#is that i understand what i'm reading *as* that language

[mxtxfanatic]

Wanted to make my own post as reference and explain my own reasoning over why I think this section is interpreted incorrectly by mainstream fandom, because jc stans applying it as a blanket statement for all of Jiang Cheng's parenting, past and present, pisses me off. Let's go!

金凌过了一阵才悠悠转醒,摸摸脖颈,还残留 着痛感,气得当场拔剑跃起:“你竟敢打我,我舅 舅都没打过我!” 魏无羡讶然:“是吗?他不是经常说要打断你 的腿?” 金凌怒道:“他不过是说说而��!你这个死断 袖,到底想干什么,我......�� 魏无羡抱头冲他背后叫道:“啊!含光君!”

Above is the scene in the raws, with the green highlight as my focus. For those who cannot read Chinese, this is the scene:

Jin Ling slowly woke up after a while. Putting his hand to his neck, some pain could still be felt. He was so angry that he jumped up and unsheathed his sword at once, “How dare you hit me! My uncle hadn’t even hit me before!” Wei WuXian exclaimed, “Really? Doesn’t he say that he’ll break your legs all the time?” Jin Ling fumed, “He’s only saying that! You damn cut- sleeve, what on Earth do you want? I...” Wei WuXian covered his face and shouted toward behind Jin Ling, “Ah! HanGuang-Jun!”

—Chapt. 24: Malice, exr

Now, this may come as a shocker since exr is my least favorite translation, but I am actually going to be defending how they translated the “你竟敢打我,我舅 舅都没打过我!” line as the most accurate translation compared to the other translations:

“You actually hit me! Not even my uncle has hit me before!”

—Vol. 1, Chapt. 6: The Malevolent, 7seas

“How dare you hit me! Even my uncle has never hit me before!”

—Chapt. 24: Malevolent Pt. 2: Escape, taming wangxian

“How dare you hit me! Even my uncle’s never hit me!”

—Chapt. 24, fanyiyi

The tricky part about translating this particular section is that the "过" is being used how "have/has/had" is used in English, and both have two separate, unique uses that depend on context to parse. Here are two examples:

Example 1:

A parent comes downstairs to find their child at home before school has let out. Parent: Have you been to school, today? Child: I haven't.

Example 2:

Two friends are contemplating which city to go to for a vacation, basing their criteria on which places no one has been to. Friend A: Have you been to Paris before? Friend B: I haven't.

Both examples use "have" (or "haven't," cause contractions), but it is clear through context that example 1 is applying "have" solely to that current situation—the child is not saying that they have never been to school in their life, just that they have not been to school on that day—while example 2's "have" extends into the full past of Friend B—the friend is saying that they have never been to Paris at any point in their life. The only reason why the distinct usage of the same phrasing isn't easily confused to English speakers is because of the context in which the phrase is being deployed (and even then, there are moments of miscommunication over lack of clear context, even when speaking face-to-face). And the character "过" is used in the exact same way in Chinese, which is why some of these translations say "hadn't/hasn't before" and others say "never before." But as I've hopefully successfully pointed out, just like "haven't" isn't always synonymous with "never," neither is "过". So which one is Jin Ling using in the excerpt? Let's look at the context:

Right before the above excerpt, Jin Ling has just saved Wei Wuxian's life from Jiang Cheng. After the escape, Wei Wuxian apologizes to Jin Ling about his words at Dafan Mountain. Jin Ling, uncomfortable at the first genuine apology he's received in his life, awkwardly brushes off the apology and is knocked out by Wei Wuxian after being distracted. He wakes up, obviously angered at the mini betrayal. Cue the line.

Based on this context, I would argue that exr is actually the most accurate translation, because Jin Ling isn't applying his complaints to Jiang Cheng's treatment of him in the general past. He is comparing Wei Wuxian's actions in that moment to how Jiang Cheng responded to him in the immediate previous moment. He's essentially saying: "You (Wei Wuxian) who I just helped despite your cruel words dare to hit me, but my uncle who had ample reason to hit me because I betrayed him hadn't before (he left the previous moment)." To which Wei Wuxian replies that Jiang Cheng is constantly threatening to break Jin Ling's legs, the implication of his words being that "your uncle may not have hit you before he left, but based on his behavior, he can always choose to hit you after he comes back."

Jin Ling then says that he considers Jiang Cheng all talk, but the next time we see him, we find that he has run back to Koi Tower because he is afraid to meet Jiang Cheng again without a safety buffer (Jin Guangyao). Even if we were to ignore Jiang Cheng canonically repeatedly physically assaulting Jin Ling in the latter half of the main text as well as verbally abusing the child from their first appearance together and fantasizing about assaulting him, Jin Ling's choice to seek protection with his paternal uncle should be enough to show that even though Jin Ling talks shit about Jiang Cheng's "disciplining" behind the man's back, he certainly takes it seriously in front of the man's face. Therefore, translating this scene as Jin Ling saying he has "never been hit before" by Jiang Cheng isn't accurate, as it overextends the "过" passed the situation that is being discussed: Wei Wuxian having unexpectedly hit Jin Ling at a moment where Jiang Cheng had unexpectantly not done the same, a reversal of their behaviors in Jin Ling's mind.

I don’t mind being challenged on this as 1) I am new to the language, 2) Chinese is not a language that can be translated 1:1 into English so there’s lots of room for translation choices that may not entirely be wrong (even my examples aren’t 1:1 on how "过" would be directly translated because there is no direct translation that wouldn’t sound clunky or weird in English), and 3) I love talking through translation logics. Just, if you wanna discuss or disagree, remember to keep it cute and keep it respectful 😊

[vaguely-concerned]

The Wigmaker Job Reread thoughts

Feat. numerous bonus general Dellamorte boys thinky thoughts, because I can’t help myself when this particular brain state comes over me I will just. keep writing.*

SO I'm rereading The Wigmaker Job and folks, I uh. think Lucanis asked Illario to come along on this job mostly because he's incredibly lonely lmao. Not entirely sure he's recognized this himself and completely sure he would not have the language, ability or instinct to convey this to Illario in a coherent way if he did, but I really do think that's what it is. (He certainly doesn’t make it easy for Illario to actually pitch in meaningfully on the job itself at any point that’s for sure!) And what’s more, I think Illario does realize it, better than Lucanis himself… and did decide to go along with it, huh. I’ll try to show my work a bit later on in the post but for now, we have a lot of rambling ground to cover, let’s get going! 

(Obligatory disclaimer that these are just my personal impressions and reflections slash barely hinged stream of consciousness and if your read on something is different that is totally fine; as usual I am mostly talking out loud trying to explain to myself what the hell I’m thinking more than anything else lol. I’m going to be touching lightly on themes of suicidal ideation and child abuse in this, but only to the extent that is already present in the short story itself. I’ll mostly skirt around the body horror elements too, if those get to you!)

— “The man who’s taken the contract is no ordinary Crow,” Felicia explained, careful to keep her voice steady. 

Ambrose uncorked the wine with a wave of his hand and began pouring it into a crystal decanter. 

“He’s Lucanis Dellamorte.” 

The bottle clanged against the crystal. A crack splintered down the glass. 

“Ah.” Goose bumps pebbled the Wigmaker’s neck. He set the decanter back on the counter and sighed. “Shit.” 

*** 

In an unassuming inn, on an unassuming road, Lucanis Dellamorte sat with a whetstone in hand, his favorite sword resting across his knees. The monotonous movement of grinding stone against metal soothed him. Seven daggers of various size and shape lay polished and glistening on a rough wool blanket at his feet.

The opening mood whiplash of Lucanis’ name being spoken only in hushed voices among the Venatori, smash cut to Lucanis sitting there peacefully sharpening his knives (this is genuinely and unironically what he does for fun. This is his idea of a good time outside of work. Give him a cup of coffee to go along with it and his day is perfect. He’s been contentedly sharpening seven daggers and a sword while Illario gets dressed. Sometimes his attraction to Viago ‘I’m going to make a spreadsheet about who to kill about this I find that relaxes me’ de Riva makes so much sense to me.)? Of course amazing the first time around, but coming back to it now that I like. Know him. No actually that is exactly who and what he is huh got it in one fhsdkj. He’s wearing a sensible neutral toned knitted sweater beneath his brooding hotboi leathers and this is what you need to understand about him.  

I wonder if we were originally going to get more of the Erimond family in the game itself, other than just the notes we do find. It’s not every day a family produces someone even Cole can’t find a good word to say about, it would be fascinating to see what else it’s capable of haha. 

— This whole description of Lucanis’ sensory hypersensitivity especially to sound (hypersensitivity, as we see later, that extends to magic, despite describing himself as being as magically adept as a brick, however that works!) taken together with his, I feel I must reiterate, sharpening his knives for fun… I know diagnosing fictional characters is a flawed premise at the outset but as far as I’m concerned and with a whole game to add to my evidence pile this man is SO autistic and if you read him through that lens it does explain some things hahaha. 

— “Any excuse to primp.” 

“Hey—I’m only here because of you,” Illario grumbled. “We should be halfway home right now. Only ‘the Great Lucanis Dellamorte’ could delay a summons from the First Talon herself.”

Lucanis set his sword aside. Illario was generally thick-skinned— except when it came to their grandmother. “Caterina can hardly complain. She’s the one who beat into me my commitment to contracts.” 

Memories of sweat-filled days without food or water came unbidden. Lucanis’s back tingled from where his grandmother’s cane had bruised his flesh for letting his guard down or fumbling his footwork. For years, he’d hated her. But his time as a Master Assassin had since taught Lucanis that Caterina’s cruelty was her way of making sure that he was prepared for this life—that he survived. 

“All that effort training and grooming us, and the old woman still won’t step aside.” Beneath the bitterness in Illario’s tone was something rotten. 

“Your time will come,” Lucanis assured him. 

“Will it?” Illario’s piercing gaze met Lucanis’s in the mirror. “People talk. You’ve always been her favorite.” 

He’d heard the rumors. For all their secrets and intrigue, the Antivan Crows were a chatty bunch. 

“My talents lie elsewhere,” Lucanis said, gesturing toward the arsenal around him. “You’re the one with the silver tongue.” 

“So, if she named you heir to House Dellamorte, you’d refuse?” Lucanis opened his mouth to respond, when he realized someone was creeping up the stairs.

. . . 

“Lucanis?” Illario pressed. 

He held up a hand and clutched the worn leather grip of his sword. Illario’s pretty-boy mask slipped as a coldness flooded his features. A retractable dagger shot out from under his sleeve.

Now we don’t have time to unpack all of that — etc. but I want this exchange here in its entirety for stuff I’ll talk about later and also hey what the hell and so on. So much going on here. Lucanis’ acts of quiet rebellion by means of a sort of malicious compliance/competence — he’s following Caterina’s teachings to the letter and getting to have some in the spirit room left over for himself. He’s found a loophole to put off going home to something he dreads in an elegant practiced way, I definitely think this is a tactic he’s employed before.to claim some bits and pieces of agency. ‘How can she complain that I’m exactly what she taught me to be?’ suppressed anger/resentment under there. 

The fact that Caterina still hasn’t named either of them as heir at this point continues to be insane, of course, as is the fact that her blatant favoritism is a matter of public knowledge to the point of ‘As you know, Bob —’ connotations and neither of them even thinking to pretend to deny it. Wild shit. If she wanted to create an environment for seething toxic resentment, she couldn’t have done it better if she’d dedicated her life to nothing else lmao. Illario: I think I should be First Talon! Lucanis: I agree (please don’t make me talk to people)! Caterina: Isn’t there someone you forgot to ask? (Would Illario make a good First Talon? I don’t know, what does that even mean, really. But as has been said many a time before it would have been a much more natural use of their skillsets and natural inclinations to have Illario in the people-facing role and Lucanis to watch his back/stab anyone who disagrees, especially if what you’re after is stability. Oh well.) 

The special element of humiliation that it is a matter of public knowledge and tactical consideration across town that you’re the least favorite child… Illario’s obsession with winning the public opinion and being able to control his own image to the outside world is ah. Perhaps understandable.

Many thoughts and feelings about how they’ve individually made sense of/created narratives around the abuse in their upbringing. I didn’t end up going that deeply into that specifically in this post but it is an incredibly important element of their relationship. 

They come back to having this conversation again at the end — everything in this story right down to the structure of it is Lucanis desperately trying to avoid something and finding it implacably still there waiting for him no matter what he does. He’s playing for time as best he can and pretending that if he doesn’t think about it it won’t happen and he won’t have to deal with it, but no matter what happens in between it will be waiting for him at the end — Illario is not letting this go, and neither is Caterina. We open with it, and we close with it; it’s inevitable no matter how you bargain or try to go for the ‘well if I’m real lucky I could just die before that becomes relevant!’ gambit. Oof. Sorry Lucanis this isn’t something you can solve through stabbing no matter how good you are at it I know that’s terrible news for you but here we are my sincerest condolences 

— So cute to see their little double act of casual smalltalk/bickering as a diversion in action already here, in exactly the same way they break it out during the café meeting in Veilguard! Courtney Woods is really good at moments of establishing character like this, showing both the brewing conflict between them and how well they know each other and the ways they can wordlessly communicate because of it all in one scene. How unspeakably comfortable and uncomfortable they are together in ways only family can manage to be haha. 

— Illario complaining that Lucanis let him get a whole outfit made thinking they were actually going to the party and mentioning how long they (not he, they, Lucanis came along for all of that) were at the tailor’s (Lucanis, implied to be very dryly: “I recall.”)... listen. Especially once you hear the banter in the Treviso market about how Lucanis once sat around waiting for six hours while Illario tried on gloves to find exactly the right pair — that is clearly Lucanis making gentle fun of him, but he is also inadvertently revealing something about himself in that he stayed for six hours to keep Illario company through that. I think coming along on shopping trips where he knows nothing is expected of him except to hang out, make light snarky comments when asked for his opinion and wait might kind of be Lucanis’ idea of a good time socially hahaha. Nr. 1 shopping wingman in Thedas. His main ‘I’ll follow you to hell and back with only light complaining’ arena for Illario. This is part of the pattern of not telling Illario the whole plan and deliberately keeping him continually on the backfoot during this whole story — which clearly, not fair to him and not a great look, Lucanis, you’re not being very nice — but I feel like this is also another entry in the pattern of Lucanis desperately craving company and not quite knowing how to ask for it nor perhaps realizing that’s what he’s up to. Also I get the sense he thinks Illario finds getting ready for missions like this and picking out what to wear fun. Which to be fair he’s probably right about, if he just didn’t also go out of his way to make Illario feel like an idiot in the process lmao. 

— At the bottom, they found an elf in a scarlet coat guarding a large steel door. She greeted Lucanis with a cordial smile. “Master Dellamorte. And . . .” 

Her friendly façade faltered as she spotted Illario. 

“Master Dellamorte the Lesser,” Illario offered with a grin. 

“My cousin,” Lucanis clarified. 

Appeased, the elf asked, “Where does your business take you tonight?”

If you wear your self-loathing and resentment on your sleeve for long enough while everyone around you ignores it as a joke it becomes an accessory! And other Illario Dellamorte hot fashion tips in this edition of Treviso Weekly. Fhdskjas the things these two motherfuckers say that they consider completely normal and sane things to say — to each other and to say about themselves and each other in public… 

— Lucanis peeked over the side. No one looked up. One of the world’s greatest wonders is mundane to these people. 

“How do they get it to float?” Illario asked, tapping his boot tip against the aqueduct.

This is so quietly sweet to me. Illario does look up, because he is also a Crow. Courtney Woods is really good at creating these under-the-surface feelings — I love the small details she puts in to emphasize Illario and Lucanis connecting over their common background, over being two Antivans in Tevinter, in being Crows, in being Caterina’s grandsons. (...and also the places those connections fail or fall short. Ouch and owie.) At a point later in the story, Lucanis thinks to look up because he hears Illario’s voice in his head making a joke, reminding him. 

Moving in tandem, Lucanis and Illario dropped to their chests and shimmied to the edge overlooking the courtyard.

Lucanis seems to value these moments of connection through common experience because they don’t require him to speak or explain himself, which he clearly finds extremely hard to the point that he’d rather not even venture the attempt/doesn’t even know how to start. These are wordless ways he and Illario know each other, intimacy/connection that’s natural and effortless where that is clearly incredibly difficult for him in many other settings — body knowledge of another person’s company with the person he (thinks he) knows the best in the whole world, the most familiar and comforting presence in his life. They were boys together, they learned how to move together, they’ve eaten at the same table all their lives. In the Crossroads when he finds the smell of coffee and home there, it’s home because Illario was there with him. Hmghfsk. Agony. Suffering.

— “So, the Wigmaker.” Illario wiggled his fingers ominously. “Tell me about him.” 

“He’s weird,” Lucanis replied bluntly. He found the moments before a job crucial for focus, but Illario was never one for comfortable silence. 

“Specifics, cousin. No one hires us to kill normal people.” 

“I gave you a dossier.” 

“Yes, but I want your assessment.” 

“I wrote it. It is my assessment.” 

“Humor me.” 

Their dynamic in this is so heartbreaking to me in that like… okay this is going to be heavily vibes based and integrating some of the things we get to see of them in Veilguard so bear with me here while I try to explain this to myself. But what Illario is trying to do here is clearly to get Lucanis to engage with him outside of the professional sphere. Of all people in the world at this point in time, I think Illario is the one single person who best knows and also cares the most about Lucanis as a human being, not about what he can do for him. He loves his cousin, he wants to know what Lucanis is thinking, he wants to be engaged with him; he’s trying his fucking damnest to pick the locks to get to the person beneath the Crow, as it were! Maybe to a Lucanis he remembers from long ago, when they were children and the connection between them was effortless and open, not yet marred by all the ways trauma and the unequal dynamic enforced on them has forced them to shut parts of themselves down to survive. I feel there’s a where did you go that I couldn’t follow and when did it happen, why did you leave me here alone, come back sort of undertone to it, both here and in The Wake. As well as in Veilguard itself, come to that! ‘That is not my cousin, that is a demon, a stranger with his face’ is a sentiment that may, perhaps, have deeper roots than Lucanis popping back up from the grave like a jumpscare. Another metaphorical/emotional truth made mockingly literal, as it were, just like Lucanis’ Freeze response and deep sense of being a monster somehow in a way he can’t put his finger on is older than Spite or the Ossuary. (Zara thought making ‘the Demon of Vyrantium’ literal would be great value for shits and giggles, and this is also a Narrative Pattern in this corner of the story, the unspoken emotional metaphors in this fucked up little family heightened and made real through the literary device of magic. It’s good stuff. Veilguard does pretty solid work with metaphors overall, honestly.) 

Meanwhile Lucanis both seems to long for that connection too (there’s a reason he asked Illario to come along with him for this even though he refuses to like. Actually give him the information he needs to actively help out particularly effectively) AND to feel threatened/inadequate when Illario asks for it. I’m not sure he entirely knows how to give Illario the closeness he’s asking for anymore, and the pain both of not being able to give someone you love what they need from you and the feeling of something being fundamentally wrong with you that you can’t understand how to do that, as well as threatening the system of values Caterina has instilled in him so deep: the job always comes first, anything that could stop you from prioritizing that is dangerous, even love. (Especially love, you only get to keep that if you do your job perfectly first.) There’s also the resentment of ‘why are you asking me for more when I already tried to give you this information/closeness in a way I’m actually capable of, if only you’d be serious and pay attention for five minutes’, a feeling of not being understood or seen. A sort of I crave your company but every time I have it it only reveals how I’m fundamentally broken despair and stuckness as well, as we see the sort of fraught irreconcilably mixed emotions in all of Lucanis’ attachment relationships in Veilguard. 

Even at this stage, Lucanis’ is a psychology held together with workaholism and ‘I’ll just bottle this all up in here and then someday, on the bright side, if I’m lucky, I will die and not have to worry about it! If I can’t see it it can’t see me and it’ll be okay’ logic, and Illario’s attempts at breaking through, born of increasing desperation, love, and justified concern as they may be, are disruptive to those defensive structures and Lucanis instinctively rejects them. (Indeed, very much in the same way as Spite’s presence in Lucanis’ psyche works eventually, and eliciting the same initial reactions in him: avoidance, distaste, fear and anger. Davrin too refuses to stop poking and back off at subtler signs, and evokes a lot of the anger and rebellious little shitness for lack of a better word that Lucanis also has with Illario. Which I think ironically is also a sign that Lucanis kind of weirdly trusts him or at least trusts that he understands the parameters of their relationship clearly, it’s one of the few places he lets himself be openly angry right from the get go.) Thus the irritable pulling away/dismissiveness, and thus Illario’s (accurate tbf!) sense of rejection and dismissal and (I think inaccurate or at least incomplete) perception of Lucanis’ motivations for it. Though, again, who can blame him for reaching the conclusions he does with what Lucanis is able to give him to work with here. And so the misery carousel keeps going round and round.  

Illario and Spite speak the same truth to him: WE ARE TRAPPED. WE NEED TO GET OUT SOMEHOW OR IT’LL KILL US. (Inferred and indirect: HELP ME) And because Lucanis’ survival instincts naturally go towards Freeze, being asked for action of that specific kind is what he’s least able to deliver, because it’ll inevitably hurt someone he loves, no matter how he moves. So he just. Doesn’t. Rook finds Lucanis trapped in a chamber deep in his brain I think has existed in a less Fade-enhancedly literal form for much, much longer than the most recent barrage of trauma. The set dressing is new, the underlying logic is old and firmly established.

Lucanis’ instinct to keep the current patterns going as painlessly or numbly as possible, to ‘keep still’ and only work within the structures Caterina has set up for them — because in his mind a flawed yet stable status quo, yes, even a toxic one, is better than the risk of unbearable and irretrievable loss and chaos at its disruption, as they have in fact experienced before under traumatic circumstances — is incredibly destructive to the both of them, and it’s born out of an incredibly deep love and protectiveness. He’s trying to keep Illario safe, in exactly the same way he thinks he’s doing for everyone he cares about by staying in the Mind!Ossuary later, but it’s a child’s/survival instinct’s flawed logic and causing so much harm in the process. Logic that indeed is inherited from Caterina, whose solution to that same logic is what Lucanis is scrambling to protect Illario from the same way he tries to protect himself (if only Illario would understand that and stop rocking the fucking boat!!!, right…). Don’t struggle against the riptide, go limp, if you try to swim against it directly you’ll always lose. (And from Illario’s point of view: well, if you loved me you’d at least try, and not just wait for it to finish the job and finally drown us.) 

In this short story you can feel how they’re trying so hard to speak with each other in the only ways they know how, with the broken mangled tools Caterina left them with, and they can’t understand each other and very soon it’s going to be too late. I’m going to go lie down on the bottom of the ocean for ten thousand million billion years. 

— More observations of the patterns between them in this generally because it didn’t fit anywhere else lol: here’s the feeling I get. Illario makes bids for connection, Lucanis seems to bluntly brush him off even as we see from his internal dialogue just how fond he is of Illario — I think even some of the more dismissive comments he makes in his head is more along the lines of the affectionate amusement we see him have around people he cares about and their foibles in Veilguard too. If you listen to how he talks about Viago and Caterina especially, there’s that same laconic observation of their peculiarities as a part of how he loves them. HowEver. He and Illario do not have the tools or understanding to express to each other that ‘oof, no, that hit on something too tender, back off’, other than to try to jab back harder and sharper. And so resentments build and deepen on both sides without ever getting any outlets. A relationship where you don’t have the right or means to say ‘no’ is never going to be a healthy one, and saying ‘no’ is the one thing Caterina has most forbidden. In other relationships Lucanis solves this by creating distance internally — Caterina is in his inner world, but she’s the outermost lock, kept further away from his deepest self. He does not resent her ‘anymore’ (he says and probably thinks. I think he might ah. Have deferred it more than resolved it but that’s just me lol), but he has protected himself from her within the means he had to do it with and found a way to maintain his attachment to her in that state. And yet he is incapable of and/or unwilling to do that same process with Illario, to let go of the closeness he can maintain there. Illario is the innermost lock of his psyche, the person who has meant the most to him and as unguardedly as he’s capable of, who he’s held the closest all this time… even after finding out what he did. 

Illario is the safest, closest relationship he has… which also means that he is the one who gets parts of all the anger and resentment and frustration that cannot be there with Caterina in particular because that would be Dangerous Territory in a multitude of ways. I think Lucanis tries to mitigate this by more deliberately pouring that stuff into his job, but it’s still down there unresolved at the core, bubbling away, the fumes rising and infecting his interpersonal relationships in subtle ways. Even the ‘read the goddamn brief Illario’ move and refusing to budge is just another version of the malicious compliance/competence as rebellion that this whole mission is towards Caterina. (Unfortunately this is how it works sometimes when you’ve had to push things down that hard for that long; it comes out with the people we love the most and who deserve it the least.) And even then it’s mostly in undercurrents moving beneath the surface— it’s something that happens in an obfuscated and buried enough way that you can’t simply break it open all at once and let air in to stop the wounds from festering. If Illario did try to bring it up directly, I do not think Lucanis at this point would be capable of staying with it, he would flinch away and dissociate/freeze and deny it was even a thing at all (be unable to recognize it as a thing at all). And Illario clearly knows this too — you get the feeling that he’s been trying and trying and trying to get through here and found no way. He’s at the end of his rope, and not just about the First Talon conundrum.

Whenever they are speaking to each other, they are also speaking to Caterina through each other because you can’t really bargain with God directly (especially one that’s known to be a wrathful god given the provocation), but there’s enough of her and her meanings fused into you over the years that it’s almost the same thing when you talk. And sometimes it’s hard to see past her to your brother actually standing there with you.   

I’m going to SCREAM Lucanis loves Illario so much that he would prefer to die, would condemn himself to hell in his own mind forever rather than face having to lose him or deliberately harm him, AND YET!!!! AND STILLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!! He is letting him down and leaving him behind and making him feel small and stupid in ways so incredibly profound and sad without even realizing it all the time. No one in this family has ever been equipped to talk about anything ever and I doubt they’re about to start now and I need to tear into something with my TEETH

Anyway. Breakdown over, on with our regularly scheduled tevinter nights reread post with slightly less anguish lol. 

— [Lucanis] clapped a hand over the mage’s mouth and slammed his skull against the wall. “Knock it off.

What does he have to go and be so casually funny for at all times. The undisputed master of the perfectly tuned in levels of comedic mild exasperation. Stop stop I already love him. 

— Illario waited with a chair and rope. 

“Sit down.” He beamed. “Enjoy a little Antivan hospitality.” 

While his cousin secured their prisoner’s bindings, Lucanis retrieved his sword from the wall. e mage was coming to. His unfocused eyes took stock of his situation. 

“I won’t talk,” he spat. “Even if you torture me.” 

“I’m too busy to torture you,” Lucanis said, and ran him through with his sword. 

. . .

Illario frowned. “If I’d known you were just going to kill him, I wouldn’t’ve put so much effort into the knots.” 

“Check his pockets.” 

“Ah—” Illario said, pulling a scroll from the mage’s jacket. “Found something.” 

The seal was broken, but the imprint of two dragons was still visible in the wax. “Venatori.”

 “Thought as much. What’s it say?” 

Illario unrolled the parchment and scanned the page. “‘Gallant brothers and sisters . . . In our veins runs true Tevinter blood, passed down from the dreamers—’” Illario’s head snapped up as Lucanis began pulling his sword from the mage’s chest. “ Careful! Remember the tanner job? You ruined my best shirt.” 

Lucanis smirked and continued extracting the blade. 

Illario took two wary steps back, then continued reading.

Unfortunately I do love it when Lucanis is a troll fhsdkj 

��� Lucanis’ inner logic that he can buy the tiniest sliver of autonomy and meaning by consistently offering up a sacrifice of perfection — that’s the silent deal he’s struck with Caterina, an exchange she’ll accept as long as he doesn’t try to get too clever with it, and his subsequent panic in Veilguard when he’s too worn down to be able to perform to perfection anymore (and with that, in this internal logic, goes his right to autonomy or freedom)……….. He really does make me so so SO sad. He needed so much therapy even before the Ossuary. Some deeply entrenched ideas about the basic transactionality in even the closest relationships here. (Where I think Illario is kind of his exception to. That’s an assumed mutual unconditional love even when some terms and conditions probably would be in order actually situation for him.) 

Also I think this is a useful look at how the Crows operating on ‘might makes right’ lines could be harnessed if you’re of a mind — basically anything goes, as long as you’re good enough to get away with it and/or don’t step on enough toes that the rest of the crab bucket momentarily team up to tear you down. And Lucanis chose to use that little loophole to go ‘well you see I’d sort of like to get to be kind sometimes actually’. Which, y’know. Eccentric for a Crow, to be sure, but are you going to be the one to tell the Demon of Vyrantium himself, Caterina Dellamorte’s most speacialest and scariest little murderboy, that he can’t keep protecting servants of the households he hits because it’s making the whole team look kind of soft??? The whole business runs on ‘I’m bigger and stronger than you so don’t try any shit’, and Lucanis has successfully built up the image of being bigger and stronger than anyone who’d think to try any shit well enough to get away with it, as Caterina has achieved for their house overall. (It’s not like him sparing witnesses gets in the way of the interest of other houses or anything anyway, he’s creating potential trouble for himself more than for anyone else which I hardly think anyone would feel compelled to protest against. If it’d been something that threatened anyone else’s bottom line, a completely different story, but I think Lucanis understands the system well enough to know where he can get away with it.) And again, all he has to do to earn it is to deliver unflinching inhuman perfection at all times! So that’s not a stressful set of psychological parameters to have to function under at all, especially when you feel yourself start to fail as you’re falling apart after horrible new waves of trauma lmao

Which I think is partially also what the ‘You think I’m not good enough?’/’Are you?’ exchange is about — it’s an extremely unhelpful and mean thing to say the way he does (especially in front of other people! Other people who, to Illario, are basically strangers!), but it’s also said out of howling protectiveness and a deep recognition of this stark truth. You can get away with it if you’re good enough, and if you’re not good enough you’re dead. Something Lucanis is blithely ready to risk his own life on all the time for perfect strangers, and is completely unwilling to accept when it comes to Illario’s life! Lucanis’ love has that light element of  possessiveness/proprietariness to it from time to time — the ‘he is ours’ sentiment that both he and Spite maintain for Illario in love and in hate. I have a lot of sympathy for it because it obviously comes from a place of painfully earnest love and fear in someone who has lost people in horrible ways at a young age, but there is something paternalistic in that protectiveness too, a lack of trust in Illario to take care of himself and willingness to cross lines in Illario’s own autonomy to ensure that he’s safe. (Not healthy or anything but considering the shit Illario pulls in this game… a little bit of can you fucking blame him I’d be three seconds away from an ulcer about it at all times too going on here haha). ‘It’s okay if you don’t agree or don’t forgive me afterwards, it’s all worth it if it means you’re safe, if it means you’ll survive’. Sins of the grandma dude. Sins of the grandma. The generational trauma starts coming and it won’t stop coming. 

— I also think it’s relevant that Lucanis can count on some things from Caterina consistently, as long as he upholds his part of the ‘deal’ between them to be her perfect poor boy slash best knife who’ll never let her down. However devastating the cost of her regard and support is, it’s only Illario who’s left completely to fend for himself in this family dynamic. A little bit of what the fuck does he have to lose going on here. Lucanis, I suppose. For a long he has Lucanis to lose, but Lucanis is starting to act an awful lot like he’s not that invested in living too much longer. So where does that leave you if you’re Illario. With a very dumb plan that was never going to work, apparently. 

— While hunting his mark, Lucanis had opened the wrong door and walked into an orgy. Getting out of that had been interesting.

Nothing of substance to add here except that the mental image is hysterical, of course, and only more so after having a whole game to get to know him. Also this is just my personal read but I don’t think Lucanis would use seduction, even as a tactic on a job, by choice — my feeling is that his act as a servant in Vows and Vengeance would be more indicative of the social stealth skills he’d use when that’s what gets him where he needs to be. (Very tired service worker towards the end of their shift might in fact be the role he was born to play he has exactly the vibes for it.) 

A good assassin knows his tools, and I think Lucanis realizes that flirting, even in a professional capacity as it were, is one of his blunter and more inflexible ones and so mostly wouldn’t use it haha. If he understood someone to be attracted to him in a way that required nothing much of him actively and would somehow aid the job I’m sure he’d use the opportunity it provided well enough, don’t get me wrong, but I just don’t believe it’d ever occur to him to go there as an opening move. The theoretical understanding is mostly there, the practical application… maybe less so. He knows he’s not very good at it and so wouldn’t rely on it if he could help it; that’s Illario’s sandbox to play in. Again this is just my personal opinion, so feel free to disagree of course, I know people have a range of reads on this element.  

— His skull felt raw. The backs of his eyeballs itched like he hadn’t blinked in days. Whatever magic Ambrose was using for his creations was tearing at the seams of the Veil. 

“Something’s wrong.” 

“Yeah,” Illario agreed, zeroing in on a group of half-dressed revelers, “we’re up here, away from the fun.” 

Lucanis snapped his fingers in front of his cousin’s face. “Focus.” 

“I am.” 

“On the job.” 

“To be fair, you never told me the plan.” 

Lucanis shrugged. “Find Ambrose. Slit his throat.” 

“Sounds complicated.” 

“It will be. The Veil’s thin here. Thinner than I expected.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “One wrong spell and this place will be swarming with demons.” 

“Then let’s kill the bastard and scram. I want to see what this city has to offer.” 

“Our ship sails at dawn.” 

Illario waved a dismissive hand. “Plenty of time for some good, old fashioned debauch—” 

“I see him,” Lucanis interrupted.

Lucanis does this really nasty thing with Illario where he first pushes him away and then punishes him for being disengaged with him/what they’re doing, or asks him for something he then rejects when he gets it. (I think he has some of this pattern in other relationships too but without the punishment or idk… familiarity/presumptiveness/feeling of natural entitlement to their attention part. Illario is his brother, the attachment there is safe/established enough that the part of him that doesn’t think he’s worth someone’s attention doesn’t kick in as it does in pretty much every other relationship. He’d never blame Rook or any of the Lighthouse crew for pulling away from him that same way, that’s a deep well of ‘well yeah valid I also don’t really want to have anything to do with me tbf :/’ self-loathing waiting to open up, ‘protecting’ him from making a presumption like that or imaging himself to have rights or worth interpersonally in basically any other context or relationship at the outset. But with Illario the love is always assumed. Both ways. You have a right to me on that level, and I have the right to you. The only person he takes for granted. Because that’s family. Oh boy.) 

See also: the way he barely acknowledges Illario greeting him when he comes back from the Ossuary and more crucially as far as Lucanis might expect Illario’s perspective to be beneath any repressed suspicions, from the dead — very understandably so, considering the Dire mood and implications and ‘...where’s Caterina’ of it all, but it’s also a larger pattern he has. I think he feels such deep love for Illario that he doesn’t quite get that he also has to like. Show that deep love for it to be understood by the other party. And it sure comes across as very dismissive from the outside, or if a person is perhaps primed to have that insecurity already by the entrenched family dynamics at play. Oh boy 2 electric boogaloo. 

Buddy you are setting the person you love the most up to lose again and again and again… and it would break his heart to truly realize that, probably, but I don’t know if he’d know how to stop doing it, either. 

This seems to be all completely subconscious, to be clear. These are clearly patterns established from when they were extremely young, and it’s hard for fish to conceptualize being surrounded by water other than when the absence of it leaves them gasping and dying, I suppose.

Shallower thought: So Lucanis is also not clean-shaven here! Probably a more casual didn’t bother to shave/not quite as meticulously maintained five o’clock shadow going on as with Illario, but perhaps a tiny bit of the pot calling the kettle black here, Mr. Lucanis ‘long black leather overcoat’ Dellamorte isn’t unconcerned with looking cool, in his more restrained way. (As we all know ‘looking cool’ is the foundational base of a Crow’s Maslow’s pyramid of needs to the point that Spite went ‘can do!’ immediately upon contact with Lucanis’ soul and never stopped dhfkjs.)

— “They’re never what you envision, are they?” Illario noted. 

“What did you expect?” 

“Hair, for one. Maybe a funny little dog.” 

That got a chuckle out of Lucanis, if only briefly.

The thing is that I love these two dumbasses so incredibly much. You see. This exchange of funny little observations is a huge part of how Lucanis interacts with Rook especially out on missions too, you can see where his patterns for having close relationships come from. Also restating my point from other metas that Lucanis seems to come alive a bit with collaborative humour, that’s clearly a social dynamic he finds soothing and also engaging, a way he knows how to take an outstretched hand. Since that seems to come from his relationship with Illario when it’s at its best… pain and suffering in my heart again needless to say

— Lucanis pays a lot of attention to people’s clothes and is very good at understanding what they’re trying to signal with their outfits. Overall he’s excellent at understanding people’s ways of thinking in the abstract/from a distance, as long as he doesn’t have to interact with them directly and interpersonally. Because then he falls to absolute pieces under the slightest pressure and runs. Again the best my particular brand of autism representation probably not even meant to be representation I’ve ever seen lol. 

— Camille had just taken a sip of watered-down mulsum, when a handsome stranger grabbed her glass and downed the rest. 

“Excuse me!” she exclaimed. The party drowned out her words, but Lucanis could still read her lips. “That’s my drink.” 

Illario simply smiled. “Guess I’ll have to buy you another.” 

Lucanis groaned—not only at the line, but that it worked. Even from his position, he could see Camille was hooked. He shouldn’t be surprised. This was old hat for Illario. But it was always amazing to see what one man’s smile could accomplish.

Lucanis’ mildly baffled and somewhat begrudging admiration for Illario’s social skills is so funny. As far as he’s concerned this is some kind of black magic beyond his ken. It must be a bit of pretty privilege involved in this case tho because what the fuck how did that land. Hey whatever works Illario you spent all that time on your outfit for a reason never let anyone tell you your slutty little unbuttoned shirt isn’t serving a tactical purpose I’m not about to tell you how to do your job

the fact that Illario is in fact a very good Crow. he's just not Lucanis. that's his original sin huh. never getting away from that one.

— Do u think Illario’s move with putting the keys on the tray instead of pocketing them and going back to Lucanis is maybe one of his small spiteful acts of rebellion. Ah. Family traditions. Truly they bind us together. 

— The Lucanis in this story is so much more… contained than the Lucanis we get to meet in the game, for good or ill. In Veilguard he is constantly fraying at the seams and cracking open under all the pressure he’s under, which for sure and of course is Not Great and causes him a lot of pain and distress — but also the whole that’s how the light gets in etc. thing, it also means it’s easier for things to find their way in to him and for him to let things out. Meanwhile here, there’s more the sense of immense tension —  a harder, more determined/deliberate lack of being able to move than the total helplessness of being stuck in the mind!Ossuary, but with some of the same quality. Illario tries to get in to find him and in his way I really do think Lucanis is trying to reach out to Illario as well as he knows how, but there’s a rigidness there that stops anything from really getting through or changing. Illario’s guilt trip letter after Sea of Blood saying that control is the quality he’s always most associated with Lucanis makes a lot of sense when you read this short story, even though I think Illario is mistaking ‘control’ for ‘deadening anything too vulnerable or ‘frivolous’ until I’m just a tool that can do a job’. That letter is transparently Illario deliberately pressing down on a bruise he knows to be tender, but it feels like there’s some kernel of truth to it beneath that which makes the sting all the worse. 

— Up ahead, Lucanis spied the servants’ entrance. If he could reach it, there was just enough space to wedge his body into the covered niche above the door. Not easily, of course, but nothing ever was. 

*Resigned Lucanis voice* Nothing is ever easy. (He does literally say this word for word in one of Bellara’s quests, and in exactly the tone you’d expect haha. He is my favourite person of all time)

— Lucanis thought about securing the entrance—leaving it unlocked could raise suspicion—but chose not to in case Illario decided to work tonight. He could already hear his cousin’s honeyed excuses— But seducing a beautiful woman is work! He snorted and pushed farther inside.

I do believe a certain amount of affectionate dunking is part of Lucanis’ love language and it’s too bad that’s kind of become a sore point/unequal power balance between him and Illario because it is frequently so funny fhdakj. Also kind of sweet to see the precedent for Lucanis sort of… keeping people he loves in his head like this, the locks in Inner Demons are clearly literalizations of a process he already sort of does naturally. He listens to the Illario and Caterina in his head multiple times during this story. I’m repeating my ‘this man is so desperately lonely in a way he doesn’t know how to solve’ point for emphasis. A common affliction in many of the Veilguard main cast, Solas of course being the most egregious and ongoing example. This game has Themes and it’s sticking to them haha <3<3<3 

— The cold opulence of the place reminded Lucanis of a Chantry rather than a home. 

Very interesting observation, now that we’ve seen Villa Dellamorte for ourselves! Is all I’ll say. (*Spite voice* Home? …Smells like linseed oil and dust)

Atlases bearing the visages of past Archons held up vaulted ceilings glittering with mosaic depictions of Tevinter’s golden age. The cost of such a commission must have been astronomical—both in coin and lives. How many slaves had gone blind gilding each individual tile? How many backs had been broken from hauling and placing stone after stone? 

There was patriotism and there was obsession. Neither was worth it.

Again. Very interesting observations from a man raised in a mansion built on spilled blood and with Crow decorations anywhere you turn right down to the wallpaper haha. Tevinter/specifically the Venatori lets him indulge in some ‘clean’ anger and disdain that he can’t have back home because it’s, y’know. Home. He may not have a lot of illusions about the Crows, but he also is deeply bound to them. Lucanis will sublimate his anger into ANYTHING including turning it on himself before he lets it touch something he loves. 

— Brief detour away from the general/worldstate agnostic approach of this post to my personal shenanigans, but…. Lucanis ‘breaking into morbid nursery rhymes internally while on a murder spree’ Dellamorte 🤝 Ellaryen ‘absent-mindedly reciting funeral rites in his head in the middle of a fight to keep his rhythm and also start to get it out of the way ASAP while people fall like flies around him’ Ingellvar. Made for each other, truly. 

— Too bad we never got to see Lucanis using a garotte in the main game, that’s clearly one of his go-tos normally. I suppose trying to do stealth sections with Taash on the team is a tall order even for Lucanis Dellamorte. The Crows AXE their regards!!! ]>:D

— The dead weight of the first man pulled the second one up until they both hung around the limestone Archon’s nape like a loose cravat.

Once more, I love Courtney Wood’s writing style. What a mental image. The tone of light comedy as Lucanis 9-5s his way patiently through all these guards is pitch perfect. 

— Spread out. Lucanis mouthed the words as the guard gave the order.

This dude really is out here doing his job like it’s a video game level he’s done a hundred times before hahaha. He’d be skipping dialogue and sequence breaking all over the place if he could. (Speedrunner Lucanis for modern AU, there’s a concept anyone can have for free that’s hilarious. He does cooking videos, knife maintenance videos and insane video game speedruns interchangeably on his channel and never speaks a single word nor leaves a note through text in any of them god bless. He has three followers no update schedule goes years without making a video and has never spoken to anyone online. He is my babygirl.) 

— One for silence.

Two for surprise.

Three for good measure.

Four’s exercise.

Five for a slaughter. 

Six for the thrill.

Seven means more sovereigns.

“Eight marks the final kill,” Illario said, coming to stand next to him.

The whole nursery rhyme, and Illario coming in with the unspeakably sinister final line here, considering what we know happens not even that long after this job! Again the connection there is between them, though — they were thinking about the exact same thing, counting it out with the same old remembered words. 

“Do you still recite that old nursery rhyme? The one Caterina made us memorize during training?”

Lucanis moved to retrieve his throwing knives. “What can I say? It’s catchy.” 

“That’s a word for it.” Illario glanced at the swaying guards overhead. “You know, if the Vints ever learn to look up, you’re screwed.” 

“They’d have to stop looking down their noses.” He narrowed his eyes. “Your tunic’s rumpled.” 

Illario flashed a sheepish grin. “You weren’t the only one tussling with guards.” 

“Tussling, huh?” Lucanis shook his head. “That’s a word for it.” 

“I’m happy to kiss and tell, but shouldn’t we do something about this?” Illario wrinkled his nose and nodded toward the sticky fluid seeping out from underneath the slain guards.

My nebulous vibe has always been that they’re basically the same age with Lucanis a tiny bit older, but IMMENSE younger sibling little shit energy from him in this moment fhdksfas glorious. Sheepish grin is also a very fun look on Illario I wish they’d leaned in a bit more on that capacity for him in-game. If he read as more calculatedly bumbling it’d change some of the scenes a lot in terms of feeling, I think 

— “Never known you to have a soft heart,” Illario muttered. 

Lucanis’s right cheek muscle twitched. “She won’t talk.” 

“This isn’t Antiva. We’re not heroes here.” 

“We’re not heroes anywhere, cousin.” 

Illario rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. The Venatori already have your name. If they learn your face—” 

“I’ll grow a beard.” Lucanis smirked. “They’ll never see me coming.” 

Illario’s frustration deflated. He grinned reluctantly. “That cavalier attitude’s going to get you killed.” 

Lucanis turned the key until the bolt unlatched. “It’s served me well so far.”

a) so it’s Illario who’ll refuse to take things seriously if he doesn’t feel like it, is it, Lucanis lol, b) ‘I’ll grow a beard’ :’) well. He did. Do you think Illario thinks about that every time he looks at him now, c) owie owie owie the foreshadowing 

I think being a hero is not important to Lucanis at all, being a professional/being able to do the job is. (Being the perfect professional buys him getting to do hero things when his heart calls him to, but the role of hero itself is clearly not a priority or something he particularly wants.) 

Lucanis clearly mostly works alone — I wonder how often Illario has come along before. We know he has pulled ‘soft heart’ moves before this, from in-game banter, but probably without Crow witnesses. How much does even Caterina know about? Might be some proof in the pile of how much he trusts Illario that he’s so blatant about it here. 

— Lucanis gestured for Illario to follow as he slipped through the entryway. They stood for a moment, quiet and still, allowing their eyes to adjust. Ten paces ahead, a stairwell materialized in the shadows. eir descent was slow going. Wrought iron made for easy creaks and groans. Each step was a test of patience—and balance. Lucanis went first, showing Illario where to place his feet.

And 

“He was my cousin, but we were more like brothers, really. Always getting himself into every sort of trouble. And I was always right behind him, you know? Always.” Illario’s voice suddenly grew thick with emotion. “Now there’s nobody for me to follow.” (From The Wake)

:) ahahaha. Ha. 

Both of them independently using the ‘but we’re more like brothers’ phrasing exactly the same way too. Alright. Okay. I’m fine

— All at once, the room became aware strangers were present. One by one, they moaned a horrifying chorus of despair. Lucanis stumbled back, his mouth dry. Something inside snapped. Death’s too good for this bastard. 

Illario touched his arm. Only then did Lucanis realize how quickly he was breathing. He closed his eyes. Remember your training , he told himself, and suddenly, he could hear the tapping of his grandmother’s cane, the hard elegance of her voice. There is no place for emotion in killing. It’s sloppy. File it down. Make it useful.

Illario being able to notice Lucanis being incredibly upset when he’s too overwhelmed to register/be aware of it himself and bringing him back to himself with nothing more than a touch to the arm is not devastating to me at all. It’s fine. In Inner Demons, even Viago and Teia fail to recognize that Lucanis is about to come completely apart psychologically, but again… I think Illario really does know his cousin better than anyone in a lot of ways. (And less than anyone in other ways, but hey, that’s family for ya lol) 

Make it useful, he repeated to himself. With slow, controlled breaths, Lucanis flushed the rage pumping through his veins until he could think clearly. 

I’m actually so happy they went away from focusing on the concept of wrath/passion as the touchstone for Lucanis’ character and angled it more towards the interpersonal issues he has with anger and with his sense of self than his rage at cruelty and injustice like this — that starts to step on the toes of Anders’ narrative space as a bisexual possessed disaster without bringing anything particularly new to the equation, which would have been a shame. Also as I’ve made no secret of I love what they are doing with him in the game SO MUCH I can turn him gently around to gaze at him forever 

— “What are you doing?” Illario whispered. 

“Breaking their shackles.” 

Illario stared. “That’s not the job.” 

“Fuck the job.” 

I think Illario is the only person Lucanis would ever say that in front of at this point. (See also: his point about honesty in their line of work towards the end.) This is a BIG admission from him, that there could be anything more important than the work Caterina raised them to — than Caterina’s approval and recognition. And what a horrible hurt that must be for Illario — ‘you’re willing to risk incurring Caterina’s wrath for total strangers on a whim, and yet not for me??’. (They both seem to recognize that death is secondary as a motivator here, Lucanis would rather die than let Caterina down, that’s the easy way out, and he’s putting that on the table frfr with the shit he’s pulling here.) Also part of what makes Illario fear Lucanis is rapidly spiralling/hurtling towards the edge of a cliff, probably, this acting on impulse is clearly not an everyday sort of thing for him. We know he’s made decisions of his own on jobs before, but probably not on this scale/in front of another Crow. 

There’s going to be room for so much ‘...why could you change for them and not for me? (why are they worth choosing to live for, and I wasn’t?)’ hurt on Illario’s side towards Rook and the Lighthouse crew after the events of the game. Maybe not as much on the Minrathous route, but even there. Like he doesn’t have much of a right to that after pulling the attempted fratricide card (that’s going to be the refrain of the rest of Illario’s life huh :’) entirely self-inflicted yet awful to have to live with; the Illario Dellamorte post Veilguard story), which only makes it worse to contemplate! Fun times in viddy games.  

— A+ body horror writing going on here, of course, hate every single thing about this thanks for asking!

—To his right, Lucanis sensed Illario readying his dagger. He gently grabbed his cousin’s wrist and shook his head. Illario gawked at him, his jaw clenched. 

The Wigmaker began the walk back toward the stairs. A groaning lament followed as he passed. When he was close enough to touch, Illario tensed—as if to lunge forward. Lucanis tightened his hold, his thumb finding the pressure point at the base of his wrist. The dagger fell from Illario’s grasp. Lucanis swiped it up before it clanged to the ground. 

What are you doing? Illario mouthed. 

Again, Lucanis motioned him to stand down. 

Once they heard Ambrose climb the stairs and close the door, Illario wrenched his arm free. 

“Have you lost your mind? We had him!” 

“He doesn’t deserve a quick death.” 

“Did you forget the mess you left upstairs? What do you think will happen when Ambrose finds his bodyguards slaughtered?” 

“Hopefully he panics. I want him scared.” 

“He’ll flee,” Illario asserted. “And this contract will be forfeit. Your life will be forfeit.”

Illario ‘cousin I am trying to have a fucking INTERVENTION with you here why am I more concerned about whether you live or die than you are!!!’ Dellamorte. His cousin is seemingly losing his fucking mind and playing with the one thing Caterina values above all and possibly would sacrifice even Lucanis for: the integrity of their House among the Crows. He’s seeing Lucanis determinedly, near methodically setting himself up for death no matter what path he ends up going down. This would be. Stressful. To have to witness, I imagine.

I do think Lucanis is passively suicidal in the way that he would vastly prefer to die on a job before he’d ever have to face the impossible choice that awaits them with the First Talon title back home — where he’s forced to let down either Caterina or Illario, possibly to spend the rest of his life on something he doesn’t want and might cost him his relationship with Illario, and is unable to deal with the thought of it so he just Avoids for all he’s worth. And he’s worth a lot that way. Which Illario clearly also recognizes and might be part of this freakout — having to watch your cousinbrother casually preparing to fall on his own sword for what seems like basically no fathomable reason (for these STRANGERS and not for me!!?!?!) and not be able to get through to him no matter what you try... you know. It’s kind of just a bad time all round for Illario too. He goes and chooses to do all the wrong things about it, of course, his talent for making everything worse in every way he possibly could is unparalleled (affectionate and derogatory), but I have a lot of empathy for where he’s coming from emotionally in a lot of ways. While you exist I’m nothing, and when you are gone I am nothing. And after you come back. Guess what. I’m still nothing. Imagine that. The Illario Dellamorte story. 

(Lucanis has also seen a lot of really horrible shit on the job lately, Venatori bullshit being what it is. That stuff must start to build up after a while, him finally snapping here makes a lot of sense.) 

— “Illario—” 

But the other Crow wasn’t finished. “I thought the plan was to have a few laughs, slit some throats—not release a demon swarm!” 

“Plans change,” Lucanis replied. His gloved palm covered the door handle. 

“Well, for the record, I preferred the other one.” 

“Noted.” 

Aw. This is my main proof that Illario does in fact understand the plea for company behind Lucanis asking him to come along on this job. Possibly better than Lucanis understands that himself, which could perhaps be. Exasperating to deal with — but he did also come along and with only light complaining etc. I umm. love them both. Some more musings about how Illario has clearly been the person most responsible for/involved in Lucanis having any kind of social life before Veilguard times: 

Comment Lucanis has around some more party districts of Minrathous in-game: “The nightlife was always more Illario's thing. He said I should get out more. Fulfilling Crow contracts didn't count.” (Illario is a terrible little fuckboy murderlad but consider what he’s had to deal with over the years…braver than any us marine etc. he’s been the one trying to convince Lucanis to take care of himself and maybe even have a good time at some point for like 20 years, a monumental task we know it takes a village/Lighthouse to make headway with. A man who has had to say ‘hey we should do something fun. No not a job with extra garrotting Lucanis Maker’s breath I was thinking a party or something’ more times than any of us have had hot dinners) 

+

Lucanis, trust me! Take this contract and we’ll be the toast of Treviso. Would I lead you astray? But I can imagine your face at that question. A better question, then: Would you truly leave me to my own devices? What would I do without you? Come, cousin, it will be just like last summer. I’ll buy the wine afterwards. —Illario

Letter we find in the room in Villa Dellamorte where it’s implied Illario has been staying since staging his little failcoup — it’s right across the hall from where he’s imprisoned his grandmother btw and I have a pet theory that it’s Lucanis’ old room. Illario Dellamorte what is wrong with you (so many things).

Illario has seemingly been drinking and reading this letter — this letter that Lucanis kept after receiving it, so Illario must have found it among his belongings at some point after his ‘death’ and has also kept it around ever since — in the same room where there’s a burned letter from Zara in the fireplace, even though the house is filled to the rafters with the Ventatori and trying to hide evidence of that connection is thus uh. Well it seems a bit late in the game to be worrying about that, is all I’m saying. It lends some credence to the idea that him crossing out Lucanis’ name in the family tree and scribbling ‘DEMON’ over it probably does carry some real emotional charge and isn’t just a tantrum/uncomplicated show of jealousy. 

So historically Illario has gone out of his way to spend time with Lucanis, and he seemingly is usually the one to reach out/take initiative in that? Lucanis clearly appreciates it — he kept that silly little letter (I am INCONSOLABLE about it btw), that comment he makes about the blight-beached boat in the Hossberg Wetlands that ‘Illario and I went on a sailing trip once. The boat ended up like that one, minus the blight (paraphrased yet very dear to me)’. Social connection is a need Illario has recognized in Lucanis before and offered even when Lucanis himself wouldn’t think to ask for it, is what I’m trying to say. I think. *sigh* listen you’ve gotten this far in the post hopefully you realize I am not entirely sure what I’m saying most of the time I’m trying to nail light to a wall here please have patience with me fhaskj

— Lucanis seems to navigate by sound a lot (which makes sense, considering how much of his job happens in the dark). Spite navigates mostly though a sense of (supernatural) smell. They’ve got a lot of eye imagery around them, but sight is not actually the most central sense for either of them. Nothing more coherent to add to that just observations haha 

— you ever think about the fact that despite everything caterina is ultimately unwilling to let go of Illario, and Illario is unwilling to let go of her. Me neither. 

— “Where are the bodies?” Illario asked. 

Effe shrank into herself. “I moved them.” 

“Not by yourself, you didn’t.” He turned to Lucanis, a smug sneer on his face. “I told you she’d talk.”

Proof Illario is not in fact an idiot and recognizes the basic logistics of a matter, and why his ‘oooh I think Zara must be back in Vyrantium already how inconvenient…’ ploy must be extra ‘...uh-huh cousin’ sus to Lucanis in Veilguard fhdjask. Trying to keep his terminator grandmother safely under lock and key while his cousin is back from the dead and possibly is now a demon with his face because of you and also you have to keep track of what lies you’ve told to what people must be incredibly stressful tbf I wouldn’t be keeping a particularly cool head either 

— Back down the hall, something wet slammed against the studded door. 

Effe’s bravado crumbled. “What was that?” 

“Take her,” Lucanis told Illario. “Find the others.” 

“Other what?” His eyes darted to the elf. “ Slaves? Absolutely not.” 

Lucanis continued as if Illario had agreed, “There’s a statue with a passage—like the one we used before. It’s not far. You should be able to escape in the chaos.” 

Illario blanched. “Did you not hear me? I said—” 

“Athima will help you. She’s the elf we met earlier.” 

“I don’t give a damn what her name is. I’m not—” 

“Once Ambrose is dealt with, I’ll meet you at the docks.” 

“Lucanis!” Illario shouted. “We are not revolutionaries.” 

Lucanis inhaled, his nostrils flaring. Illario was right. The Antivan Crows were assassins, not freedom fighters. Back home, people liked to romanticize, but Lucanis knew what he was. Still, his fingers twitched. 

“They are not responsible for their master’s mistakes.” He locked eyes with his cousin. 

Illario tried to remain resolute, but it was like touching hot steel. Sighing, he cursed and turned to Effe. “Come on,” Illario snapped. 

She glanced toward Lucanis. He gave her a reassuring nod. 

“My cousin may be a snob, but he’s true to his word.” 

“Are you? ” she asked, referring to his promise about Ambrose. 

“The Wigmaker will die tonight,” Lucanis affirmed. “But you have to go. It’s about to become very dangerous.” 

How much do you want to bet Illario is going ‘fuck it’s like trying to have a staring contest with Caterina herself’ on the inside right here, with all the emotions that may involve lmao. Lucanis is getting Illario out of there before shit really hits the fan too, notably — where Illario might see mostly lack of respect for his skills/what he could bring to the fight (there’s not none of that from Lucanis’ side either, but less than I feel Illario might be imagining), I think there’s a protectiveness, an unwillingness to risk Illario when the real madness shakes loose. *Lucanis voice* I mean it’s fine if I die obviously. but you don’t get to. get in the fucking car illario  

I think Lucanis adds the ‘My cousin is a snob, but he’s true to his word’ to reassure Effe that she can trust Illario/make Illario seem less scary/intimidating to her — both invoking the familial connection and the gentle dig to show that ‘see, I trust him, I’m not the least bit threatened by him, you don’t have to be either’. I don’t imagine ‘snob’ would be particularly upsetting to Illario either so while it is another datapoint in the grand tradition that is Lucanis-led public Illario slander, this might be one of the least egregious examples of it lol. (Implied lack of skill would hit way harder than anything about their social standing, I’m imagining)

— Lucanis has such a desperate need and desire to care for someone, as evidenced by how he reacts when he gets a whole Lighthouse full of people to do exactly that and springs into action like he’s been born for nothing else. He is that predator turned sheepdog all anxiety all the time he transparently projects onto Assan in that one banter with Davrin. That instinct has clearly been deep in him all this time, waiting for the right ground to grow in. To further his parallel with Davrin in so many things, there is a big part of him that is a protector as much as the part that’s a hunter, and it has finally found its place.

And like… can you imagine being Illario seeing that. Or this. Obviously it’s the right thing to do morally but on the petty small emotional and interpersonal level. Unbearable fhjksa.  

— Lucanis felt no sympathy. They were, all of them, Venatori supporters, who either knew what Ambrose was doing or chose to turn a blind eye to indulge their own vanity. Ignorance is bliss, not innocence.

Extremely interesting thing to think for someone raised in the Antivan Crows! I do think he actually holds himself to that standard, though — he doesn’t consider himself in any way an innocent. Even in situations where he is actually innocent, like how he feels about his time in the Ossuary. It’s easier for him to conceptualize that the demons/spirits in there were as innocent as anyone else trapped down there than to accept that maybe he didn’t deserve what happened to him either.

We’re also seeing the groundwork here for one of my favourite aspects of his character: the fact that he has an enormous, nearly unstoppable and instinctive on a kneejerk sort of level capacity for empathy — something he uses to great effect as a tool in his professional life to understand and predict his targets and the people around them, and which makes him an extremely devoted friend in his personal one — and yet is much more sparing with his sympathy. Those are in fact separate mental processes! And it’s fascinating to see someone in which the divide can be so clean and stark. (Not to keep beating this particular drum, but something deeply neuroatypical going on with this man long before the whole demon thing, he’s just found his niche and functions to the point of excelling in his particular field lol. Uneven skill profile: can intuit the thought processes of Tevinter fanatics or how word spreads through a community (as seen with the inn owner at the beginning) to a T from about two casual glances and find a way to stab anything up to and including a god cloud, cannot for the LIFE of him have an emotional conversation with his brother who he’s known all his life or understand what he’s thinking, because that all falls apart at the drop of a hat when he has to actually engage interpersonally himself and understand and interpret his own feelings on top as well in real time. Relatable. Is all I’ll say.)   

— The mage’s jaw pulsed. “You think you can come into my Imperium and act as judge and executioner?” Lucanis opened his mouth to respond, but Ambrose anticipated his answer. “Don’t say, ‘ Sì! ’” 

That earned a genuine smile from Lucanis. “Normally, there’s no judgment—only a contract. But for you, Ambrose, I made an exception.” 

The Wigmaker raised a brow. “Oh? What makes me so special?” 

“You upset my delicate sensibilities.” 

It was Ambrose’s turn to laugh. 

“I thought a Crow could stomach anything—for the right price.” 

Lucanis leveled the Wigmaker with a pointed look. “Not red lyrium.” 

“Morality is not static. Right and wrong are a matter of perspective.” Ambrose’s words were practiced and tired as if he had given the same reasoning a hundred times. 

Lucanis continued his advance, refusing to engage in the Wigmaker’s rhetoric. Nothing irritated him more than self-righteous excuses. If you’re going to do something terrible, just own it.

For your bounteous amounts of fuckery you have been promoted from the ‘contract’ category to ‘enemy’ category! Congratulations Ambrose it’s your special day. Also this makes a lot of sense with how he seems to feel about Solas too. 

— Hopelessness flooded the mage’s eyes. “One day, someone will turn your work against you. Only then will you have some semblance of the emptiness you’ve made me feel.” With his good hand, he gathered what was left of the wigs, hugging the locks to his chest. 

Lucanis experienced a twinge of disappointment, kindling for rage. He expected more fight from a high-ranking Venatori. He thought of the Wigmaker’s workshop, of the prisoners, their bellies full of poison, hanging like butchered pigs in stale, suffocating darkness. “Get up, Ambrose,” he growled. “You don’t get to do that—you don’t get to quit.” 

…

Panting heavily, Lucanis regarded the creature’s collapse without joy or anger. A vermilion fire engulfed the carcass, leaving nothing but a brittle husk. The other abominations stirred. 

“You have your vengeance,” Lucanis rasped. 

But his words did not reach them. They stared, snarling and ready. He squeezed the grip of his sword, preparing for another fight—then the pressure behind his skull eased. Without the Wigmaker, the demons had no anchor in the waking world. Gradually, the abominations disintegrated into ash. With the source of their anger gone, the spirits of vengeance returned to the Fade, allowing the dead to rest. 

Only then did Lucanis exhale and let relief wash over him. 

“Contract complete.” 

Again I’m glad they didn’t go with building on that in the end because I like what they did do with him so much better, but you can see here where they were laying the groundwork for more of a ‘righteous wrath’/outward facing central pillar for Lucanis’ character here. I’m on record as adoring the internal angle/more of the focus on disrupted self, and I think they also built really well on the subtextual family dynamics going on through this story, that’s a much more fascinating angle for me personally. This instinct for/longing to indulge in stubborn opposition sure does still exist in him, though, that’s such a fun part of him to make externalized as a whole little guy riding shotgun in his soul 

— That’s one way to make a point, Lucanis thought, coming to a stop.

Have I said enough about how much I love him. Because I do. One of his early very good ‘...wtf’ moments, so plenteous and marvellous in the game itself. (Not including all the body horror he’s actually looking at here b/c it’s truly disgusting and upsetting, excellent job as always Courtney Woods) 

— Sensing its weakness and spurred on by the demons of vengeance within, the other abominations began to surround it. 

That’s it, Lucanis smiled encouragingly. Good little demons. Turning his sword over in his palm, he cut across the roof.

Lmao. It’s interesting that Lucanis has a slightly… odd relationship with spirits/demons already here, for a non-mage and someone from an Andrastian culture — he’s able to think of them sort of as a natural part of an ecosystem that you can turn to your advantage if you’re careful and respect their unpredictable nature as part of the natural landscape as it were, and he extends his remarkable capacity for empathy to them in the way that he thinks about what their motivations and drives are in the same way he does with people — ‘you have your vengeance’. The baseline Chantry doctrine about spirits is basically ‘Always Chaotic Evil, Stay Clear’, but Lucanis seems to think of them as like… fellow predators. You know the way wolves and ravens will sometimes ‘team up’ and have symbiotic relationships? Kind of like that. Which is very him hahaha I mean sure Crows hire people for things all the time and if you can pay them in just doing your job anyway… it makes a lot of sense that this is the dude who’d think to earnestly strike a deal with a spirit despite the cultural narratives he was raised with, is what I’m getting at

— Lucanis reached the docks just before dawn. Knowing Illario as he did, he passed their ship’s allotted berth to check the nearby taverns. After a quick glance up and down the harbor, Lucanis settled on the Nug Queen purely because it was the cleanest establishment of the lot. When he entered, limping and bloody, the barkeep glowered. 

“Walk out the way you came,” the dwarf instructed. He had a tawny mustache that was twirled and waxed at both ends. 

“I’m looking for my cousin,” Lucanis explained. (🥺He’s literally just looking for his cousin…)

. . . 

Lucanis prepared to leave—then he heard Illario’s silvery voice flattering one of the waiters. 

“Oy!” the dwarf called out as Lucanis staggered toward the row of booths lining the left side of the tavern. “Exit’s that way!” 

His bellowing drew Illario’s attention away from the handsome servant. Upon seeing Lucanis, he jumped to his feet. “Andraste’s holy cabbage, you look like shit.” 

“Get that man to stop yelling at me,” Lucanis said. He plopped down in the booth, taking a moment to rest his eyes, while Illario soothed the irate proprietor.

‘Get that man to stop yelling at me, Lucanis said’ is my favourite line in this whole short story and always has been fhdskjfhsa it’s just so good. ‘Illario snooze that guy for me I never figured out how to do that non-lethally’. And Illario drops everything and DOES get to work on snoozing that guy. They’re headed right for disaster but I. adore them.  

Andraste’s holy cabbage HIGH on my list of extremely good Andrastian oaths btw thank you Illario. 

I wonder if this inn was supposed to be an in-game location at some point, it gets such a striking (and hilarious) description.

‘Silvery voice’ :’) well that got lost along the way haha. I honestly think the dialogue as written in the game could have landed differently with some changes in voice direction — if the actor wasn’t doing quite so much of an obvious Ze Evil Voice performance, the read on him might be slightly more ambiguous. (His immense susness would still be the same, of course, that’s just built in structurally, but I maintain that that storyline is more about chipping away at Lucanis’ denial that he’s been holding on to for so long down in the Ossuary until it has to crack open and crumble, less about the whodunnit of it all. We know who dunnit and so does Lucanis deep down basically from the first moment, I believe, he just can’t bear it. Not unlike the way Harding deep down knows what the red shade haunting her is, but is unable to accept and take that in until she confronts it, actually! Lucanis and Harding have some parallels going on in the deep there. People pleasers grappling with how to hold on to their healthy anger. Lovers of turnips. *Lucanis voice* Everyone likes turnips.)

Lucanis shambling around bleeding and absent-minded on post-adrenaline autopilot after that utter horror show (again I sheltered you from the body horror here but. Holy cannoli) until he finds the safety of Illario and then collapsing into the booth and almost nodding off b/c Illario will take care of it he knows how to talk to people, even though Lucanis never really relaxes he very nearly does here…………. You see the trouble is that the love is very much there. It just makes everything worse, but it is there. Always. And I’m afraid not even the Ossuary could change that, even when it changed everything else.  

Like… From Illario’s perspective Lucanis just sweeps in bleeding and limping with an imperious demand after shooing him away before — because he doesn’t have the inside view that the bluntness is because Lucanis feels safe with him. This is the sort of ‘pls solve this thing I don’t understand and find overwhelming and annoying’ a child extends to a parent/attachment figure ‘imperiousness’ to me, not an order from a superior. From which I think you can read some things about their dynamic growing up, aside from my ‘Illario has been 80% of Lucanis’ social skills most of their lives’ running joke lol. 

Both of them can form surface relationships with other people, mostly with transactional elements to them — Lucanis with the Villa Dellamorte staff growing up and people he meets and helps on the job, the ‘friends’ Illario sarcastically accuses him of making earlier in the story, and Illario clearly leaving a Necropolis-sized graveyard of shallow connections both romantic and otherwise behind him without ever getting deeper into it himself, gratification and a feeling of control and competence and entertainment all in one with no true intimacy behind it — but I think Lucanis is right when he tells Rook that Illario has been his only actual friend, before them (and the team, obviously). And for all his extroverted fuckboy antics, I think Lucanis is Illario’s only real friend too, I doubt any other relationship has ever reached him at the core but Caterina and Lucanis. They have been. SO weirdly socialized, they struggle so very badly to make real connections outside the family in their individual ways, feast or famine as their approaches are. And part of that is that in their childhood they’ve been forced to try to meet their emotional needs with each other in ways that were doomed to fail; things you should get from a safe parental figure and a group of peers, community, not your brother who’s basically the same age as you and just as traumatized and psychologically malnourished. Things they will not get from the Crows, a community that is also the constant threat that ate everyone else in the family, and not from Caterina, who aside from the general cultural Crow brutality in overseeing their upbringing is too busy negotiating with the ghosts of five children, eight grandchildren by making sure her last two grandsons survive, not realizing that it means she has not taught them the first thing about how to live. Or, perhaps as likely, that is just not particularly a priority to her, she values her control over them and thus perceived control of the future and continuance of House Dellamorte way beyond their happiness. (God it’s all such a real-feeling mess because the love is also there and real, it’s just that that makes everything worse and even more tangled. Family!!!!) 

Caterina has set up this dynamic of Lucanis as the golden child (he can do no wrong and thus is allowed to do no wrong nor want anything for himself she didn’t let him have; never making a mistake in life is something that is normal to demand of yourself and possible to achieve etc.) and Illario as the fuckup kid, the lesser one, we keep him around for sentimental value of course he’s family but he’s largely ornamental lol. (Sorry about your life, Illario. I’m not sure whether being her favourite or not being her favourite leaves someone with the worse deal psychologically long-term, but your situation is particularly undignified and thankless I will grant you that.) Illario is much more faithfully the Crow Caterina raised him to be, where Lucanis uses his competence and Caterina’s personal affection for him to get to keep and protect some of the parts of himself the role of Crow should forbid. And she STILL openly and unabashedly loves Lucanis more, while Illario cannot do a single thing that pleases her no matter what he tries. Lucanis at least has Caterina’s recognition and affection, what does Illario have? What does he have that could make him anything in this Crow eat Crow world? 

Which is why Illario needs Lucanis to choose him over Caterina with an intensity and psychological urgency that again, is more like a child needing a parent to put them first or treat them like they matter to develop the sense of a worthy self. (Or Caterina to choose him over Lucanis, but that’s never going to happen while Lucanis is still alive, and probably not even if he really were dead.) Lucanis can’t give him that, because he is unwilling and unable to give up either of the two attachment relationships he has left, even if it means he has to mangle and push down his own self to maintain those bonds. He will freeze to hold on to what little he has, even when what he has also hurts him and they are hurting each other. At this point in the short story I think Lucanis wants Illario to be honest with him the way Lucanis is honest with Illario (which unfortunately also means Illario gets some of his more unpleasant sides), and Illario can’t give him that because when he tries Lucanis straight up refuses to listen — can’t listen, because what Illario is saying would disrupt everything Lucanis is trying so desperately to hold together at any cost. Again, Lucanis asking Illario for something he then punishes or ignores him for actually giving. They’ve had to be everything to each other and they just can’t be. Not even through any fault of their own, that’s just how it works. And Lucanis starts to find his way out of that during the game, make other connections that do help, but I'm not sure Illario does or will. Don’t look at me and don’t speak to me I’ll never be okay again 

- “Drink?” his cousin offered, returning with two glasses and a bottle of wine. “It’s expensive.”

 Lucanis accepted with a faint nod. 

“Some say a bribe spoils the vintage,” Illario mused while pouring, “but I think it tastes all the sweeter.” 

“Effe and the others. Did you get them to—” 

“Yes, yes,” Illario snapped, “I did my good deed for the year.” 

The two paused to sip their wine. 

Lucanis rolled the liquid over his tongue. Bribery had not spoiled this bottle, at least. 

“Camille didn’t make it,” he said finally. 

“Who?” 

“The guard captain.” 

“Ah,” Illario said, nodding in recognition. “Well, that does free me from promises I didn’t intend to keep. And Ambrose?” 

“You have to ask?” 

“Fair enough.” 

THANK YOU, LUCANIS!!! THAT IS THE THING YOU SHOULD BE SAYING!!!! THANK YOU FOR GOING ALONG WITH MY NONSENSE THAT I JUST SPRANG ON YOU ILLARIO!!!!! I’M HAPPY TO SEE YOU AND THAT YOU’RE ALRIGHT WOULD NOT BE OUT OF ORDER PERHAPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD I love him more than anyone in the world but he’s infuriating sometimes especially when dealing with Illario fhdskja. You can tell how much he does trust/value Illario because this is the first time he relaxes a bit in the whole story — the mental image of Lucanis standing there with his huge puppy eyes dripping rivers of blood onto the floorboards in his fucking… batman ass getup like ‘🥺is my cousin here’ is so. It’s so much — but again you have to SHOW that somehow too Lucanis he can’t read your mind. I think it’s what he’s clumsily trying to do with telling Illario about the guard captain, a little bit — that’s an olive branch/trying to give Illario the peace of mind he just gave to him about the fallout of the mission, even if it’s a sadder outcome — but that’s also a sign that he’s completely missed on understanding what Illario would value here. (For Lucanis someone he flirted with being torn to ribbons five minutes later would be a big deal no matter what, probably, for Illario it’s all just business. Whomst??? Oh her lol.) Illario tries to fall into their pattern of companionable bullshit because that seems to be as much as Lucanis will accept from him as a show of care, but even that Lucanis breaks him off on, with what to Illario seems like doubting his skills/ability to carry out the job Lucanis handed him (Lucanis seems to want to know for his own peace of mind more than that, tho, from my vibe here; he did make a promise to Effe). 

“That his?” [Illario] gestured toward the dark stains on Lucanis’s coat. 

“Mostly.” 

His cousin’s brows drew together. “Do you need a healer? The ship will have one, but if you can’t wait—” 

“I’m fine,” Lucanis stated. 

“All right,” Illario said, topping off his glass. “We’ll just pretend that’s wine you’re dripping all over the table.” 

“What do you want me to say?”

How many times do you think Illario has had to rock up to Thedas emergency care with his cousin like ‘well he says he’s fine and to not worry about him, which in my experience is Lucanisese for ‘I’m about to bleed out and die on the spot’.’ As someone who has now been on that side of Lucanis’ ‘*actively bleeding from the eyes* I’m fine don’t worry about me’... y’know I’m not saying Illario was right or anything (he never is (affectionate) that’s his charm) but I do have a certain amount of sympathy one does start to lose one’s mind after a while. Yeah I am making silly jests and japes to avoid talking about this part because it’s so painful to me to contemplate thanks for asking. To be serious, though: being forced to watch Lucanis do this to himself, and then being asked to pretend he can’t even see it to enable it… that’s a big ask and one you should not be making of him, Lucanis. He’s not doing it intentionally, and it’s because he is also in so much pain over this that he has no idea how to handle, but it doesn’t stop it from being fucked up and unfair. 

‘I don’t understand what you want from me/I don’t know understand how to give it to you’ and ‘So we’re just going to pretend that nothing’s wrong and you’re fine and nothing needs to change, you can keep going like this indefinitely?’ 

Illario’s gaze grew hard. “How long are you going to keep doing this?” 

“Doing what?” 

“Caterina’s bidding.” 

The wine turned in Lucanis’s mouth. “Illario. Stop.” 

“If I was in charge, you wouldn’t have to do this anymore,” he cajoled. “You could quit.” 

Lucanis stared at his cousin. “I don’t want to quit.” 

Illario sat back. The distance between them suddenly felt much wider than a table. 

“Even if it kills you,” Illario whispered. 

“Death is my calling,” Lucanis stated, matter-of-fact. “Just as yours is to become First Talon.” He smiled, hoping to ease the tension, but Illario’s posture remained taut. 

“And if Caterina disagrees? If she thinks you’re the better man for the job—” 

“I don’t want it, Illario,” Lucanis insisted. 

“But you wouldn’t refuse.” 

“It’s impossible to refuse Caterina,” Lucanis admitted reluctantly. “Only prolong her, until she sees reason.” 

He knew it wasn’t the answer Illario wanted, but it was the truth. And in their line of work, honesty was hard to come by. 

Illario exhaled and lifted his wineglass in salute. “To reason, then.” 

“To reason,” Lucanis echoed. 

The two Crows clinked the rims of their glasses together, then prepared for the long journey home

Sobbing and crying and dying. So much stuff going on under the surface here. This particular conversation clearly haunts Lucanis for a long time after, it’s where most of the Illario lines in the Mind!Ossuary are taken from. ‘You’ll choose her over me every time, even if it means death and leaving me behind alone. No matter what I do I’m never going to be good enough for her or you, no one is ever going to choose me or put me first or think I matter at all’. Delicate overtones of ‘You love even the work more than you love me’. The more mundane layers of jealousy, of being the unfavorite, the Cain and Abel of it all. The I can’t grow when you always get all the sun.  

The distance between them suddenly feeling much bigger to Lucanis… in a way I think that’s Illario’s side of ‘it wasn’t the answer he wanted, but it was the truth. And in their line of work, honesty is hard to come by’. Just for a moment Illario drops the act, he stops trying to reach out to try to find him again, to do his ‘job’ in the relationship of smoothing it over and pretending everything is fine or at least sustainable, and the distance that has slowly grown between them over the years is laid bare. Lucanis would ignore that forever if given the chance, but here Illario finally refuses to play along and forces him to feel it.

After a whole story of Lucanis being ruthlessly competent at his job to the point that he turned it into a challenge run for extra style points just because he can (and because it would be quite emotionally convenient for him to die before he has to go back to Caterina and probably be named her heir), we see him try to (avoid having to) have ONE real conversation with someone he loves and he’s so awkward. He’s reduced to pleading for Illario to stop. (There are notably no please and thank yous between Lucanis and Illario — mutually, also notably  — but that ‘Illario. Stop’ carries big helpless ‘please don’t’ energy)

I’ve talked before about the way Lucanis speaks of Caterina like she’s a weather system, or an act of God — something that can’t be resisted, only navigated with immense care and a hope for the best fear for the worst attitude. He expects Illario to have reached the same conclusion, raised side by side and in the same household as they are… but he hasn’t. They are different people by nature and the roles within the family have given them different perspectives — on what’s possible, and on what’s sustainable. It’s. hey. It’s a lot. 

— God. can you imagine being Illario when Lucanis returns from the grave with some FUCKING RANDO Caterina dragged into the house five minutes ago, and not only is he, surprise surprise, already entrenched as their favourite and they don’t like Illario (they don’t even know all the reasons why they shouldn’t like Illario yet, they just think he has rancid vibes! Which to be sure he does he’s big enough to admit it it can’t be helped the rot will out!! but STILL!!!!!), on a Treviso saved run Lucanis also lets them waltz through all the locked doors in his mind that Illario has been clawing his fingers bloody against for decades while screaming for him within the span of a goddamn afternoon’s work of Fade shenanigans. and through all of it they are *throwing up noises* FLOURISHING together whether as friends or something else in a way that practically shows like a healing glow around him. Rook ‘steal your cousin-brother (you kind of lost the right to stay his favourite when you y’know. Murdered him)’ Dragon Age swooping in to end this poor pathetic little man’s entire career in the last way he hadn’t already managed to ruin it himself. You know what. I kind of get it, Illario, that would send me finally stark raving bonkers insane too. After all that I think I too would have marched over to the ancient elven mean girls like ��sure I’ll join you in burning down the world if you spare me some gasoline I need to do something hugely self-destructive and unwise and take everything down with me’. Obviously Illario sucks in many many-faceted and inventive ways but holy shit dude. In his shoes could you sit through the café scene without choosing violence.  

— Do I have to put in a disclaimer here that even though I have understanding and empathy for just how shitty Illario’s situation is pre-game and am expressing myself with comedic hyperbole about it, what he ends up doing to Lucanis is obviously extremely bad not justified and not okay in any way etc. and I do not endorse cousin murder as a way to solve your interpersonal problems, nevermind entrusting the task to your known mad scientist girlfriend with blood magic benefits if you did mean for it to be a clean quick death. Lucanis did not deserve any of what happened because he’s an imperfect communicator and like any of us has some less than perfect interpersonal patterns, and he’s still an intensely loveable character to me with these flaws. Is that something I have to state for the record after writing 12k+ words about him like this. One would hope not but you know. I’ve been on this site for a long time now and I am carrying around some stress fractures of the psyche about it, at least this way I know I’ve done what little I could to make myself perfectly clear in this our how dare you say we piss on the poor public square lol 

— The hilarious/hopeful thing is that I don’t think this relationship is necessarily doomed because of the very specific ways Lucanis is nuts haha, he has not willingly let go of anything he loves one single day in his life and he’s not about to start now — if Illario can bring himself to take that outstretched hand and do his part of the work I feel there could be hope for it. Not for it to ever be what it was before, of course. But to be something, still. Once Lucanis recognizes some of his own shortcomings in the dynamic I think he would try to work on that on the Forgive route at least, Illario matters that much to him. 

— rare W moment for Illario towards the end here and we simply must grant him those: Zara clearly meant to merely use him as a means to get to Lucanis, but he did seemingly somehow manage to get her properly wrapped around his little finger for real eventually. Enough for her to be very bitter about it after death, at least. Listen Zara play too close to the fuckboy fire and get burned to a crisp puh-lease this man is a professional. If he’s your amatus why is he obsessed about what his grandma and cousin are going to think of him after this and killing you mid-sentence. Smh 

— god I have said so much in this (...obviously. my face is in my hands why am I like this this is my curse), but I’m still not sure I’ve managed to get at what I was actually like. trying to say. Oh well. At least this chunk of thoughts is out of my head now, maybe I’ll get some room in here for something else and maybe even sensible for a while (doubtful but one should live in hope) 

*in a 'that's a threat' kind of way. also well done for making it all the way to the end you're a real one

[akanemnon]

Hey Akane, just got back to reading your Twin Runes comic and I was curious about the swearing. I've noticed a few times where they used the $!#% kind of swears instead of using a real word. Is that the characters hiding the swear word in polite company, or is it an advanced swear like Lancer talked about? Was wondering if it sounds crazy or they are swearing regularly. Or if it is just annoying to type the ###$$$$ stuff a bunch, since I understand that would suck. Oh and thank you for sharing this comic with everybody, it is so good!

To be honest, the whole swear situation is a way for me to test the waters since I've made the experience that swears are treated very differently in different countries. I at least made that experience in the US. Words that are considered very mild where I live could be seen as harsh language somewhere else. I'm not sure what exactly is acceptable and what isn't in terms of swearing because I was raised in a different culture.

Also, I know that a big chunk of my readers are kids and young teens. I don't want to deal with any angry parents. But that's mainly just me overthinking and preparing for the worst.

[aurumacadicus]

Listen I'm not asking you to not reblog that post about defending women who enjoy reading smut. It does have important messages I guess, and once the hurt and confusion of "wait a minute how the fuck am I annoying when we're in our own corner of the sandbox?" wears off I'll be able to understand them better.

What I'm asking you to do is stop and think about why a certain demographic of people annoy you, especially if it's almost exclusively women. I'm also asking you to pause and consider the language. There are many posts going around this website with the sentiment "if this pigslop can get published, so can I!" completely ignoring the fact that the book was published and someone read it. In fact someone probably liked it. And maybe that someone who likes it is someone you know, but you'll probably never find out now that they've seen you making fun of it.

[vidavalor]

hi! had a question about book vs. show opening and i think i need a more experienced word nerd than i to handle this.

in the book, specifically on the copyright page, there's a line that says: "Caveat: Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home."

however, the television at the beginning of the show (as said in the script book, i'm not sure if this is the exact wording) says: "Warning: Causing Armageddon can be dangerous. Do not attempt it in your own home."

I was wondering what your thoughts on why "caveat" was changed to "warning" were, or if there was any reason why it was changed at all?

Well, hi there, @the-ineffable-parker! 💕 This question is everything. I don't know if I'd call myself a more experienced word nerd but I'm happy to share some thoughts and, of course, your virtual snacks of choice. 🤗

On the caveat and what I think it has to do with the nightingales and the neato fan under the cut.

To see what the reasons might be for these particular word changes between the novel and the tv series, I think that we have to first talk about why both the Caveat on the copyright page in the novel and the War-into-Warning that opens 1.01 exist in the first place.

Why does the story-- in both book and tv series form-- open like this?

I think that the short answer to your question is that it's related to wordplay in different mediums.

What I mean by this is that when you write a very wordplay-happy novel like Good Omens, you can do some wordplay in the book that you cannot do as easily in the same way with a more audio/visual medium, like television. On the other hand, though? There are visual puns that you can do on television that you would not be able to pull off in the exact same way in a book.

Both the novel and the tv series are using the same core language but they're just presenting some of it differently in the tv show because there is a lot of fun to be had with having audio/visual possibilities to use to tell the story, too.

To give you an example, let's look at what the book did vs. what the show did with the errors pun.

One of the jokes in the book is that there is a passage in which the word errors is spelled as error's. Obviously, the humor here comes from the fact that there is an error in the spelling of the word error. This pun works great in the novel because it's designed to be one that can be read but what if you wanted to include something like this in the tv series, where the majority of the words that are heard are spoken aloud?

The answer is what they did in the 1793 scene, which is have Aziraphale say this to Jean-Claude:

"C'est une grande mistake... erreur."

The humor here is that Aziraphale blanks on the word for error in French and winds up saying the English "mistake" instead. He's made an error on the word error-- a very similar pun to the one in the novel-- but there's also the extra layer here too of the fact that the word he remembers a second later as being the French word for error is correct-- it's erreur. It's almost exactly the same word. It's basically the English word error spoken with a French accent. 😂 He's got the entire, more complicated, rest of the sentence correct but for the word for error, which is easily the easiest word of them all. It's both humorous and also highlighting that Aziraphale's just in his head with French sometimes and that's what causes the occasional stumble.

This erreur pun would work in written form in a book but it plays even better on screen and Good Omens is taking advantage of the visual component of the television series to do all sorts of fun visual puns and otherwise utilize the visual medium to help with understanding of all different sorts of levels of language use in the story.

Think about visual puns like Aziraphale telling Mrs. Sandwich she's a figurative "pillar of the community" while the two of them are standing beside the bookshop's literal structural pillars... or the kids! visual pun from The Flood, when Crowley says "you can't kill kids!" and we see that the group of living beings that he's looking at when he says this contains both tiny humans and baby goats-- both of which are called kids.

I think that there is a visual reason why the word warning was used in the opening of the series and not caveat-- even though a caveat is a warning. It's related to what the caveat in the novel actually is and how they can best convey that exact same thing to a television audience.

So, the real question is: what is the caveat, exactly?

Why does it exist? What's this thing on the copyright page of the novel, which is virtually unheard of? Why do we need this note at the start of the book and what is it saying?

To look at this, we're actually going to do it in true Good Omens style-- out of chronological order 😂-- and actually begin with the warning that opens the tv series because, while it's the same thing as the caveat in the novel, I actually kind of like the war-into-warning even better.

The very first thing we ever see in all of the Good Omens television series is a word.

Specifically, it's the word war-- and it is very large and very red and very capital letters shouted in our face.

This is so the very first thing that we see that, as you can see from the screenshot below, I don't even have time to exit to full screen once hitting play before this is what I'm looking at-- and it doesn't even stay like this long enough for me to be able to take a clean screenshot of it before it begins to move and give me more to work with when it comes to understanding it.

At the same time as the word war is shown visually to us and we're reading this word, the word is chanted once by an unseen chorus of people. This is very important and you'll see why in a moment.

From just this alone, we can learn a couple of things.

One is that the word war might as well essentially also be the title of this show, which will make sense to us when we learn that the show is about different kinds of Armageddon. The plot is about the threat of Biblical and global kinds of Armageddon but it's really about a person's own Armageddon-- their own mental health struggles.

But, before we even get into analyzing the word war, there's first the even more important matters of the way that word was delivered to us-- and why a word was delivered to us at all.

Almost immediately, the screen begins to move and we see that we weren't actually looking at just the word war... we were really looking at the word warning... and then, very quickly, we are shown two things rapidly at once...

The first is that that more words start to scroll beneath the warning and the second is that what we're looking at-- the source of all of these words-- is a television that is revealed to be floating in outer space.

So... we're watching a streaming television show that begins with a message delivered to us on a visual metaphor for streaming television-- a tv floating in space. This is pretty meta stuff, right?

This is showing that the warning on the television screen-- the words we are shown there-- are all a message that is related to our ability to understand the show we've selected to watch. Good Omens is opening with a warning to its own audience about the very wordy content within the program and the coded nature of it.

This is also really funny when you consider that tv content ratings-- which are consider warnings-- also appear at the very beginning of hours of tv. You can see Amazon giving me content warnings over the War/Warning in the screenshots above, as we've all gotten when streaming the show. I found this quite funny considering that this show would be TV-MA on Amazon without the cant and the novel would never have been published by a traditional publisher in the late '80s without it.

So, the network is warning for content but the show itself is giving content warnings of a different kind-- ones related to letting the audience know that they have decided to stream a show in which a word game is afoot... but what kind of word game?

The war-into-warning is a visual metaphor for that thing around which Terry Pratchett's Discworld was formed: etymology. It's about the history of words and their meanings-- or, why it is we say what it is we say and how we came to say it.

It begins with showing a core word-- war-- and then expands to show word evolution through its related word of warning. This is the reason why it's war/warning and not caveat, even though a caveat is a kind of warning, as we'll look at below.

It's because the word war living inside the word warning allows them to create a visual to show us word history right off the bat at the start of the series to convey that to an audience who isn't reading the story so much as hearing and seeing the story unfold before them.

Immediately, we are shown that this is a show that is obsessed with words because big, red, capital letter words are the very first things that they showed us. We know that looking at the connections between words and their histories and earlier meanings is something worth considering when we are listening to these characters speak.

But, maybe most importantly?

With war/warning, we are also given the very first Clue as to how to speak Crowley and Aziraphale's cant-- hidden there before, if the show is our first encounter with this story, we've even met them or heard them interact.

It also happens to be the biggest and most important Clue. It's basically the Clue that, if you do nothing else but this, you're going to be able to figure out a fairly decent amount of what it is that they're saying. That Clue?

Is simply to look at the words within words-- which is also, subtly, a backdoor entrance into etymology as a whole because it's encouraging you to take apart the words.

I know that must be shocking since you messaged me with this request and my every other post is literally doing exactly this 😂 but, for the record! as I've said before, I didn't just make that up out of nowhere. I'm following the directions of the cant that I've found keys throughout the story and one of the biggest ones is this opening of the tv show where they're like...

So, you're about to watch a very wordy something in which it becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly that the main characters are speaking a hidden language and, if you want to understand that language, the biggest tip that we can give you to get started is to pay attention to the words that are hidden inside the words they are choosing to speak.

Remember when I said the fact that the word war was chanted was important? This is connected to that.

War is chanted... but warning is not. Why?

Because this is an example of one of the main ways that the cant works. Warning is the word that's really there on the surface level. It represents the word we'd hear them speak if only listening on the surface level. The cant, though, is hidden in the origins of the words they're speaking and in the words buried within those words.

Part of the game of this for Crowley and Aziraphale is to try to carry on an entire conversation that is happening on one, surface level but is really another conversation entirely in the cant. It's their flirty little birdsong. To do that, they're often intentionally choosing words based on the words that are hidden within them or based on the historical or alternative meanings of those words. In other words?

They're using etymology to code their speech.

This is why approximately 80% of the posts on my blog 😂 are taking apart the words in this story and coming at them from their histories and from the words that are within them. I didn't just randomly decide these were the wordplay rules out of nowhere-- I'm literally following the different directions that I keep finding in the keys hidden throughout the story.

So, war is chanted to highlight the importance of looking for hidden words and at looking at the etymology of words. The fact that it's chanted is awfully interesting because...

...the word chant comes from the Latin verb cantere, which meant to sing. Chanting is a spoken word version of music, right? You know what other cousin word to chant also comes from cantere?

Cant, baby. 😉

The word for the kind of hidden language that Crowley and Aziraphale have formed is etymologically related to the very first sound we ever hear in the series. The chanting of the word war is really the story chanting cant! at the audience.

So, the word that means a hidden language is a variant of the word that means to chant, or to speak-sing... and both words are from the same Latin verb for singing.

So, now, we just connected canting to music-- something that seems significant considering that the characters are birds and Nightingales, as we'll look at below, is the word that Crowley and Aziraphale use to reference their romantic cant.

Because canting is a big way of expressing love for one another, it is also somewhat synonymous for them with love and romance, which is how Crowley said "no nightingales" in The Final 15 and meant I was canting and you didn't hear what I was saying but *Aziraphale* heard that and took it instead as more like this isn't loving me-- you don't love me and started to cry.

Music is language. Singing is talking is canting.

This is also why, if you go to a church service, the person whose job it is to lead everybody in singing is called a cantor... which is actually the same word you could use to refer to someone who is speaking in a cant.

This is part of the humor when Crowley and Aziraphale are canting up a storm in St. James' Park in the first episode and Crowley jokes that there won't be anyone Up there for Aziraphale to cant/to sing with in Heaven (and to "sing with") because Up there, there's only...

So, if we take these clues from war/warning and we apply them to one of the biggest words in Good Omens when it comes to Crowley and Aziraphale and their language, we can figure out why the obsession throughout the story with the nightingales, right?

What are literal nightingales? They're a nocturnal songbird, right? They're birds that are up and singing and mating during the evening, when most other birds are asleep, which is in keeping with Crowley and Aziraphale's secret relationship and how they often meet up to spend time together during the night. They're nocturnal birds themselves. [This is also one of the main reasons why the Job minisode-- with the courtyard scene that sees them begin to form the cant-- is entitled "A Conversation with Owls", which are wise old nocturnal birds.]

Nightingales are called that because the night part is obviously related to the night and the gale part is from the Old English galan/galon, which meant to sing. Considering what we went into about singing and canting above, it makes for a good word related to the hidden language. So, what about the wars within warning here? What words are in nightingales?

Ale, which is a type of alcohol, which is sex in the cant, and the homophone for night-- knight, which they both once literally were. While knights were men, the word gal is also in there because they're all the flavors. Finally, a gale is a big storm, particularly one at sea, and the two of them have a long history of literal nights in storms together-- The Flood, Job, etc.-- but a storm for these two with their fish/the sea metaphor for sex seems also likely euphemistic/metaphoric for a passionate night.

The poetic name for the nightingale is the philomel, from the Greek philomela, and it has a rather perfect etymology for this conversation. Philos is Greek for a lover and for loving something. The -mel/-mela part of the word, though, has two, different etymological tracks. The Greek word melos means a tune or a song, which would make philomel mean "lover of song". However, the Greek mela is actually the word for the apple, which would also make philomel mean "lover of apples."

The evolution of -mel/-mela in words from Greek has a lot of overlap between the meanings of apples and songs to a point that it could, in all likelihood, easily mean both. The inclusion of apples also references what they consider the start of their relationship in Eden.

Nightingales are philomels-- lovers of music, of cant, of apples and of "apples." As many have pointed out, the French word for the nightingale is rossignol... but the birds are not the only thing that rossignol means.

A rossignol is also a skeleton key, or a master key. It's a key that unlocks all the other doors-- which is, functionally, what nightingales is in the series.

If you understand what a nightingale is, you've cracked the code enough to understand that there's a cant and you're figuring out how to speak it, which is also then how you can understand more about what you're watching through understanding more of what Crowley and Aziraphale are saying.

Rossignol became the French word for a skeleton key because of the Rossignol family, who created The Great Cypher that coded French state secrets for generations. It's a reference to a cant that was developed to keep France safe and Aziraphale plays on that when flirting with Crowley in S2.

"I went to Monsieur Rossignol's night classes in 1760."

"I went to" (past tense of to go to, euphemistic for to come) "Monsieur Rossignol's" (Monsieur is French for "my lord"-- this is "My Lord Nightingale's") "night classes" (night time; knights but lass in class = classy lass b/c Aziraphale's Lord Nightingale is Lord Gender Fuckery). French is also old slang for oral sex. Aziraphale learned how to speak it the hard way. 😂

Aziraphale's French flirtation to Crowley in this scene is also a riff on a phrase related to vocabulary, which, as we know, is what a cant is. He references la plume de ma tantes, which are those sentences you are taught when learning to speak a new language that are things you are probably never, ever, ever going to say in real life but which are worded in this way to teach you more vocabulary faster than you would otherwise learn it.

Frances McDormand's The Voice of God is largely reading passages from the Good Omens' novel in S1 and many of the things she is saying are la plume de ma tantes, as part of her job as a character is to help teach us Nightingales. Some examples: "He probably wins prizes for his tropical fish" and "The Russian cultural attache's black bread is particularly sought after by the more discerning duck."

Nightingales is then a word that references their cant but the cant is really two things. It exists to mask their speech in public so that they can really be saying sweet things to one another when sounding like they're bickering enemies on the surface but they also just love it. They love words and their history is also the history of words on Earth, as they're the ones who have been here since the beginning through these evolutions. They're walking, talking etymological dictionaries and wording each other is a literal love language. They use it in private, too, because they enjoy it.

A cant, fundamentally, is a private vocabulary. It's a type of dialect made up of giving existing words secret, private meaning known only to those who speak the cant.

If you have a partner or a long-time friend or family members where you have a series of in-jokes and references and words that mean something different to your small group than they would to outsiders, you actually speak a form of cant. This is called a familect and most of us speak at least one or two. Nightingales is a structured, secret code and it's a fun game that they love to play together but it's also just the private vocabulary of a couple.

This is where we're going to come back to caveat.

So, we can see why war into warning was a good way to signal the cant on television and start to explain it but what about how it was originally done in the novel? What's the pun there?

The book and the tv series have almost the exact same caveat/warning, as you pointed out. Other than changing the word caveat to the word warning in the tv series, the only other thing that's different is the very beginning of the second line.

The book is this:

CAVEAT

Kids! Bringing about Armageddon can be dangerous! Do not attempt it in your own home.

The tv series is this:

WAR... WARNING

Kids! Causing Armageddon can be dangerous! Do not attempt it in your own home.

As you can see, the only other difference is the 'bringing about' from the novel being changed to 'causing' in the tv series. It'll seem weird that I'm going to say that this is not that big a deal but it's not and the reason why is because they didn't actually delete it entirely. They just moved it into a different la plume de ma tante within the same episode-- one that helps to reinforce that Armageddon has different layers of meaning. The "bringing about" is here in this bit:

This leaves us with the change from caveat and the significance of that word. Like the quick war/warning in the opening of 1.01, we can now expect that the caveat is there to talk about cant, right? And, in fact, it very much is.

First off, the caveat is located on the copyright page of the novel, which is where all the info about the book is located. This is where we can mention that the words that are in the caveat and the war/warning are phrased in such a way so as to immediately invoke an informercial.

When you read them, you most likely think of the phrase: "Kids! Don't try this at home!", right? The phrase is synonymous with infomercials of the '80s and '90s, in particular, where how something worked was detailed in the commercial as part of the enticement to buy it.

While the television floating in outer space in 1.01 is a visual metaphor for streaming television, there was already this television reference in the caveat in the book back when it was first published because the language of that medium was being used in this little message on the copyright page previewing how the product that the reader had bought or was thinking of buying worked.

Caveat is Latin for a warning and translates to "let the person beware." You've probably heard of people saying "buyer beware" as a disclaimer for a product, yes? That evolved from the famous Latin phrase that meant that same thing, which was caveat emptor.

Caveat emptor was a phrase meaning that the buyer was responsible for doing their due diligence on a product before deciding to purchase and use it. So, the book opens with the word CAVEAT shouted at the reader and what follows is actually the warning that people would need to be fulfilling the idea of caveat emptor... and only the word caveat appears on the page. The space next to it is, um, empty. There's the first pun of the book and the first hint at there being hidden words... but this isn't even the best part of the choice of the word caveat to open the novel.

Arguably the most famous book related to cant in history is a book called A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors. It's a book that lives at the intersection of religion and cant-- which feels extremely relevant to Good Omens, no?

The book is a purported expose of and glossary of one of the most well-known cants in history, which is Thieves' Cant. The things you need to know about Thieves' Cant is that an absolute fuckton of words we use still today with regards to criminality originated in Thieves' Cant... and that Thieves' Cant is generally considered to have been almost entirely (if not entirely) made up by Thomas Harman, who is the author of the above mentioned book.

The first word in Good Omens-- which features a made up cant designed to help queer code the novel so it could be published and sold-- is a reference to history's most famous made up cant that was also invented to sell books.

Here's another reference to a commercial cant before I tell you more relevant things about Thieves' Cant... Gabriel and the neato fan.

Gabriel is using the first novel of Discworld as a literal fan and there's also the fact that the Discworld books do make neato fans-- as in, fans of the books. The other meaning, though, is that, in the Victorian era, there was this thing called Fan Language that was a secret language completely made up by a fan maker whose sales were dipping to sell more fans. It took off in public, though, and people started actually using it and a fan, as a result, is one word that can be used to refer to a cant.

Good Omens' cant shares foundations with how language is used in Pratchett's Discworld so when Gabriel takes a copy of the first Discworld novel-- The Color of Magic-- and is like "books are keen!" (kee, homophone: key) and starts fanning it in Saraqael's face and saying that Discworld can make a "neato fan"...

Gabriel doesn't know it, of course, but, on a meta level, he's telling everyone that the cant is the brainchild of Terry Pratchett and comes from all of the evident love of etymology woven throughout his Discworld novels. It's saying that Discworld is one of the keys that are helpful to understanding the cant and how language is used in Good Omens.

[Some not at all subtle shade being thrown at You Know Who with this, as well. 😉]

This is also why the literal fans come out during The Meeting Ball when Aziraphale has taught the neighborhood a fan by miracling them all into having the ability to speak 19th-century styled Nightingales.

And, no, for the record, Ms. Cheng is not doing something with her fan that was an approved move in The Secret Fan Language of the Victorian era. 😂

The neato fan and fan language is referencing another cant that was made to use hidden language to sell a product to further the suggestion that Good Omens is doing the same. Another example of this, too, is in the references to The Maltese Falcon, which also used etymology-based queer coding to tell its story.

Crowley had a Maltese Falcon prop overlooking his communication devices (lolololol) in his flat in S1, where it was also positioned to create a shadow when the sun came through, having the effect of revealing a hidden pair of birds.

Back to caveat and the ties between Thieves' Cant and religiosity...

So, we all know from school who Martin Luther was-- he of the whole Protestant Reformation and eventual Lutheranism, etc.. There's a truly weird piece of his history, though, that relates to cant and also doesn't just go along with themes in Good Omens but has a disturbingly relevant connection to things going on in the world right now.

In the 1520s, Martin Luther comes out and starts telling anyone who will listen that even well-educated, Godly people like him can fall victim to thieves and be swindled. He claims that he's been robbed by a group of "vagabonds" who spoke "a secret dialect" to communicate between each other in a way that Luther couldn't understand. Martin Luther didn't just tell his friends about this-- he used his platform of that era to not shut up about it for quite some time.

Martin Luther went so far as to write the forward for the German edition of a book called Liber Vagatorum, which became known in English as The Book of Vagabonds and Beggars. It was a book that claimed to be the first glossary of what would eventually become known as Thieves' Cant (or Peddler's French). Liber Vagatorum was kind of an early days book on this subject, which involved the "culture wars" of this era.

Basically, during this time period, a few things were happening at once that made people like Martin Luther and other religious leaders very nervous. One was that, while books were still expensive, the population as a whole was rapidly becoming more literate. Religious fundamentalists do not like literacy because literate people are generally more liberal and much harder to control.

The other thing going on is massive wealth disparity causing there to be a large number of vagabonds-- people who are homeless and/or hungry, and whose only "crimes" are begging for money, loitering/sleeping in public spaces, and maybe some petty theft for food and medicine. They're not actually dangerous criminals but people who need help in a society with no social safety nets. Probably because of this wealth disparity, a thing called rogue literature becomes incredibly popular.

Rogue literature are stories about criminals. Some of them are about sympathetic, heroic, Robin Hood-type characters. Some of them are just about legit bad guys but maybe exploring areas of moral greyness or just having a villain for a protagonist. This is incredibly liberal storytelling for the very religious time period and popular fiction is exploding as a result. This world of more secular, more liberal imagination is threatening to those trying to keep their power through religion.

In order to thwart this, leaders like Martin Luther and others began to equate these "rogues"-- real and fictional-- with the demonic... and the vagabonds with the rogues. Stop me if this is sounding a little familiar, particularly if you're currently living in the United States.

Making this worse is that punishment for crime back then was fucking brutal. You could be hanged if you were caught stealing more than once. People were tortured-- the stocks, whipping people, all that stuff was commonplace. And there was basically no real separation of church and state so if the religious leaders said that things like hunger and homelessness made vagabonds as criminal as rogues and if those criminals were all demonic, then you can see the desperation happening here for social control, right?

Back then, as always, there some signal words that some thieves would use to know if they were speaking with someone who was friendly or to communicate without outsider knowledge but there wasn't this established, elaborate secret language that Martin Luther and others claimed there was. So, why did they claim that there was this thing?

They were looking to make rogues seem demonic and dangerous and empowering their flock to know how to fight the evil darkness living among them. Some believed that to be true but others were just drawn in because, ya know... secret codes and underworlds are kinda fun, actually? The church leaders told everyone that these rogues were all demonic and they spoken in a secret code and people got really into figuring it out. Most claimed they were doing it for pious, morally upstanding reasons... but everybody likes a good bit of hidden mystery.

The religious zealots of that time were trying to use this secret language thing to make rogues seem scarier and draw people closer to the church again and that probably worked for some but, overall, it pretty much backfired because people like a bit of fun mystery. It wound up making the rogue world all that sexier... whether everyone pouring over notes to decode it wanted to admit that or not. 😉

Think about references to other things like this in Good Omens... like how R.P. Tyler makes sure to watch all those "scandalous" programs on the BBC before he writes in to complain about them... because God forbid, he just admit that he likes a bit of spice in his television shows. Think about the jokes around The Velvet Underground which, before it was the tongue-in-cheek name of a brilliant rock band, was a bestselling book from the early 1960s that was a pearl-clutching "expose" of all the whole "secret world of deviant sex" that was existing all around everyone.

This is, fundamentally, all the same nonsense that was going on with the religious people going at those demonic rogues and vagabonds in the Thieves' Cant era and trying to shame people by saying enjoying popular literature was unholy. It's all about using religion as a form of social control.

There's always people who want to make a buck at the expense of others and don't really care about the morality of that, though, and this guy Thomas Harman saw an opportunity in 1566 to make some cash by publishing the book on Thieves' Cant (which he went full bigot on and also referred to as Peddler's French in his book.) Harman claimed expert status by saying that he had been taught the cant by an actual rogue but even plenty of people back then-- let alone pretty much every historian since-- thought that this sounded less than true.

Still! People like a secret code, man, and life was really boring back then. The book was a huge hit. Even writers of rogue literature who were pretty sure it was bullshit decided to put some of these words into their stories-- namely because many of their readers thought Harman's book was true and that this is how thieves'/rogues spoke so they were demanding "authenticity."

What happened is word evolution at its finest. As these books continued to exist into future generations, the cant Harman is thought to have personally invented to sell his book became the etymological origins of words related to criminality that are still really common in English. Amusingly, many of them have even been adopted by criminals themselves.

This is just a handful of words and phrases that originated from Thieves' Cant:

The mafia term "made man"; a fence being the term for a person who will sell stolen goods; the phrase die hard, which meant to face the gallows without fear; to flog meaning to whip; to grease (someone's palms) meaning to bribe them; to take a hike; to hoodwink someone; hush money; jail bird; to lift meaning to steal; to be left in the lurch...

This is only a sampling and it shows the impact of all of this well into today. The point is that Thieves' Cant is not just one of the most influential cants that has ever existed but it is also the most famous example of one that was not organically created. This guy sat down and wrote it in order to be able to sell a book.

The point in this reference here is that Thomas Harman was helping religious zealots in making up this cant to sell this book... while Good Omens is a satire of people exactly like Harman, Martin Luther, and these other religious zealots. The cant made up for Good Omens was done to queer code it so it could be published in a society that could barely tolerate the surface-level blasphemy of the book, let alone the queer romance at the center of the story.

Thieves' Cant was partially a tool of oppression while Good Omens' Nightingales Cant is a hidden language that exists to allow freer speech.

If you take the words-within-words rule and apply it to caveat, you quickly see the words cav, cave, and eat, right?

The eat makes sense to us pretty instantly because of all the food in the story and the role of Famine. Cav is a word related to horses (think: cavalier). So, now, we have food and horses, both of which aren't just euphemistic in Crowley and Aziraphale's cant but are part of the overall figurative language in the story and in things like The Four Horsepeople of The Apocalypse, whose job it is to start the war of Armageddon. Finally, and most importantly, there's the word cave.

Cave as a verb means to fall in. It's saying right up front that the story is about falling in all meanings of the word and that likely includes Aziraphale's fall here in the tv series. Consider the presence of the cave in the opening titles...

Caveat, as a word, shows what causes a person's own Armageddon, which is fundamentally what the story is about. It's famine. It's hunger. It's a lack of not just literal food but every kind of food-- it's lacking sustenance and satisfaction. It's when we push that away that The Four Horsepeople start to metaphorically show up at our door. That's when we're likely to fall-- to cave in, to collapse. That war within ourselves is for what the book is a warning.

I think that caveat has maybe actually found its way into the Good Omens tv series, if not quite at the start of the series. It's this visual warning in S2:

Kids! Causing Armageddon can be dangerous! Do not attempt it in your own home! There's some more things in here but just a quick look at some of these starter things here...

Kids!-- A note to pay attention to the multiple meanings of words, such as how kids is a word that applies to tiny humans and baby goats and, facetiously, people of basically any age; and also a note to be aware of wordplay using the animal kingdom.

Dangerous-- In the tv series, the word that basically single-handedly proves hidden language by how Aziraphale's use of it in the 1967 scene makes absolutely no sense without seeing that he and Crowley are speaking in a cant. ["I can't have you risking your life-- not even for something dangerous."] Take this apart and you find quite a few romantic things.

Do not attempt it in your own home-- One thing here is that this can be two, separate-but-related sentences: Do not attempt. It in your own home. But, if you look at words-within-words and homophony, this can also be a warning that seems true of many situations but also awfully relevant to the end of Season Two...

Do not/knot at tempt. It in your own home.

[scentedpeachlandcreator]

I hope u're doing well! I've been reading ur blog like since 5-7 days ago, and I truly appreciate all the knowledge u share. I had decided not interact until now because, while I understood many concepts at first, some things suddenly became confusing as I kept reading. I would really appreciate it if u could explain everything I need to know from scratch to fully master the Law of Assumption and the 4D/3D concepts (I read one of your Google docs but I really got confused in some—if not most—parts.) English is not my first language, so some expressions make it harder for me to grasp everything completely. That’s why I’d be extremely grateful for a more detailed breakdown. And also, if it's not too much trouble, could you explain to me how to get CONSCIOUS to the void tonight? I know that every night we get to the void but I haven't been conscious, and I've been trying for 1 or 2 months at this point. I would really appreciate it if you could do it! Thank you so much for your time! Please continue with u so wonderful blog !!! ✨♥️

𔘓 Hello lovelyyy!

How are you? Thanks for liking my blog i appreciate it alot.

Anyway here's the breakdown:

What is the Law of assumption:

The Law of assumption is a universal law that states what you assume to be true without proof will become a fact, but that comes with persistence in the assumption.

How to manifest:

★ pick your desire: you can choose whatever desire you want to manifest, it can be multiple, a list of them, and even the unrealistic ones, there's no limit.

★ declare that you have it and accept it: of course that would feel weird at first, but the moment you decide that you already have your desires and that they're yours then it's done, accept that you have it in your imagination. (It would feel natural with times)

★ have faith: have faith in the Law and in your imagination, the Law cannot fail you and never will, your assumption has to happen because it's a Law.

★ persist: no matter what your circumstances are, and what happening in the 3d does not matter, because even if things are going worse in the 3d, you still have your desires, they are yours from the start and nothing will take it away from you, so keep sticking to your assumption and being loyal to it, you know it is real and you believe that you already have it.

4D and 3D?

When it's comes to understanding the concept of the 3d and 4d and how they both work, many individuals tend to think that both of them are seperated, but that entirely wrong, they both work together and they're not seperated.

Example:

Imagine with me the 4d (aka your imagination) as an empty pitch black room, when you imagine something or make an assumption, your desire appear instantly in the empty room, and now you see it, you have it, but let's just say you start spirling, doubting, affirming the opposite, your desire that is in the empty room start fading away and is replaced by the negative ones where you say "i don't have it" and that What the 3d gonna reflect, but if you persist in your assumption no matter what the 3d shows you, your gonna keep that assumption alive in your 4d, in the empty room, then the 3d will reflect your 4d and you'll see it physically.

That Basically how the 3d and 4d works, the 3d is just a relfector, a mirror (3d) reflecting your reflection (4d).

To understand more about the 4d and 3d read this.

What does it mean creation is finished?

Creation is finished implies that whatever you wanted already exist in your consciousness, there's million and infinite of realities where you're already the Version of yourself that is living their dream life or having that specific desire.

If you want to understand more: read this.

What does it mean to live in the state of the wish fulfilled?

I know you heard this term already but i'm about to make it simple for you: the state of the wish fulfilled is a feeling you have, the knowing feeling that your desires are yours and there's no point in looking for it in the 3d, because you just decided that it's already yours, you won't feel like "waiting" for your desires, "looking for your desires", "Desperate for your desires to show up", or "being impatient for your desires", you know you have it and that it's done, there's nothing for you to do but keep living in that state until it's show up in the 3d.

Read this and this.

How to use the Law of assumption to induce the void state?

Now before i say anything, i recommend you to read this and this to understand more about your pure consciousness aka the void state.

★Pick an affirmation for example:

"i Always induce my pure consciousness easily and effortlessly"

"everytime i fall asleep i Always end up in my pure consciousness"

"i Always wake up in my pure consciousness whenever i fall asleep"

★Believe in yourself and in your power: that is really essential, it's comes with the powerful and strong believe that you could do it and that you're already a master at inducing your pure consciousness.

★Persist in your assumption: no matter what happens in the 3d, no matter how many times you wake up in your old shitty reality and still find yourself there, keep persisting that you did induce your pure consciousness last night and that you're a master at it, do not give up, i'm telling you, that your assumption are more powerful than what the 3d throw at you, the 3d is just reflecting you old beliefs and assumption, so stick to your assumption and keep being loyal to it.

Ta-da! Easy right? Now i don't want you to stay in this shitty Reality and lock tf in!

If you have any questions you can check out this post, and this post and this post, this one and this one.

Xoxo, Eli

[scribesynnox]

Fuck it, I have too many thoughts about mer au Jazz and Prowl and how they met, I'm not confining my ramblings to the tags anymore. Text post be upon ye. @keferon for their apocalyptic ponyo au

Everyone has been writing such excellent ideas for jazz and prowl, and I'm gonna add my own.

language barrier my beloved, jazz can understand humans, maybe even MULTIPLE human languages due to getting bounced around a lot, but doesn't have enough practice with mer and can only speak in a bastardized chimera version that is 10 different dialects in one ugly torn up trenchcoat. And also it's limping. He only knows that much in the first place because that's what he was able to pick up from the short conversations he has with other trapped mers.

Meanwhile Prowl doesn't know ANY human speech because as far as the merfolk are concerned, humans are like land dolphins; smart and cute but also clever enough to know it and very capable of being assholes. Still not as intelligent as them though, and language being a mystery to merfolk. Like, Prowl will recognize certain tones and gestures, sure, but he doesn't know enough to be able to hold a conversation. He didn't know they could even DO that!

which leaves them both in an awkward position. Neither knows the other's language enough to hold a proper conversation, and Jazz is woefully very very unpracticed speaking with another mer (the humans were scared Jazz would eat/hurt any other rare mer that gets put in the same tank as him so Jazz remained woefully alone alone ALONE).

Jazz overhears the humans talking about bringing another orca mer in with him and he is SO EXCITED!!! Finally, FINALLY!!! Something new, something different, and stars and moon above, something that can TALK and treat him like a PERSON!!

because he IS a person, he IS! The humans took a lot away from him and treat him like a dumb animal, but he knows he isn't, he's smart, he's clever, and he is so so SICK of not being treated like a PERSON.

and this orca will be with him for an extended period of time! Not just a small wave or quick snatches of simple conversation during performances or check ups. The orca will be WITH him, long enough to TALK.

Long enough to plot, even!

So Jazz is maybe a little overenthusiastic when Prowl wakes up from being drugged and Prowl maybe doesn't react super well to a strange orca after having just recently fallen asleep from trying to nurse his wounds from the LAST orca mers he met.

then you add language barrier on top of that and the two are kinda just left there staring warily at each other.

no matter! Jazz has a goal and by the MOON he is going to GET it.

Call Jazz an octopus with the way he keeps escaping captivity (sometimes he sees them on his own nightly escapes and it makes him laugh at seeing the little guys be just as bored and disdainful with captivity as he is), but he still hasn't actually. you know. ESCAPED escaped. But with Prowl here, he has a better chance!

Prowl REMEMBERS the outside! Remembers what the ocean is like, clearly is old enough and experienced enough to have lived to adulthood, and maybe! remembers how close to the ocean this place actually is!

Prowl has INFORMATION and Jazz does not. He needs information if he is ever going to get OUT of here and get back to where the water is not Wrong and Forward doesn't run out after 5 idle tail swishes, and also not DIE immediately in the new waters because Jazz isn't stupid. He knows this place isn't the ocean and knows his chances of surviving in the ocean after spending most of his life in captivity is going to be low. It's going to be one hell of an adjustment.

(I'm starting to realize why I'm constantly running out of tags in the posts now, wow, this is getting long. Better go put this under a read more)

Jazz is going to need information if he is ever going to get HOME.

(but what is home? Is home a fuzzy, blurry memory that he doesn't remember anymore? He doesn't even remember what the water felt like anymore, he only knows that the water here is WRONG)

(What a joke. To remember enough that the water feels Wrong, but not enough to remember when it was right)

Well Home sure as hell isn't HERE, so Jazz is going to get OUT, and this new mer here is going to help him!

Meanwhile on Prowl's end, he just woke up from being poisoned by the humans and is trapped in a weird artificial ocean. He must be in one of those structures the humans like to build, and as fascinating as it is to BE in one such structure. It also does not bode well for getting BACK to the ocean because humans are very infamously land bound.

Then all of a sudden a weird loud orca mer is in his face and speaking in the most dizzying language he's ever had spoken to him. One klik and it's the low, loud notes of the open sea dialect, the next klik it's the rapid staccato of the lake dialect, and in another klik it's the sing song tones of the northern foggy dialect! Prowl can barely keep up, even as the mer is clearly slowing down to speak with him.

Prowl doesn't know and he doesn't care, the other mer is a stranger and Prowl doesn't know WHAT is going on. Is he one of the orcas that fought Prowl earlier, who ended up getting dragged here with him? Is he a random orca that just HAPPENED to also be caught?

The chances of a random orca being here by coincidence is low, and so Prowl assumes it's an orca who had tried to come back after him to finish the job but got caught along with him.

It doesn't explain the horrifying butchered language being spoken to him however.

Unfortunately for Jazz, Prowl is still keyed up from being injured and now from being poisoned, so he whistles harshly "STAY BACK" at him anyways, and Jazz doesn't know what was just said, but he can tell when hackles are raised as well as anybody else, so he raises his hands and slowly backs away.

It takes a couple more tries and several hours of being in each other's company where nothing happens before they both calm down enough to actually get anything done. They both want to escape, and they both can't understand each other.

Yet.

Prowl pantomiming "what is your name?" to Jazz and Jazz replying with a very distinctly human noise of "Jazz".

Jazz immediately clocking in the sneer/pity on Prowl's face at the name and he is Offended! Like, it's HIS name! HE chose it, and so help him Moon, Prowl is NOT allowed to be all judgey about it. So he likes jazz music! Sue him! He's allowed to name himself whatever he wants!

Because stars forbid he get to decide anything else about his own life.

If he wants to name himself after a human noise, then he will name himself after a human noise! He doesn't want to hear anything from Mr. "low throat rumble with a weird echoing undertone to it", whatever that means. He's going to call him Purr for short. Isn't that nice, now they BOTH get to have human names.

"Is it JazzProwl if they're not lying to each other about something?" Now it's a a little tricky given their language barrier, less opportunities TO lie, but I live to please, and I can work with this.

Jazz is a performer. He knows how to put on a show. He's done nothing BUT put on a show his whole life.

Act cute. Act docile. Act dumb. This is what protects you.

Jazz is TOO used to putting on a show. He automatically hides his intelligence and skills from Prowl.

Wait no, even better: Prowl lies to Jazz about something, taking advantage of the fact that Jazz doesn't understand mer language yet or is ignorant about something. Maybe he lies about what someone said to them or maybe he's lying about a secret. Or maybe he's just lying because Jazz is one weird and suspicious orca and Prowl just doesn't trust like that.

Either way, Jazz realizes it and gets so so so MAD that Prowl is treating him like a dumb animal just like the humans did and THAT'S when Jazz starts acting dumber and less competent than he actually is, because if Prowl wants a dumb animal, then he's GETTING a dumb animal.

Jazz starts pretending that he doesn't understand what Prowl is saying, even when he does, and he doesn't do things to help even when he COULD, but it would leave him vulnerable/involve trusting Prowl to hold up his end of the deal. I.e., they need to get to the other side of a collapsed building but the only way through is up and over. And Prowl doesn't do "up". Jazz does, but in order to do it, he'd need to trust Prowl to lift him over, or maybe there's like, mutant birds in the area (or just regular seagulls, the vicious little fuckers) and he'd need Prowl to keep watch or something along those lines. Or maybe it would just hurt to go over the wall because there's broken glass on the ground, and he COULD hurt himself to go over, and then help Prowl follow through without hurting him, but Jazz decides to not let Prowl know that he can go over the wall. They go to find another way around.

Act dumb. Dumb is what protects you. Performing keeps you safe.

Well this got HELLA long, so I'm going to cut it off here. Plus I am eepy. Time to hit post and leave this for future me to find every spelling mistake ever, later. Or never. Who's to say.

I am just Consumed with mer thoughts. They must be released.

Edit: i cut this one a little short cuz it was getting long, so here’s a second part. Bonus content let’s goooo.

[proseandpsalms]

hello!! i don't know if you've been asked this before, but i just saw a post of yours that said you don't believe in a conventional/eternal hell. can you explain/expand on that please?

i was by a previously pentecostal "fire and brimstone" (now conserv. baptist) father, and a conserv. baptist mother. a lot of my family (the ones who are christian, anyway) are very end-times/rapture/hell/fire and brimstone-based. it's honestly terrifying- i grew up having nightmares about it all when i was young. i'm now deconstructing my faith, but that aspect always feels like a scary looming figure at the back of it.

i read somewhere once that jews don't believe in an eternal hell? i'm not sure if that's true or not, but that's what i was reminded of when i saw your post. is it like that?

basically, i'm asking: why do you believe that way? what supports it (not that you need anything to support it, just that if there is, i'd like to see it)? would you be willing to share?

thank you very much- i'm sorry this got a bit vent-y, but i just wanted you to understand my background, and where i'm coming from when asking. :D

On Hell

First of all I want to apologise for taking one million years to respond to this. Time is a slippery character with few morals.

The first thing that I want to establish is the difference between what I understand hell to be and what others do. Growing up I was taught that hell is a pit of fire and flames that people reside in for the rest of their soul's eternity, as punishment for not believing in the Christian understanding of God. I do not believe in this.

I do not believe this to be a biblical notion either. I encourage you to read the following and click the link to read the full text as they articulate it better than what I possibly could ever. Here is an excerpt from it.

"There Are The 4 Words Translated As “Hell”

Most of the confusion around Hell starts with translation error. There are four separate Hebrew and Greek words which are translated into the single English word “Hell”, despite having drastically different meanings.

Sheol (Hebrew)

Hades (Greek)

Tartarus (Greek)

Gehenna (Greek)

The English language is often very limited when trying to express certain concepts. A perfect Biblical example of this is the multiple Greek words translated to the single English word “Love”. Agape is a special version of love that speaks about God’s love toward humanity. Phileo speaks about brotherly love and Eros refers to sexual love or desire.

And just like “love”, the English word “hell” is unilaterally translated from the Greek and Hebrew words Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus, each of which have different meanings.

1. Sheol (H7585)

שׁאל שׁאול she’ôl she’ôl sheh-ole’, sheh-ole’ From H7592; hades or the world of the dead (as if a subterranian retreat), including its accessories and inmates: — grave, hell, pit.

2. Hades (G86)

ᾅδης hadēs hah’-dace From G1 (as a negative particle) and G1492; properly unseen, that is, “Hades” or the place (state) of departed souls: — grave, hell.

3. Gehenna (G1067)

γέεννα geenna gheh’-en-nah Of Hebrew origin ([H1516] and [H2011]); valley of (the son of) Hinnom; gehenna (or Ge-Hinnom), a valley of Jerusalem

4. Tartarus (G5020)

ταρταρόω tartaroō tar-tar-o’-o From Τάρταρος Tartaros̄ (the deepest abyss of Hades); to incarcerate in eternal torment: — cast down to hell.

Below, I’ve listed the full 13 times “Hell” is used in the NASB translation of the Bible. Sheol and Hades are always correctly translated as “the grave” in the NASB and other more accurate translations, which is why you don’t see any references below. I’ve included those words in our discussion simply because they will come up incorrectly as “Hell” in the KJV.

You’ll notice that NONE of the above 4 words actually translate to Hell. The closest is Hades, which is derived from Greek mythology and is never actually translated to “Hell” in academically accepted translations. Sheol and Hades are both always translated as “death” or “the grave” in the NASB and other more accurate translations. And as we are about to see, neither Tartarus nor Gehenna can be correctly translated as “Hell” either.

In other words, “Hell” is NOT actually in the Bible."

I believe in "hell" in the sense that when my soul feels hurt and tormented, that is a bad place for my heart and mind to be. When I think of Jesus and His loving teachings I am filled with peace and helps bring me out of that place.

While I don't believe in ETERNAL hell, I do believe in divine punishment. Those who do not follow the teachings Jesus preached (being loving, kind, empathetic, caring about social justice) will experience some sort of punishment. If it is not in this lifetime, I believe it will be in the next.

Do I believe they'll all be put in flames? No not really. I believe God will provide them with a consequence that will assist them in changing their perspective and changing for the better.

I don't believe people who don't worship the Christian understanding of God, yet follow what Jesus preached will be punished eternally. I don't think God will mind if we get the theology wrong but what we did get right was the act of loving our neighbour.

I've likely not explained this very well at all and I'm still growing and learning in my faith. If you have new perspectives you want to add onto this and more resources to provide to me, I am more that happy for you to share them!

If you are going to get upset with me in the comments for what I believe and tell me again and again that ETERNAL FIRE AND HELL is real, I am unfortunately not interested in that. I was taught that for many years of my life and it never brought me peace. It only made me feel further away from God because I didn't understand how He could be so hateful. Please don't come to my comment section and tell me my God is hateful. I deconstructed that notion long ago.

Let me know if you want me to explain anything better or provide more resources!

God bless everyone <3

[libraford]

There was just so much "I'm glad they're out, but I'm not going to hold their hand and welcome them into our spaces."

Which is like... the first part of that is what I was suggesting. I wasn't even asking people to be nice beyond acknowledgement that them leaving was a good thing. And I did over-react a little bit because it was somewhat obvious that it was a lot of bad faith reads, but you know... I just don't react well to being called a nazi apologist.

And part of this is that I'm coming fresh out of doing research for the conversion therapy ban, where I had to hear so many strawman and slippery slope arguments as to why parents should be allowed to enroll their gay children into a program that has a less than 1% success rate and a 40% increase in suicide and is mostly characterized by literal torture.

And I saw both supporters and opponents of the ban say things that completely missed the point because they didn't read thoroughly or critically. But the important thing, I guess, was that they were angry.

While researching, I came across the oldie-but-goodie: Westboro Baptist Church- which I hadn't thought about since we were still in college.

But Fred Phelps just straight up hated everything. Like damn. That man really had unearthly amounts of hate in him. And he'd put ideas in people's heads and they'd rotate it around for awhile and they'd end up hating a version of events that barely resembled reality and... well, sometimes people get caught up in hating something so much that they don't read through.

And I think that things like anger, fear, hatred... they can be addicting to some people. I know that I have to limit my intake of The Horrors to digestible things written in plain language, and that I have to do it around the same time every day, or I'll just keep looking for more. And there haven't been very many resolutions to things, so its kind of like a cat chasing a laser pointer.

But I had a positive outcome with the conversion therapy ban. It made me feel good. Even if some of the people who were on my side of the issue somewhat missed the point, it felt good to celebrate a win. So I saw the exit group as another win, even if it was a small one.

I understanding wanting an Acceptable Target. The more I read about conversion therapy, the more I fucking hated Gary Cooper and Michael Bussee. Like I want to throw rocks at these people who left a legacy of hatred and a trail of bodies.

Finding out that they both left Exodus International to (1979 equivalent of) marry each other kind of took the breath out of that. That so many of the leaders and faces of the movement spoke out and said 'I was wrong and I am sorry for the damage I've done' gave me mixed feelings. As late as 2013, decades after the founders of the movement left, still dealing with the fallout and only just now in 2025 are people starting to get with the program on banning the practice of literal torture.

Having an Acceptable Target didn't make all of it not happen. And them apologizing didn't stop the movement. Even with a ban in place, I think that the change will be slower than I would like.

So its like... why am I putting this much energy into wanting them to feel pain when one of them already died of AIDS and the other one has been an outspoken opponent of the movement he started? Its not... its not gonna change where we are.

I'm trying to look more into the concept of what I'm doing instead of the person who is doing it. Like don't get me wrong: I want Elon Musk, Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Mike Pence to all have really ironic deaths. I think it would be satisfying to read in the 1-hour I set aside for easily-digestible news reports. I think that's a human thing to want.

Not gonna fix the problems. The problems are bigger and less easily solved than the richest man in the world falling into a vat of acid (oh god please it would be so funny.) They're concepts. They're isolationism and Rugged Individualism and Corporate Greed. Its racism and xenophobia and misogyny and transphobia and ableism. And the people who think that they cannot, will not, and could never be guilty of those things is disturbingly susceptible to propaganda.

Acceptable Targets are satisfying. Sometimes it can be productive, like when you punch a Nazi and they stop spreading their shit! But punching a Nazi doesn't end Nazism all at once. You have to keep punching them. And you also have to understand why there are Nazis. And you also have to learn why they recruit who they recruit. And this means finding empathy for your enemy, which is hard to do. And the work is long! And sometimes its boring! And sometimes its thankless! And sometimes its fucking impossible!

So I see why some people would prefer Acceptable Targets. We all do it. Which is why I believe in patience in lieu of forgiveness. The work is long. Lives are short.

Not to dwell on the subject, but somewhere along the line the word 'cheer' got misinterpreted to mean 'take an active role in a person's healing process and forgive them wholesale of their actions, shield them from the consequences, and vote for them when they run for senator.'

[meatballlady]

Every single fic after s1: "and then they went to Crowley's flat, and they confessed their eternal love, and they stared deeply into each other's eyes..."

Me, not realizing how bad it could be: "yeah, okay, love it, but some variety would be nice - "

Every fic after s2: "And then Aziraphale got to Heaven and immediately realized that he was a fucking idiot and wanted to turn around and grovel on his knees before Crowley but he couldn't because it was all a trap. Meanwhile, on earth, Crowley has been drinking for 84 years ... "

Me: *incoherent screaming*

[cassandrva]

"average writer makes you understand 60% of what they write" factoid actualy just statistical error. average writer makes you understand 99% of what they write. dunnett georg, who references 11 medieval poems in 6 different languages per paragraph & makes you understand 1% of what she writes is an outlier adn should not have been counted

[silenzahra]

🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

Hehe, looks like we're all signing up for an Asterix marathon as soon as we can 😄💖

Ooooohhhh that was SO interesting 👀👀 I get it!! It's amazing that it's been not only translated into Swiss German but also adapted to it!! I'm so happy for you!! 😄👏💖

You know, everything you explained reminded me SO MUCH of my own case. I'm from Andalucía, in the south of Spain, and we also have a very specific accent in here that makes it hard to understand at times for people from other parts of Spain (like Madrid or Barcelona). It's not a language either, just a dialect, but we do have some specific words that are only used here and non Andalusian people have never heard in their lives, so at times we joke that we need a Spanish-Andalusian dictionary hehe 🤭

Andalucía is a wide autonomous community (which would be what cantons are in Switzerland or states in the US), and it's divided into 8 provinces, each with its specific accent. For instance Granada and Sevilla both are provinces that belong to Andalucía but the accent in both places is VERY different, but we don't have any difficulty understanding each other.

I don't think we've ever had any media specifically translated into Andalusian but that's normal, we're used to reading/hearing standard Spanish even if it's not exactly how we speak. At most, what we've had is some Andalusian people maybe making a parody of, let's say, Harry Potter and adapting its lore into typical Andalusian culture or things like that, but nothing official. So I think it's amazing that you at times have media translated into Swiss German! I think all languages and dialects and ways of speaking a language should be recognized and celebrated, so I'm truly happy this is the case for your specific dialect 🥰💖

I'm the one who's been rambling now hahaha, sorry if this sounded boring or annoying but I really loved reading you talking about your language and dialect 😄😄 Thank you so much for sharing it! And it's so sweet that you remembered that I studied German at university 🥰💖💖

AYYYY a fellow Asterix fan!! 😁💕🙌 I've been noticing other people around me mentioning this franchise and I'm very happy to see that it appears to be fairly well known online. 🤭

Got a favorite album, just out of curiosity?^^

Ayyyy your ask made me so happy!! 😄😄 Yayyy I've always LOVED Astérix ever since I was little, and I love rereading the comics and rewatching the movies from time to time!! I had no idea a series was in the works and I found out thanks to your reblog 🤩🤩 I am SO looking forward to it!! And I'm also so happy to find more and more people who love and enjoy this franchise 🥰💖

As for a fave album, it's honestly a hard decision because I have so many! But you know, being Spanish, I just have to go with Asterix in Spain as I LOVED reading it over and over again growing up, and it has so many funny moments!! Also, I personally love to see how they represented us Spaniards with our typical customs and all that 🤭 It doesn't matter how many times I reread it, it always makes me laugh like crazy 😂

I also love Asterix and the magic carpet and Asterix and Obelix all at sea as two other favorites. What about you? I'd love to hear more about your story and memories with this franchise, if you'd like to share! 🥰

Thank you so much for the ask! 💖💖💖

[danieyells]

Fun little factoid about Sho

In the game files there's some audio that's just like. "Generic Story Voices". The same ones that I got Kaito and Towa's incantations from. Generic audios were used in campus chats before they got fully voiced I believe, but now they're not used anywhere as far as I know.

One of Sho's is labeled 'Hyde'

And he uses 'Aniki' for him???

My understanding is generally that 'aniki' is kind of respectful and the fact that he uses a respectful term for the brother that he hates struck me as odd when I first found the file(then again he uses 'senpai' for pretty much every student older than him so far, so maybe he's just respectful in general?? Or maybe it's more of a sarcastic thing for Hyde?)

And then we got the 'I'm counting on you Shohei' bit and I was like. O h. Either he's actually fond of/respects Hyde a lot and has no problem being obedient towards him or he just. Speaks to him respectfully out of intimidation maybe? Or habit since he speaks restfully to other people? Idk. Why does he refer to him so respectfully. . . . . . . .i wanna know. . . . .tell us what their secret dealings are zzg. . . . .based on the way he talks to him in the campus chat he doesn't respect him like that but they were also in like a main hall of the building? Maybe in private he speaks and acts totally different?

[quatregats]

Also I realize that the answer is probably just reading enough period sources but as a linguist I really do need to pick Patrick O'Brian's brain about where in the world he got his different speech patterns from

[tentenismybitch]

Me a nosey and messy bitch:

Soooooooo, whats the hot take 🧐👀👂

i was gonna be like "come off anon and i'll tell you privately!" but honestly idgaf, this is my blog!!

i've been reading fanfiction since i was 9 years old, and writing it since i was in middle school. in my early teen years i mostly read fanfic for "het" ships (primarily nejiten, sasuino [lol] and shikatema.) as an older teen/adult i've been consuming more gay content. as y'all know i love team gai. my fave ships are kakagai, nejiten, and gaalee, so these are the ships i read the most fic of. and i've gotta say.

IN MY EXPERIENCE!!! fics for gay ships are usually way better written! BY A COUNTRY MILE!!! and idk why it is!! i have found NUMEROUS long + incredibly well-written fics for kakagai and gaalee, less so for nejiten. even searching ao3 and seeing fics for other "het" ships that nejiten is a side pairing of, just on the summaries alone i can tell A LOT of them are not for me....sorry! sorry!

like i don't want to be a mean and messy bitch but alas here we are. sometimes, the plots just aren't giving. like, they're not interesting! but also, i am primarily talking in terms of technical writing craft and skill!! summaries be riddled with grammatical issues and typos*, or don't make sense, or, again, aren't compelling and make me want to read the fic. or the characterization is abysmal! from blatantly out of character actions to, just, like, fundamental misunderstandings of the characters

i just find a lot of nejiten fics that are written exactly in the way that i used to write when i was 14!! and i'm sorry again! that may work for some people but i am a voracious reader and also want to write as my CAREER, so that's just not gonna cut it for me....

of my 3 favorite naruto ships, nejiten is the only one that i've been shipping SINCE the beginning of my days in the naruto fandom (aka when i was 9/10 years old!!) but of my 16 ao3 bookmarks, only 4 of them are nejiten-centric fics–two of them are by the same author (shoutout to @winterberryholly) and 1 of them is a oneshot.

hence the point of my original post. WHERE are the well-written, nejiten-centric fics that are, like, longfic. i've found cute oneshots or shorter fics here and there but it's like damn. what's a bitch gotta do for a 300k slowburn friends to lovers bi4bi ptsd trauma + healing nejiten fic? write it myself?!

TLDR my hot take is that gay ships tend to have much better written fic than "het" ships

[ubtendo]

@skipitty-bop because I'm mean I'm going to tease something