice slowly shifts to a rougher, tireder tone. He is losing himself in a way none of the others ever have, because physically he is human. There is no supernatural force making him become something he isn’t, he isn’t becoming something he already was (at least, he hopes). His blood isn’t pushing him to follow instincts.

The only way Kai could become a monster in the land he is in, is through himself.

[shutupineedtothink]

“Siuan was fridged for Moiraine!” Mm no. You don’t get an epic death scene voiceover speech that guides the whole narrative if you’re being fridged. You don’t get the conclusion of your own narrative arc that has been prophesizing your downfall from s1. Also here’s an alternative: what if Siuan’s last act on this earth, after she publicly declared her love for Moiraine, was to give the love of her life the strength she needed to live and defeat the Dark. Without even knowing it. By standing for the Light, for the Aes Sedai and her oaths, Siuan saved Moiraine. What if you gave her that agency back that she fought so hard to keep as she made the ultimate sacrifice? And you bet your ass if she had to do it again she would.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

At your side [End of Season 2]

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[riickgrimes]

[kvtnisseverdeen]

If you wish to go up to the library for the rest of the evening,I shall not say a word. Nor shall I blame you. I am merely glad you came.

BRIDGERTON | 1.08

[gravitysoda]

refusing an impossible wish and settling for one last game of chess.

[autumn-may]

terrisas really funny ithink

[gofishygo]

cw: you fucking die

price who is willing to do anything for the greater good. we've all seen it before, through countless missions- the 'draw the line wherever you need to' mentality. and what makes you think you're safe from it? because when you're tied up and a gun is pointed to your head and strange men are speaking to you in a language you don't understand, you finally learn what it means to be married to john.

as much as he loves you, you are still a part of his life, and that life is fully consumed by his profession. he's not coming for you, there is no fairytale ending where him and his team swoop in and save you- this is the truth, bare and raw. that his finite, as long as these conflicts continue to exist.

you die not knowing where you are, empty eyes staring at a camera that will no doubt brodcast this moment to your husband, and he will tell himself that this is just another sacrifice, even though it feels as if his whole heart is ripped from his chest. that this was for a better future. (but how can a future be better if you are not in it?)

but everything he says, all the morals that compose himself, they begin to weather and crumble in the face of his regret. he knows death well, has spoken of it to greiving wives and children, has seen how it has taken brothers-in-arms, teamates, civilians and politicians one by one, in a ceaseless march. but when it is you, and when it is under his hands and by his moral code, he finally snaps.

[tangerineseed]

to those who came before me and preserved what they could. happy indigenous peoples day

[amariram]

“I failed?”

[agathasblackheart]

Can’t stop thinking how you can hear Nicholas shout “mama stop” towards the end of episode 5 and it’s been so long, Agatha probably didn’t remember what his voice sounded like until that moment. The gut wrenching, heart aching pain that must have hit her in that moment to hear her baby boys voice after hundreds of years. Oh she loved her son so much. She never would have sacrificed him for the darkhold, I know it.