#but will be sad to see him go :(

[keferon]

Don’t mind me I just like to see him go bananas about cartoonish Autobot rules

Maaan…..if Prowl was in tfp he would spontaneously combust at least once a day

[egophiliac]

still ruminating over Lost In the Book With Spooky Skeletons Part 1, so here's a selection of some of my favorite little bits! (...some more loosely paraphrased than others) (I just feel like Idia has no room to criticize in general, okay)

anyway, I'm sure we're just going to have a fun time celebrating Halloween and nothing bad is going to happen whatsoever! :)

[mrdespondency]

he's so babygirl

[kabukiaku]

I want him to have his revenge arc <3

Happy Anniversary Meliora 👑

I had something else planned but I did not have the time to work on it. But this bad boy has been sitting in my drafts long enough.

[rainbow-sunshine-unicorn]

Remember when Anthony Bridgerton said:

And then it turns out that this is him with his wife:

[zan0tix]

to be seen for your humanity

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about not only the specific people lucanis pulls in to represent the 'locks' in his psyche, but the storytelling that happens in the structure/order of them. the underlying ideas are presented something like:

the lucanis who went into the ossuary never came back out again; he died down there (the boy caterina raised is gone forever) -> you're putting yourself in danger doing this (by being close to me), you should leave because I can't bear it if you get hurt because of me -> it doesn't matter even if we do try this, it won't work anyway (again because of me) ('you know what he's like, you can open the door but he won't walk through it' :'( oofie doofie) -> what if the real secret is that there was never anything but the monster in here from the beginning. you should leave, there was never anything here worth saving in the first place. (implicitly: what if I deserved what happened, all along.)

it runs pretty cleanly from outward-oriented attachment anxiety ('caterina won't even want me back like this, she won't recognize me (the same way I no longer recognize myself)) and gradually deeper inwards until we reach self-image and self worth. or you know, the harrowing basic lack of it lol.

"careful -- they'll know we're not right," spite says in one of their first scenes... but clearly, some very deep part of lucanis has feared or suspected for much longer than that that there's something inherently not right at the core of him, way before any demon entered the picture. and the voice he gives those lines to is the person who should know him better than anyone in the world, who he has loved more than anyone in the world -- and who deliberately chose to hurt him so horrifically anyway. 'It's better if I'm just a monster and deserved what happened than it is to allow for the idea that the brother I love doesn't really exist and maybe never did'. it's better if he's fundamentally flawed in some way that needed fixing to help him survive, and that's why caterina chose to hurt him again and again -- out of love. (this one I think he might have a very sad wakeup call on one day if he ever ends up with the responsibility and care of a child of his own in some way and realizes just how alien the idea of ever intentionally hurting them for any reason is to him. oh buddy. also interesting that he keeps caterina as the outermost lock -- there IS a distance he keeps there that he hasn't with illario. he doesn't resent her 'anymore' he says, but he also keeps her carefully further away from his deepest self.)

as far as I could tell the only note in the mind prison that's fully hidden and needs to be uncovered is the sad painful helpless stupid little truth that even after all this, even knowing what happened... he still loves his brother. is there anything illario could ever do that would make lucanis completely stop loving him, do you think? sometimes the trouble with unconditional love is that it is, well. unconditional, even when some terms and conditions probably would have been in order haha.

that's the pattern you see there again and again; he would rather destroy and abandon and imprison himself at every turn than let go of love, even when it's just scraps, even when there's only ever enough of it to hurt him. it's only when rook shows up and as it were takes his hand and walks along with him that he can entertain the idea of changing the story of what walking out the door might mean in the end.

[yo-yo-yoshiko]

Watching this man and his misfortunes like a sporting event.

plus a closer look at these cause i legit pulled an eye muscle drawing them...

[xxplastic-cubexx]

when you draw erik in glasses i just go sobbing

erik and his grandpa glasses are incredibly important to me i dont think i can stress this enough..

[nellasbookplanet]

The tragic idea that the Betrayers loved their siblings so much that it ended up being what drove them apart. They didn't want to settle for anything that could hurt their family, and mortals were doing so, either directly (a mortal usurping one of them) or indirectly (emotionally hurting them during the Schism by just. dying so much). To the Betrayers, it wasn't worth it. They wanted their beloved family to leave and go somewhere that wouldn’t hurt them.

To them, it's the primes who are the betrayers. The primes were motivated by more than just love for their immediate family - they loved their creation, too, and more than that, felt a responsibility for it. They would rather fight their own siblings than leave it.

We saw all the gods love and protect each other during the opening of Downfall. The Betrayers were not uniquely evil from the start. They wanted to save themselves and their family from hardship and suffering, even if it meant leaving their creation, their game, and in response their siblings locked them away. Not only do they not love mortals, they view mortals as this corruptive force that somehow turned their family against them. Do they think that, if they succeed in exterminating them, the Primes will be freed from their influence? Maybe - perhaps some of them are waiting to forgive and embrace their siblings, but far from all, I suspect. Asmodeus certainly expressed during Calamity that he didn’t so much want to be reunited with his siblings as he wanted to punish them. He was betrayed by the ones he loved most for the sake of a game! Maybe togetherness and forgiveness was once an obtainable goal, but not anymore. Even if the Betrayers succeeded in ending Exandria, the Primes would never forgive them, and they would never forgive the primes. Their family can never be whole again because of, as they see it, the toxic influence of mortals. So they hate mortals for this influence, but more than that, they hate their siblings for being so weak as to fall for it.

[kkotkkoji]

i'm normal about suo. totally normal.

[wishchip106]

i genuinely want to know what Erik’s routine was when he was in prison because they clearly managed to keep his hygiene up somehow

i’m still trying to wrap my brain around it HOW DID THEY TRIM HIS HAIR AND SHAVE HIS BEARD WITHOUT USING METAL?? REALLY SHARP PLASTIC???

it’s also sad but funny comparing him to the man who wasn’t in prison for ten years but still Erik manages to look better then him 😭 that’s what depression does to you though so 😔✊

also another thing the government hadn’t even built the plastic prison when they captured Erik so for some reason this man (who’s one of the most powerful mutants on the planet) managed to escape and then get caught SEVERAL times before they threw his ass in his cell

i thought you were better at this Erik come on man….

[matchanon]

phainon as a lovesick fool doesn’t think you belong to him, he would not assume he could possess you like that no matter how much he wished he could, he would look so pathetic

he wishes you would belong to him. he wishes you loved him as much as he did. he wishes you would look at him and see someone worth loving, worth cherishing, worth pouring all of your affection and dreams and hopes.

but no matter how much he wishes it so, he can’t ask it of you, not when he can’t do the same yet, not when the tomorrow at the end of this journey is wrought with blood and death, not when he has to step up to inherit the coreflame, not when he is the deliverance and the world (you) depends on the prophecy

there is meaning to this long fight, there is hope at the end of each night steeped in blood and suffering

if at the end of this journey there is still anything left of him that remains phainon, perhaps he will ask you if you will have him, then

[skunkes]

[yo-yo-yoshiko]

"The truth is bitter."

I'm sorry Komura decided to make you her little chew toy this year, kiddo... (here's a close shot at Hanto and a clean version of the duo up top)

[miniimerry]

I know people looooove to insinuate that Zoro doesn’t like Usopp because of Water 7, but I am coming to Zoro’s defense on this (not how you think!). Usopp and Luffy were both acting and reacting based on very heightened emotions. Usopp was utilizing a very common tactic— hurt before you get hurt. Not his best moment, but I think it’s understandable under the circumstances. Luffy, because he’s stubborn and also a little bratty, then countered with a classic baby brother tactic— when they go low, you go lower. The problem with this is that they aren’t just playing in the backyard. People have left their homes and families to follow Luffy. They’re fugitives. The government wants them dead. In normal circumstances, they’d fight and ignore each other and make up. But they can’t do that in this situation because it’s not a game. Zoro was trying to get the two of them to see that. Luffy may be silly. He may be lighthearted and carefree, but he is the captain on their very real pirate crew. There is no time for petty strife. If you quit, you have to mean it. If you remove someone, you also have to mean it. By the time their fight comes around, both Luffy and Usopp already regret their choices and want to just move on, but Zoro forces BOTH of them to face this discomfort and play through it so that they both understand the weight of their choices.

THAT BEING SAID!!!!!!!!! It’s not like Zoro was like “and FUCK that Longnose”… he was the first one of the Romance Dawn trio to ask Usopp to join them. He knows Usopp’s got a big heart. He knows what Usopp brings to the table, even if Usopp doesn’t. He was LIVID when he saw what Franky had done to Usopp!!! But he’s also been around. He’s a famous bounty hunter. For quite a while he was the most famous person on the crew. He’s probably seen tons of crews and watched their dynamics and understands that hierarchy exists for a reason. If you’re following someone without conviction, you’re risking your life every day for someone who can’t stand on his own morals. They can’t afford to do that. And it seems like in these ‘Zoro Hates Usopp’ arguments, they very often leave out the fact that Zoro told Luffy that if he didn’t stand by his choices, he’d leave the crew, too. He was just telling them to stand on the business they’d put out into the world, which I think is a perfectly fair stance to have. We all know that Zoro takes the words he says and the words others say very seriously. This is an extension of that. But it doesn’t mean he hates Usopp or Luffy. He just recognized that if they’re all allowed to hop on and off the crew, and if they’re not able to articulate their feelings without being mutinous, they were doomed to fail.

(I’m going to pause here to acknowledge that Zoro treated Sogeking in the same way that he’s always treated Usopp. They cut up together and he still takes care of him in his own weird way and he trusts him as a crew member. Think about how he treated Robin when he wasn’t sure about her. He didn’t do that here!! It was like “old times”. He still viewed him as a member of the crew.)

And THEN!! AND THEN!!!!! When Sanji tells everyone that he overheard Usopp’s rehearsals and that he intends to come back to the crew, Zoro still says that Usopp needs to apologize to their captain. Because he’s. You know. The captain. Mutiny is a serious action. You can’t just not acknowledge it. It needs to be faced. And Zoro is all hardass about it like “if the first thing he says isn’t an apology we’re leaving him” and then what does he do? He pretends he can’t hear him not apologizing. Usopp goes on for a while, and he pretends he can’t hear anything. And then as soon as Usopp apologizes, he smiles!!! Because he knows it means Usopp is coming home!!!!!!

And I know. I can already hear it. “Well, why didn’t he just not insist on that stuff???” Because the crew needed to figure out that behaving that way had the potential to cost them in ways that are uncomfortable! Yes, we don’t see Luffy doing the same. But I think it’s important to note that they are a crew and there’s essentially only one actual assigned role and that’s Luffy’s role as captain. Even if his decision is stupid they need to follow it. That’s the choice they’ve made. And they can be kind of loosey goosey in every regard except that one. Because if his final say means nothing, that could have catastrophic consequences for everyone. Plus, as readers, we get to see Luffy’s discomfort and remorse plenty. He weeps and tells Zoro that accepting the duel is hard and he hates it and Zoro basically tells him he has to lie in the bed he’s made for himself or he isn’t fit to be captain. And Luffy clearly felt very uncomfortable with the fact that his knee jerk reaction may have cost him his bestie/brother/playmate. He couldn’t even smile convincingly about the prospect of leaving Usopp behind. He felt a level of regret that I’m not sure we see him feel again. I think Zoro put them through their paces pretty equally. Zoro saw Luffy regret his choice and forced him to stand by it, which is his job as a captain. And he insisted that Usopp apologize for his choice, which is his job as a crew member.

Zoro’s intent wasn’t to take sides. He wasn’t operating under the belief that the captain is the only one that can be right. He was trying to get all of them to understand that exploding, quitting, and coming back without acknowledging the source of strife is not a sustainable method of communication for a crew. If they can’t hash it out and own their mistakes or mean what they say, they can’t fully trust each other. And they need a captain with a clear vision. There’s no room for wavering unless they’re ready to lose their lives.

And Usopp comes back and he’s still clinging to Zoro and climbing on him and using him as a shield, so I think they’re just fine.