#shadowheart x zeke

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saw a post and had the urge to draw a act 1 interaction silly have it

inspo for zeke’s pose in the first panel

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Drawing kisses is hard, but overall I'm happy with how these turned out. I forgot how much I enjoy using colouring pencils

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finished something woagh. zeke/shart ship template ft live gort reaction i guess.

template from @/GOOMYLOID on twitter i think correct me if i’m wrong tho

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mmm shadowheart’s death. i am making this so. AAAAUGHH.

something about them having this big emotional confrontation about what is currently happening with gortash but both of them ending the day huddled together because they need each other (well, for one this is true and one only wants it to be true).

i just. think shadowheart’s death should be sort of. anti-climactic? if that’s the right word? it doesn’t happen during one of these explosive moments, but zeke just wakes up the next day and shadowhearts throat is violently ripped out and the taste of blood is all he can feel in that moment. he just lays there for hours on her rotting corpse! and he doesn’t even cry! he can’t!

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(inspired by this post) he ruined their couple’s t-shirts :/

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sorry.

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shart about zeke

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what are zeke and the companions’ dynamics like? what are their first impressions of each other?

and why does minthara leave in act 3? (i mean the answer’s fairly obvious but it’ll sound better from you)

i uhhhhmm have to replay the game to give you accurate answers for everyone because a lot has changed since my first playthrough 6 months ago but i think the only ones that will stay relatively the same is his dynamic with shadowheart.

so, zeke and her are very enemies to ‘lovers’ basically lmao. zeke is skittish and extremely mean to everyone, but especially someone like shadowheart, who is not afraid to bite back against his bullshit, makes him act out. she offers him her last healing potion one time because he’s (as usual) more injured than her and he shatters it against the ground, thinking he’s being so clever by exposing her attempt to poison her.

when you ask him why he’s letting her stick around, or more accurately, sticking around her, he’d spit in your face, grunt and walk away, but really he comes to see her as a big comfort. someone who lost his memory like him. he almost sees it as distraction from his own memory loss, figuring out her ‘case’ so to speak. she’s also a cleric, and subconsciously i think zeke just deeply wishes for some healing, y’know. even if the wounds gortash inflicted/inflicts on him are not able to healed, it’s a nice thought i think. and most importantly: shadowheart, besides just seeing the wild freedom in zeke she never really had in her life and coming around to finding it absolutely beautiful like a raging storm is beautiful (her being afraid of wolves but then finding the beauty in them do you get it), sees that smart, fiery young man who gives 110% to everything he does. and she wants to believe that there is good in him, too. that he is a person. a person who is capable of loving her back. those last things are not true of course, but zeke is so extremely drawn to people who have a ‘i can fix him’ mentality about him, people who are good/things he could never be, because to some degree, he WANTS to be fixed. he WANTS to be normal and he wants to love and do things normal boys do. have crushes and go on dates and get married and have kids. but that’s him dreaming and really just hiding from gortash. he’s someone who hides in the shadows quite a bit, and this is no different. because if he really was capable of being the person shadowheart believes he could be, then he wouldn’t be gortash’s/the machine’s antithesis/archnemesis as the wild anymore.

i really like the ‘wolf who has been on the hunt for so long that its paws are bloody resting on a flowerbed temporarily and involuntarily crushing the flowers during this before getting up again’ imagery for them… like, zeke is not a good partner. he’s horrible. shadowheart i am so sorry… it’s like hugging a wall of thorns….

but again in between all this heartbreaking stuff there’s also lots of moments in which zeke genuinely gets close to feeling happiness for the first time in (t)his life (insert gortash seething behind the scrying eyes control board here) and also just. lots of shenanigans. zeke has 5 charisma and is just so painfully awkward and awful. sometimes he just crawls into her tent in the middle of the night and just like. watches her while chewing on his fingernails or something and when she wakes up and ask him what tf he’s doing he’s just like. ‘being…boyfriend…?’ like. god.

shadowheart about him is basically that one post that’s like. ‘yeah it’s rotten work. especially if it’s you i’ll fucking do it but christ alive’ and she NOTHING but pain and suffering for it!!! because that’s what happens when you get involved in that bullshit in any way sigh

also while gortash does not like this situation, he has no ill will towards shadowheart actually, that all goes to zeke as usual. he sees it for what is: zeke dreaming, attempting to hide from him in some way, pretending to be something he’s not. he punishes zeke for that alone. he will drag him out of the shadows into his searing light & their war as he always does.

he does have a conversation with shadowheart (in an emotional outburst she tries to assassinate him for what he did to zeke the night prior and he’s of course aware of her breaking in and all but lets her get through into his room in which he’s waiting for her with a cup of tea lol) and he’s basically telling her that he doesn’t care what happens to her, but that he won’t have to do anything about her transgressions tonight because zeke is going to kill her sooner than later. she ultimately stays with zeke and gortash, zeke expert 9000, is of course right, but again, does not give 2 shits about shadowheart, maybe even preferred this outcome because it caused zeke more suffering.

edit: they are so ‘i love you’ ‘it’ll pass’ coded. sorry

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little sketch of shadowheart and zeke :3

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shadowheart comforting zeke. he tried to bite her before this but she got him with a hug.

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shadowheart x eke moodboard lol

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zeke going from believing that love is nothing but fairytale bullshit to learning that love is real because shadowheart loved him. he could never reciprocate but he knew it was real.

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scene of shady and zeke to this song. “free” is obviously meant to be interpreted differently lol. zeke remembering the blood pact as he goes swimming with her.

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shadowheart/zeke moodboard time wooo!! feel like lying in a puddle

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got tagged by @spyridonya to make a couple in this picrew!! gortash/zeke wouldn’t have worked for obvious reasons so have zeke and shady instead!

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pasting discord rambles here so i can easily access the lore later instead of having to search for 8 billion years pt idk

in the story i don’t think they ever interact besides gort basically telling shadowheart ‘ezekiel is going to kill you sooner or later :) probably sooner. definitely sooner ;P’

and i think the worst part is that he doesn’t really have a lot of ill will towards her. most of his ire is directed at zeke and he sees her as nothing but a mortal zeke is using as a distraction so he’s really like. i do not give a fuck about what happens to you but zeke will kill you btw.

i think while i talk about how zeke is basically daydreaming escaping his real life in the thing with shadowheart shadowheart is also doing that to a degree. this conversation with gortash is one of the few times in which she’s like. concious of the fact that zeke WILL kill her one day and that gortash is right. sadly she ignores this and even if she didn’t it would have been way too late. one of the few times someone should’ve listened to gort sigh

like. it’s hard to describe why exactly but it basically comes down to this ‘equal in divinity’ thing once again. he’s not doing it to save her life or something shadowheart is a lowly creature just doing what lowly creatures do. it’s irritating but nothing he’s gonna spend much time on. meanwhile zeke, his ‘martyr’, is wallowing in some fantasies of ‘love’ and ‘being a person’ aka he is malfunctioning and gortash fixes it. wakes him up.

oh but he’s definitely talking extremely condescending shit about her. ‘OF COURSE she doesn’t understand you ezekiel she is but a mere mortal she simply couldn’t even if she tried :) she lives according to her nature as a mortal just as we are living according to ours :)’ but again to him that description fits just. everyone with the exception of him & zeke of course so he doesn’t see her as more inferior than most