#choices kade

[storyofmychoices]

This is hitting so hard. The amount it hurts is just 😭😭😭😭😭

I don't like angst. 💔

To know Mal was without Daenarya for a year. That man. My heart breaks for him.

Then to know he still starts their orphanage. My entire heart. But she wasn't there. It was her orphanage too. And she wasn't there. He saved the children but without her. It's so so bittersweet and it's hitting so hard.

Mal's (and Daenarya's) orphanage is one of my favorite series I've written and to have this version hurts so much. But it's a bittersweet hurt because I am so so so proud of Mal! I am so happy for him. It just hurts me.

[Mal Volari x Daenarya Masterlist] [Mal’s Orphanage]

[sophie-summer]

Ok, but can we talk about why Kade didn't get a new outfit. Of all of them, he's the one who needs it the most.

[zhoras-bitch]

Blades, but it's just ✨ women ✨

[chaoticdazefire-new]

Decided to make an edit of all the BOLAS party members

[bedtimegiraffe]

I finally figured out why all the party members in Book 2 come out as so frustratingly self-focused to me.

It's not because they're all struggling with their own stuff. It's all about shelving your agenda- that thing in a relationship where you go, 'You need my support right now, so we're going to worry about my thing later.'

And MC does this constantly.

I just barely escaped death and found out a year passed, but is Kade recovered from the Shadow Court?

I just almost drowned, but it's time to comfort this owlbear cub and unpack Valax's trauma!

I just almost died twice to the Ash Empress, but is Nia coping with being corrupted okay?

Which can be okay. Shelving your agenda is part of a healthy relationship of any kind.

The problem is that no one does it back. I think Tyril and Nia kind of sum up the whole group's attitude:

But I don't think MC was ever going to be 'ready.' Someone else was always going to have to 'unshelve' it for them and make an effort to put the focus on MC.

Now, adventurers don't tend to be particularly well adjusted people. The full party has got maybe 1.5 healthy childhoods and 4 living parents between them (judged pretty generously). But it still feels like the others can't get it together enough to ask if MC is okay. Not that MC really makes it easy! I see MC as someone who is so used to pushing their feelings down to focus on whatever work is in front of them, they almost can't access their own emotions.

Which is why we had the brief glimpses of panic and the breakdown moment in Chapter 17. I think the breakdown makes sense mechanically. Kade is the one character your MC is guaranteed to have a strong connection to and this way it's not gated behind any diamond choices (like some really crucial character moments with Aerin and Valax, no I'm not bitter about it). But that makes it feel like the whole party has been neglecting MC while Kade immediately sees MC and goes, "Dude, you are not okay. Talk to me.'

And MC tries to turn it into comforting Kade! Kade has to actively argue with MC to make them actually acknowledge that they're having a hard time.

MC for some reason can't or won't talk about their own trauma and Kade (who's only been around for 5 minutes) is the one who has to actively force the issue for MC's own good. Which is not a great look for the rest of the found family.

Afterward, Mal and Nia both seem to address it without really getting the point. Mal says, "We know things didn't go the way any of us wanted." (Which could mean... anything. But I'm feeling generous.)

Protecting MC from death is not an equivalent exchange to talking about feelings! It is in fact dodging the feelings by focusing on practicalities again! Y'all better get it together in Book 3, I swear.

Overall, MC constantly delays addressing their own vulnerability and issues to focus on everyone else. And the others don't know how to do the same thing for MC, so the pattern just gets more engrained and damaging.

Except for Kade, my perfect boy.

Sources (they're fun, I promise!):

Screenshots from Neckrone Shen's playthroughs of Blades on YouTube, my go-to for whenever I can't remember something or don't have the screenshots myself.

I think @oh-so-youre-a-nerd's incredible piece 'Take Take Take' kept rattling around in my head until I figured out how to articulate why it felt this way: https://www.tumblr.com/oh-so-youre-a-nerd/736449955360899072/take-take-take?source=share

The language of 'shelving your agenda' came from the very good Cinema Therapy video about Kristoff from Frozen:

[distraughtlesbian]

can i speak my truth ? can i keep it real ? there shouldve been more in-party conflict in blades 2. like obviously mc should’ve gotten to cuss mal out in particular when he was like You Dont Know What We’ve Been Thru as if getting kidnapped and forced into a magically induced coma and getting your blood stolen and having constant benadryl nightmares is a walk in the park lmfao, and also just gotten to talk more about what they went through and how it’s impacted them

but also there should’ve been way more beef between the other party members. like girl if i’m nia and i’m spiralling scorning sleep and food constantly hunting for a way to free MY GIRLFRIEND (!!) from the clutches of some goth elf cunt on top of making the fantasy catholic church christlike again and repressing my inner shadow demon and one of my friends is like “hesdeadjim.png give up also fuck you” and then fucked off to be an alcoholic pit fighter, i wouldve actually just thrown hands when we saw each other next. no magic no nothing just me and my nasty little fingers (covered in paper cuts from all the arcane shadow tomes ive been reading) coming straight for her eye sockets. staff of silverlake should’ve been nia’s weapon and she should’ve leapt into the pit in chapter 4 and clocked imtura in the skull with it.

like you bitches should be CRAZY!!!! you should all have DISORDERS!!!! you should be begging ravens perched on busts for RESPITE AND NEPENTHE from your memories of me !!!!!! the moon should never beam without bringing you dreams of ME and the stars never rise but you feel MY bright eyes. tyril should be half-mad with grief and stress he should be mumbling to himself and seeing mc’s silhouette in dark corners. nia should be clearly and obviously off her fucking rocker and constantly on the verge of self destructing and taking us all out with her. imtura should be constantly blind drunk so she doesn’t have to feel her grief or anything at all really. mal should have been in the wind the second it started looking like mc wasn’t coming back and nobody’s heard from him in months. kade should be in a bottomless pit of grief bc when he was stuck in the shadow realm we never gave up hope and we went to rescue him but now that the tables are turned he’s slowly losing hope and day by day and night by night we recede and he becomes more faithless. threep and loola should be inseparable sleeping in a pile together never beyond a wing-length from one another and keeping obsessive tabs on all the other party members no matter how far-flung across morella they are because they’ve already lost everyone and everything they knew to the shadow court once and they’ll be damned if they lose anything else. also kade and aerin should’ve built up a weird semihostile rapport bc once everything fell apart and everyone went their separate ways it was just the two of them in the whitetower palace and kade would go to his cell and sit out of arm’s reach to vent about his time in the shadow realm and his grief and hopes and fears. they both knew and loved mc, in their own ways, despite how aerin hurt them, and now they’ve both lost them, maybe for good. maybe one day aerin starts talking back

where is the SPICE where is the FLAVOUR? where’s the DRAMA where’s the OOMPH where’s the PANACHE? you cannot look at me and tell me these dysfunctional bitches wouldn’t fall back into their worst habits once the one person who held them all together up and vanished into the void. why am i not ending each chapter feeling like i’ve just gotten punched in the dick bc the love is so obviously still there and that’s why it hurts so bad. they should’ve put their whole budget and pussies into forcing the party to fit themselves back together even though they’ve all grown new sharp edges and keep cutting each other up. they should’ve gone full dark no stars about it. grief is an amputation but hope is incurable hemophilia you bleed and bleed and bleed, plants that are split down the middle dont heal they die, you are a language i am no longer fluent in but still remember how to read, what lived and died between us haunts me still, if someone asked me at the end i’d tell them “put me back in it”, i care what ghosts think of me, come back even as a shadow even as a dream, someone has to leave first this is a very old story there is no other ending to this story, etc, etc, you get it you understand. also the mc should’ve come back WRONG.

[rosepetals1]

did i mention that i love kade? because i love kade. this is a kade appreciation post ❤

[aria-ashryver]

⚕🧾 Blades College AU 🎭⚔

Nia: Philosophy + Religious Studies double major (PhD thesis on the nature of "good" and "evil") Mal: Early Childcare Education Imtura: Pol Sci (w a minor in ecology) Kade: Literature + Classics

Any thoughts on what everyone else's majors would be?

thank you to @korgbelmont and @cassiopeiacorvus for the assets and assembled sprites! individual sprites + comparisons under the cut!

[inlocusmads]

okay but imagine Kade dealing with MC's absence. Everyone's talking about the LIs but imagine our brother.

Kade was held captive in the Shadow Realm for so long. He was so fuckin lonely, so devastated, waiting everyday for MC to come and weighs the possibility of dying or MC dying. It's so difficult. Then when he finally gets rescued, he's quickly thrust into a new friend group. It's the thief guy again, with this tall elf dude and a strong orc who looks like she might knock his teeth out and the princess. Kade is also dealing with the grief of the time lost, that so many things have changed and dealing with the trauma of loss and pain too.

Imagine. Them just returning back to normalcy.

Kade thinks this is it. No more monsters to fight. He's joking when he talks to his sibling about how they're always running off to new adventures. He wants a quiet life telling stories. He's still iffy about getting along with MC's group of friends. It's still so new. They all have many different jokes, experiences that he doesn't know about. He just wants to spend time with his sibling - all that lost time. He doesn't want to think about "a new adventure" getting "whisked away". He's seen the dangers. He enjoys stories more, where it is safer to explore danger without getting corrupted by dark magic, poisoned by monsters eating into his skin, breaking arms and legs trying to escape and crying with all his heart out when they threw him back into prison. Starving for days.

And MC is gone.

They fight. They're gone. Through a portal. Kidnapped even before they could start a different life in Whitetower. He's planned everything out. A place where they can both be. Both have food to eat, stories to swap and -- they're gone.

The grief hits him. He blames himself. He blames their new friends. He blames everyone that has ever put MC through shit. He blames his own weakness, his inability to fight like the friend group. He's scared, he doesn't eat, he doesn't sleep, he's just so lost. He's adamant to ask for MC's friends for help. He's frightened by them and blames them for the mess they'd dragged MC into. He's hopeless. He's already grieving. He spends days searching for his sibling, crying every night, walking on foot all through Morella for answers.

He's screaming at Mal for his cocky attitude, Tyril for his apathy, Imtura for her impulsivity and Nia for her self-doubt. He's screaming at them to do something, do anything. He's seething, he's punching the walls thinking about his sibling starving in a prison like he was. He's shaking, he can't eat, he can't do anything without them. Everyday he wakes up with nothing left to go on for. Every day for a whole year. Nothing. Nothing about MC. Nothing about the Shadow Realm.

And then.. he sees them.

Step through a portal.

MC is in disbelief. Their eyes adjust to the light in Whitetower.

Kade doesn't believe his eyes. He cries tears of joy. MC doesn't understand.

"But -- you've been gone for a year!"

[thedezzler]

I don’t rlly like it when people say Kade is your “brother” with quotation marks. He is your BROTHER. No quotation marks. At least for me.

[storyofmychoices]

It took 17 chapters for someone to acknowledge that MC went through a trauma

[dist4nt-shores]

choices as random text posts i have saved part 3!!! u guessed it, beneath the cut

blades fans wanting to romance valax after ch.1

choices mcs when their entire friend group is in love with them

immortal desires mc

foreign affairs mc

the kindred coven

ian kingsley

kade from blades of light & shadow

the phantom agent

part one | part two | part three

[zhoras-bitch]

Kade makeover because he deserved to get one in book 2 (arguably more that anyone).

More versions because I don't have any self-control:

[hayaku14]

kuroba toichi you need to stay dead or im going to fucking kill you myself

[bedtimegiraffe]

Enjoy (?) some screenshots of Kade being grievously injured at the end of book 1, with consequences into book 2!

Book 1 fight with the Dreadlord possessing Nia:

Book 2 reunion:

Kade is still remarkably chill though. A+ brother

[heauxplesslydevoted]

The way time passage differs between the realms