darkmagicmirror

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(sketch) TDP S7 CONFIRMED LETS GO???

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✨

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This blog was once a mage fam and Aaravos stan account. Now it's mage fam and Aaravos AND Leola.

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“Our family was shattered forever.” Let’s delve into the two images accompanying this line, shall we?

Before the shattering:

Soren is looking up at Viren, who saved his life and he chose to stay with, for comfort, guidance or connection. Viren doesn’t reciprocate, fixated on the loss of his wife. The staff of Ziard, which Viren used to imprison K’ppar and Aaravos crafted for his pawns, is a barrier dividing them that Viren actively holds in place.

Viren and Soren are framed inside the arch furthest away and Claudia to a lesser degree inside the nearer arch, enclosed in the wall, the structure of their family home. They are trapped. Lissa is free. She even blocks part of the wall and archway, visually overpowering it.

Lissa has an arm raised to her chest defensively, no longer feeling safe around Viren; Soren’s arms hang passively at his side; Viren’s posture is stiff, one hand on his staff and the other behind his back (as he’s becoming a more emotionally repressed and manipulative person who doesn’t always want to show his hand, so to speak); and Claudia’s are desperately, futilely reaching out to Lissa.

The children are both between their parents. Claudia is closer to Lissa, alone in her section of the frame. Soren is right next to Viren, making their height difference and power dynamic more obvious.

Claudia is Viren’s shadow, which is framed as a bridge between Viren and Lissa in this brief instant before Lissa takes another step - darkness connects to her to her family. As with Soren, Viren doesn’t show any interest in her. Unlike Soren, her distance from him is her choice. She’s running ahead of him in the direction he’s facing, like in his dark magic dream where she follows in his footsteps and then surpasses him.

Claudia’s left leg is barely visible under her dress, looking almost like the stump it will eventually be reduced to.

Only Lissa and Claudia are crying. A link has recently been established between tears and dark magic, and while Lissa had a bodily fluid harvested for a spell against her will, Claudia will volunteer her blood when a spell demands it.

The light is literally behind the family with shadow surrounding them, indicating sunrise or sunset. Sunset would be most thematically appropriate for the last memory of the whole family, but it would make sense for Lissa to start her long journey at dawn in a time and place with such limited artificial illumination (especially without the use of dark magic). It is a new dawn for her as an independent woman, after all.

After the shattering:

The point of origin is Lissa, as her decisions to divorce Viren and let the children choose who to live with, leading to Viren raising them on his own, define the new state of the family. All the cracks radiate outward from her forehead, her mind, and she’s by far the most fractured. That’s a worrying picture of her mental health. The cracks break and distort her family and their home, but she cannot see this and clearly doesn’t intend it.

The same crack crosses through Soren and Viren and another vertical one descends part of the way between them as well. It hasn’t fully divided them yet, but it will.

Soren is gone except for his legs and head. His head - still searching for something in his father - is even lower and further away from Viren. None of the others are diminished like this. The imagery of a severed head and missing torso full of vital organs ironically evokes death, despite his preserved life and perfect health. Viren doesn’t kill him, but he will destroy much of his spirit.

Viren is almost completely duplicated, in contrast to Soren being eclipsed. His copy is fainter, shorter and overlaps partly with Soren’s legs, as if he’s replacing his son and the man he might grow into with a vision of himself. Perhaps he’s in two minds about the path he’s chosen? Or beside himself with grief under that cold exterior? He takes up more space, but is also broken and trapped more tightly in the fractures. Like Soren, part of him is lost; he’s the only one to have what appears to be a missing shard interrupt his depiction with a slice of nothingness, reflecting the piece of his soul that he’s turned into a black void. The head of his staff being above Soren’s legs represents dark magic replacing Viren’s relationship with his son in his life.

Claudia is actually intact, but a duplication of one of her legs is cut off. This may reference how she will duplicate her lower limbs into five tentacles and then have one of those cut off, Rayla probably thinking it was an extra that wouldn’t correlate to her human leg. Like Viren, she’s boxed in by the cracks, which draw lines between her and the rest of her family on all sides. Viren and Soren share a shard with Lissa, but Claudia doesn’t. Her indecisiveness has left her even more isolated.

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nothing tragic ever happened to them what do you mean

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I love u aaravos….

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I ❤️ 19 year olds with extreme mental turmoil

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Imagine being a human at the time after Leola's fall.

Apparently the impact was a devastating event, so you'd have your own troubles, but afterwards humans in the area would still have noticed what was going on in the crater:

A giant just kneeling there, crying and not stopping. Crying for years. Sometimes people dare to approach him, but he doesn't notice or care, he just cries, clearly anguished. He was already there when you were born and the crater only contained a salty lake. But over time the giant creates a whole ocean with his tears, and he is still crying when you die of old age, leaving you to wonder if he will eventually drown the whole world. And you never learn why.

Haunting.

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aaravos was right actually because if a bunch of weird ass star cops murdered my autistic daughter in front of me and then i was imprisoned in a crater with her bones and filled with my tears by the fuckass dragon who ratted out my daughter I would have totally committed The Atrocities too

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After making this post, I noticed that there's another moment where Aaravos soothes Leola's dissociation/hand flapping.

It's before the Trial even starts! It was very blink and miss. I even had to watch at half speed her just to see everything he does. The first several times I watched this scene, I wondered why he had to walk around the disk to see her, and then I realized it was because she was dissociating already! She doesn't respond to his arrival, even though she's aware - she's just frozen. (Shout to his very visible shock and worry)

And just like I mentioned in the first post, he gets down to her level and touches her shoulder.

and in this case, runs his hand own her arm, and gently squeezes her hand once with two fingers, and when he knows she's alert, he puts his hand on her shoulder again. (I love his expression in these frames too)

He has this down to an art. He has done this enough that it works even in this one exceptionally frightening situation for her.

Something very, very interesting is that Aaravos doesn't speak to her in this moment (they don't even talk until the execution), because he knows his daughter well enough that not going to be able to answer him in this moment.

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Ok yes, we're all very excited about the Autism rep with Leola's hand stimming, but I also want to talk about Aaravos' Autism Dad King interaction with it.

The other thing I notice is that she seems to have dissociated a little bit - and it seems like Aaravos noticed before he got on the ground with her.

She stops when he holds her shoulders, bringing her back to focus.

And then guides her when she's the one that pulls in to cuddle. Not just as an emotional comfort, but for sensory pressure....and on Aaravos' end, demonstrating his affection before the court as he had been the whole time, with the certainty that it may be one of his last chances. (Additionally, reinforcing my theory of Startouch cultural practice that parents wear the center of their bodies open. Leola might have just needed it longer/didn't like the feeling of fabric against her face)

And he holds her until she's grounded enough to break off on her own terms and return to the ear-covering/rocking stim (where she seemed less dissociated)

At which point he helps her hide behind him as she had been before the dissociation, shielding her from whatever Star Councilor is talking before them at moment.

And that's just one significant example of how he addresses her combination sensory/comfort needs during the trail. All while pleading for her life and speaking on her behalf since she's nonverbal in this moment. There are a few smaller moments too, but this is the one that stuck out to me.

(And then he couldn't even verbally console her until they were alone when they only had moments left!!!)

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My dude was really playing thousands of years of long game just to set up the death of the guy that snitched on his baby girl and then taunt him to his face as he was dying.

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the stars, the moon, they have all been blown out

you’ve left me in the dark

[id: a digital portrait of leola from the dragon prince. a young elven girl with purple and blue skin with stars as freckles. she has long white hair with a magenta galaxy-like underside and small braids framing her face. she has magenta eyes and a single purple horn, like a unicorn’s, coming from her forehead. she wears a sleeveless high-necked deep purple top with a star in the middle of her chest, glowing. she is looking up, the background around her featuring tendrils of smoke and a burst of lines behind her. end id]

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Important news from The Dragon Prince Season 6: Ezran has a sign name!

[Image description: A scene from The Dragon Prince showing Gren and Amaya. Amaya's right hand is in the E handshape, with fingers and thumb curled inward toward the palm. Her hand is held on the left side of her chest.]

Amaya moves her hand slightly downward and diagonally after this scene. It was unclear to me if this is part of Ezran's sign name or just the transitional movement to the next word Amaya signs, but a friend of mine who knows ASL says it looks like the second movement is part of the name. This means Ezran's sign name incorporates the sign for "king," which uses a diagonally downwards movement across the torso.

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WIP

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where the villain arc really started