#i need to do more posting into the void!

[magicofthepen]

The Ryans Reread: In Sea-Salt Tears

Hi hello I love Elizabeth Ryan a Normal Amount!

These ramblings are cross posted from my Liz Ryan reread thread in the October Daye Discord server.

I had discussions with a couple people about In Sea-Salt Tears in the thread, but these notes are just messages I sent—my initial reactions to the story on reread. And I reference other Liz appearances, especially Drown the Lamenting!

“We know that, while we may love the ocean, the ocean doesn’t love us.” / “We know that we, among all the fae, are temporary and flawed….” 

me @ the Luidaeg, always: You fucked up a perfectly good descendant race, is what you did. 

(to be fair, that’s just most characters @ the Luidaeg)

but it sure was a Choice to revive your descendant race via a group of people you Made Sure grew up thinking they’re lesser and not worthy and hated (by you)…..

~

“I miss her every day, and the worst of it? The worst of it is that she never existed.” 

See, this is fascinating to me because it’s not true, but it is complicated. Cousin Annie was always a mask of sorts, but so is the sea witch, and both guises enable her to do thing she can’t do when she’s being the other one. There was genuine, honest vulnerability that Liz got to see from her that very, very few people do. There was also so much withheld context. 

But I don’t think Liz ever understands to what degree the Luidaeg was honest with her—which makes sense! How is she to know what was true and what was a lie? So it falls into the category of “things that would be nice for the Luidaeg to explain, if she ever manages to stop being an asshole to Liz.”

~

“Mathias had beer. Mathias always had beer — his parents were Canadian, and they’d been letting him drink since he was fourteen, the lucky stiff. Colin had the weed.” 

I so want to know if this is actually intended to be Mathias from The Unkindest Tide and Colin from A Local Habitation. I know the wiki says that the Colins are the same, but his backstory in ALH doesn’t work with this story—but is that just a continuity issue? It’s hard to believe that there would be two Selkies with the same name at the same time, even if the Selkies overall reuse names…..

also Colin is the weed guy in both ALH and ISST. 

Mathias’s backstory also contradicts if it’s meant to be the same one, bc he’s meant to live on the same coast and be part of Roan Rathad in this one, but if I can headcanon that he was just temporarily living with another clan to see what it’s like over there, I really want him to be the same guy. It’s much more fun if these other Selkies were all part of the same teen friend group as Liz 😄

~

cw: discussion of suicide 

“Former Selkies almost never stay within sight of the sea. The ones who do always wind up drowning when the need to go back to the sea gets to be too much for them.”

oof at the high risk of suicide among Selkies that pass their skins. (I have a lot of feelings in general about mental illness in the Selkie clans and the ways that we see it be normalized or ignored.)

end warning

~ The schism between Selkies and Selkiekin is so intense, and yet there’s such a sense of collective family identity, it’s so interesting. And it really does make you feel for the clan leaders, and how they are responsible for everyone and making sure everyone’s being taken care of, but they are also Selkies and thus firmly on one side of that divide, where their Selkiekin cousins are concerned.

The whole thing of Liz not knowing if she’ll ever get a skin, despite being an only child, and presumed heir is somewhat confusing?? Although we do see a great-grandmother passing a skin to a great-grandchild in this story, skipping over her children and grandchildren, some of whom might not even be alive anymore? 

So I guess she can’t expect that one of her parents will pass their skin to her generation, because they could decide to live a lot longer—Daisy’s great-grandmother was three hundred. 

(Interesting that some folks still do wait a while, and possibly have their children outlive them.)

~

“What are you?” said Mathias bluntly. Tempe hissed for him to be quiet. He ignored her.

It really is infinitely funnier if this is the same Mathias. 😄

~ When I first read this story, it truly caught me by surprise that Liz is only sixteen when she meets Annie. 🥺

~ what Annie is pretending to be—a Selkiekin Roane changeling—is what Diva actually is. at least Liz can be reasonably confident Diva will transform (based on what Aldridge said), she won’t be denied the same way (Liz thinks) Annie was. but still interesting in the context of those seven years when Diva existed, but Liz didn’t know who Annie was yet.

~

“Someone had to stay and keep an eye on the children. The older cousins would relieve us around midnight, and then I could run.” 

again, that whole “we take care of each other” ethos, everyone is meant to pitch in with looking after the kids. and even when Liz does Not want to be on duty, she doesn’t consider ditching her family responsibilities, she’s just looking forward to being off shift.

~

“[Annie] would have nothing but this: empty kitchens and watching cousins walk into the waves when she had to stay on the shore.”

the way Liz is actually Not Wrong about this…..

(except it’s by choice)

~

“Yeah, well.” Colin frowned, keeping his arm around my shoulders. It seemed suddenly like he was smothering me, but I couldn’t figure out how to step away without insulting him. It was clear that he saw Annie as a threat. I just didn’t know why. “I’m not the one you should be apologizing too.”

Colin at the Convocation of Consequences has the dawning realization that he was in a brief teenage love triangle with the sea witch 😄

(sorry buddy you were never gonna win that one, she’s a lesbian)

~

“[Annie] didn’t judge me because of what I did or didn’t have. She never would.”

oh noooo Liz is so painfully wrong about that 😭

it’s not that she doesn’t care if Liz has a skin or not, it’s that she has the opposite judgment of what Liz is used to. and that judgment is gonna be so much worse when it hits

~ Liz and Colin are definitely hooking up, given that she intends to sleep with him that night originally. and given all the sulking, he very much has a thing for her. but given that she goes off and kisses Annie that same evening, she clearly does Not think they have that kind of relationship, they’re just friends that hook up sometimes.

so really only Colin thinks he’s in a love triangle 😄

~

dammit this beach scene still tugs at my heartstrings

(I think because, despite it not being in her pov, I can feel the Luidaeg catching feelings in spite of herself)

but oof, she is millennia old and Liz is barely eighteen

and that’s not even the most dramatic invisible power dynamic at play

it’s never brought up in relation to Liz, but I definitely remember Toby having a thought about how all the Firstborn affect their descendant races and how she thinks the Luidaeg’s effect might be making the Selkies trust her more than they should

and gonna circle back to this later but I do think there’s evidence to support the Luidaeg giving off “trust me, don’t ask too many probing questions” vibes

~

“Every day was a tug-of-war between dreaming of my own future and realizing the horror of what would have to happen for that future to be mine. A relative could choose to pass his or her skin, becoming mortal and dying in the human way, but that’s not the usual way for Selkies to be made. If it were, there wouldn’t be so many of us. We die younger and more often than almost any other race in Faerie.”

They are fully fae, but they have a way higher death rate than other fae. And this has kind of scary implications for the Roane? If the Selkies are more prone to deadly accidents because they don’t grow up as fae and are only thrust into that world later, the same is true of the new Roane. Except if they die, no one will become fae in their place.

on the other hand, maybe the fact that they’re all seers now really helps cut down on the fatal accidents

~

“Was Annie already aware that I’d been passed up again, and that I was the last of the little bonfire circle she has stumbled into eight years ago?” 

🥺🥺 at the fracturing of Liz’s friend group and how isolated it leaves her.

~

also I have to assume that Liz’s parents don’t realize Liz is having a casual flirtation with the sea witch, otherwise why did they not make sure she was picked for Tempe’s skin, thus ending that.

It really is their decision that drives her completely towards Annie 😬

~

“There was a choice there, blurred by sweet red wine and sea-salt tears. Annie didn’t reach for my hands. She was leaving me the room to make that choice on my own, and I appreciated that, because I knew, just looking at her, that she was offering me something more than sex. Sex was easy; sex was fun and cathartic and nothing even remotely like a commitment. But Annie….

Annie had been hurt before. I knew it every time I looked at her.” 

Given the timeline, what Liz says here, and how she talks about hooking up with various people as a teen in an “experimenting and figuring herself out” way in DTL, this is definitely her first serious romantic relationship. 

and also, as of present day, her last 😔

~

[EDIT: oh the sex scene is…..it’s the beginning of a relationship destined to implode, but they’re also so horny and enthusiastic it’s easy to forget that part. it’s hot! them getting handsy before they’re even in the room…..😳]

~

“We went to Disneyland, where she kissed me on the Haunted Mansion ride and we had our pictures taken with Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother.”

the Luidaeg canonically taking her girlfriend on a vacation date to Disneyland is very on brand but also. the dramatic irony of the whole sea witch thing is. yeah

~

“My mother sighed. My father cried. I loaded my things into the back of Annie’s car, and together we drove to San Francisco, where her apartment was waiting for us.”

godddd this hurts when you realize both her parents Know

Liz’s parents: …..fuck fuck we should have given her Tempe’s skin

it has to hurt so much, knowing that your daughter’s girlfriend is lying to her, knowing that she’s far more dangerous and powerful than your daughter knows, and being unable to say anything

~

“It was surprisingly spacious, taking up most of the ground floor of an old brick building near the wharf.” 

the vague horror of Liz moving into a skerry entirely controlled by her girlfriend and having no idea

I also would like to know how the Luidaeg managed the whole “people bugging her for bargains” thing during the years Liz was living with her

yeah a lot of people Stay Away because of her reputation, and most don’t know where exactly she lives, but some do!

[EDIT: someone else suggested that it’s a different apartment than the one we see in the books, and specifically a different door to the same skerry. so she still has her “sea witch” apartment elsewhere. and I’ve adopted that headcanon!]

~

“We walked hand-in-hand through the city until it was almost dawn, and then we ran back to the apartment, and fell into bed, and held each other through the sunrise.” / “I was restless, moving from job to job until I found a position as a night clerk at a store that sold skin magazines and dirty movies.”

so the implication is that Liz basically lived nocturnally while she was with Annie, although she was still human.

~

“We’d been living together for almost a year before I asked about her family.”

This this is the reason I think the Luidaeg is giving off some flavor of “trust me / don’t pry” vibes. They’ve been dating for years before this, and Liz has never thought to ask about her family? That sounds completely implausible, unless maybe Liz is subconsciously being steered away from asking questions about Certain Things. I don’t think it’s something Annie’s actively doing, it’s just a feature of being Liz’s First and the subtle influence that gives her. And it takes this long for the weirdness of not having ever asked about Annie’s family to finally overrule the vague “don’t pry” vibes.

I could see that when they’re in the “we meet up and chat and flirt and kiss at clan occasions” stage of their relationship, but they’ve been properly dating for eight years by that point, they’ve been living together for a year. That is a long time to never ask “Where are you from?” (which is the specific question Liz asks)

I can’t imagine seriously dating someone in general and not knowing anything about their family—even knowing that it’s complicated and they don’t like talking about their family would be knowing something. But Annie has to tell Liz that she’s not very comfortable talking about her family, which means even that hasn’t come up in conversation before.

~

“My mother…went away. And my father couldn’t stand to be around me after that. He left me by the sea. Said ‘It’s in your hands now, Annie,’ and walked away. I haven’t seen him since.” Her breath hitched, and I realized with a start that she was crying. “I miss them so much.”  

god I love this scene.

it says so much about her complicated relationship with her parents, and thus says so much about how she is being honest with Liz when she doesn’t have to be. she could have invented a different backstory for herself, but she told the truth — because that’s such a huge part of why she pretends to be Selkiekin, she gets to show emotions and build connections she never would be able to otherwise. this conversation is so intensely personal because she is choosing for it to be, she chooses to pour out some of her messy feelings towards her parents and cry about them and let herself be held.

~

“Did she know, even then, that I was lying to her? Did I know? I like to think not.”

(this is about the “I’ll never leave you” promise.) oh Liz 🥺 you meant it at the time, it wasn’t a lie

also! thinking about it…..that was never a promise she could keep, what with her being mortal.

the best thing she could do to keep it was take the skin. and she very clearly intended to come back, she wasn’t breaking up with Annie. she just didn’t think Annie would follow through on the ultimatum.

she did go back, afterwards. she didn’t walk away.

Liz didn’t leave Annie. Annie left her.

~ okay I’m at that scene now and it’s like. this? this is meant to be the betrayal that the Luidaeg holds against her for two decades and counting?

she made the best decision she could with the information she had!

Drown the Lamenting gets into this more, but there’s the visible age gap struggle and how she assumes it would lead to a break up eventually — and the skin would fix that.

(or at least not make it worse, she doesn’t actually know it’ll age her down)

She promised to never leave Annie, and the immortality would help guarantee that.

This is what she’s wanted her whole life, this is her dream. She has no reason to think there’s anything wrong with it.

Even if it was just the last point — I genuinely believe she did nothing wrong by choosing her life’s dream, especially when “you can pick your dream or me” is a pretty shitty ultimatum to give to someone. tbh I wouldn’t blame her if she did choose to break up with Annie at that point, but she didn’t even do that! she thought Annie didn’t really mean it.

the Luidaeg chose to withhold crucial information from her, and then has been punishing her for making the wrong choice all this time.

Liz literally doesn’t understand why it’s an either/or decision, as far as she’s concerned there’s no reason for it to be?? why can’t Liz be a Selkie and they can stay together??

so yeah, she picks the choice that gives her what she wants and would make them both equally immortal, instead of the choice that requires her to deny her dream and continue to age and has no benefit other than “doesn’t make Annie jealous bc she can’t have the sea,” as far as Liz is concerned. I don’t think it was a betrayal at all.

the part that could be seen as a betrayal is her choosing to take the skin of a dead Roane, when Annie, who she thinks is part Roane, will never have the sea. but at that point it’s literally take the skin or die, so.

which is also a deal the Luidaeg put in place! she’s the reason Liz can’t choose to back out at the last moment.

~

“Damn it, Annie! That’s not fair! Have you looked in a mirror lately? I’m getting old! I’m going to keep getting old, and then I’m going to die, and I’m going to leave you alone again! I’m doing this for you!”

Annie laughed, a sound as bitter and lost as the bellow of a foghorn. “No, Liz. Don’t even try that on for size. You’re doing this for you. Because you want it. Because you feel like you were cheated somehow. Well, you weren’t cheated, Liz. I gave you everything I had it in my power to give. You weren’t cheated. I was not a second place ribbon.” 

She thinks Liz is just making excuses, but we know the age thing is clearly bothering Liz, that it’s not just an excuse. Liz is also definitely doing this because she wants it, but she has no reason to think it’s a Selkie skin or Annie, not until Annie lays down this ultimatum.

“I gave you everything I had it in my power to give.” …..except the truth

~

cw: discussion of suicide 

My mother’s mouth twisted. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I tried to be strong, for your sake; I tried to let you go. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t sit by and watch you leave us. I’m so sorry. I was weak.”

🥺 this scene hurts more after reading Drown the Lamenting knowing she knows that passing the skin will kill her. It will kill her, and it will hurt Liz, but she is doing it anyways because she can’t watch Liz stay with the sea witch forever. and the defiance of this skin passing, choosing to risk the sea witch’s wrath by taking Liz away from her. because getting her daughter away is more important than the consequences. she already knows she won’t survive this.

end warning

~

her father being buried in the sea, and there clearly being traditions around burials is another way the Selkies are Not Like Other Fae—they’re close enough to the mortal world for the night haunts to more often leave bodies behind for them to bury, often enough that they have burial traditions. (it also reminds me of how their wakes also buck fae tradition, being more lively celebrations of life)

and given that he would have no reason to pass his skin because his daughter is already a Selkie, and since Liz’s mom died after passing her skin he probably wouldn’t want to leave Liz the same way, I doubt his death was expected the same way? It seems more likely that there was an accident of some kind, as there more often is with Selkies, and he died unexpectedly and as a Selkie.

I wonder if, post-Diva’s birth but pre-his death, the question of “is Liz still his heir?” actively came up? because Liz broke the rules and had a changeling child and is she still allowed to inherit the clan? and only the Selkies, not the Selkiekin, know the full Selkie-Roane connection and thus might understand why having a Roane changeling kid might be different. Did the question of inheritance have to be ironed out beforehand? Or was it assumed if the sea witch had a problem with that, it would be dealt with if Liz tried to take over the clan?

~

The mourners were a constant tide, terrifying my daughter—sweet Diva, only seven years old, with her father’s huge green eyes and my tendency toward stillness—and forcing me to answer questions I wasn’t yet prepared for.

huh I’d forgotten about the “tendency towards stillness” line. because we see Diva so little, but she is in constant motion when we do—running to be the first to the door, running around the house, running up to Annie and talking a mile a minute.

I realize it could be “I hadn’t thought much about this character”/Not That Deep, but I could also take it as Diva was a much quieter/shyer kid than she is as a teenager, that she used to tend towards watching the room.

~

“I was contemplating the liquor cabinet”

Liz inheriting the clan was probably what kicked off the road to where her alcoholism is now—between access to a place to hide from the rest of the clan (with a place to store alcohol already included) and having her world upended that same day.

~

The door swung open, revealing the heads of the three nearest Selkie clans: the Chase, O’Connell, and Anthony families.

We know the O’Connell and Chase clans are East Coast (and so is the Lefebvre clan)—and they’re all relatively close together and 3/5 of the North American clans. idk why there are so many Selkies in that area in particular, enough for three major clans, but I’d like to think the Anthony clan is somewhere else—it’s never said, so in fic I’ve placed them on the northwest coast of North America.

and presumably Seanan hadn’t invented the the Lefebvre clan yet, otherwise they would have been included in this bit. because they’re not any further than the Chase or O’Connell clans.

so presumably the clan leaders were around already for the multi day funeral, it’s probably something that’s expected when someone knew takes charge. (Liz also says “There’s more?” implying that they’ve all been talking to her a lot already, but they’ve been waiting for the Luidaeg to show up to do this last bit.)

[EDIT: Never mind, the coastal distribution of clans makes sense—given the Selkie clans presumably originated in Scotland, it makes sense that a majority of the modern North American Selkies would be clustered around Nova Scotia.]

~

I stood before I could think better of it, almost stumbling as I raced around the desk. “Annie! Annie, I missed you so much, I—”

it’s been eight and a half years and Annie was the one who disappeared without a trace on her, the one who failed to communicate. and her immediate reaction is still to welcome her, to want to talk and fix things.

and the Luidaeg could have done this reveal in private, but she chose to let Liz embarrass herself in front of the clan leaders—her new peers and the only people who are allowed to know who Annie is.

the Drama of this reveal ahhh

I remembered winding my fingers through that hair while she cried out, muffling her voice against my skin. I looked at that hair now and knew without touching it that it would slice my fingers, that every strand would be razor-edged and deadly.

this image ahhhh — a good memory soured, intimacy and closeness vs a warning to stay away…..I am Hurting

~

I forced myself not to look away from her. “I missed you,” I said. “I buried you,” she replied.

Liz just found out Annie lied to her for decades and the very first thing she says is still I missed you……god

“I buried you” what a cruel thing to say and then leave and it’s also not true, Annie has not moved on from Liz the way she’s acting like she has here, the things she says about Liz later on point to many emotions roiling under the surface.

~

These are the things every Selkie-child knows: that the sea does not love us, that we are finite and flawed, and that we must never, never trust the sea-witch. I know all these things to be true.

that last line oof. the lesson she learned in the end is that all the warnings were true 🥺

~

Because I made the greatest mistake of all, a mistake that may well be unique in all our world: I loved her, and she loved me. I broke her heart. I proved that we are still no better than we were. Even after all these generations, we are still betraying her.

Liz did break her heart, but the rest of what Liz says here is so much more blame than she deserves, she really has internalized that it was all her fault, even to the point of comparing taking her mother’s skin to the original murder and theft of the skin. “we are still no better than we were.” holy shit taking a skin your family was bound to on purpose to keep the magic alive is not in any way comparable to murdering the Roane to try to become immortal.

(I am thinking about “You’re going to cut yourself to ribbons already over the things you can’t undo” and I am so sad about her 😔)

~

in DTL she finally stopped dreaming of Annie and started to be well rested and now she says she always dreams of Annie and it’s what she deserves 🥺

~

“At least my daughter will be spared the choice.”

once again she talks about Diva being spared the betrayer’s bargain as the key Thing (I’m noting this bc of how the narrative of Diva as apology is only ever something other characters say, and Liz recoiled from the idea of having a kid as an apology to someone, but she did like the idea of a kid who would never need to wear a skin to have the sea).

interesting that it’s left ambiguous what exactly she’s “not sorry” about. her relationship with Annie? her choice to leave and take the skin? (I mean, probably not that—although it’s complicated actually, because if she never left Annie, Diva wouldn’t exist).

[ancient-reverie]

a moment of silence for all us disabled ones who had to watch each of their friends move on with their lives without you and get jobs, go to school, have partners come and go, get engaged and move house etc.

shout out to my fellow struggling people who are still sitting in the same bedroom they grew up in. the ones who can't get a job, can't make new friends, can't find a partner or partners, can't move house and can't go to school.

I hope one day we can all find someone to at least sit with us in our rooms. I see you and I understand... and I'm sorry we can't be that person for each other

[kacievvbbbb]

I know this isn’t a particularly common characterization of them (at least not what I’ve seen) but I personally think of the two;

Shanks rarely gets restless, he’s the one more content to just bask in a moment, it may not be in silence but he’s comfortable just doing nothing with his crew. As long as there’s alcohol, a hammock and the people he loves, Shanks is straight.

Contrary to that Mihawk is always itching to do something, entertain himself in some way. If he’s not dueling/training, he’s gardening if it’s not that then he’s cooking or he’s reading and if nothing else will do then he naps. but he’s always trying to occupy his time with something.

I think a lot of people don’t notice it because it’s not the jittery hyperactivity that people associate with it. But Mihawk is restless, endlessly so. He’s in a never ending fight with his boredom but it’s all internal.(except when he decides to make it someone else’s problem ala Don Krieg)

Mihawk’s the type of dude to implode instead of explode so it makes sense that things like restlessness don’t really show themselves in an outwardly physical way. Instead it’s more of an internal pressure and incessant need to stave off boredom. But because of his preference for being alone and the fact that the activities he chooses aren’t ones usually associated with restlessness. It goes unnoticed.

Except by Shanks who’s always going out of his way to make the life of a pretty little birdie a litte more interesting.

[moonchild-in-blue]

I think it's funny how most of us here went from Sad™ and Depressed™ as children/teens, only to end up ✨Sad and Depressed✨ adults.

Funny in the way that, we thought things would never get better, and they did. And funny in the way that they actually never DID get better - we just learned how to cope.

Except that we actually *didn't* learn how to cope, we just got used to it. Which really means, we didn't got used to it - we are just too tired to care.

Going through my worse depressive bouts before felt like fighting teeth and nail for a way out. It was hell, and it burned, and I cared. Now I simply shrug and be thankful there's fire to make some coffee. Does this make sense?

It was so loud and shrieking before, and now is more of a constant heavy hum, always there just out of reach, clinging to my legs and feet, dragging itself on the floor like a old dying beast. Once in a while it remembers it's alive and rips by flesh with its teeth, without any warning. Then back to playing dead. It bites less frequently now but my God, does it hurt.

I'm glad to not have to constantly fight for my life anymore, but I miss the days when that was something I wanted. I'm afraid I tipped the nihilistic scale too far and now I'm just sort of drifting away, little by little.

It's too quiet now and I don't like it.

[b3ndy]

Hey question. Has anyone ever like. Been territorial over media (source especially if fictionfolk) and found a way to get over it. If you have I'd really, really like advice. Even if you haven't but have things to say I'd appreciate it. Thanks. Elaboration in tags, I suppose.

[spinjitsuburst]

ramble about ur favs i wanna hear abt ur thoughts -zaptrap

HAN’S INFODUMPING ABOUT JAY... START!!!!

so like sgdkdhdkdhd I say Jay and Lloyd are my “favorites” but honestly it’s so hard to pick favorites out of this skittles squad like I love EVERY character for a variety of different reasons. I was going to also infodump about Lloyd but then I started talking about Prime Empire and then this post got. Long. So. it's just Jay I may infodump about Lloyd another day especially since I'm very Conduit Brained Rn but yea yea!

this is long so i'm putting most of it under the cut so y'all don't kill me for making a huge long post

I considered putting Zane and Sora on here as well since I’d also consider them my “favs” but like this is already gonna be. A lot of. Infodumping (also i typed THIS part before I even started and decided not to yell about Lloyd because this already got long enough). Maybe I’ll make a separate post for those two hmm hmm much to consider but for now MY (technically) FAVORITE NINJAGO CHARACTER: JAY WALKER

THE SPARKPLUG WHO INVADED MY BRAIN LIKE A PARASITE

so hey his name is a pun this makes me laugh ridiculously hard every time I remember he is named. After a misdemeanor HSKSHDKFH

Jay is such an interesting case of a character for me because I started out the show not liking him. Which is. Stares at my entire account I think my feelings have changed somewhat

Jay starts out as an asshole I don’t think anyone can disagree with me there (although honestly they’re all assholes in early ninjago they bullied a ten year old and left him dangling several feet off the ground) but over the course of the show you can see him start developing into a much more interesting character. He goes from being so insecure he's faking everything about himself to someone who knows who he is and is so genuine about it

now yea we could argue about whether his character was too uwu-ified post-season 10 but this is the FUN HAN POST SO WE'RE NOT GONNA TALK ABOUT THAT the point is you can SEE the growth that Jay has gone through and I am going to show you that growth through what I call

✨ The Skybound to Prime Empire Effect ✨

I AM SO PASSIONATE ABOUT THE IDEA THAT PRIME EMPIRE WAS WRITTEN TO BE A DIRECT PARALLEL OF SKYBOUND AND WAS CENTERED ON SHOWING HOW THE NINJA ESPECIALLY JAY HAVE GROWN THROUGHOUT THE SEASON

when season 12 rolls around we are at the point in Jay's development where he is CONFIDENT in who he is. He's a fun-loving jokester with the power of lightning and the drive to help people whenever he can. He uses jokes and humor to help alleviate tension and get people through whatever's happening. And when on his own what does he do?

BECOME AN ENTERTAINER BABEY

i like to think jay's club in prime empire was a safe haven for anyone stuck in the game who figured out hey. we Can't Leave and felt freaked about it. Also Jay would generally try and spread the word that hey something ISN'T RIGHT HERE which would lead people to want to stay with him

(totally plugging my friend's fic but this kind of thing is explored in would you like to enter prime empire by @finn-m-corvex y'all should check it out cool cool)

also the prime empire shorts which i watched all of in the midst of typing this video cuz i love them go watch them please please please jay was publically fighting the red visors which I imagine may have raised some red flags for some players

THIS SOMEHOW TURNED INTO PRIME EMPIRE INFODUMPING LMAO ANYWAYS Jay's confident! He becomes an entertainer because it's who he knows he is! And it's something that will get people hyped and having fun, which is very in-character for Jay to do! He uses those kinds of things to mask the Bad Things going on and get people remembering what's good

I've talked about this sort of thing before but that's Jay's whole philosophy as early as season 9! Which is a DIRECT contrast to how he views it in season 6, as Nadakhan puts it scarily accurately

"You make jokes to mask the fact that you're afraid"

(i was gonna grab a screenshot for that like i did with the hunted scene but netflix has bloCKED THE ABILITY TO TAKE SCREENSHOTS THE WAY I USED TO and i don't have them already and i'm too lazy to grab them from elsewhere so alas trust me he says it)

making jokes to hide your fear and using humor to remind yourself of what's good and coping with the bad are two VERY different outlooks on it

so I think this outlook is what drives him to make this glamrock persona in the first place - this is a bad situation, one he's in with other civilians, and what better way to keep him and themself safe until the others get there than throwing a big performance at a safe place!

also it's just so gender okay I want to look like Superstar Rockin' Jay so badly

it's also interesting to see his outlook on his parents change over time! In season six he finds out Ed and Edna aren't his birth parents and feels upset about it, not understanding why his birth parents would've abandoned him. In season twelve, that outlook changing is EXACTLY why Jay's able to get through to Unagami

"I was abandoned by my parents, too!... I never understood why, and I never had the chance to even ask. But I always hoped there was a good reason. What if there's a reason?"

(again curse you netflix i wanted SCREENSHOTS whatever whatever)

It's this scene that gets Unagami to calm down long enough for Milton Dyer to get there, and presumably is what stops him from just. Flattening him and Jay like a pancake.

to piggyback off of this i absolutely adore how Unagami and Jay consider each other adopted brothers in that one book I still haven't read and I hope he's in Dragons Rising at some point Unagami is my favorite "villain" (no longer a villain) in the whole show he deserves more screentime

like this is where i found out about this and it's plagued my mind ever since. i need to read. this book just for them

SO YEA OKAY Prime Empire is "Who is Jay as a Person Post-Skybound" to me also it opens up so many fascinating things about Jay. I rest my case

so backpedaling a little bit. JAY CARES SO MUCH ABOUT HIS PARENTS GUYS IT'S SO SOFT AND I'M sobs

like yea the first episode with Ed and Edna in it has Jay avoiding them like the plague but this gets explained very easily when you remember he was bullied for his home life before he became a ninja. It makes a lot more sense why he wouldn't want them around his new friends, assuming they'd react the same way. Also how was he supposed to know literally all the rest of the groups parents were either dead, presumed dead, or had a toxic relationship with their kid lmao

(Cole calling his mom kills me. Cole's mom is dead. I know they probably just didn't think that far ahead when writing the dialogue but it's so funny mans pretended to call his dead mom to get on Jay for not appreciating his parents iconic behavior)

anyways literally every episode Ed and Edna are central to (except like the one in skybound) Jay stops at nothing to protect his parents and it means the absolute world to me he's so much like them!! They raised an inventive little nerd and he will stop at nothing to make sure they're safe and it's. It's SO IMPORTANT TO ME OKAY

ALSO this is an excuse to clip my favorite piece of dialogue possibly in the entire show. Except Netflix won't let me now. So you just get the text dialogue

Jay's just fallen from the sky with a messed up eye and is incredibly distraught that all his friends are captured. And his dad just. The woRLD IS FALLING APART AND HE'S EATIN' SOUP-

Ed i love you

anyways

anways anyways this just turned into me rambling about prime empire and then Ed and Edna and a lot of disjointed other stuff but thank you for this opportunity i was going to also ramble about lloyd but i put this post in a word count and

yea i think that's enough for a tumblr post anyways! If anyone wants any like. More logically thought out and direct thoughts about characters feel free to send me asks this was fun thank u @zaptrap for this opportunity to scream about jay

[sketchy-tour]

Aa realizing I'm probably just gonna have to be okay with posting sketches more often.

As much as I love pouring my heart into a piece and showing it off, I am simply not in the headspace nor have the energy to juggle big pieces and everything else.

Aa

[jojen-hewitt]

💖💙Happy Holidays!! 🎄✨

[constantvariations]

I get why people say Wyll/Karlach is enemies-to-lovers but it's missing too many of its signatures for me to agree

By nature, E-t-L's are slow burn. A good chunk of the story waits for one party to discover they're on the wrong side/both parties to realize they have more in common with each other than their factions, then a whole other chunk is dedicated to them learning how to trust each other. The higher the stakes in the story, the slower the burn

Yet everything between Wyll and Karlach is revealed and resolved in a single conversation. There are no lasting consequences of that initial animosity. Both are too good to hold grudges and all the fault lies firmly in hands not their own. Karlach trusts Wyll instantly and he her. Their friendship is so immediate that it's easy to forget that we met Karlach with the intent to kill her

And then there's the source of their quarrel. Wyll was led to believe Karlach's a devil seeking destruction and Karlach was just trying to go home. The thing that sets them against each other isn't their own beliefs or loyalties or anything deep seated and personal, it's the chain of command, something they're both eager to be rid of by the time we meet them. While it gives them something in common, it leaves them with nothing to unpack or overcome together

Compare that to the king of E-t-L's, Zutara of Avatar the Last Airbender. Zuko spent most of the show's runtime trying to capture the Avatar to guarantee the Fire Nation's total conquest, something Katara wants to prevent at all costs. When the two are stuck together by happenstance, they lash out at each other only to bond over their lost mothers. Then Zuko betrays her, something Katara does not forget and does not forgive until he proves himself much, much later. Afterwards, they support each other, watch over the others together, and make a damn good team against Azula. Perfect, should have been canon, fuck Bryke

Honestly, I think Wyllach is just Faerûn's version of a meet-cute

[itty-bitty-sunshine]

i think you should do whatever your heart tells you (regarding the comics)

Ok so exploding them it is

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

[sinistersuns]

i’m getting irrationally annoyed by those “immortality isn’t so bad yeah your loved ones would eventually die but that’ll happen anyway” posts. are you just not gonna love anyone else after those people die?? and if you do youre okay with that cycle repeating thousands of times????? now if i was part of a group of immortals then hell yea brother sounds good but i just. don’t understand the idea of being okay with being fundamentally alone forever

[cartoonghosts]

genuinely people need to tag triggers. Love all the 'not my responsibility to tag stuff the way you want it' shit but that is for fandom and weird kinks and whatever not LITERAL PICTURES OF SELF HARM AND BLOOD EVERYWHERE like I'd be fine if it was tagged 'tw blood' (which I don't have blocked!! I'd still be triggered as fuck but hey you tried idc) but when you don't tag it at all I have to assume you are actually trying to hurt someone. Yeah I block immediately but thst doesn't change the fact that I'm triggered and the sh urges are back. This is true for text posts too, although I try to block words (I genuinely hate it so deeply when people sidestep other people's word blocks with 'sewerslide' or button mash numbers in the word like. I am going to fucking kill you. 'Oh noo it's triggering to me uwu' bitch you made me actively suicidal for the first time in months. Fucking die. Don't post that shit if using the actual words triggers you). You ABSOLUTELY ARE responsible for what you put out into the words. People saying 'oh ur not responsible for other peoples triggers and emotions' are genuinely heartless and have never felt human empathy. You ain't responsible for how I react to your content, but you NEED to try your best to give people the bare minimum of warnings when you post triggering shit. Look at ur vent post and be like 'hey I'm gonna tag this as tw vent/ tw si' and you genuinely might save someone's life. Probably not but the chance should be enough for you to care and if it isn't, block me. Don't argue, just block me now.

[polaroidcats]

sometimes you spend a week ignoring real life and being a tourist in your own city with a friend and then the crushing weight of adult responsibilities comes back in full force

[mx-heartacoustic]

Why the fuck do I exist? Did God create me just to ruin others? I’m the cause of so much problems. If I didn’t fucking exist maybe things WOULD be better. Why the actual fuck did I do this. I’m a terrible fucking person. I wish I could just go to sleep & never wake up. Everything I fucking do ruins others. I ruin everything. Literally. How the fuck did I even get here? How am I still alive? Fear of death? Spite? I’m not sure. But I don’t want to be here anymore. I wish I could jump from the school rooftop & never look back. It’s so tempting. One day, I’ll try. Maybe by then I’ll have fixed all my mistakes.

[bluberimufim]

LOSING MY MIND

HAVING A BREAKDOWN

'HELL SCREEN' IS SO GOOD!!?!?!