#{ care you caleb! }

[thelonelywhale]

No you don't understand how important it is to me that Caleb and Essek have this soft, deep, profound love for each other. These two people who were so broken and saw themselves as so damaged and irredeemable and utterly damned, having the chance to heal together and cultivate this sweet, gentle relationship with each other. The fact that they can now carve out moments of joy together, that they proved you can change and better yourself, with time and effort and love.

Matt taking the time to show that even in just a few little ways, to let Essek express his love so casually and with so much reverence and care is just AUGH. That's how you do redemption arcs. He understood the assignment. That's not only respecting the players for the time they put in to creating these characters and their pathways for growth, but also saying to your players (and viewers), "it's possible. Everyone deserves a second chance at happiness."

They redeemed themselves, together.

[somewhatsentientspellbook]

"he's so strong..........of heart"

[soath]

“essek wants the gods dead” “oooh, this is going to change essek’s mind about the gods” i’m sorry but that boy is a cultural luxonite. he has no strong opinions on the gods other than ‘well, they sure empirically exist’. he might have some issues with his home faith (understatement) but he was still raised in an ancient battlefield literally scarred by the horrors of the calamity where the prime deities are a bunch of affectionately tolerated minority cults. his entire society thinks they transcended the need for Gods with Shapes and my man is not immune to the luxon-centric chauvinism of his upbringing.

sure, given another few years under ludinus’ thumb he could have probably been swayed to team deicide, but that’s not where’s he’s at. where he’s at is hanging out in rexxentrum, getting made fun of by caleb for referring to the dawnfather as ‘an influential, if over anthropomorphized solar deity’. you can take the elf out of rosohna but you can’t take rosohna out of the elf. the gods? well, fjord and caduceus are very fond of theirs (tone of someone describing their friends’ baffling but periodically lifesaving hobby). he technically works for one now through the cobalt soul and he can respect her ethos. after that he runs out of things to say about them.

now the luxon, on the other hand… he’s watching this entire directors cut triple-feature like a hawk. trying to divine the secrets of the universe from a reality show and it might just work.

[amoritasart]

He learned from the best ! ☺️

Meanwhile Caleb

Based on my AU

[brookesmartt]

Levitation Cantrip

I could make him so much worse.

Essek: Me! (@_brookesmart_ on other platforms)

Caleb: Tory Hatcher (@ Tory.Hatcher on other platforms)

Photography by Jessi wills ( @thatjessiwills )

[c-kiddo]

i try with all my might not to be a hater but i just got to episode 100 on my cr2 rewatch and i keep thinking abt this moment in ep99 when tmn straight up ask essek about how it feels to see that adeen (who he framed for his own actions) is in chains instead of him, and essek replies "honestly, freeing" ..... 😐

[meadowsofmay]

c1: liam narrating vax showcasing care through braiding/taking care of the hair of his favorite women

c2: sam narrating nott braiding flowers into caleb's hair under the belief of given protection even though he is dirty and kinda reluctant but still allowing her

[simmersofia]

Kale: Woah! What happened to your hair??!!

Johnny: I shaved it all off in a panic spiral.

K: I thought you were gonna pee on a stick.

J: HENCE. THE. PANIC. SPIRAL.

K: Just do it, you’ll feel better once we know. And since you refuse to go to a doctor, this is the best we can do in this situation.

J: It’s positive, K.

K: Oh my—

J: My life is over. I’m a freak of nature. They’re gonna wanna do all sorts of freaky tests on me, Caleb! I can’t deal with puking, what if there’s puking involved?? How is this thing coming OUT??! I wanted to travel to Tomarang sometime, what if I never get to go there now? People say you can travel with a baby, but they are all lying!

K: Hey, baby, calm down.

J: I’m not ready to be a dad, Kale.

K: We’re gonna be parents, Johnny. Together.

[le-ki]

darling id dance my dreams away so long as I danced with you

[essektheylyss]

💕 and 💙 for the ask meme?

💕: What is an unpopular ship that you like?

I really think that Yussa and Essek could have a very funny fling as, like, Essek's rebound relationship down the line. I don't know if this is unpopular, because for a while it was a thing people joked about all the time, but also where did that energy go.

Actually I'm going to use this to get on a small soapbox but like, as a whole I think fandom has kind of moved away from making fanworks for non-canon ships when one or both characters are in a canon ship, but I do find it fairly difficult to write ship fic for non-canon ships in this fandom (and campaign 2) in particular because the canon ships are so well-established in their respective stories, so I really do feel the need to flesh out and justify why a different relationship is happening, and I don't think I'm alone in this in that most fic I've seen for even ships that have some canon basis do feel the need to do this! And some of the strongest fic I've seen for non-canon ships do actually put thought into this, so I don't think it's a bad thing at all, but I do sometimes feel like I should write more fic with less justification for ships that aren't canon. But it's so HARD to write even short fic for ships that aren't yet established cuz wdym I gotta do all the leg work here. If I wanted to do that I wouldn't be procrastinating on my editing.

💙: Which character is not as hot as everyone else seems to think?

Oh god, I have honestly so many answers to this question. The one that I think is most egregious is definitely Molly, but with the caveat that Kingsley is actually that hot because he gives less of a vibe that he needs people to think he's hot, which is the absolute least hot thing you can do.

[uncanny-tranny]

Femininity isn't even one percent as degrading as the men who police other men's perceived amount of femininity with micro-levels of scrutiny

[its-your-mind]

on this the eve of the m9 reunion I for one would like to wish the most VISIBLE of weeks to canon aspec icons caduceus clay and essek thelyss. both have AMAZING senses of fashion. have worked hard to be POWERFUL spellcasters. can walk into a room and have an IMMEDIATE vibe check on every person in it. have not a SINGLE social skill between them. an absolute pleasure to have them both playing for the “eh… don’t get it” team. ty matt and taliesin for your service.

[pandoratheprocrasticreator]

now that the gang’s learned a little more about who caleb was and what he looks like i wonder how long it’s going to take for hunter to realize that not only does he look like caleb now, but he’s making the same choices caleb did. he has brown eyes and longer hair like caleb. he’s interested in wild magic like him. he has at least one surrogate sibling (luz), maybe two (gus), that he wants to take care of like caleb took care of phillip. depending on what his deal with willow is he may have even fallen in love with a witch like caleb did. he doesn’t know about how caleb might have been a woodcarver like hunter himself wants to be, and he probably doesn’t know the specifics of flapjack’s relationship with caleb. but with flapjack’s soul bouncing around in hunter’s mindscape now (?) and what gus saw of phillip’s life, hunter might find out about it in the next two specials.

and like. hunter’s entire arc is about individualism. he’s been told what he’s supposed to be his entire life and he wants to decide what he wants to do for himself. idk what he’ll think of caleb after hearing his story but whether he thinks caleb is still bad or not hunter isn’t going to want to live his life exactly like caleb does. and if he considers his appearance and life choices, i feel like it would horrify him for a bit to realize he’s been unconsciously mimicking caleb all along. especially if you add in a few more scenes of belos referring to hunter as caleb in his inevitable confrontation with the main characters.

so i wonder if this revelation is going to cause a breakdown in hunter’s relationships, hobbies, etc. like we already saw him do a 3 am mental breakdown haircut because he didn’t want to look like caleb. he loves luz, gus, and willow with all his heart ofc but it would be interesting if we see him interact with them and recoil, even subconsciously, because he thinks this is exactly how caleb interacted with people in his life, and good or bad, hunter wants to reject everything that had to do with caleb.

ofc the satisfying conclusion to this arc would be for hunter to recognize that although his life choices parallel caleb’s on a surface level, they are still his choices and his choices alone. he can’t let what caleb would have done control his life, and that includes rejecting things that caleb did specifically because caleb did them. i’m not sure if i actually want them to do it bc it seems like it would take up a lot of screentime and they still need to tie up the arcs of other characters but it would be cool to see themes of it

[crimeronan]

loving that there's no real confirmation (unless i missed st) of whether caleb is an actual ghost or a manifestation of belos's guilt or a hallucination or a tattered unreliable mindscape fragment or something else entirely because it.... doesn't matter. it doesn't matter. it does not matter it makes no thematic difference it does not matter. the story is always the same the ending is the same the choices are the same the ruin is the same. caleb has been haunting the narrative for the whole show but he's always been tied intrinsically to belos alone, his memory and the corruption of that memory have been belos's driving force for centuries. caleb appears as a gaunt vengeful shade who exists exclusively in belos's narrative because that's what he's always been he's always been haunting belos he's always been haunting the story we're just seeing all that between-the-lines ghostly presence splashed on screen. holy wow i love a good character who has always been dead since the beginning and who only exists as a flawed recollection to an unreliable narrator and who will never be alive and who will never change the present and who will never be anything but dust and bones.

[dawnbreakersgaze]

Today I asked myself the question:

"What if Zayne's Slut Suit but Grey-er?"

The answer was yes. A very very resounding yes. Because Grey looks good in everything (as long as I don't curse it by trying to draw a full smile 😩 but dont worry cursed Greyson can't hurt you here shhhhh)

[theprinceandthewitch]

I know I've talked abt this to death, but I still can't get over how Lumity and Huntlow shippers tried to claim Caleb and Evelyn as their own.

Even though Hunter is literally a clone of Caleb and he has the same exact character arc Caleb had. And Willow doesn't fill in the role of "a witch from another world who lured Philip's brother away from him" like Luz does.

I will never quite get over what Huntlows and Lumitys tried to do, because it is the most audacious example of biphobia I've ever seen in a fandom space.

People know on some level, Luz likes princes - it's something that is brought up twice. Luz goes on a quest with a prince and she writes a story where her self-insert kisses a prince. And they're also aware that Luz and Hunter fit the roles of Caleb and Evelyn to a tee. But something in them just can't handle it - the possibility of a bisexual woman writing a story where the bisexual girl has undeniable romantic subtext with a boy is disgusting to them.

Luz is bisexual, but she can't actually be bisexual because most people in LGBTQ+ spaces don't view bisexuality as a legitimate sexuality. People legit see Luz breaking up with her girlfriend to date a boy as an example of homophobia and the writers wanting "to turn her straight." Luz's bisexuality is only valid if she dates girls and is still dating a girl by the time the story ends. Basically bisexuality is only valid if the bisexual "chooses to be gay" because if they don't, then they were always ''straight'' and should be casted out from their own community. It doesn't matter that Hunter is bisexual and that m/f pairings between two bisexuals are non existent in media. Because Hunter and Luz would "look straight" if they started to date, it renders this important and vital bisexual representation as "straight representation." Because for some reason, people have it in their heads that straight people can relate to the bisexual experience and vice versa.

But yeah, the kneejerk fear and hatred that the Caleb/Evelyn = Lunter parallels invoke in people would be funny if it wasn't downright biphobic lol