#insane that this happened to him twice

[cyndaquillt]

Who the hell looks at a homicidal 21 yo and thinks "Yeah, you are fit to adopt a 14 yo"

[essektheylyss]

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.)

[cogcltrcorn]

godric true blood is such an insane character because it's like well what if a teenage gaul in first century ad was abducted by roman vampires and made puer delicatus and then he was turned into a vampire and then he killed his sire and then ran away into the fucking woods and spent the next millennium as a violent and wild thing that follows only the whims of its own hunger and curiosity. and what if next time we see him in the 21st century he's bored to the point of suicidality. and what if he also definitely fucked alexander skarsgard

[mamawasatesttube]

do you ever think about how kon got drugged to the point of inability to think clearly and then enslaved for Two Fucking Months and then we just never mentioned that again? that is, except for when he went back to visit and help out the guys who enslaved and drugged him because he was lonely enough to befriend them after they said oh sowwy we didn't know you were a person uwu. i think about this a normal amount

[rosiesriiveters]

okay but do u ever think about rosie’s crew hearing about him re-upping? do you think he tells them before he asks his CO? do you think they saw it coming? even if they did, did it still scare them? that their dear friend could still die? did they beg him to just go home? to come with them? when they were back home, i wonder how often they thought about him… did they read the newspaper hoping that they wouldn’t find out their fearless leader had died when they should have just dragged him home with them? did their hearts sink when they learned that rosie was shot down in east berlin? they must have truly thought it was over. i hope rosie tracked them down after the war to visit them

[k1ranishf4]

Every time I go through Con O’Neill’s insta story, I lose half of my life like in Minecraft

[andyling]

WAIT GUYS HOLY FUCK I JUST REALIZED SOMETHING

BOTH MARTYN AND BDUBS BOOGEY KILLED TANGO IN LAST LIFE AND NOW IN LIMITED LIFE TANGO’S BOOGEY KILLED BOTH OF THEM 

BRUH I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD THIS SHIT IS SCRIPTED 

[martyrbat]

batman and superman vs vampires and werewolves #2

[amelikos]

"Maybe they actually liked their pseudonyms, after all?"

[weezerlvr228]

why he so mysterious…

demur

[anachronistic-falsehood]

literally no hate 2 troy lougferd/lintroller fans but i am absolutely flabbergasted by like 90% of u. like yeah cool idc if ur shipping troy with lint but so many ppl r making incredibly deep posts about lint and troy being in love and helplessly longing for each other and it's like. lint was there for like five minutes where did this come from!!! granted i have not watched eps 4 and 5 yet so if he shows up again thats cool i get it but i saw a post about lint and troy cannibalism and i think you guys are just making your own ocs at this point

[breadharmskoi]

at this point david tennant pt. 2 electric boogaloo is the fourteenth doctor and ncuti gatwa is the fifteenth doctor to me. some bullshit i know which better have a good canon explanation but that means fifteen will debut on the 15th series of new who. also 15 is a cooler number than 14 anyway so we stay winning <3

[gyaru-tau]

I should make a hc!phil playlist i could cook so fucking hard

[whenthegoldrays]

Hmm

[dandyshucks]

this is making me SICK IN THE HEAD I TELL YOU. ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEE WHYS THIS SO CUTE. HELP ME. I THINK I HAUVE COUVID....

[lesbiansanemi]

I need to beat something into a pulp I’m so pissed off