#growth! I hope!
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my butterfly chasing has me tinkering with my tumblr blog page, and it's a wip atm (the html needs a LOT of adjusting atm) and my about and tags pagers are pretty out of date. so, I'll try and work on that over the week I suppose
my complaining tag hasn't been used in a few years. at first I thought I was just trying harder to keep the negativity off my blog (which I also do) but then I was actually reading some of the posts and. oh gosh. those were some Big emotions I was dealing with. Glad to not be That guy anymore. Your 20's really just kinda suck, but since you're out of your teens it feels unfair because you should be Beyond such angst. but. nope. apparently it'll keep going a bit longer. Fascinating collection of posts over the years as a retrospective.
#ftr the complaining tag isn't and won't ever be listed in the tags page#while I'm working on these I might also go back and make them all nonrebloggable too#probably my covid whining could've gone in the complaining tag#but like it sucked but the timing of it was so atrociously bad I kinda also came back around to being funny.#one of those posts that i was looking through from when I was... I guess about 24ish?#idr what the context was but I was apparently mad at my family to the point of being invited to leave#and i elected to sit there visibly and uncomfortably seething so that my upset could be witnessed.#I just DO NOT have that kinda energy anymore lmao?#which is a relief#I don't think I'll ever Like my birthday but maybe now that I don't have the energy for such Big Feelings#about shit that doesn't actually matter. that maybe my birthday introspection can keep this kinda tone going forward.#I don't mind this kind of thing. it's interesting for sure to look back#but so many of my birthdays in my 20's I just was so depressed and those feelings of like#wasting my life away and not doing EVERYTHING#getting another ticker on my age tally right when the calendar really compounded that feeling#so many of those birthdays were spent on crying jags. like. covid. but I didn't cry this year! woo! and I just teared up slightly last year#growth! I hope!#why am i rambling
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License to Kitty.
#dungeon meshi#izutsumi#marcille donato#chilchuk tims#I still stand by my tags on the Izutsumi character study piece I did in January - but I will repeat myself on a few lines here:#I *really* love this character. I love that all of the dungeon meshi crew are complicated and have difficult to love components.#But Izutsumi is a particular kind of hard to love. I foresee a lot of people being turned off by her abrasiveness and lack of teamwork.#She is very self-centered and openly goes against what the party agrees on.#She's a picky eater in a story that is 50% about eating good and healthy food!#It is in part about her growth but admittedly even *then* she remains rather true to her self-centeredness.#Even though she isn't as nice or funny or compassionate as the others...Izutsumi is still someone worth loving.#Even the more difficult people are someone worth loving.#And those people in turn are people who have something and someone they love.#She may be a girlcat but she is the most human of them all.#I hope that if you are an anime only watcher and are feeling put off by her at the moment; you'll give her a chance.#By the way: *yes* I worked very hard to draw that skateboard pose. It was worth it.#EDIT: HAPPY 500th POST OF POORLY-DRAW-MDZS!!! What a comic to commemorate the milestone with!
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Headcanon: Deep down they both want to be their fairy godparent/godkid again after losing them, but don't believe they deserve each other and feel like they aren't worthy to be their companion anymore
They both need counseling and therapy as a whole package
#fairly oddparents#fairly oddparents a new wish#peri#peri fairywinkle cosma#dev dimmadome#fop a new wish#peri fairly oddparents#a new wish#periwinkle#the fairly oddparents#dev#my art#fanart#I like how both Peri and Dev is the type who prefers not directly express their feelings because they want to be seen as cool/independent#and be loved by the people that they care of#in other words#a tsundere//hit#jokes aside I like to think another reason why Dev cried during that scene is because-#he realized he's doing the same thing that his dad has done to him but on Peri#and yet Peri still cares for him despite his treatment towards him#like how Dev still loves his dad despite being a terrible father#and just..want to do everything right by him to earn his dad affection#man#Also ngl I have a hunch that Dev might still remember since Hazel's ''no rule'' wish was pretty vague#so maybe he counts in that wish?#plus he was wearing sunglasses before the memory wipe which maybe that won't affect him as well?#you can see I'm coping rn#I do hope this is only temporary and we will see them being back together in season 2 tho#giving them both some time to reflect and growth#because Peri clearly needs more experience in his job and Dev needs his character development for season 2
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"Luke Skywalker isn’t like the old Jedi. He saves Vader with his attachments!”
Wrong!
Luke Skywalker, at the end of Return of the Jedi, after his confrontation with the Emperor drags Darth Vader through the destructing Death Star. He’s desperate, knuckles white under the heavy weight of his father’s body, a little boy dragging his dad to safety. He sets Vader down for a moment, to catch his breath or maybe to get a better grip. He goes to grab Vader again, but Vader, uncomfortable and in pain, asks Luke to take off the mask. He wants to see Luke through his eyes instead of the eyes Palpatine built for him. Luke refuses, says that removing the mask is a sure way for Vader to die. Luke doesn’t want Vader dead, he wants Vader alive. Not to hold him accountable for his many evil acts, but for the same reason why Luke Skywalker can’t kill Darth Vader; Vader is his father and Luke loves him.
And yet, after a moment, Luke removes Vader’s mask. He doesn’t want to, he hesitates, but he removes the mask with enough slowness to allow Vader to take it back. In that moment, Luke sets aside his desire for Vader in his life, sets aside his desire to see him live, and sets aside his entire mission, the reason he was even on the Death Star in the place. In his compassion for his father, Luke stays with Vader until he dies. It is this moment where we see him be the best damn Jedi he can be. I’d even argue that this moment is the greatest example of non-attached love we see. Because Luke lets Vader go! He lets his father die, and in some ways, by removing the mask, he too kills Vader, he stays with him until his last moment, gives him the kindness of granting his last wish and finally chooses Vader.
And Luke doesn’t have to do this. If Luke Skywalker’s love for his father was an attachment, he would ignore Vader and continue dragging him to the escape pod, put his desire for a father as his central focus and ignore Vader’s wants and discomfort. Maybe he would even save him. But he doesn’t. Instead, he watches as Vader dies.
He builds a Jedi burial for his father and watches it burn the remnants of Vader and Anakin Skywalker away. He mourns Vader, he mourns what they could’ve had as father and son, considers what ifs and maybe-if-I-did-this. Vader/ Anakin is released from his mortal body, from his ‘crude matter’ and Luke lets him go. He says one final goodbye to Anakin. Then, he joins Leia, Han, Chewie, Lando, and the rest of the Rebels and celebrates their victory. He lives in the present and celebrates what he has instead of what he lost.
Luke Skywalker is THE Jedi. Everything about Luke Skywalker serves as the foundational cornerstone of the Jedi, everything about the Jedi as a culture and philosophy is reflected in his character. Luke’s desire for the New Jedi Order isn’t to throw away the values of the old Order, but to vitalise them, breathe life back into dying lungs, and rebuild a path that people set out on their way to destroy. (Yes, his Order is different from the Old, but that’s because it has to be. He doesn’t have the resources or the safety of the Old Order.) The philosophies of the Jedi are difficult and they aren’t for everyone, and like the perfect Jedi that Luke is, he struggles and stumbles and sometimes he even rejects it. But, no matter how far he falls, it is a way of life he chooses again and again and again. It is a way of life that welcomes him back each time
#luke skywalker#star wars#pro jedi#jedi positive#luke skywalker meta#luke skywalker loves being a jedi and i'm so tired of people pretending he doesn't#I hate you 'time-travel fics where Luke judges the Order for how they've handled things'#Luke would be the people's padawan actually chasing everyone down to acquire every bit of knowledge that they have#star wars meta#jedi order#the jedi#anakin skywalker#darth vader#the original trilogy#a new hope#empire strikes back#return of the jedi#if I tell you that luke outgrows anakin/vader? if I tell you that Vader is just the start of his Jedi growth and the end of it? then what?#Iong post#it kind of ran away from me
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"In an unprecedented step to preserve and maintain the most carbon-rich elements of U.S. forests in an era of climate change, President Joe Biden’s administration last week proposed to end commercially driven logging of old-growth trees in National Forests.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, issued a Notice of Intent to amend the land management plans of all 128 National Forests to prioritize old-growth conservation and recognize the oldest trees’ unique role in carbon storage.
It would be the first nationwide amendment to forest plans in the 118-year history of the Forest Service, where local rangers typically have the final word on how to balance forests’ role in watershed, wildlife and recreation with the agency’s mandate to maintain a “sustained yield” of timber.
“Old-growth forests are a vital part of our ecosystems and a special cultural resource,” Vilsack said in a statement accompanying the notice. “This clear direction will help our old-growth forests thrive across our shared landscape.”
But initial responses from both environmentalists and the logging industry suggest that the plan does not resolve the conflict between the Forest Service’s traditional role of administering the “products and services” of public lands—especially timber—and the challenges the agency now faces due to climate change. National Forests hold most of the nation’s mature and old-growth trees, and therefore, its greatest stores of forest carbon, but that resource is under growing pressure from wildfire, insects, disease and other impacts of warming.
Views could not be more polarized on how the National Forests should be managed in light of the growing risks.
National and local environmental advocates have been urging the Biden administration to adopt a new policy emphasizing preservation in National Forests, treating them as a strategic reserve of carbon. Although they praised the old-growth proposal as an “historic” step, they want to see protection extended to “mature” forests, those dominated by trees roughly 80 to 150 years old, which are a far larger portion of the National Forests. As old-growth trees are lost, which can happen rapidly due to megafires and other assaults, they argue that the Forest Service should be ensuring there are fully developed trees on the landscape to take their place...
The Biden administration’s new proposal seeks to take a middle ground, establishing protection for the oldest trees under its stewardship while allowing exceptions to reduce fuel hazards, protect public health and safety and other purposes. And the Forest Service is seeking public comment through Feb. 2 (Note: That's the official page for the proposed rule, but for some reason you can only submit comments through the forest service website - so do that here!) on the proposal as well as other steps needed to manage its lands to retain mature and old-growth forests over time, particularly in light of climate change.
If the Forest Service were to put in place nationwide protections for both mature and old-growth forests, it would close off most of the National Forests to logging. In an inventory concluded earlier this year in response to a Biden executive order, the Forest Service found that 24.7 million acres, or 17 percent, of its 144.3 million acres of forest are old-growth, while 68.1 million acres, or 47 percent, are mature."
-via Inside Climate News, December 20, 2023
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Note: This proposed rule is current up for public comment! If you're in the US, you can go here to file an official comment telling the Biden administration how much you support this proposal - and that you think it should be extended to mature forests!
Official public comments really DO matter. You can leave a comment on this proposal here until February 2nd.
#united states#us politics#conservation#climate change#sustainability#forests#old growth forest#national forest#carbon emissions#climate action#climate crisis#forest service#biden#biden administration#public comment#good news#hope#it took me soooo long to hunt down the actual public comment link#by which I mean like 10 minutes but like#that's too long! especially considering I am way better at navigating language and bureaucratic websites like this#than A LOT of people#why tf can't you just comment on the Official Website For Public Commenting?#aka regulations.gov#baffling#anyway the good news is I did find it so pls do go ahead and submit a comment if you can
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My page for @kairizine. It was such a huge honor to be part of this wonderful book with everyone, I had so much fun!
[id in alt!]
#kingdom hearts#kh#kh kairi#kh xion#kh namine#i don't really feel proud of my own stuff usually but#i really think this is the drawing i'm most proud of from this past year!! it made me think 'oh maybe i can draw' haha#i'm still kinda bad with colors but something clicked with this one. and i feel like i got the sentimental feeling i wanted!#ooh but this project's about flower symbolism so ramble incoming:#protea symbolizes resilience transformation and diversity; hollyhock means 'please remember me.'#so my general theme was finding a sense of self.#these 3 have struggled with finding their own identity; they tend to get left behind both in-universe and in general plotwise#and naminé and xion both resemble kairi and were overshadowed by her memory. but i feel like all 3 have transformed into their own people#xion and naminé have their faces covered partially by hollyhock to show their wish to be remembered for who they are-#instead of the parts that they share with someone else#and the protea bouquets show how they each held on and resiliently grew into their own person despite it all#i put a little swervy path on the hill behind kairi to give that hopeful sense of growth and moving forward. it's a little hard to see#hopefully that makes sense! i really love symbolism but i think in visuals so i'm really bad with words#but gosh working with everyone on this project was so fun. it was like impossible not to get swept up by the team's hype for this zine#i need to hunt down everybody's work and rb it#ohh and everybody's flowers are so crisply drawn it's insane!! i think if i lined all these flowers and leaves i'd die haha#fan art#my art#project stuff
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they hate him for his autistic skull swag!!!
#malevolent#malevolent spoilers#arthur voice john baby im so proud of you and your emotional growth is so hot#john voice youre the love of my life i domt know what j would do without you#yorrick voice if you had stayed in the dark world you would have kept torturing people for fun! hope this helps :)
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911: Lone Star | S5E5 -> Carlos' episode evolution
#911 lone star#911lsedit#tarlos#carlos reyes#my gifs#the journey!#the way he's defensive and a little dismissive in the beginning#he doesnt think the problem is as bad as tk does#but then that dawning realization of how much he risks losing if he doesnt appreciate the moments he has#this was exactly what I was hoping we would get when we saw the trailers and descriptions#this epiphany that there are changes that need to be made#and then carlos DOING THE THING#i'm just so proud of his growth here#queued post
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I can only take so much, but lately, they have replaced my reflection. And realize I'm just as bad as them.
#messyr#doodle#vent art#idk what im feeling but im just really tired- pessimistic and agitated lately#overthinking stuff about growth as a person LMAO. Envy that builds inferiority then dissolves into insecurity ew#ive yet to accept the truth that it will never get better- so i can only be there for others until i watch them go.#And I walk back to the same cage where I grew- bc the cage is all I know. I'd watch from afar and wait- wait for what? Idk#Genuinely happy and proud to those who worked hard for that success-- an ugly thought whispers to me thinking why cant I have the same#well- people w the same situations as me- knows how unfair life is so we work twice as hard. but sometimes... It's-- not enough.#And to an unfortunate fate- it'll never be enough. and it feels as if you amount to nothing.#I've been stuck for so long- I'm convinced enough that I cannot be helped. Still I cling onto the tiniest spark of hope.#bpd#abuse mention
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the psychological horror created by Hasbro’s desire to sell more toys rather than honour the desires of the original creator resulting in an immortal alicorn princess of friendship doomed to watch her friends grow old and die without her is so interesting to me. by trying to cater to children more you have accidentally created a reality in which death of the main characters friends as she lives on for centuries is not just implied but confirmed. idk it’s fascinating to think about
#EVEN MORESO BY G5#with discord in the comics clearly descended into misery without fluttershy#their absence speaks volumes#and I know kids are able to handle mature topics like death earlier than we often assume#but still it’s so strange to think about death of the main characters being canon and confirmed in the colourful pony cartoon#wild#mlp#major character death#character death#DONT GET ME WRONG I LOVED THE LAST EPISODE SO MUCH#it’s just !!!!! I wish twilight was growing old alongside them#I don’t like how much she looks like celestia too#she’s grown so apart from her roots it feels like it undoes much of her growth#at the same time it’s the best ending we could’ve hoped for all things considered#I JUST MISS HER ICONIC FRINGE
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crazy abt astarion going on to “be a hero” of his own volition after spending the entire game talking about how much he hates them. me when the character not only breaks the cycle of abuse but goes out of their way to ensure it is never repeated im CRAZY IM INSANE!!!!!! FUCK
#bg3#astarion#bg3 spoilers#CHEWIJG ON MY LEG.#i love you growth i love you character development i love you hope and light and love and peace
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With the end of season two comes a second redraw!
[Nov 2022] [June 2023] [June 2024]
#better drawn mdzs#mdzs#wei wuxian#lan wangji#I was really looking forwards to this redraw - though the jump in skill isn't as dramatic as the last one I still am proud of my progress!#It's really incredible to look back on this last year and how much has happened since then.#Both in my personal life and this blog.#I started the second season while I was going through some pretty rough times and it truly kept my sanity afloat.#I challenged myself a lot more this year! And while it didn't always turn out the way I hoped-#-being messy and earnestly trying to do something different has been my favourite part of art.#There will always be a lot of room to grow - I don't think art and creativity has a ceiling.#I went from doubting that I was even an artist to joining a gamedev team as the lead artist! That's character growth!#Thank you all once again for joining me on this journey B*)#Thank you for all the messages and support you have sent my way these last 18 months.#I'm so happy to have been given the chance to create something for this community. You've given me so much and I am so grateful.#I'll take a little break to post some personal project stuff this week and resume season three after that!#Onwards to another season of silly (and sometimes serious) comics!
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I know we all complain about Nat’s roots but honestly I do love the symbolism of her roots not really growing out until after Javi’s death and her being crowned the new antler queen. Like it’s this physical representation of her slowly transforming into the Nat we know her as in the adult timeline. I love that the first time we really see those roots peeking out is when she has her most significant shift into something darker and more hardened. The blond represents her soft self, and the more we see the brown start to grow in, the more Nat and her morals have changed.
I definitely don’t think the writers intended that but I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt.
#maybe I’m cornplating rn but I hope we keep seeing Nat’s hair growth correlating with her changing as a person#like the blond is what’s left of her old self#yellowjackets#natalie scatorccio
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"Yeah, but we talked about it and I didn’t want it." "Why not?" "Because it scared me."
#critical role#ygifs#cr3#fearne#she got me fucked up#her leaving her treasured cherished postcards at the altar of the raven queen where so many memories are left#leaving the one thing that had been her lifeline and her hope. the most important thing to her and she leaves them behind#because they weren't what she thought they were.#her innocence growing into sadness and that's the reason why she feared the dark versions of herself#because she was sad and angry and alone#this faun wearing her heart on her sleeve and running from what hurts her and it's just. ms johnson i'm#''do you think it’s the world changing you or do you think it’s you changing in the world?'' ''yes.'' girl i'm on my knees#I couldn't be more grateful fearne continued from exu this growth hurts so so so good I'd die for her#fearne angry? delicious. fearne sad? delicious. fearne tits? del-#fearne this episode you can really taste the If I'm Not Pleasing People It's My Fault When They Leave and it bit me
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Today is January 27th, which is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I'd like to get some stuff off my chest.
First, I'd like to take a minute to point out that it is not Yom HaShoah, which is the day Israel (and by extension large portions of the Jewish diaspora population) uses as Holocaust Remembrance day. Yom HaShoah is on the 27th of Nisan, a date that was selected to commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, centering Jewish resistance in our own story. That date was selected nearly five decades before the UN picked January 27th, which was selected to center our white saviors who came to liberate Auschwitz. This is utter bullshit. And no excuses for not being able to handle a moving date on the Gregorian calendar - April 19th would be the Gregorian equivalent, and it was not selected.
Having said that, given how many infographics I've seen over the last four months about how people are increasingly denying or doubting the Holocaust, I figure any day that acknowledges it is a good thing, so yeah, let's take two days to remember. I think it's worth it.
So given that this is the Holocaust Remembrance Day that centers our goyishe friends, let's talk about how our goyishe friends should observe the day.
1. It is likely that you never learned a lot of details about the Holocaust. Holocaust education usually boils down to, "and the Nazis put Jews in camps in order to kill them, and a lot of Jews were killed in gas chambers, and about 6 million died in all." Go learn some details. Read or watch an account from a survivor. Learn about the medical experiments, or the death marches. Learn some details about what the gas chambers were actually like. Try to understand the horror. Learn about the SS St. Louis or the Evian conference in 1938 where almost every country on Earth decided it was better to let the Jews die in Germany than to allow them into their own countries.
2. On that note, take the time to understand that anti-semitism neither began nor ended with the Nazis, and that even the "good guys" were incredibly antisemitic.Try to recognize that the antisemitism that was present where you live right now in the 1930s didn't just disappear, it just went into hiding. Think about where it might be hiding now.
Basically, because this is the Holocaust Remembrance Day for the goyim, I want to focus our remembrance of what happened on the goyim. What did they do? What could they have done to help? Why didn't they? We can come back in May for more Jewish focused learning, but the Holocaust could not have happened without A LOT of willing goyim, and I think we should spend the day remembering them and their actions.
And as a side note: if you happen to read this and you've chosen to spend the day engaging in Holocaust denial or Holocaust inversion, then know that my hope for you is that something happens in your life to teach you empathy and basic human decency. And I hope it isn't pleasant for you.
#holocaust remembrance day#antisemitism#I am expecting social media to be a NIGHTMARE today#it's going to be holocaust inversion all day long#and I'm not going to be surprised by it#but I am going to be infuriated#my hope is that this post reaches one person sometime in the future when the left has moved on to some other thing to be outraged about#and that it triggers growth in them - makes them take a minute to learn something about history#but I don't think that 2024 is gonna be the year for that#the jews are tired
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One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.
(Buckle in. This is a long one.)
In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.
As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.
Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.
This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.
I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.
But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.
So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.
But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.
But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.
It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.
He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)
So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.
But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.
(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)
#something something hope is a weapon hope is a discipline hope is a garden to cultivate!!!#HE'S SO GOOD HE IS TRULY EXEMPLAR OF THE WHOLE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEIN AND I DO NOT THINK THAT'S AN ACCIDENT#truly just like. enormous proponent of letting trust and curiosity into your heart regardless of the horrors.#it's hard and it makes you more vulnerable and sometimes it hurts so so much but it will also save your fucking life!#cr spoilers#critical role#essek thelyss#cr meta#I was gonna apologize for the length but I'm not sorry. I'm also not sorry for being insane about him but he's so special to me.#head in my hands he's so GOOD HE'S BEST BOI! GUIDING LIGHT NORTH STAR!!! LOOK AT HIM!!!#also truly if i had two nickels for a span of time with no essek sightings where I wrote a lot of fic#with deliberate personal acknowledgment that I was writing some pretty maximal arcs for him in terms of character growth#and then end up getting essek for half an episode and having to go OH WE'RE GOING THAT FAR ACTUALLY. FUCKING INCREDIBLE.#yanno. two nickels. but good lord I am thriving that it's happened twice#augh this is ONE of the pieces I need to write this week. we're not gonna talk about it
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