#el in general. that crushing loneliness and then !! friendship !!!!

[seagullcharmer]

finished lesson one of the scholomance. absolutely adored it (will likely reread over the next few days) can't wait until the library has the next two available

[overanalyzingelswordiswhatido]

Time for some Eve analysis

I'm like 90% sure Eve has anxiety. The first actual emotion we see from her is doubt. Not only that, its SELF doubt. Then she gets wrapped up in a war where she watches Nasods get turned against each other with the Alterasia plants. Her next actual emotion is loneliness when she wakes up to find all her friends essentially the equivalent of dead. But hey! Theres hope. She brings the core back online and tells it to rebuild her people. She uses all of her power for that and needs a nap but thats okay. Except oops. Adam is bad at communication and fucked all of that up because he didnt tell anyone why he was making this army and he went and hurt people in the process. And now she is well and truly alone. The only Nasod left on Elrios. With a savage looking redhead boy telling her he will be her friend. I also think that her anxiety is very apparent in the Ultimate and Sariel routes. They design themselves into battle Nasods to protect a kingdom they haven't even built yet.

Also, its very interesting that the first solid dynamic we see between her and the El Search Party is her looking after Elsword. Now part of that is learned. Eve doesn't quite have a concept of what friendship really is when they first pick her up. She doesn't even seem to be familiar with the word. Aisha and Elsword are the most obviously close in the El Search Party. Aisha is always going after Elsword and saving his ass and yelling at him for being dumb. Aisha's reasons for that are because she's tsundere. Eve's reasons are because she doesn't have an exact idea of what friendship is and because Elsword is the one it seems she's most likely to lose should something go wrong. Rena and Raven are sensible. Aisha is pretty sensible and only likely to get hurt when she follows Elsword in. It's also stated when the Glitter Vanguard explodes in the palace entrance that Eve was the only reason they made it out of there. She's shown to get after Add when he does something to hurt someone, more so than any other character in the game. When Elsword merges with the El Eve tells him that just because she said she would respect his decision doesn't mean she would accept his sacrifice. She's also shown to be uncomfortable with the idea of sacrifice in general. Unless of course. Its her thats doing it. At which point, its shown that if she deems it necessary she would sacrifice everything she is. She advises certain courses of action throughout the game, that are often designed to minimalize casualty. She prioritizes the safety of those with her, not just the El Search Party, when things go wrong in Velder. In the Sander end scene she crushes Karis under Adam's fist when Add decides it would be a good idea to take her on himself. When Rena collapses in Feita, Eve has knowledge of her condition that would only be possible by being with Rena. She's shown to be concerned about Raven, even when first meeting him, despite his very distinct distrust of her. While she isnt leaping around trying to please him she is also conscious of his triggers and doesn't bring them up.

I've said this before but Eve is shown scolding Elsword and Add on multiple various occasions but its interesting to me that the only time its Eve that scolds them as opposed to Elesis or Aisha or one of the others, is when what they're doing/saying is likely to hurt themselves or someone else. Otherwise she has very little to say about their behavior. With Add, she doesn't just scold him when he's causing harm to Nasods or putting them in danger. She also scolds him in Lanox when he starts shooting rapid fire interrogating questions at Gloria and Darkmoon and making them cry. She also scolds both him and Elsword in the end of dungeon dialogue of Phantasmal Geyser for peeping in the girl's bath. She is ready to execute them. Also, Add and Elsword, who are the two most prone to getting themselves into a situation they can't get out of, are the only two characters she is shown to scold and come to the aid of most often.

All of that being said, since Eve is still learning emotion and all of its complexities, I'm not sure she is completely aware of the source of her anxieties. She knows that when her friends/other people around her are put in danger or hurt in some way, she worries about them and depending on the severity, she may even feel powerless. In order to prevent herself from feeling uncomfortable (or possibly even doing something stupid to protect them), she takes steps to prevent them from getting hurt. She knows she cant keep them out of danger, but she will keep them from getting hurt badly enough that she might lose them.

On a complete side note, Eve mimicking Aisha is probably the cutest shit I've ever seen. They are definitely best friends at the very least and I am not at all unhappy at shipping them. And even as Eve grows into her own person, she retains what she learned from Aisha. Despite being more kuudere (with a small himedere streak) than anything else, Eve continues to express her connections in ways that more resemble Aisha's tsundere attitude. As she grows though, she basically puts her own spin on it and I love it. This is the shit I am here for.

[luthorcorporated]

So I had a friend who hadn’t seen all seasons of Smallville in order tell me they found some aspects of his character arc disjointed. I wrote this up for them and figured it’d be a good thing to post for a general reference.

Season 1: He realizes he no longer has control over lex and then during the last episode he realizes that lex has the same feelings he had towards his parents. It's the first wake up call for him. Lex feels like his father has treated him as the enemy. Lex doesn't think he loves him. Lex holds resentment towards him and so on + he goes blind later (technically s2 but in s1 is when lex hesitates to kill him). He almost immediately regresses and then projects the whole "seen us as opponents" thing onto Lex but I still think it's a very important first step because it was a very much needed shock to the system.

Season 2: Very clumsy, half-hearted attempts to reconnect with lex that are done more out of loneliness and personal pain of being blind than actually feeling like he did anything wrong. During that season he also meets Martha who pushes him to try and be more considerate of others however he does it for the wrong reasons. He does it to impress her, or because she showed him how it works in his favour pragmatically. Arguably this isn't character development but I believe it's a very important step because it's his first genuine connection with another person in decades and it's also his first real attempt to care even TRY to be better even if it's for the wrong reasons. His feelings for Martha ARE genuine in my opinion but I also think they're split between genuine feelings and seeing her as an object to be won over. She rejects him and suddenly she becomes even more desirable because she told him "no" and Lionel LOVES a chase, because he LOVES to win. To prove that he can have whatever his heart desires and in this case, it'd also prove to him that Martha wasn't as good of a person as she appeared to be. However, again she rejects him (very softly) and ofc Lionel would never force himself completely onto another person so instead he assumes she no longer wants to work for him and says "I suspect Mrs kent will no longer be in my employee" which I assume in Lionel speak means 'she's fired'. This was to protect himself from further rejection. It also means that any positive character progress he does disappears because he was doing it for the wrong reasons. Also, keep in mind he finds out he has liver disease somewhere between s1-2.

Season 3: He's arguably at his worst. He's desperate to find some sort of treatment or cure for his liver disease. Lex was thought to be dead and then he's not but he's a mess and wants to start back up at Luthorcorp. And then all that shit with his parents comes up and Lex is butting in where he shouldn't be butting in. Also, morgan dies. Lex has a genuine psychotic break on the island and then Lionel has to force him to have another one so he can fry his brain. The shit about his parents is constantly around and talked about. OH, and he's still dying and Lex is trying to betray him and and and....basically it's a shitstorm and with nothing to buffer him with more rational less 'crush. destroy. demolish enemy.' thinking he spirals. All his most heinous acts happen in s3

Season 4: Transference is peak worst for him and it's basically an explosion of all the hurt and betrayal he feels towards lex and even then, as he smashes his head against a table he doesn't actually kill him. Which I know doesn't seem like much but tbh given that he tried to kill Jonathan and was sick with power I think it shows that on some level he still had that love for lex in the back of his head. and then for some reason the rock cures him of his liver disease and the rest of the season he's riding high on I Survived juices. But he's working towards an idealized version of what he thinks it means to be Good and he doesn't have much to go off of, so when the delusion crashed (You can thank Lex for that) it crashed hard and he immediately tried to slip back into old habits because they were comforting. But he couldn't, not completely. He had evolved beyond that too

Season 5: A summary of it is that he's the vessel for Jor-El and that helps guide him to Clark but if you take out Jor-El it's more like a season of self-discovery. He truly struggles between these two extreme views and often slips back into his manipulative habits. However, Martha is back in his life and I think her friendship really helped to guide him. So especially in the later s5 he really leans on her, and she him (Jonathan dies in s5)

Season 6: He still struggles but I think he's a bit more at peace with the morally grey thing that he has going. He still does sketchy shit (he never stops really) but s6 is more about personal growth than helping push the plot forward (he does just not A  LOT). It's really just him learning to be more openly caring towards the few that he cares about. Realizing that he doesn't have to care about every single damn person out there to be Good to others. He can just care about Martha, lex, Clark and the rest of their gang (to an extent). So s6 you see him slowly trying to do smaller things like making Martha lunch while helping her work on her senator speech. And for the first time in literally (probably) ever attempting a certain level of emotional vulnerability (when he tries to tell her how much she means to him). He learns to see people as individuals with needs, wants, and feelings that are different from his own and furthermore he learns to PUT those things before his own. Which is why he tells Martha to go to Washington in s6 despite obviously wanting her to stay because it was Martha's time to grow as a person and he knew that she really wanted to do great work but she couldn't do that and stay in Kansas full time so he lets her go

Season 7: Not  A LOT of major character development. He becomes more steady in his belief of a morally grey area and he also still makes a lot of fuck-ups like doing things without consulting others (like doing shit that totally effects them but he's just gonna do it cos he knows what's best clearly). The biggest thing he does is tell lex that he loves him (too little too late but it's still a huge step for his character)

[shivroy]

10 facts about elsibeth!!

-Elsibeth is a demigirl! She generally uses she/her pronouns, but Teuksi and Jordan often use they/them pronouns for elsibeth because both of them know she appreciates it. They and she are basically used interchangeably, although sometimes elsibeth feels more nonbinary than other times and prefers they/them pronouns. It really just depends on the day; she often thinks of herself more as nonbinary though. 

-Although torixi and others have tried to get elsibeth not to think this, she does have pretty bad body issues, and she sometimes doesn’t leave her house because of dysphoria. Although all limebloods have pretty curvy figures, it’s a lot more dramatic in afab limebloods and it sometimes causes back problems. Elsibeth can’t really bind either because she gave herself some rib and lung problems when she corseted her waist when she was young (which is a limeblood tradition for all kids, albeit not a good one). It’s not the worst, though- elsi’s house is pretty awesome. It has a loft and a bunch of books everywhere, all the gaming systems no one would expect her to have, and 9 mannequins she is making constant soap opera for. Pretending like she’s got other people around makes her feel better, becauuuuse…

-She has a deep-rooted loneliness that is always in the back of her head until she gets to the new world, because she is the last “pure” limeblood of her breed on the whole planet. On the old world, purplebloods headed a sort of genocide of limebloods, solely because purplebloods believed limebloods to be an unpure mix of two ancient blood colors, olivebloods and limebloods. The purplebloods planned on later doing this with lowbloods and even highbloods until only purplebloods remained, but they never got even close to that. On the new world, history is changed and many limebloods survived the eradication efforts, so there are limebloods there, but on the old world elsibeth is alone. Her lusus is a passenger pigeon-type creature, and although she loves her lusus it sometimes gives her a painful reminder that they are both alone.  

-Her loneliness has led to her having occasional depressive spells, and she often gets drunk and stays up all night talking to jordan about whatever’s on their minds. It’s less like therapy and more like venting. jordan sometimes gets really worried about elsibeth because she’s far from a lightweight and can drink a concerning amount, and then she usually starts crying and lays down in the middle of the kitchen floor, squinting at the florescent lights and listening to jordan mumble half-asleep “you’re gonna be fine”s and the noises the dishwasher makes.

-She is very interested in string instruments, and she plays the cello and bass quite frequently. She is the bass in a little jazz quintet led by teuksi and morgan, and she plays cello when her and her friends mess around with their instruments, and also sometimes in torixi’s unpleasantly titled band. Elsi hates the name but the music is sometimes fun, and elsibeth likes coming up with idiotic song titles, as does everyone else. 

-Getting to see her full smile could probably cure any ailment, it’s a magical event, really. She’s pretty goofy around the right people - usually herself, one of her favorite things to do is to play mass effect and scream at the TV and make herself laugh. Unfortunately most people never get to see this side of her because she gets kind of uptight around most people. She is a lot more relaxed at her house. While torixi is one of her closest friends even if tor occasionally sucks super bad, elsi still can’t exactly be herself around her. Same can be said for her around teuksi, el’s more like a gentler version of herself around teuksi. Less uptight, but not as funny as she normally is. She’s very lovey-dovey around nireta, and pretty timid around kivern (i’ll explain why in a second), but still not totally herself. Her and jordan crack themselves up when they’re not having one of their deep talks, so she’s probably the most true around him. 

-She has a SUPER big crush on kivern, but she has gotten excellent at guarding her mind. Being friends with torixi made it a necessity because of torixi’s ability to warp other’s thoughts, but kivern’s thought-reading makes elsibeth much more nervous, because unlike with torixi elsibeth has no idea what thoughts kivern could be sensing. Elsibeth is kinda weirded out herself by this crush, because she generally doesn’t fall for people in this way, it’s just like growing affection, often starting with friendship, that turns into love, nothing like this silly stuff she feels about kivern. Elsibeth’s crush started when she met kivern at a summer camp (WHICH IS SOMETHING I GOTTA EXPLAIN SOON!), and began noticing she was blushing like crazy whenever kivern smiled at her or accidentally touched her hand. Elsibeth got uncharacteristically shy around kivern, and silently lost her mind conpletely when kivern offered to french braid elsibeth’s hair, back when her and torixi were planning on growing it out together. Thinking back on it now, elsibrth is super embarrassed to think about that, because her thoughts must’ve been broadcasting loud and clear “OH MY GOD I AM IN LOVE WITH THIS GIRL I CANT BELIEVE SHES ACTUALLY TOUCHING ME SHE JUST TOUCHED MY NECK OH MY G-” and she has no doubt kivern picked up the message. Or maybe she was just focused on braiding. 

-Her role as Seer of Life gave her many powers after she finished the game, but one of the ones she was able to harness before the game was the ability to “switch her eyes with someone else’s”. This meant she is able to give teuksi sight for very brief amounts of time, but it made her blind for that time as well. She could also do this with people who had working eyesight, like she did it with torixi to see what it was like to have limited depth perception, and with seetsu and vaydra to see how much they really needed glasses (the answer: A LOT). It’s an interesting thing to do, but it gives her a spitting headache, especially with teuksi. 

-She knows it’s somewhat wrong to generalize any blood color, but she absolutely loathes purplebloods. The only one she’s been in contact one is the most disgusting troll she’s ever met, and the hurt and loneliness she feels for what they’ve done can’t be easily ignored. 

-uhhhhhhhhhhh shes probably a furry dont tell anyone