#anyways <3 pain

[notebooks-and-laptops]

People do not talk enough about how amazing Lae'zels voice acting is. Devora Wilde put her whole ass pussy into some of those lines but nobody pays attention and calls laezel one note and angry. But have you listened? Have you heard her voice shake as she cries "what good - this heart of stone - for it to be shattered?" Have you heard the conviction where she declares that Vlaketh has sinned against her? Have you listened to the fear in her voice, the slight tremble when she is talking of becoming a mindflayer and the way that she has utter awe in her tones when she experiences something that is truly spiritual to her? Like. It's such a subtle and great performance.

[lilybug-02]

Pain is a great motivator…

Part 26 || First || Previous || Next

—Full Series—

Meanwhile Toriel:

(Loud noises don't wake her up usually.)

Artist note: I’m so proud of this :))) I know it’s a lot of dialogue and reading, but dialogue is grueling work for me. I’m glad with the art and for the amount of pages I made in such a relatively short time span -w- page 5 was super fun to work on. A lot of blood, sweat, and hours here... :) The backgrounds were a big bore tbh, but I finished them! Yippie!

[tagerrkix]

rage.

[arsuf]

"You might have made me what I am, but I can be so much more than what you created me to be." 🧛

[missmolsa]

Truly the family of all time <3

[iooiu]

playing around with future donnie’s design and all i can say for sure is this:

1) lose an arm gain three

2) dies

[nailsinmywall]

Descendants of finwë (incl. kidnapped children): sons and daughters of fëanor, fingolfin and finarfin

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

some misc scribbles <3

[temeyes]

took the three of them to our outing today! the Bois had fun!

[ivypond11]

it's been a week and i still haven't recovered </3 so i did a little sketch with this scene between normal and scary because it fucked me up and i need more moments of them comforting and caring for each other

[ride-a-dromedary]

[I'm sorry for your loss.] It was a long time ago. The wounds don't heal, but they become more bearable.

[kaltacore]

no but essek's abnormal behaviours in the last arc and especially in episode 140 are my roman empire. which is ironic because aeor is something of a roman empire itself. but in all seriousness, it was the episode that made me realise i love essek and his development so much and it kinda summarised it even before caleb's epilogue.

and i mean the "it's not fair" scene specifically. it's like, an epitome of his whole character progression from a person who put An Objectively Important Goal above all else without hesitation to someone who can't help but care for people around even more than his goal, no matter how big and relevant it is.

the mighty nein - and he alongside them - pretty much saved the world and freed an ancient city from thousand-year-long suffering. they defeated nine extremely powerful menacing entities who managed to stay out of everyone's sight for years and were so close to achieving their goal and dooming exandria in the process. they did the impossible and became heroes and somehow, they survived, even though they had bidden farewells a couple of hours ago because they had already understood what they had been facing. and nevertheless. they made it.

and none of them was celebrating.

mighty nein are basically essek's only friends. he knew them to be very unusual people, to put it lightly, loud and stubborn and completely inescapable once they consider you to be one of their own. and they showed him so much kindness and put so much faith in him, they were here playing the most atrocious music ever and digging clay in his backyard for a spell they invented just to help one of theirs and asking him if he could bring them pastries the day after they found out he was lying to them and had started a war. they were chaotic and weird and sometimes unbearable but most importantly they were carrying so much hope with them all this time - a hope they could end the war, a hope they could stop the angel of irons cult, a hope they could get better, a hope he could get better, and now, finally, that they could save their lost friend.

and that hope shattered, just like that, the moments after they'd already made the impossible. they saved so many souls - and then could not get back just that one.

for essek "my intentions were never good they were important" thelyss it just. shouldn't have mattered. they won. it could have been worse. people die and when they die they rarely come back. they should've been happy everyone else barely made it alive.

but for some reason, mighty nein being so defeated after they saved the world exposed him to that overwhelming feeling of injustice and unfairness. and i mean, there were many things essek considered to be unfair, but when i watched his first appearance and his interactions with mighty nein later on til their reunion in aeor arc, i wouldn't dare to guess that one of the things on that list would be something that personal. and personal not even to him.

the thing is, essek didn't even know who that guy was. why mighty nein cared about him so much. he had an idea, i guess, that he was their friend once, or someone in that body was. it was also a person who wanted to unleash a terrifying horrific aberration onto the material plane. it was a person very dedicated to killing essek and his friends - and they still didn't take any pleasure in fighting him. essek didn't feel strongly about lucien or molly, because he never knew them.

i don't think he mourned his death and failed resurrection. he mourned mighty nein's hope, the one they put in him when they had no reason to, the one they offered yasha in the cathedral and the one they kept after the spell for veth failed and the one they carried til the very end because they wanted it to reach molly. they had saved people with this hope. they had saved nations. they had saved the world. but they ended up feeling like it hadn't even been worth anything.

how desperate would it feel, witnessing people who for some reason always saw good in you when they absolutely shouldn't, who made literal miracles out of nothing, who ended wars and fought gods and tricked the hags and freed cities from horrors beyond anyone's comprehension purely because they thought it was the right thing to do and also loved their friends this much, silently crying over a dead body they couldn't bring back to life? how desperate would it feel to realise that with all your knowledge about time you dedicated your life to and threw away any principles for, you can't undo this? no one can. some things are left to fate alone and this time it wasn't kind to them. no matter how much good they did, they still got slapped in the face.

and it was, i think, such a genuine moment of empathy. like, essek is the character who prefers to put up a facade and act distant and self-composed but this time he just. walked away unable to watch this. the could only say to fjord that it wasn't fair. even when he was caught off guard in nicodranas he was able to explain himself and his motives to an extent even though he was a nervous wreck whose extra important plan went to hell the second the only people he cared about appeared. this time he had nothing to elaborate on. it just wasn't fair. it wasn't fair his friends didn't get what they wanted the most. it wasn't fair he couldn't do anything to make it right.

it is such a sad and beautiful and even cathartic scene because it is about person who started a war that destroyed so many lives - and then met this ragtag group of weirdos who saw a lonely stand-offish guy and said "hey, let's be friends!" and didn't even wait for him to answer. he saw them being serious and calculated and he saw them being ridiculous and extremely stupid, he saw their mistrust to outsiders and their loyalty to each other, he made spells with them and paid a visit to their hot tub, he ate their stale pastries and drank their hot chocolate mixed with whiskey, he was welcomed amongst them and in their wonderful home, both in xhorhas before they even found out what he had done and in the tower when they already knew - and then, he saw them mourning their loss, defeated and helpless, and he, a person who believed there were things more important than whole nations, let alone just one life, couldn't help but share the pain they felt. a pure display of compassion from someone who detached himself from it, who didn't believe he could grow into a better person capable of it again, but became one nonetheless without even realising it

[varilien]

he is so unicorncoded. to me.

[skyberia]

néphos/astarion stuff from... the recent past

[korokonas]

Big fan of Meryl

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

some Friendly Maintenance scribbles i forgot to post!