#because it's just who he is

[blood-orange-juice]

It feels so weird having a centrist stance (if it can be called so) in most Childe debates. People want him to be just one thing so badly.

I think whatever dichotomy you can come up with he's probably both.

He's a sweet boy and also an abyssal horror, neither part is a mask.

He obviously has cPTSD but also a lot of his behaviours that look like trauma-induced responses are just him, real him. To deal with trauma you have to dig deep enough to find the real you and, well, that's what he found.

He's obviously Abyss-tainted but it's for his goals and seems voluntary and he's very much in control of himself, so can you really say it's not him?

He does need help and acceptance but no way it will make him "normal".

Remember that domain inside Canotila's book? A dog who was a dog and a rifthound at the same time. I think he's that.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Knowledge Revenge.

[artkaninchenbau]

Crocodile finds a strange stray cat an 11-year old Nico Robin (AU where they met 13 years earlier. Robin's been on the run from the World Government for 3 years. Crocodile's 27 and has not set up base in Alabasta yet)

It seems like I have become possessed. By some sort of demon.

Bonus:

[roninkairi]

You can only reblog this today.*

*PLEASE READ THE TAGS

[k3yreviewer25]

One of my favorite hobbies is thinking about the fucked up implications of this fantasy world map my parents got me for christmas

[Image ID: photo of a map. On the left side of the map is Middle Earth, with the Shire and Mordor labeled. To the direct right of Mordor is Whoville.]

[cozylittleartblog]

"content creator" is a corporate word.

we are artists.

[onesidedradiostatic]

stayed gone but you're the sinners watching/listening

(AKA I spend an unnecessary amount of time editing)

[nerdpoe]

Danny's found a way to dodge GIW trackers, as well as his parents. Their equipment hunts ghosts, ghosts run on emotion; so as long as he keeps his under a tight lid and doesn't feel anything ever, they won't be able to track him.

It works!

He's able to run from them, and goes as far as New Jersey. The plan was to stow away on a ship, and go to literally any country that wasn't America. He goes to Gotham, which hosts the one harbor he knows where no one will ask any questions.

But because of how weird he acted (completely emotionless during a Joker attack), he was fingered by police immediately.

He's handed over to CPP. CPP doesn't know what to do with a teen literally so traumatized that they don't show any emotion at all, ever. He keeps just...walking out of his placements. Just leaves without a sound.

Luckily, he's always caught, due to those placement houses having quiet alarms and him refusing to run.

They call the one foster parent they know who does.

Bruce Wayne takes in the strange, nameless kid who refuses to talk.

On paper, they gave him the filler name of 'John Doe', for lack of anything better to do.

Bruce does everything he can to make the newest arrival feel at home. Damian, for as territorial as he is, actually breaks out of his shell sooner than expected just to try to get the new kid to speak. To emote. To do something. Duke tries the open approach, then tries the 'no one will ever know, everyone thinks I'm an innocent goody-two-shoes' approach. Nada.

Tim even tries to trick him into talking, but nothing works.

Enter Dick; Dick heard about Bruce's new ward, about the situation, and decided to see if he could get the kid to open up.

Danny though. Danny's in trouble.

The Wayne Manor is weirdly secure, and he can't just walk away like he did his other placements. He can't use ghost powers or the GIW and his parents will immediately know where he is.

He really, really wants to take Bruce up on his offer and just spend the day relaxing. Respond to Damian's attempts to provoke him. Overshare about space facts with Tim.

But most of all, he really, desperately wants to get in a Pun Competition with Dick. He wants to laugh at Dick's jokes, and learn coolass gymnastic tricks!

But he can't!

If he relaxes with Bruce, he'll be content, which is an emotion. If he argues with Damian, he'll get annoyed, which is an emotion. If he sneaks out with Duke and breaks the rules, he'll get happy, which, again, emotion. If he overshares with Tim, he'll get excited, which is, yet again, an emotion!

The worst sin of all, he can't even show proper appreciation of the food the Butler keeps making him!

And now there's even more people coming over!

There's a quiet girl who keeps reading his body language and trying to get him to dance ballet, a blonde girl who keeps trying to kidnap him to take him to BatBurger, a guy with a stripe of white who wants to take him to a shooting range, and it just...he really, really wants to!

He wants to do all these cool things with them!

But he fucking can't!

[anna-scribbles]

last one i promise(<—lie)

[wu-does-art]

coming out as a "Will snores obnoxiously loud" and "Nico breaths so quietly you can barely tell hes alive" truther

[loriache]

"I've been waiting for ages for somebody to unmask them."

This moment tends to elicit negative reactions in a first read through, and I've got some opinions about why where Kabru is coming from here actually makes a lot of logical sense. So I thought I'd elaborate on that.

I think people hear this and go, "He thinks they must be hiding something because they gave money to someone? What a cynic." Or "he dislikes them because they did charity?? What's wrong with this guy!". And obviously, a lot, a lot is wrong with him. But I think this makes more sense than it seems at first glance! What people evaluating this judgement miss is why Kabru is paying attention to Laios and co to begin with.

Kabru knows of the Touden siblings because (he's a little bit of a stalker-) he is keeping an eye on all the relevant parties in events developing on the island, in order to be able to guide them to his preferred outcome. This includes adventurers because they are the ones actually exploring the dungeon! He's well aware that something as minor as internal tensions between party members could be key to the historical events that are developing. (He would love the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.)

His desired outcome is that whatever the rewards are of breaking the dungeon's curse, whether that's kingship or the ancient elven secrets of dungeons, are claimed by:

A) a short lived person

B) Someone who will be a good, effective leader and/or use those secrets and the power they carry wisely, with foresight, and to establish a political bloc for short lived people.

The person he can best trust to do this is, of course, himself. But due to his PTSD regarding dungeons and monsters, he's not able to develop the necessary skills to conquer the dungeon. Once he realises this, he starts looking for someone else who he can support to that end.

But most of the adventurers don't have any intentions of conquering the dungeon, don't have the skills, or are unsuitable in other ways. In fact, it seems like some potentially suitable people are the Toudens. There are a lot of good rumours about them going around - they actually seem to have a very positive reputation! That's what Kabru means when he says "unmask".

So when Kabru is observing something like them giving money to an old comrade from their gold-peeling days, he doesn't consider it a problem because "they're giving money to this person who doesn't actually need it" or because they must have some dark secret if they act superficially nice. I think he actually understands this situation and what it implies about Laios (in particular) perfectly well.

Laios and Falin gave money to an old comrade who got injured and couldn't work. That person then healed up but kept taking their money. Then he used the money to start smuggling illicit goods to the island.

The key is that for Kabru, the problem here is the same as with the corpse retrievers - people using the dungeon's resources to fuel dangerous, selfish, or violent pursuits cause problems for the island, attract more criminals and people with motives other than breaking the curse, and increase the chances of the whole situation ending in tragedy.

Kabru is willing to work with the Shadow Lord of the island if it gets him to his goal - he isn't scrupulous - but the criminal element of the island increasing is something he sees as a major issue.

Also, when you're evaluating someone as a candidate for power, riches, secrets, potentially kingship - then being curious about how the money you give to people is going to be used is kind of a relevant trait!

Interpersonally, Kabru's actually very easygoing - I mean, Mickbell isn't exactly an upstanding guy, is he! But Kabru likes him and they get along well. These traits wouldn't be a problem at all in a friend, or a comrade, or someone Kabru was confident he could use. But he can't get a handle on Laios, and Laios is someone who has the potential to be a major player!

On Laios' end, this is the same as with the marriage seeker who joined their party. She kept asking for things and he gave them to her, because he tries to be nice to others. He even gives her money! It's the exact same thing.

That's fine, but it became a problem because he basically wasn't interested in her motives, didn't notice she was trying to manipulate him, and it also didn't occur to him that the other party members would notice or be affected. We can assume the situation with the gold peeler is the same. When Kabru says that "It's not that they're bad people, they just aren't interested in humans," he isn't wrong.

The extent to which this is true of Laios is linked to his autism imo, (because it isn't just disinterest - he genuinely isn't able to notice nonverbal cues that people are lying to him or have ulterior motives) but to a greater or lesser extent I think it's a very common trait. Most people aren't actually that interested in other people who aren't close to them. Kabru is the weird one here. It isn't an issue except as a leader - which is why we see an immediate comparison to the Island's Lord, because that's how Kabru is evaluating them.

And disinterest in/lack of ability with people to the extent Laios exhibits it, it does, actually, make him a worse leader... it's just that as we see in the story, people can help him out. The rest of the party tell him the marriage seeker is taking advantage of him so he tells her he can't give her special treatment anymore. They're pissed and it's a crisis point - he couldn't have recovered their trust without Marcille and Falin - but that's exactly the point. With Marcille and Falin, he was able to recover their trust.

And he has other good traits that make up for it, such as his intelligence, strategic knowledge, open-mindedness and sense of fairplay.

Kabru doesn't disqualify Laios as a candidate based on what he sees about him from afar, though - he still tries very hard to get close to him, obviously hoping that if he manages he can steer Laios to defeat the dungeon and make up for his lack of people-skills in the aftermath. (Which... he does eventually achieve that goal!) He completely fails until the events of the story, so... definitely I think "They just aren't interested in humans" could also partially be a stung reaction to Laios' complete disinterest in him.

Anyway, that's my read on what exactly Kabru's "issue" with Laios is. Obviously, once he does find out what Laios' true nature is like - about his love for monsters - he develops an entirely new set of fears about Laios' priorities. But since Laios kept that a secret until the start of the story, he has no idea of that yet.

Given all that, I think it's interesting that he says that he doesn't think that the Toudens are suitable to defeat the dungeon, and that he's hoping they'll turn out to be the thieves. As some of his few potential candidates, people who he thinks may play a big role in the island's future, you'd think he'd hope they would be good people!

I suppose it's better, in his eyes, because it means that he's involved in something "interesting". They haven't just had their stuff stolen by regular criminals (boring, puts them further away from his goal) - they've been caught up in the beginning stages of "a historic event". The desperate and dwindling group forgetting morals in their quest to retrieve their lost comrade probably appeals to his sense of melodrama. Because he also just... loves drama.

Despite it being "uglier than anything he was expecting", he still pursues Laios as the person he wants to conquer the dungeon pretty much as soon as it becomes clear that he won't be able to do it himself and they are out of time. That's because... well, to be fair, there aren't any other options. And he fits standard A: he's short-lived!

and Kabru still hopes he can fit standard B, too, and be persuaded to use the power he wins for good. No matter how many nightmares he has about Laios, or whether he thinks about killing him. He doubts him, but ultimately he puts his faith in him and seems happy after the manga's ending that he made the right decision.

[corviiids]

got into bg3 a few months ago and it's about time i inflicted my astarion posts on tumblr. i sure post about him a lot. you'll never guess who my favourite character is. that's right! it's gale

[selenityshiroi]

Zelda travelling around Hyrule after the Calamity and people are tripping over themselves to tell her stories about the Hero because they love that feral cryptid mad man and are so proud of him

'I met him when I was about to get eaten by a Hinox...he jumped off a horse, fired 12 arrows in the blink of an eye and then got smacked in the face with a tree...but then he came back and hacked away at it's legs with this stupidly big sword until it finally died'

'He was wearing this weird patched together mask that looked like a monster but he made enough curry for everyone so we didn't like to ask'

'But...the hero was a girl? She wore these lovely green silks and every time she came out of the Gerudo Canyon she had a bag full of electric safflina to sell to Beedle over there. The Gerudo think she's an amazing fighter, which says a lot, and she always thanked me for looking after her horses when she went into the desert'

'I swear to Hylia that he ran through here wearing nothing but his underwear and a mask shaped like a leaf...claimed he was looking for the Children of the Forest. Sorry, Princess, but I'm not sure he was quite right in the head at the time'

'He used to creep in here silently wearing this grey mask and with enough lizards and beetles that we could make enough elixirs to last for a month. Not sure I ever saw his face without it'

And the entire time Link is stood neatly dressed, three steps away, listening to every word and no one pays him the slightest bit of attention. Because none of them cotton on that 'prim and proper Royal Knight' Link and 'I will defeat this Lynel with a stick, a pot lid and a bucket load of adrenaline' Wild Child Hero is the same man. Especially with how many masks he owned.

When they walk away and are out of sight and earshot Zelda just raises her eyebrow with a smile and he is like '...I can explain...it made sense at the time'

[oscarlovesthesea]

ok but he was fully flirting here. I think it's so funny that Charles was like "idk if I'm in love with you but we have all eternity to figure it out" and then literally an episode later he was like "welp time to start thinking about this!" and immediately started openly flirting with Edwin. you go bisexual king

[hyenaa-euphoria]

hope 1/???

more angst!! i am actually building an au around this comic but I’ve never done aus before so like this is new to me!!!

[egophiliac]

I have SO many thoughts about everything and they are in no kind of order yet, so here's just some quick little bits in the meantime!

I am not normal about any of these characters!