#What happened to Falst Erin

[notasouleater]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAÀAÄAAAAAAAAAŪĀ

[falst]

KENDALS SELF DESTRUCTION HURTS EVERYONE AROUND HIM THE SELFISHNESS OF SELF SACRIFICE *SHAKES YOU*

[spacetimeaccordionfolder]

As several folks have pointed out, a lot of Erin's struggle is likely not just pride, but feeling as though he has to help people. He's got the power to do this, so why can't he? If he can't, is he powerless? If he can't fix the problems then how can he help people? It's not that he thinks he actually has control over everything, it's that he thinks he has to have a solution ready to be able to fix anything and everything. If he doesn't, then what is his point? He is the Elemental Magus, and first Void Mage, and already had unusually powerful soul channels as a child. We know he was fragile and prone to passing out as a kid (Tess says this to Falst after Falst insists he's fine after being hit by the knockout powder- implying Erin would also do that- insist he's fine before falling over.) I already made a post a month or so ago about Kendal's comment on Erin's desperation, and how Kendal is speaking from his experience with his desperation leading to him not valuing his own life, and stabbing himself. I think we could also connect Erin's need to have a fix for everything or a semblance of control to Kendal's constantly pushing forward to help Vash, with little regard for his own well-being, prior to the end of Arc 1. (Kendal knowing that Zuurith might target him, and trying to handle that without getting anyone else involved, as it's god business; telling everyone else to leave during the fight with Tynan; everything that happens in ch 18). While Falst, Alinua, and Dainix's criticisms of Erin are valid and make sense, given their viewpoints and life experiences, I think Kendal might be at a place where he could talk to Erin about this and Erin might listen. The current page (2.2.29) is just the two of them, and Erin seems pretty close to having his last semblance of control snapping. I wonder if we'll get a repeat of the "I won't be alone" or "we grow," but even if we don't I will enjoy what ever happens. Practically anything could happen on Fridays page and I will still pace in circles with excitement. I love these characters so much.

To sum up:

Erin: I have the ability to fix the problem! And I can totally fix it! That's what I do!

Kendal: last time I was thinking that line of thinking I ended up stabbing myself do you want to talk about it

[comicaurora]

Wait wait wait

If Ferin souls are closed to the elements, and Falst can use light magic, and the Light Dragon is the equal and opposite of the Void Dragon ...

Does that mean Erin's plan just got a huge spanner in its works ?

I'm sure Erin would have lots of thoughts on what just happened if he had seen it.

[sunset-sunbun]

I find it very interesting that we know everyone's past pretty well in Aurora Except Erin's.

Like we've been with Kendal since day one, same with alinua (kind of sort of) and she gave us some more context throughout the comic. Tess, Dainix, and Falst gave us a rundown in varying levels of explanation but either way they all give us a pretty good picture about what happened and why they are where they are and stuff. ...Except Erin. We know his father was an emissary and Tess was bought into his family. and that he went to the soul shaper monastery once and got sealed. we know he wanted to do more to help Tess and was also pretty fragile....but that's it. we don't know much about his past other than some titbits of knowledge here and there that give us the frame but not the full picture as to what happened. but we know s o m e t h i n g (s) happened. and honestly I cant wait to see what it is

[catboy-artist]

New page, new space on the bingo card! And here we have Falst doing what cats do best, breaking free of his restraints!

(I also redrew the free space deco.)

Theories under readmore as always!

This is awesome as fuck. Falst broke out of it through sheer will. There’s gotta be some symbolism in him breaking out of his restraint there.

Also, Light Dragon’s power in its raw form is white fire not dissimilar to void… veeeery interesting.

She’s most likely going to notice something is up, but we just got a scene cut away from Paladin and LD so maybe not next page.

I think Falst is gonna catch on to what just happened and start breaking everyone else out of the halo while the paladin is distracted with Kendal. Dainix is closest physically so maybe we’ll get a tactical moment

Speaking of, is he gonna be on fire? Probably not majorly since this is still Falst’s character moment. However, maybe he’ll be on fire juuuuust enough for Falst to help him calm down.

Once again demonstrating what happens when you ignore the so called innocents and dismiss them as non threats. Great job Paladin, when will you learn these are the PCs

(Also. I think Voidy will honor the agreement and leave everyone alone for now, because its not desperate yet and it would benefit a long game plan to make Erin think he can be controlled)

[incorrect-comic-aurora-quotes]

Erin: Every single odd number has an “E” in it.

Alinua: LISTEN-

Tynan: Not all of them. 30 and 50 aren’t spelled with the letter E in it…

Dainix: Father god

Tynan: …if you can split a number in half evenly, it’s even. 30 and 50 are odd.

Falst, unimpressed: 15+15=30, 25+25=30

Erin: 25+25=30? You sure about that??

Alinua: Lord have mercy….

Dainix: One, three, five, nine, and since everything else after that is a variant of these numbers, then all odds have the letter ‘E’.

Erin: YOU FORGOT SEVEN!!

Alinua: It keeps getting worse.

Erin: who failed yall?

Void Dragon, to Erin: What it’s like calculating the tip when you are gay and also super dumb and don’t know math.

Tynan: You whole ass forgot about eight - a number with an E and is pretty fucking even.

Erin: Why would 8 be brought up if it’s EVEN in a post about ODDS??????? The post said “every single ODD number has an ‘E’ in it” not “every single number with an ‘E’ is odd”. What the fuck.

Tess: Er, guys two is odd and doesn’t have an E. Just saying…

Erin: Did you deadass just try to tell me two is odd? I’m fucking crying throw the whole squad away.

Falst: The one thing I notice is that no matter how much you want to throw this squad away, you just can’t.

Tynan: Wait what about zero. That’s an odd number, no?

Erin: *Confused concern*

Kendal: Ok but hear me out, fifty and thirty make up for the fact they have no E by the way they are pronounced third-E fifth-E.

Erin: Bro, why do 30 and 50 matter THEY’RE FUCKING EVEN!

Vash: What the actual fuck is happening.

thanks for the request @wise-healer c:

[bucketsandraincoats]

right, I've been Thinking. About something that I don't really... see... talked about? Maybe its just me, but I haven't seen any posts about it. Um. Erin is so lonely.

Of course, right? Aurora is practically Loneliness: the Comic and its interesting seeing how it manifests for different reasons, and in different ways. Alinua's is deep, ingrained in her, and it seeps into everything. Kendal's is new, like everything else, and he's still trying to understand it. Falst's has claws and sharp teeth and the need to protect. Dainix's is softer, in the background; Tess' used to be all around her, but it's been better lately.

Where's Erin's? He's the elemental magus, the aseran champion, he has a hundred connections but no one who stays for him. He must regard Tarren as a bit of a miracle, I think. Yet Kendal and Alinua went with him. Granted, this is because VD technically can't hurt them, but even if he could've they would have made the same decision. There are now 5 people who know of the all-consuming darkness inside him and have chosen to stay. So now what? Now comes the desperation, as others have mentioned, because Erin is hubristic and prideful but it's also partly a cover-up for his need to be worthy of the power he's been given. Despite the front he puts up, Erin cares. We heard it from his sister: he doesn't. Leave people. Behind. In his eyes he becomes the leader of the group, the one who will keep anything from happening to anyone. Not to get too 'gifted kid' with this, but the environment Erin was raised in taught him to put Greatness above all else, even in regards to his worth as a person. So these people- he has to show them he's great, because if he's not, he's not worthy, and he's not enough, and everyone will see him for the incompetent arse he is and then they will leave. He can't have that. Not again. I also saw the 'you don't have to hold me back anymore' as said because he doesn't believe Tess would care about him of her own accord. He knows why Tess left, there aren't supposed to be any hard feelings, but subconsciously he can't shake the fact that the Runaaser siblings don't leave people behind. Yet she did. Tl;dr Erin's need to hold everything together is because he's fiercely protective of everyone, because he cares about them and doesn't want them to think he's not strong enough, because then they'll leave. Basically adding another layer to the hubris -> actually partly desperation posts (which are rly good) that's like. -> the desperation is also partly because he's lonely and needs people to stay and care about him (because obviously no one does, imagine that). He's in the Floof Squad too. His loneliness is different but its there

[gispurple]

Thinking of writing an Aurora AU that takes place in the Tma universe. Think it would go something like this:

- Erin is a part of the Asera institute in the US as an archivist except there was no communication so Elias has no idea he exists. He’s just an avatar of all the fears, incredibly overpowered, and not being monitored at all.

- Vash was a monster of either the slaughter of the End called the God Soldier or something but got completely cut off from his patron and left Kendall behind. Kendall is not connected to an entity in any way but is completely inhuman, just living in the body the entity made for Vash.

- Tess is a Fairchild. Need I say more.

- Alinua is a corruption/extinction avatar who has absolutely no idea what the fuck is happening to her and is actively Becoming throughout the story, but is absolutely determined to STOP what is happening to her.

- Dainix is Agnes Montague 2 electric boogaloo but with human emotion this time. Also has no idea what’s happening.

- Falst is a hunt avatar who did not sign up to be a cat boy and is trying to find some way to pass as human in normal society.

- after a Big Messup Erin ends up with a manifestation of the Extinction stuck to him (Voidy) and is trying to get him removed.

- pretty much the entire crew is going on a massive road trip from supernatural hotspot to supernatural hotspot trying to stop The Extinction from emerging, chasing down the collector, and solving all of their individual problems.

I think I’m gonna end up writing this once my computer starts working again,

[t-5seconds]

i'm doing a hunger games simulator of @comicaurora ! you may recall i already did one of these in 2020, but the cast of the comic has changed since then and i want to do another one.

the game is under the cut! (most of it, anyway. due to tumblr image limit, the ending is in a reblog.)

here's our tributes! only one can win. place your bets now

not much happening here

theia falls in a hole and dies! sad, i like her. tarren breaks kendal's nose?? i did not think they could do that. primordial life falls in a lake and drowns! not how i expected her to go out.

nobody else dies at the reaping. onto day 1, then

vash dies of hypothermia. not as dramatic as how he died in the comic but they can't all be winners

are my eyes deceiving me or are the void and light dragons getting along?? also, trusk dies trying to escape the arena. considering his canon backstory i think that's understandable

theia, life, vash and trusk all died of natural causes, so nobody has any kills! as such nobody is in first place yet

tynan kills his own teammate! i guess that's on me for making them teammates. tahraim kills kendal! tess kills jolon! lots of death on night 1!

caliban kills dainix! what about that vague project?? i guess in the hunger games you have to make sacrifices to win. onto day 2

erin pushes the paladin champion off a cliff! i thought he could fly, but i guess not.

tess kills the light dragon! caliban tries to kill tynan, but fails.

6 deaths today, those being zuurith, kendal, jolon, dainix, the paladin champion and the light dragon. with kendal dead, district 1 is out, and so is district 5 with the loss of the paladin champion! only lady huracan remains to represent the paladins. with 2 kills, tess is now in first place

nothing really exciting on night 2. i would love to know what kind of ghost stories the void dragon tells, though

erin spares ilia! tess forces shrike to kill tynan!

first the light dragon, now lady huracan?? did the paladins and the void dragon form an alliance while i wasn't looking???

only tynan died today, but his death marks the end of district 10. tess remains in first place

nothing too interesting here

erin tries to poison alinua and accidentally poisons himself. he was the winner in the first aurora hunger games, but it seems he won't be that lucky twice!

lady huracan tries (but fails) to kill shrike. everyone else just kinda wanders around

erin was the day's only casualty. tess remains in first place

no deaths on night 4, but lots of holding hands, snuggling, and questioning one's sanity

caliban kills the void dragon! that's the main antagonist dealt with.

shrike refuses to kill falst. weird, i would've thought she'd jump on the opportunity

acid rain! alinua lets caliban die! lady huracan lets tarren die! tess kills shrike! gleicann dies! tahraim lets lady ilia die, even though she is made of water and i would've expected her to be immune to acid rain, but i guess not!

6 deaths today! the void dragon, caliban, tarren, shrike, gleicann and lady ilia are all out! with their deaths, districts 6, 7 and 8 are out as well! tess is still in first place. can anyone defeat her? there's only 5 people left to try!

an uneventful night 5. how does tess have an infection if she's made of metal? is she rusting??

the feast! falst falls in a lake and drowns. don't worry falst, it's not that embarrassing. life went out the same way

an uneventful day 6 with our remaining 5 tributes.

falst was our only death today. district 4 is out. tess is, as always, in first place. i've just hit tumblr image limit, so the conclusion to the games will be in a reblog!

[narnianvalkyrieofberk]

New year, new me! ... Or at least continuing to try and build a me I like progressively more and more. Today's step? Starting to kill the part of me that fears being cringe by posting my @comicaurora self insert OCs even tho they're super self indulgent and occasionally lore-breaking (sometime because I misread/misremembered something from the lore page; sometimes because I use them in RPs and I like watching Erin lose his shit over something that makes no sense to him :P )

One of my earlier ones. Metalcaste because y'know. Wanting to be a cool metal lady like Tess. Ended up making an AU of the og version because the og version leaves Zuurith immediately after being released from prison and ended up being @nogenderonlyvoid's self insert's bodyguard. I wrote a ficlet that involved Icarus turning down Shrike's offer to take them to breakfast their first full day outside of prison, but Icarus turned her down and left Zuurith all together instead. Of course eventually I started wondering what if she took Shrike up on her offer and that's when the second version happened.

Can you tell I have a thing for wind-fire-lightning as a tri-element combo? :P

Oh hey, this one cursed out Caliban to his face. And for once we didn't do a wind-fire-lighting combo! Progress! Expanding to new horizons! :P

This one was a wind mage until I remembered that younger races don't do elemental magic. So she ended up obsessed with lacrima instead. Frequently mistaken for a freshman his entire time at the academy. Great way for me to vent my frustrations over how people responded to my baby face in college! May or may not have a starmetal dagger in their boot.

I keep doing AUs of this one. OG version was "adopted" alongside Tess and had to hide her full-leopard form because Galen was scared of it. Then did a version where The Ruunasers only knew about the leopard form and kept her as a pet until Falst enters the mix. And more recent AU has been "Snowspot" running away from the Ruunasers shortly before Tess sparks and running into Falst and chilling with him. Ruunaser twins (Erin and @nogenderonlyvoid's oc) don't find Falst's shifter buddy is Snowspot until Petrichor

Ah yes, nothing makes a possessed elemental magus trust you more than slapping a sealing cuff and ropes on him while he's passed out from fending off a primordial void dragon! In the Junior Champion's defense, they were badly injured from the battle and wanted to make sure the Void Dragon couldn't run away with his vessel while she trying to clean and bandage her wounds. Wrote a ficlet for this one that takes place shortly after he loses his status and his arm. Got to project my obsession with looking at the moon at night.

Narni Chaosbringer who I definitely did not forget to add until after initially posting :P ^^"" God of "everything fun" or "everything chaotic and destructive" depending on if you ask them or Zuurith :P Has one (1) emissary who is also an elemental magus because I reeeaaaally wanted to fuck with Erin.

[reflection-s-of-stars]

The Least I Can Do

It is the birthday of @falst aka Scar aka Magnus aka a lovely person and great mutual so here is a fic! It’s set after the current arc finishes, and it’s just a little Alinua + Falst convo! I haven’t done one of these in a while so just bear with me <3

Being healed felt nice. Really nice.

This might’ve seemed obvious to anyone else, but it was new for Falst. He was rapidly realizing he’d never been properly healed before- lacrimal life magic was the closest, but it had felt strange, old and dry and vaguely disapproving. But Alinua’s healing magic felt fantastically sweet and new. The little tendrils of magic reaching into his wounds weren’t sucking Falst dry like before. They felt like being hugged, like being washed down with warm water.

Not that he needed it, of course. Alinua was just doing him a favor, like she always did after her friends got hurt.

“It’s the least I can do,” she kept saying. She liked repeating things, as if saying them over and over made them truer. That was also nice, though Falst couldn’t pinpoint exactly how.

She also liked to ask questions. That was less lovely, but he played along.

“What were the catacombs like?” “Dark.”

“Do you wanna talk about what happened?” “Not really.”

“What else do you wanna talk about?” “Dunno.”

Maybe he wasn’t playing along that well, but he was hurt. She could bear with him for a minute.

The sun was rising. The sky was beautiful this time of day. Alinua seemed to agree: the little life-tendrils were going a bit slower, and her eyes were wide, staring just above Falst’s head.

“They’re nice, right?” he offered as a conversation topic.

“Yeah,” she almost whispered. “I always like looking at them through the trees.”

“Not much else to do when you live in the woods.”

“I get that,” she laughed.

He cocked his head. “You lived in the woods?”

Alinua nodded, returning to the scratches on his arm. “Didn’t Erin tell you?”

“Oh yeah,” he offered, rather uselessly. Falst vaguely recalled the explanation given by Erin for Alinua’s weird abilities, but the technical terms eluded him, so he’d forgotten most of it. It had something to do with the Chimeric Plague, but the last he’d heard of that involved its sufferers barely making it to five years old, so who knew.

“How long were you…” he struggled for a word- “in there?”

“Living the green life?”

Falst snorted. “That’s a hell of a way to put it.”

“I like it,” Alinua giggled. “Ten years, by the way. What about you?”

He paused, counting on what few fingers he could use.

“Twelve,” he said, then thought better of it: “Twelve-ish. Maybe thirteen.”

“You win.”

“I guess.”

The sky was yellow by now. No, it was gold- not gold like Tess’s skin or like Kendal’s hair, but gold like Falst’s eyes. Gold like the cat’s eyes he got from his father.

Thirteen years.

“What day is it?”

It was Alinua’s turn to frown and count. “Fifteenth day of the eighth Sindahlan, why?”

“I think it’s my birthday tomorrow.”

Alinua didn’t say anything. She broke her magic from his arm. The absence felt slimy and cool, like touching a slug, but not unpleasant like Falst had anticipated.

The mage turned away from him. Her hair shook as she worked on something he couldn’t see. It was a little bit green and a little bit pink, a little bit glowy and a little bit sweet-smelling. When Alinua turned back around, she held a big red fruit in her hand.

“Happy birthday,” she said. “I couldn’t exactly wrap it, but I hope you like it.”

Falst didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t gotten a birthday gift in… well, in thirteen years. He took it from her hand. It was hard enough that his claws didn’t dig into the shell unless he applied pressure.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“It’s the least-”

“Yeah, I get it,” he interrupted, but he couldn’t hide a smile. “It’s the least you could do.”

“Do I really say it that often?”

“Yep.”

[the-mountain-flower]

Spoilers for the webcomic Aurora page 1.22.50

Falst worried about Dainix

-----

A) This is badass

B) Their FACES

-----

Dainix: flamethrows the glort out of his lungs

Alinua: what the FUCK just happened

-----

Erin: Falst isn't dying, Dainix can breathe, NOW I can show off!

This is why we stan SickTats McHubris

[spacetimeaccordionfolder]

spoilers for the current aurora page (2.3.17)

me this morning

oh wow that got blurry uh anyway I awoke, looked at the news (see panel 1) and then opened comicaurora dot com and panel 2 happened.

panel 1 is "everything currently going on"

panel 2 is "omg soulfire can transmute light into void! Woah! I was right! This is the best! Multiple theories confirmed! Woah!"

I think panel 6 of 2.3.17 might have been the highlight of my day so far. I also think I might have seen someone referencing my post from Monday night in the comments but I didn't want to ask and be wrong.

The rest of the day has been ehh at best but thinking of panel 6 has consistently made me excited.

WAIT I forgot it's PURPLE!!!! WHAT that's so cool. I was right about the colors too and i'm so excited about that Soulfire can Transmute Light into Void and Void into light.

[I am a crustables/ferinheit shipper but uh. you know how falst can do light magic. Erin can do void magic. and soulfire can work with them both. do I ship Dainix and Erin? never thought about it before. but huh. I don't think I am being serious about this. but also.]

[comicaurora]

This is probably a weird question, but what are some tips you could give on character design? I've been trying to feel confident with my own designs, but they feel kind of bland... what kinds of things would you suggest to help make designs stand out more?

Hoo boy. Hm. I feel like I am not the right person to ask about this because objectively I do almost nothing you're "supposed" to, but if it's working I guess that means I might be onto something?

A lot of my design considerations are practical. I don't want to give anybody a design that's going to be a nightmare to draw over and over again. I've done enough commissions in my time to know when somebody is overdesigned and therefore hugely annoying to draw, and that's a no-no. So I tend to stick with simple patterns at most, not too many layers, no need for five million belts, no need for incredibly intricate hairstyles, etc. This is a practical consideration for the medium of comic art, but other mediums have different considerations - 3D-modeled art, for instance, can overdesign the characters as much as they want because they only need to model them once, and a lot of visual novel characters are limited to a very small handful of poses and some interchangeable expressions, meaning it isn't prohibitively complicated to make them a little Extra. The most time-consuming and frustrating commissions I've ever done were for characters who were frankly never designed to be drawn more than once. A quick sampling of highlights for the design features I swore to myself I would never deal with again-

So on a basic level, if you're designing a character to draw over and over again, it needs to be something you're willing and able to draw over again. Intricate patterns, a lot of interlocking plates, anything with lace - those are all things I try to avoid.

I've often seen the advice that character silhouettes should be super visually distinct, that characters should be very strongly shaped like different things. I think that's great if your style is that flexible, but if you kind of want everybody to be shaped like a human being with a skeleton, this advice is not very useful.

I think a diversity of body shapes is great, but the style I favor requires the anatomy to at least sort of makes sense, which means while there can still be a lot of variation in the distribution of muscle and fat, everyone's bones are gonna be in roughly the same place. I can't just draw a square and fill it with a dude. So instead I try and distinguish my character silhouettes in other ways.

Everyone's hair is different, and because most characters have big hair, this plays a large part in their silhouette. Falst and Erin both have short hair, but Falst's is a bristling mane while Erin's is usually more swept and soft-looking. Dainix and Kendal both have long hair, but even when Dainix's hair is loose it doesn't hang or flow the same way Kendal's does - it gets in the way, drapes in front of his face and overall doesn't move the same. Alinua's hair is bouncy curls. On top of that, everyone's outfits are fairly simple, but no two of them are exactly the same - Erin has a monopoly on poofy sleeves, Kendal has cuffed boots and the back-slung sword, Dainix has the poncho and the poofier pants, Alinua has the v-neck top with slightly pauldron-y shoulders and the slippers, Falst's clothing is ragged at the edges, etc. Even without getting into their distinct color palettes, everyone's at least a little bit distinct.

And this is another place where I purposefully try to avoid overdesigning. If everyone has too much going on it can circle around to being hard to tell the characters apart, because too much is happening. Who can pay attention to the fact that one character is sleeveless and one has asymmetrical boots and one has a mullet when everybody is wearing eight layers of embroidered fabric with four belts and half a breastplate on top?

Avoiding same-face is hard, and I'm not very good at it. But I do try to make sure everyone's face shape, nose and eyes are at least slightly different from everyone else's. It might not show from a distance and it might not be as extreme as a pixar design sheet, but it's something.

Ultimately the main consideration I keep in mind when designing characters is - perhaps a bit redundantly - their character. Who they are as people, and how that will impact the way they look. Everybody stands differently, and shifts their weight differently when a situation is changing.

Despite both being short, lightweight guys with short hair, Falst and Erin are wildly different people and are not going to dress the same, make the same facial expressions or hold themselves the same way. Despite both being tall, long-haired, generally friendly warrior badasses, Kendal and Dainix carry themselves very differently and react to things in very distinct ways. Tess and Erin have the exact same haircut and nobody noticed for ages because of everything else.

The designs aren't complicated, and compared to some, they aren't even that distinct. But I try to make sure that their personality is visible in every aspect of their design. Every "why?" in their design has an in-character answer, and since they're all quite different on the inside, keeping things simple means that starts showing through on the outside.

This is also how I can visually distinguish between Vash and Kendal, who have the exact same body and clothes.

we can never underestimate the importance of ✨body language✨

[gracklinging-electricboogalo]

Anygays now that we've established that drawing with blood is fine and normal actually I think I should cover Falst and Dainix in blood next. I'd have to wait for a much bigger cut to happen though which would take a while, since I'm a rather careful person. Or Trusk's eyes are redish, right? hmmm Erin's turn red when he uses fire, but that's more orange. Or I continue with the running non-Aurora list. What do you think Divorce Lawyer.

divorce lawyer here. cover falst in blood