#he’s crashing out

[fishysaltine]

Honestly I’ve always seen Bloodbath (or the kill Zara quest) as Illario’s final desperate attempt to be swayed form his plan. It kind of reminds me of Solas and Varric’s note of him in the beginning of the game “he just needs someone to give him a different option”

Like Illario is genuinely upset about this whole thing. He thought Lucanis was dead, and we see that he was such a chronically depressed alcoholic yapper after Lucanis’ death that even though he did give the hit, he at least regretted it or it didn’t sit well with him. (I have no doubt Zara manipulated him to some extent into it, since she has her eyes on Lucanis after the Wigmaker job anyway, but neither Zara or Illario are actually explored in game). But when Illario is taking us to the boat, he makes note of saying Catarina didn’t tell him because “I would have tried to save him.” The way he says that line is in a COMPLETELY different tone than anything else he says. It’s stern and to the point, not condescending like after Illario takes out Zara and talks down on Lucanis, telling him he’s a danger and liability.

If Illario knew Lucanis was actually alive, he probably would have killed Zara earlier. And Zara obviously KNEW THIS because she didn’t tell Illario Lucanis was ALIVE for that very reason. Illario never knew about Spite. He never planned for the Ossuary. He never meant for that to happen! Zara knew that whatever Illario and she had going on would never even be close to the bond Lucanis and Illario have, and Illario would put that over power every single time.

Almost every single time.

Because he knows what he did, and he still goes out for coffee with Lucanis and the weirdo rando that saved him. And then he tries to convince Lucanis to stay away from Zara, because he knows that Zara is capable of and how not only she can, but has hurt Lucanis. (She turned his big brother into an abomination!)

WAIT A MINUTE WHO ELSE DOES THAT? Lucanis does! Except Lucanis is more direct about it. Says that Zara might come after him. Illario tries to convince Lucanis she’s in fuckass land, get him out of the situation ENTIRELY involving Antiva, the Anntam, First Talon. Yeah, there’s probably a selfish motivation, but in Wigmaker Illario is so fucking scared Lucanis is going to essentially fling himself off a cliff, there’s a genuine “heyy can you take a holiday? Can you stop being passively suicidal for me, your little cousin? Can we stop with the ‘death is my calling’ shit?”

Of course Illario can’t just go “uhh I’ll take care of it dw bro” because to Lucanis the beef with Illario and Zara isn’t merely as personal as he (and Spites) beef with her. They really just want to protect one another and get their dues.

Illario killing Zara wasn’t so much for him. I mean she kind of played him, but whatever, it didn’t necessarily affect Illario in anyway, it was for Lucanis. A way to try and appease the guilt of something that he never intended to happen to his older brother. That’s why Illario wants to be there during Bloodbath. “It’s Crow business” aka ‘WHY ARE YOU TAKING WEIRDO RANDO 1 & 2 OVER ME? I deserve to be at your side, I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth and back, why won’t you let me anymore?’

So Illario meets Lucanis and his rando friends on the rooftop. Lucanis asks him what he’s doing there- and Illario says he wants to go. He’s so desperate to go, to prove his alliance to his big brother cousin. But that’s not all. Lucanis has been gone for a year, and then left immediately. Killing and missions, being Crow’s is one of the main ways Lucanis and Illario bond.

Illario has never felt good enough. For his grandmother, for Lucanis, for anyone. That’s why he started this mess. Zara tells him Lucanis doesn’t think he’s good enough, he never will be, until he does the most Crow thing ever and cuts him out of the family line. Then finally, maybe, when his cousin’s eyes are glassy and corpse empty, will they be filled with approval.

But Lucanis is right here (with two randos)! And Illario asks him to involve him, just looking for that smidge of approval. And Lucanis says no. Ok. Cool! Maybe he just wants you safe. Fine, whatever. But you’re capable- at least you think you are.

So you ask the damning question. “You think I’m not good enough?”

And your cousin, your big brother, simply says: “Are you?”

While surely a good natured jab from Lucanis as siblings do, had Lucanis’ answer been anything even close to praise or more concern, I think Illario would’ve been fine to step out of the way. ALL he needed was Lucanis’ mild assurance/approval. Just a ‘oh no, you’re good enough. I just don’t want you getting hurt is all’

But he doesn’t say that. He simply feeds into the very insecurity that sent Illario to selling him out, the very one that Zara told him but he never quite believed until the words came from Lucanis’ mouth. ‘You’re not good enough to stand by my side anymore.’ And potentially ‘I’ve replaced you with rando 1 & 2, I don’t need you anymore’

So then he doubles down. No more playing nice cousin or big brother little brother. If Lucanis doesn’t want Illario by his side anymore- fuck it, Illario doesn’t need him. Lucanis saying Illario isn’t good enough isn’t just a blow to his ego, or self confidence/self esteem, it’s a flat out rejection. So he takes the kill from Lucanis, and essentially tells him to get the fuck out of dodge or else, and then tries to strong arm first Talon.

Lucanis never quite gives Illario “the different option.” Illario throws their bond away not because he necessarily wants to, but because he thinks Lucanis’ threw it away first, and that he’s just folding onto a frayed rope (not even mentioning how Illario crosses out Lucanis’ name in the family line, showing how he just… almost doesn’t exist. He’s gone to Illario. Illario’s so hurt by everything he just wants Lucanis gone at this point, come hell or high water.)

Lucanis quite literally says that the only way Catarina would be proud of Illario is if he kills her, and if that extends to Lucanis, so be it.

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

My Great Grandma who loved her babies very much

Reference that I used for the face!

[s0fter-sin]

thinking about the way ghost doesn't hesitate to start killing shadows when graves betrays them but soap only takes one hostage

you can almost hear the voice in his head telling him it doesn't have to be this way; they can still talk it out

"i'm calling shepherd"

his first instinct when confronted with betrayal is to play it by the books: to go up the chain. that goes against everything we've seen him do. he bucks authority at every chance except for the one time he's confronted with the barrels of his allies' guns

he wants a peaceful resolution; for the first time we've ever seen, he doesn't want violence to be the answer. there has to be another fix, a solution that doesn't end with him killing the same men he's been working with; his friends

nothing's happened yet

it doesn't have to go this way

but ghost has been betrayed before. he knows the way this ends; either with him six feet under or his enemy

he doesn't hesitate

it's only when they knock alejandro out that soap shoots; when they spill the first blood and cross a line they can never come back from

only when ghost orders him to run and he has to cover his retreat

and somewhere along the line, between civilians’ screams and taunting voices, between his shaking breath and ghost steady in his ear, that naivety is stripped away; his trust turned to teeth that he uses to sink into throats of men he'd have given his life for

"be careful who you trust, sergeant; people you know can hurt you the most"

he's learned the price of trust

just like ghost did

but unlike ghost, he has someone to guide him through the aftermath

"good advice, It"

[aur07a]

while I don’t ship shadowvanilla I do think shadow milk would be the shittiest wingman of all time

[chamoemileclown]

imagine getting so good at life and climbing the ranks super quickly just to become god and hit an upper limit of things to accomplish after becoming immortal.

[ruporas]

🎆 (id in alt)

[ryartchus]

: )

[bunnieswithknives]

How much can you fit under your skin?

For @warning-heckboop's AU :3

[kevindavidday]

okay but jean having a breakdown post tsc 2 interview and all three of his love interests rushing to him to console him in various ways and it overwhelms him so much he ends up leaving them behind to sit next to neil instead

[paunchsalazar]

they were sleeping together at this point

[cozylittleartblog]

redraw of a meme my brother sent me. hello ultrakill fandom

"the armor comes off-" yeah but that's not Nearly as funny

[nashvillethotchicken]

I stand with Louis no matter what. If either lestat or armand did that shit to me and people talked about me the way they talk about louis on here and on twitter you're gonna see me in history books

[tapeworrmart]

Reopening old wounds 🩸

[1mm4d13]

Well, that was just prime.

[kiisaes]

doodled them post-timeskip :> (kind of a redraw of this)

[seamistgale]

Bernard was being haunted.

His sus-o-meter isn't up to 100%, but if he's being real, it never is. The downside of being into conspiracy theories was that you were only partially sure which one was more skewed than the other. One day he could be convinced Batman is more cryptid than man, and then he'd stumble on some fascinating witness accounts that make him rethink the Vampire hypothesis.

This time, however, he's fairly sure this sort of freaky shit only happens to people in those cookie-cutter horror movies.

… Except this particular ghost might be of midwestern decent, or something, because they sucked at properly haunting.

Example number one:

It was rare that Bernard had dishes piled up. He lived alone, and occasionally Tim would come to his apartment; with a couple of games, some takeout boxes, and a movie later, there would be way more things to clean up than a whole weekend on his own.

The last time Tim came over, Bernard didn't bother cleaning up for the night, and then the trash just…. Disappeared.

Not like 'a burglar broke in for some weird fetish reason, and my trash is now gone' gone, but more 'the trash is in bags, the dishes are clean, and I swear the air smells fresher' gone.

That was strike one.

He brushed it off because Tim had been there. It was unlikely he just went on a stress cleaning spree at Bernard's place but… Well, Bernard's caught him doing way weirder shit. It's fine.

(it's not fine. You just didn't move things around on someone else's turf.

"…Clean up?" Tim echoed back from the phone, sounding as confused as Bernard felt the following morning. "I-- no, of course not!" and then hurriedly continued to reassure Bernard he'd never do that. Because Tim was nice like that, even after Bernard low-key accused him of giving him the Gotham equivalent of pissing in someone else's yard.

So, that was strike one in the back of his hindbrain that something was up.)

Strike two and three came together.

See, in Gotham's economy, sometimes your employer doesn't have your paycheck the week it should be. Who cares if you need to pay rent through or your landlord will double your rent? Neither your boss nor the landlord in question, obviously. So what he usually did was have a nest egg the size of his rent just in case.

But this month Bernard had splurged a little too much, so he was short. It was nothing big, he was just five bucks short.

The issue was, that his landlord was paranoid and was already breathing down his neck for not paying the next month's rent the day before the new month started. Like clockwork, his landlord put a warning under his door, ready to evict him the same day the month started if Bernard didn't have the rent in cash the next morning.

He knew the eviction notice was at the door, but chose to ignore it because it didn't matter, he'd get those five one way or another by the end of the day.

By the time he came back, two things were out of place. The first was the eviction notice on his table. Again, no one moved someone else's shit around.

Strike three happened while counting his nest egg, and would you look at that! He had more money than he'd counted. Nothing ridiculous, just… He had those five bucks now.

All these little things were easy to miss, or misremember, but Bernard was not most people. But the catch here was… All these things were good things. Sort of.

So not only was this happening when he wasn't around, but they were happening to his… Advantage? He'd even call it good fortune if one was willing to ignore the lack of privacy… And maybe he would have, if this wasn't Gotham. Privacy was a mix between a luxury and a currency. Sometimes a kindness.

In some ways maybe it would have been an effective scare tactic, to mess someone's shit up, but this was not the way he'd personally go about it if he wanted someone to leave the building.

So here Bernard was, staring again at the dishes he had placed as bait, because he wasn't an idiot and tempting a ghost into anything remotely violent was stupid. The dishes were cleaned.

He squinted at the ceiling, then at the rest of his apartment, trying to gauge whether trying to make first contact was going to get him more haunted, killed, or turn him into a Saturday morning cartoon.

Finally, he picked up a cup. Not a glass cup, because why would he give the ghost any ammunition, but a couple of fairly clear plastic cups, a marker, two sticky notes, and filled both cups with tap water decently enough so a mild tremble would be noticeable.

The first sticky note said "Yes", and the second, predictably, said "No."

"So." Bernard sat in front of the cups, feeling halfway like a dumbass for doing this in the first place, and halfway like he's about to do the worst decision of his life because it might just work. "You from out of town, or are you just really shitty at this?"