#s4 artbook

[cocogum]

Season 4 (and after) characters who wear capes

*note: Since I've been scanning the season 4 artbook and got way too annoyed at the amount of CAPES I've seen, I decided to list EVERY SINGLE character who wears one just to show you how much of a problem this has become💀💀 And yeah I included Oropo's special episode for being an extension of season 4.*

Yugo

Amalia

Dally (his cape goes back to normal in Waven)

Madagaskane

Armant

Aurora

Lance Dur

Astra

Astra's wife

Eniripsa Queen

Astrub's governor

Brakmar King

Brakmar general

Sufokia Empress Mabel

Prince Adale

General Mofette

Every.single.elite.eliatrope.

Oropo

Qilby

Nora

Toross Mordal

Sram necromes

Grougaloragran

Bouillon

Sidaire

Ripulse

Julith

Grougalorasalar

Yrehn

[kirichux]

Pls if anyone has the S4 wakfu Art book and willing to show me Nora I’ll forever be grateful 🙏😿😿

[cocogum]

I'm guessing character sheets don't count as artbook material to them 😭😭😔

WHY WASN'T THIS IN THE ARTBOOK!?!?!?

[nina-numa-blog]

Eheheheh, looks like a Wakfu S4 artbooks it's coming probably at October 👀

Here they are some pages

[kradogsrats]

Signs of the Fall, Pt. 2

Since Part 1 was cut short due to the limit on number of images per post, here's Part 2.

Perhaps Your Heart Is Not Yet Darkened

And finally, the big one: the darkened center of his chest star. We can pinpoint this as happening somewhere between Leola's execution and whenever TMO gets around to checking on Aaravos weeping over her remains:

I have my own feelings about the whole "for 100 years, I wept" thing in relation to Ripples, mostly related to how I don't think the place Aaravos is crying is like... the same plane of reality.

We're also given pretty big hint as to why his star is darkened, and the subsequent connection between him and dark magic:

Aaravos is connected to dark magic users through the emptiness in his own spirit, as seen in his darkened chest star. Why is his spirit empty? Well:

Because he lost what fills that darkness. Bummer.

How was he able to conceal this from the rest of Xadia for hundreds, if not thousands of years, seeing as it's not darkened in the s4 flashback? Well, we still don't know. Why does it light up again when he's casting primal spells? Don't know that, either.

I do think most, if not all, of the pre-s6 theories about Aaravos's chest star are still viable. The Laurelion poem remains suspiciously on point, and "dark magic corruption is literally an offshoot of Aaravos's own entrenched grief and hatred" is... a take I expect will be kind of controversial. (I might noodle on that a bit more and see about writing it up, because I don't think it's as insane as it sounds.)

It is Such a Quiet Thing, to Fall

So to circle back to the beginning, we still have the question of what even was Aaravos's fall? Why is he "fallen"? What does that even mean?

Most interpretations have been that it's related to some kind of transgression and punishment, whether that was his machinations in bringing dark magic into being or some earlier involvement with humans that met the stars' disapproval. This, I think, is largely rooted in Aaravos's definite associations with Lucifer, fallen angel and manipulator of humanity. Plus there's the fact that he's imprisoned when he's introduced, and it took a while to get across that he has actually been imprisoned for "only" 300 years—"fallen" was frequently taken to be synonymous with his imprisonment, being stripped of his power and exiled.

I want to put forward a theory where those things are separated: even though the artbook directly says, "As a 'fallen' Startouch elf, Aaravos can only access a fraction of his former power," I'm not sure those things are actually related.

Aaravos's relatively depowered state, I think, may actually be a normal part of him choosing to manifest in Xadia.

It's pretty standard for divine beings taking on corporeal mortal form to not be able to access the same level of omnipotence as they could before. Given the way Leola's trial and execution played out, it also doesn't seem like stripping Aaravos of some of his power is something the council of stars would be interested in doing, whether they wanted to punish him or not.

So one possibility is actually that a "fallen" star is simply another term for a Startouch elf walking Xadia, one of the great ones made manifest.

Another possibility is to come full circle back to Aaravos as "the Fallen Star" being related to his imprisonment. In answer to Ezran's question about whether a fallen star was previously just a star, Zubeia describes Aaravos as powerful and beloved, until they found that he had betrayed them all and had been doing so for hundreds of years:

We don't really have a ton of context for Aaravos for the time period between what we see in s6 with Leola and what is described as 300 years earlier in s4, or even how much time that was, but the references to "fallen star" are largely confined to the latter period. The mirror inscription, for instance:

The one exception is the history book page about Aaravos that appears only in the artbook (alongside the two seen when Viren, and later Callum, try to look up information about him). It's the Italian-language one, and among other things, says:

Known by many names in ancient stories - "The Fallen Star", the last of the Great Ones, the bringer of gifts, but his true name was Aaravos. Texts mentioning his name have been found since the time of the great schism, although there are disagreements about his role in historical events. Some describe him as a beneficent figure, an ally of humanity, willing to share his great magical power with those who needed it the most. Others portray him as…

(As a side note, there's a very significant translation difference I've discovered here from what is on the wiki. The current Google Translate output has "Texts mentioning his name have been found since the time of the great schism," while the wiki translation has "Words mentioning his name have been truncated since the time of the great schism." I don't know Italian, but I did French and a teensy bit of Spanish—personally, I think Google is correct on this one, looking at the individual words and there relationship to other Romance languages, there's nothing in there even vaguely similar to "truncated." THIS IS A HUGE DEAL, ACTUALLY, GIVEN THAT THE MAGICAL CENSORSHIP OF TEXTS ABOUT AARAVOS IS A PLOT POINT. So never trust this fandom's wiki for anything but the most obvious information, and take even that with a grain of salt.)

It's not clear exactly when this text is supposed to be from, as it is referring to Aaravos abstractly as a historical figure. It could very well be from after his imprisonment—with the Orphan Queen's involvement, information about Aaravos from that era could easily have been recorded even on the human side of the Border.

Anyway, my point is that Aaravos imprisoned is actually a strong contender for the meaning of "the Fallen Star," but we still don't really know much about his imprisonment as related to his powers. The prison was created specifically to contain him, and Zubeia refers to "part" of its power being that no one knows where it is.

It seems unlikely, given the way Zubeia describes having to confront Aaravos obliquely, that even the archdragons would have been capable of stripping any part of his powers. So if his power is reduced when in the prison, it's almost definitely only when within the prison.

Personally, that's what I lean toward at this point—that Aaravos having reduced power is related to his incarnate form, and "fallen" is a modern descriptor applied to reference his descent from a place of honor and respect when his betrayals were discovered.

This concludes my post-s6 "State of the Fallen Star" address, thanks for reading this incredibly hot mess of a take.

[general-klumpp]

DuckTales THEORY: 'New Scroogea' Cliffhanger (S4+)

TLDR:

S3 cliffhanger: discovery of unseen continent, New Scroogea

Whether inhabited by Scrooge wannabees, clones or stans, Webby WILL play a part to bring them together, Donald tagalong

Ma Beagle and Rockerduck are almost certainly the main villains

Ending might seem a bit lackluster and must pave way to S5

If they went this far, S5 would have May and June as the main protagonists while tackling the multiverse.

Hello Duckblr! Although I'm currently working on my own take on a hypothetical Season 4 of DuckTales, I just found out a strange tidbit of information from the artbook. Combine that with already existing speculation online and I have a nearly perfect picture.

Courtesy of violetganache42, That's right. Had DuckTales not been canceled, the cliffhanger would be the discovery of an unseen continent known as New Scroogea. It's been speculated that this could be the location the cast could have originally been planned to fall into.

The question is...what is New Scroogea?? Some believe it's a place where everyone dresses up or acts like Scrooge. Some believe Scrooge will colonise the place. Some believe it's a place where its inhabitants idolise Scrooge. Some even believe it was the result of F.O.W.L. dumping treasures, which could substantiate the defeat of Bradford.

Since it's a common word now that S4 was planned to be Webby's season, she could fit the plot with a few of these examples with New Scroogea inhabitants in mind. Scrooge wannabees, or dopplegangers? Webby can help them while solving an internal conflict within Scrooge, seeing that she, May, and June represent his troublesome side. Scrooge stans? Webby can teach them the proper way to follow in his footsteps. Scrooge colonises? Webby gets Hortense for a word or two about ethics. Donald is 100% our adult protagonist because he has May and June.

While we now understand how Webby will fit as the main protagonist, what about the villains? A better question is, what two villains know about owning a new land, and who may be of interest in taking over a new continent? That's right, Ma Beagle and Rockerduck! Ma Beagle makes perfect sense as there was a comic, 'His Majesty, McDuck' which involved the Beagle Boys trying to take over Killmotor Hill which was declared as a separate country from America. Also, Beagleburg and the fact that she never got her season. Rockerduck because we need to see Rockerduck Estates and there was this gift made for John Hodgman depicting him as a lawyer, perfect to defend Ma Beagle. Other than that...maybe there'd even be a New Scroogean gone rogue...

So...how would the New Scroogea plotline end? I'll be brutally honest, (it's not sour grapes because I found out about this after I started DuckTales MMM) I don't really like it. Why? Because it would destroy all this foreshadowing made earlier teasing us about more important ideas. Poe De Spell? Waddlemeyer? Negaduck? What about characters who need to find a new purpose or peace such as Magica, Manny, Gizmoduck, etc? Unless New Scroogea was kinda affected by the Ramrod or something, I believe these ideas would have to be pushed aside for a fifth season, giving it a lackluster or predictable ending where the New Scroogeans just laugh or swim in gold or something... Considering they had at least 87 more ideas in mind, a fifth season would tackle May and June's pursuit of a social network while going into the multiverse plot teased by the Darkwing characters.

So...yeah...what do y'all think?

[hoshii-zoras]

dokkaaaaan!

S4 DVD-Box Cover, scanned from the Yoshihiko Umakoshi Toei Animation Works artbook.

[ninjasmudge]

before my brain and motivation to function falls back into the void. this HC I have for MK is by no means groundbreaking or anything it's probably basic but it has me by the throat, i love it so much and I don't really see people talk about it as much so we all know that MK is an artist and a pretty damn good one, mean he's apparently illustrating his own copy of JTTW (if I'm remembering that correctly) which we do see in the show and it looks really good. my hc is that MK loves to draw really detailed artwork of his friends and he takes a lot of candid photos of them for inspiration. particularly action shots of them. he'll sneak multiple snapshots or video them during training or just doing something cool in general. like mei doing aerial tricks in her dragon form or racing on her bike, red or nezha doing flaming kickflips, pigsy showing off some while cooking, etc. and sometimes it's just them chilling and the scenery/lighting around them looks really lovely or peaceful, examples being MK coming across nezha or wukong meditating or doing warm-ups, or his dads sharing tea at a festival. (because MK can draw tang I think he just has a harder time drawing him like a badass like the others. he draws him best in a gentler domestic setting with him looking wise or fatherly. but that's just my thoughts) he has special art supplies he uses just for those, the good high-quality artbooks, pencils/paints, etc. of all his art projects these are the ones he shows the most focus and attention to detail on because he's putting every bit of his admiration and love for his loved ones in there. and mk is surprisingly really good at being sneaky about this cause he's a little embarrassed and self-conscious about it. like he's worried it'll come off as creepy and like so many artists question if his art looks good enough to show too his idols so he hasn't shown anyone the finished drawings yet except maybe a few to mei, partly because he trusts her partly because it's very hard to find anything from that girl. which is a shame because these art pieces would definitely make wukong/nezha/mac/redson cry happy tears because like "omb...do..do i really look this cool?? is this how Mk actually sees me?!?" i ESPECIALLY love the idea of Nezha coming across mk's secret fanart notebooks and he finds all the lovingly drawn pictures of him looking so stoic and cool and just collapsing in shaking tears because its SO HARD for that poor guy to get the respect he rightfully deserves because of his height/age. and seeing just how much his adopted little brother loves and respects him is just...fgwgfiesyygg he doesn't even know how to properly react (it probably be the same thing with mac or redson, just shaking crying stuttering messes of emotions they don't know how to express) anyway there is my long ass rant (i'm sorry for the length or any spelling errors also can you tell brotherly Nezha and MK is one of my favorite things. i....i just want to see them get more screentime together in s4 ;;-;;)

i absolutely love this idea, its so sweet, the idea of nezha especially really needing to hear from someone he cares about how much hes respected is just *chefs kiss*

its also making me think theres probably a lot of sillier fun photos that might even end up on pigsys photo board!

[lunanightriderofthecove]

Scrolling through my notes and realising I never posted my s6 theories. They're from July 30.

Season 6 Title will definitely be Star. I thought for the longest time that season 7 will be titled after dark magic. But I just remembered that there is this archaic kind of magic mentioned in the novels that's even older than primal magic and lost to time. So maybe that's the title?

It has by now been confirmed that s7 will be dark but I'm still attached to that theory.

It is basically confirmed that there will be another timeskip after season 6, so I'm expecting another artbook after that season releases (hopefully next april)

What will that third arc be called?

Aaron said in an interview that both s6 and s7 will still be part of the mystery of Aaravos arc, but that doesn't necessarily exclude the timeskip.

Aaron said that s7 Claudia will be more powerful than atla's Katara, so we know she'll survive long enough.

Nothing to add here 😆

Season 6 will likely be about the dragang searching for the Quasar diamonds. There was that credit art in s4 of a crown that was theorised to hold those diamonds. The question really is: where is that Crown?

I hadn't realised it back then that the corona of the heavens had been confirmed to be at the star scraper. Thanks to the announcement of the cc panel back in September we know that Rayllum will be going there to get sword and crown.

S6 will either have Aaravos getting out of his prison or the dragang making sure there's no chance of him ever getting out by himself or being freed.

Aaravos will definitely get out in the second half of the season, even if they might try to secure him forever.

I still feel like Terry will want to distance himself from Claudia at some point in the future seasons. I personally think he's too good for her.

Episode 1 laughing in my face by making Claudia the one who leaves. But I always felt like the breakup would eventually happen, I just didn't expect it like this.

[ol-files]

!!

Ogrest tome 5 and wakfu S4 artbook having the same publishing date

[daydreaming-robot]

SPOILER ALERT FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T PLAYED SIDE ORDER YET!!!

I am lowkey pissed that 4 wasn't like a prominent character like an ally in the DLC omg. The parallel canon boss fight is a massive implication that they were captured and became... that. However I am curious on how they were chosen to handle the security system in the memverse, because back in the S2 artbook, it mentioned that before they joined the Squidbeak Splatoon, 4 was extremely busy with extracurriculars. So that made me think, what if said curricular was computer programming, or computer engineering, or computer science back when they were in school. Pretty much made me think on how big their knowledge on programming is. Or Marina showed them how the simulation works I don't really know why they're chosen for that role before all went haywire. The reason why is Smollusk's top secret notes(if you complete the spire with 4's palette), it said such strength should be used in the name of order

ANYWAY when I completed the Spire Of Order, I was hoping 4 would make at least be in the Order Sector somewhere.

And I remember that Pearl said that 4 was supposed to be a big shot, was is a PAST TENSE WORD which made me imagine something... what happened to 4 prior to Side Order.

Anyway I remember that there's an S4 coming in the near future so it BETTER show 4 somewhere istg, there's NO WAY for Nintendo to show 4 adress on the official map just because why not.

I imagine their scar to be a little different than Captain 3, I'm thinking... central heterochromia, red pupils, orange Irises, or something like that, as a result of prolonged exposure to the simulation

anyway that's my thought on the lack of Agent 4 in the dlc :(

you good, four?

+ greyscale ver cuz i thought it looked cool

[cocogum]

WAKFU S4 ARTBOOK

PAGES 36-65

Pages 8-35 ● Pages 66-93

[garyfischy]

my 21 vbros rant

This is clearly cobbled together as i had way more i wanted to say, but i can't be assed to edit my writeup. Maybe youll see some of these ideas and frustrations about s6/s7 in a later essay. Feel free to leave me anon hate about putting a 9 paragraph rant on your tl. Fish out

I have a lot of feelings abt 21 vbros's ego death because thats like. All he's known his entire life. Just this world of fun and games and shit, and once that comes crumbling down once, then twice, and like. I think ironically his character development being shunted off to the side is a hilarious parallel to nerd-dom and otakus in general

After having to actually face reality and stop dicking around, he ends up spending a ridiculous amount of time devoting himself further to being a henchman. physically, on the outside, he becomes almost unrecognizable and obsessed with revenge- yet his obsession with somehow proving that manliness by having sex with women falls short, because he can't understand relationships. (Or whateverthefuck the monarch and drgf have going on, anyways). In other words, while he might be more tough and physically aggressive he hasn't matured beyond that same childishness (in the commentaries.. they were going to have a gag where he stares at drgfs tits and flashbacks to a bunch of other girls he liked as a teenager. Which is ..stupid but speaks for how inexperienced he is). Like he still talks about girls that hugged him and made eye contact years ago.

im not going to excuse the weird sexist stuff he did in s4 though. I think some of it shifts the focus away from "awkward dude" to "fucking creep" territory and a lot of it wasn't rlly needed

But then after the s4 bit he steps away to do his own thing, but doesn't really get how. Whatever he tries to do on his own just falls to pieces because he's still obsessed with being part of a cool team, one that couldn't care less about him. He ends up crawling back to the Monarch, who he's been obsessed with his entire life*, back into the same rut of being a henchman. Slightly different now that there's only 3 of them.

*hammer shifts between calling 21's obsession with the monarch vaguely father-figure like, noting he grew up without a dad, but then also contrasting it with drgf's sexual interest in the monarch, and how they both 'fall in love' in their own ways. dr girlfriend's love being pity and romance and 21's being blind devotion

s5/s6 is kind of weird because you can see the consequences of the past seasons on monarch/21's relationship. (Fuck this post is getting long! Ill have to write it in essay form later). Hammer describes it in the artbook as this sort of, abusive buddy movie relationship. Where 21 feels used and manipulated but can't do shit about it. He wrote up the blue morpho plan, after all. He thought it was cool to assasinate, but then gets all bummed out about doing the dirty work and burying the bodies. He still can't bring himself to reconcile that "cool" image of himself as Kano, mowing through enemies in a cool car, and that of himself as a lackey. Of watching his boss fuck his hot wife in the living room meters away. He still glamorizes his life even as the cracks obviously show through, in all 3 of the monarchtrio relationships. he expresses some guilt over the whole situation, and it would have been really interesting to see what happened after he was found out as the instigator of the morpho shit.

BUT THEN

THEY JUST DON'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT

LIKE YOU'D THINK DR. GIRLFRIEND WOULD BE A LITTLE MORE UPSET THAT HER HUSBAND AND ... MANSERVANT JUST WENT OUT AND SLAUGHTERED MOST OF HER COWORKERS ILLEGALLY

But no. She just covers it up, that i understand , and nary a word is shared between them about the season-long arc. (I could write another essay about this too but that's for later). She's fine with it, because she loves the monarch, she's mrs. Wife, she moves on.

Even if the monarch jeopardized her career and possibly her life as well, doing something selfish and illegal that was completely unnecessary.

ANYWAYS this is getting way too long

But then post-s7, after both dr girlfriend and 21 express doubt over their choice in careers, after they're continuously compared as parallels/ foils to each other- they were brought into this bullshit world of larp-bureaucracy and henching and arching, and they love it, but it's starting to stress them out, they both get hard reset back to status quo by the movie. Dr Girlfriend worried about her marriage falling apart? 21 expressing remorse for his actions? Nah. Let's have them both give huge speeches about how great their lives are and how much they love their jobs! Don't even think about the irony of a woman groomed by her college professor to be a perfect trophy wife saying she "chose her station in life". Why even bother setting up all these threads of regret, burnout, remorse, if you're going to have these characters regress back to s2-era mentality?

Then again dr. Gf's arcs were never perfectly written. I just wish they did more with her as a character and her insecurities and regrets too...

This is stupid. But yeah 21 trying to escape from henching and find his own station in life, rebounding every time he tries to leave or quit, eventually ending at "i love my life and job" despite clear plot notes showing otherwise? Perfect analogy to the american nerd/otaku. Brushing off any flaws or worries in favor of being a loyal consumer.

[toxicnorn]

s4 update: i just got the image files together for two new poster packs, bringing the poster backlog to:

80-90s restaurant interiors minipack

90s-2000s cgi minipack

clown art

britney spears

metropolis

nick cave

ray-ban advertisement

kate bush

jjba

60-80s female singers

goth/punk/progrock

still wip:

sailor moon artbook

junji ito

fuan no tane

horror movie

b52s

goth singers

utena

i have a lot of images saved better utilized for another format. the goal is to get the hang of making cc with meshes to move out into framed images and wall art instead of just wall details. ultimately, it would be good to move into doing clothes cc but that quest is complicated somewhat that i use alpha content exclusively instead of the easier-to-make maxis match content.

(the end goal is to finally launch my simblr...sometime.)

[cocogum]

*GIGGLING KICKING MY FEET SOBBING SCREAMING* 💖💖❤️❤️❤️💕❤️💕❤️❤️❤️💖💖💕💖💖❤️❤️❤️💖💕💕💖❤️❤️💖💕💖💖❤️💖❤️❤️

If the season 4 artbook doesn't reveal that, much like when Disney created Flynn Rider, the Wakfu crew gathered all the female (and queer) members of the team to hold a Hot Guy Meeting in order to come up with the most attractive design for Adult! Yugo, I will be severely disappointed.

I mean, this cannot just be a happy coincidence. The crew knew what they were doing at all times:

[kradogsrats]

Signs of the Fall, Pt. 1

Since basically... forever? Look, idk I wasn't around for the first half of this fandom so I don't know when Aaravos as "fallen star" was revealed. But presumably since then, it's been a big question mark as to exactly what that means.

We're told in places like the artbook that—along with whatever else it may mean—Aaravos being a "fallen" star means he's significantly depowered, and that his "fallen" status was a consideration in designing his look. So, reasonably, there should be identifiable features of Aaravos as a "fallen" Startouch elf, and we've collectively already spent a shit-ton of time overanalyzing them and what they mean.

BUT now that s6 is out and we have a chunk time seeing Aaravos before anything that would normally have been assumed to be his "fall" (more on that later), I wanted to return to some of the ones that have been most discussed.

The Eyes Have It

Previous assumption was that Aaravos's eyes not being the luminous Startouch pink outside of flashbacks was related to his status as a "fallen" Startouch elf and related to the darkening of his chest star:

This has not been cleared up by s6, where he is shown both with

and without the full-pink Startouch eyes

in contexts that are basically identical, aside from medium (one being a painting, and one being animated), in the same damn episode.

So what, if anything, does it mean?

First of all, I want to acknowledge that this may be entirely a choice of artistic convenience. Having arted a time or two, myself—characters without human-standard visual distinction between sclera, iris, and pupil are an unbelievable pain in the ass. A huge amount of microexpressions that humans subconsciously rely on to convey mood and intent are entirely down to the spatial/size relationship of iris and pupil to the surrounding eyelids. Leola and TMO are animated with full-pink eyes, with the irises barely distinguishable and pupils invisible, sure—but Leola has a shit-ton of emotional body language to compensate and let's be real, TMO is intended to be serenely inscrutable and alien.

It's just really, really hard to have a character convey the depth and nuance Aaravos requires when you're effectively barred from using one of the most critical aspects of facial expressions. Rather than fight that uphill battle, they may have chosen to handwave it in one context or another. (That is, the state of Aaravos's eyes is linked with his "fallen" status, and in the scenes with Leola they are meant to be different but it turned out to be way too annoying to handle.)

It could also, like Leola's single horn, be explained as a unique feature of Aaravos or this particular physical manifestation of Aaravos, except that they did go out of their way to include the full-pink eyes in not only the painted s4 flashbacks, but also the s3 promo art:

To be completely honest: I'm not convinced at this point that this is a feature we're meant to attach significance to. Unless we get additional context of another Startouch elf with eyes like Aaravos's, or conditions under which Aaravos is actually animated with the full-pink Startouch eyes... I don't think we can really know for sure.

Star Up, Star Down

In the same vein as his eyes, we've attached a lot of importance to the orientation of Aaravos's chest star. Since the Star primal symbol is actually used very rarely, and in just about every context up to s6 it was in its "upright" orientation—that is, the opposite of Aaravos's chest star. And like, obviously a fallen star would be upside-down.

It seems like s6 is determined to mess with us in that respect. For the most part, Aaravos's chest star is upright, or opening-down:

Until his grieving, when it is opening-up (and also darkened):

HOWEVER, when TMO appears in the same scene, their chest star is also opening-up, though lit:

We also get a LOT more usage of the Star primal symbol at the Starscraper:

And—excluding when it's on the floor so you can't know for sure what the "proper" orientation is—it is exclusively opening-up:

Also noteworthy is that we don't see the mark directly on Leola's chest, but on her clothing it is opening-up:

As is her star in the constellation:

So whatever the orientation is meant to signify—and unlike the eyes, I do think this is still significant in some way—it's unlikely that it's a strictly negative symbol. There's some other dichotomy at play that it's indicating.

Body Bling

This one doesn't come up as often, but it's suggested (at least in the artbook, IIRC) that Aaravos's body stars are brighter before he's "fallen," when he's at full power. Is this objectively true? Well... yeah, not really.

In arc two, they're very similar levels of brightness across s4-s6, independent of his chest star:

In arc one, the mirror effect tends to be more pronounced than the one scene where we see it in arc two, so it sometimes looks like they're not as bright. I think they actually are meant to be, though:

And then, of course, at the end of s2 when he's casting, everything is brighter:

So that doesn't seem related at all, except in the sense that magic is shiny. Maybe we'll learn something at some point about Aaravos's relationship to the primal sources that will explain that, but for now we can put this one to bed.

—

aaaaand I have actually hit the "images per post" limit so we'll be concluding in Part 2!