#i just. really love foils

[raayllum]

do you have like a list that explains which poetic tags line up with each motif/parallel? (like "it was just red", "i'll be your slaughterhouse", etc.) i'm interested in them but i can't always tell what each tag refers to :) sorry i wish i was better at figuring this stuff out lol.

Yes I do! Those are typically my foil relationships (which my masterpost here is a little outdated) so a guide, if you will

Ezran and Claudia: home is the first grave

Harrow / Ezran + Viren: dead kings and consequences

Harrow, Sarai, and Viren: tragic trio

Rayla and Harrow: paying the price

Sarai and Claudia: queens of katolis

Callum and Claudia: callum x claudia

Rayla and Claudia: raydia

Callum, Claudia, and Rayla: where can i put it down? 

Rayla, Soren, and Claudia: would you love me more if i killed someone for you

Soren and Rayla: sorayla

Rayla and Callum: every separation is a link 

Callum, Viren, and Aaravos: wouldn’t you want to tell it kinder if you could 

Viren and Callum: it was just red 

Viren and Rayla: the one who ruined me; i did it myself 

Rayla and Aaravos: not at home with the dead or the living 

Viren, Rayla, and Claudia: why it ends why it always ends 

Viren and Janai: things we lost to the fire

Callum/Rayla and Viren/Aaravos: i'll be your slaughterhouse

Runaan and Viren + Claudia: practical uses

Bonus actual motifs (which rn are very Rayllum centric but I'm sure I'll branch out further in the future):

Storm motif

Ghost motif

Cliffs motif

Reaching motif

Orpheus and Eurydice motif

Hope this helps!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Parallel Lines and Brothers.

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[a2zillustration]

Part 2 of 2

Thanks for tossing me the ball on this one Larian I am now running with it at mach speeds.

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[[ All Croissant Adventures (chronological, desktop) ]]

[[ All Croissant Adventures (app) ]]

[wishesofeternity]

The thing about HotD is that it while it absolutely minimizes the agency and ambition of both Rhaenyra and Alicent, this is specifically used to glorify Rhaenyra and frame her as righteous while condemning Alicent and framing her lacking. That's the key difference in both their textual portrayals that has directly led to 90% of the fandom hailing Rhaenyra as the second coming of Christ while spewing the most hateful vitriol at Alicent just for existing. But y'all are not prepared for that conversation.

[madbyer]

Steve getting a summer job at 18 bc his dad made him vs Jonathan working since he was really young to support his family. Steve having all of his needs met vs Jonathan having to help pay bills. Steve not going to college bc he didn’t get in vs Jonathan not going bc of his guilt and anxiety about leaving his family. Steve smoking weed for fun vs Jonathan smoking it to cope. Steve ‘babysitting’ Dustin vs Jonathan parenting Will. Steve’s ‘asshole’ Dad vs Jonathan‘s abusive Dad. Steve being excited about his future kids vs Jonathan‘s fear of turning into his Dad. Steve idealising Nancy as his wife vs Jonathan being terrified of holding her back. Steve getting to be a teenager while Jonathan had to be an adult. The audience forgiving Steve but not Jonathan. Steve running from the cops vs Jonathan getting arrested. The audience loving Steve but hating or ignoring Jonathan.

[otaku553]

More reluctant king sabo au! I realized recently that this au is an excellent excuse for drawing sabo in pretty outfits that he would be absolutely miserable in :)

[bbnibini]

I find it so painfully heartbreaking that Solomon just...laughs off all the derision, the name-calling, and possibly even did "evil" things on purpose because it's expected of him at this point. (He had not always been like this as Thirteen pointed out before). There was a time when he was "innocent". When his soul sparkled. When it resembled the kind of soul everyone in these god forsaken (pun intended with spite) three realms seemed to associate with the ever loved MC. He's just...worryingly carefree. And because he's like that, he feels even more of a tragic character to me.

Sometimes it even seems that he himself would seemingly make up excuses on why he's hated. Oh, it's because I'm a sorcerer this. I might have won a war against Devildom single-handedly this. I have forgotten. But maybe, I did something bad, that. Hon, you were doing that to SURVIVE. You don't have to be a faultless person to deserve compassion. You don't have to be MC to deserve to be loved.

[clownsuu]

have a nice day!!

((i'm sending congratulations in advance, because when I have your birthday, I will sleep soundly))

AWEAWEAWE ALL OF MY LIL GOOBERSSSSSSS ;;;;;

[of-the-eventide]

...who else could I love but you, my brave little spark...?

auraugust 2024 - myth truth

[disco-troy]

the titans are the funniest team ever bc every single one of them has issues with consent - you have:

Kory (autonomy of her destiny + body re Tamaran and years in slavery)

Donna (autonomy of her identity and body re Dark Angel, the million times old men took an interest in her, non consentual god kisses),

Vic (autonomy of his appearance and body, his phyical body constantly changed without his input, non consensual kissing)

Dick (autonomy of decisions and body and mind brother blood in ntt and everything onward)

Raven (autonomy of emotions, duty, destiny and body trigon + Azarath)

Joey (autonomy of decisions and body and powers that inherently ask questions about others autonomy Slade + slit throat)

Wally (autonomy of emotions and decisions falling in love with Raven)...

And then they have Gar (unable to respect any woman's boundaries )

[rabbitprincessthief]

gog i still can't get over minish cap vaati's Everything. He is So Fucking Stupid (affectionate)

Like. This guy's establishing character moment is, in order:

he's introduced as having won an entire tournament to get to touch a magic chest and get a cool sword, which was the prize for said tournament

turns around and does a goddamn evil soliloquy TEN FEET AWAY FROM THE GUARDS who were about to hand him his macguffin on a platter

(like this man fucks up his own horribly planned daylight heist because he cannot keep a lid on the dramatics for FIVE FUCKING MINUTES, IN PUBLIC)

(THE BAR WAS ON THE FLOOR VAATI, FUCKING GANONDORF PLAYS THE PIPE ORGAN FOR HIS OWN BOSS INTRO AND HE STILL KNOWS BETTER THAN THIS SHIT)

proceeds to fight the guards (it is, admittedly, a curbstomp for him, but it still clearly wasn't his plan, because otherwise why bother with the tournament)

gloats evilly

opens chest, unleashing a whole bunch of monsters

exposits out loud about Zelda's powers like a nerd while she is actively charging up her magic powers to kick his ass

RECOGNIZES and IDENTIFIES said magic as the special power carried by the female royal line

completely fails to recognize it as the light force he is currently trying to get his hands on (he spends like 99% of the game not figuring this out.)

petrifies her

(i have no idea if link could have deflected this spell if he had managed to get the right angle with his shield but i like to think somewhere there is a very short and very funny alternate timeline where it happens)

(more importantly: no part of vaati's original presumed plan would have involved doing this. he 100% created this situation for himself by being an dramatic idiot and picking a fight for no good reason.)

looks in the chest

there's no light force

considering his stated goals he might be as confused as you are about the monsters tbh

uhhh

evil laugh

teleports the fuck out

He then proceeds to spend the rest of the game trying to figure out where the light force is and ends up having to wait for Ezlo and Link to figure it out first because he was, as far as I can tell, GENUINELY stuck on this part. He fucking kidnaps and impersonates the King, not for access to Zelda, but to… send guards to go look for the Light Force, presumably because he was either running out of ideas or genuinely thought that would work.

None of the guards even had any idea what he was talking about. He's not even good at impersonating the King. He's already sent like twenty people to the dungeon by the time you get there and it hasn't even been a week. Somehow the game spins this as a cunning plan and clever manipulation or something.

(Meanwhile the guards are just. Poking around in random bushes and shit hoping to find the light force. One of them asks you what you think it might look like.)

Zelda is literally right next to the throne and Vaati does not figure it out until you find an actual honest-to-goodness LORE TABLET spelling out that the Light Force is Stored in the Zelda, at which point he's like "ahahaha you've done my work for me this was definitely my plan all along" and takes over the castle and throws a bunch of monsters at you to stall for time while he figures out how to extract the force from her. Somehow he still doesn't think to actually lock the fucking door.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Assisting Acquaintance Acquired.

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[sleepy-aletheas]

The love I hold for Haikaveh being thematically parallel to Nabu Malikata and Deshret is ever abundant and I have Thoughts on it all. I just wish I would ever decide to try and write my thoughts down when I'm in a reasonably awake state to have a shred of sense and not after spending the whole night staying up and pushing myself into sleep depravity.

Anyway, the basic idea is that I think both Kaveh and Alhaitham mirror certain aspects of both gods, but probably are meant to be the happier endings of that type of dynamic/character types. It's not just Kaveh=Nabu Malikata, Alhaitham=Deshret, Alhaitham has certain similarities to Nabu and Kaveh has a lot in common with Deshret (I would even say he is a more narrative foil to Deshret than Alhaitham ever could be). I understand that it's easier to just pick one pair for comparison and be done with it for simplicity's sake, but I'm already neck deep in overthinking, might as well go fully out on it eventually.

Even if I really wanna write this out, I don't know how comprehensive it would be. I make sense to myself, but the moment I try to put anything into concrete words, it suddenly feels like I need to fill in 5 different topics to make any sort of sense and bring the whole conversation to the same page with a common understanding.

Maybe I'll take a nap, that could fix everything.

[drbtinglecannon]

Since it's the episode airing today, I wanted to point out another fun way Kabru and Laios are foils

Kabru immediately recognized his party members just by their body language when they were all under a shape shifting spell, meanwhile it took Laios a bit of time and a specific train of thought to figure it out

Kabru figured it out while Daya was attacking him because he recognized her fighting style, and from there he immediately clocked the rest of his party in just a glance (Holm was frozen in place, Kuro was looking around confused cuz he could smell everyone but couldn't see them, Mickbell ran off, and Rin was casting a spell)

Meanwhile Laios' party had a range of appearance differences and it still took them multiple rounds of working together to narrow it down, until 1 fake Marcille, Chilchuck, & Senshi were left

The most interesting part is fake versions of Marcille and Chilchuck gave the suggestions on how to sus out the imposters (red letter to indicate fakes & whose memory the fakes came from)

Even funnier the fake Marcille who suggested showing off their books exposed she's a fake by showing off her book

Once down to 1 fake each, Laios decides the easiest way to figure out the fakes would be to put them on the spot by preparing a meal!

Except it isn't easy, and none of Marcille, Chilchuck, nor Senshi believed he could tell them apart anyway as Laios isn't exactly known for his perceptiveness, so they all conspired to figure it out themselves. What I love about this chapter is it's constantly fluctuating between the reals & fakes thinking these thoughts with them all mixed together, and that the real versions keep getting suspected as actually being the fakes

Laios isn't very good at reading people, we've seen that repeatedly this far in the story, but he IS knowledgeable about monsters. So he figures out who's the real Marcille, Chilchuck, and Senshi by thinking about how they interact around monsters

And it works! He correctly figures out each of the party by their mannerisms wrt monsters!

Sure, it isn't as quick or graceful as how Kabru figured out his party, but Laios used his strength (monster hyperfixation) to successfully sus out his party's imposters.

Tldr Every bit of Kabru being good at reading people Laios is good at reading monsters, and he learns to use that to his advantage

[lgbtlunaverse]

While rereading mdzs I am once again shocked by how talked about the "you were the only mistake he ever made" line from Lan Xichen to Wei Wuxian is and how heated it gets some people because honestly... I don't think he actually even believes that.

Stay with me. Look at the actual line. (I Included 2 translations for comparison's sake)

Firstly, yes he is mad at Wei Wuxian in this scene. But his biggest moment of anger was actually before this. By this point he's realized that Wei Wuxian forgot what happened after nightless city (and therefore ISN'T stringing along his baby brother on purpose) so he has in fact calmed down a bit.

Secondly, notice that he starts by talking about how his uncle felt. This is not Lan Xichen making a value statement about what he thinks. When he says Lan Wangji was proper and righteous he is talking about him being a model lan, he's talking about their family and clan's perspective of Wangji. Indeed, in their eyes, Wei Wuxian is the only time Lan Wangji was ever not the textbook perfect Lan.

Thirdly, what is Lan Xichen trying to say here? What is he mad at Wei Wuxian for? It's that he doesn't know Lan Wangji is in love with him. His anger is eased by realizing Wei Wuxian doesn't remember the very blatant confessions lwj made in the cave after nightless city, or Lan Wangji fighting his own clan elders for Wei Wuxian, and so had no way of knowing the whipmarks on Lan Wangji's back were related to him. But he is still mad, he still thinks Wei Wuxian should have been able to figure it out. So what does he highlight?

The fact that the only thing Lan Wangji, perfect model-Lan righteous Lan Wangji, ever defies his clan for is Wei Wuxian.

And Wei Wuxian has seen him do this! Even if he doesn't remember this one instance. Because Lan Wangji has been doing that the whole story through. Wei Wuxian has watched Lan Wangji blatantly stand against the entire cultivation world for him, and here Lan Xichen is highlighting just how unusual that is, how much Wei Wuxian must mean to Lan Wangji that he's willing to do that. The important part of the sentence here is not "mistake" it's "only."

Lan Xichen here isn't trying to say that he disapproves of Wei Wuxian, or telling him to stay away from his brother. Remember, the thing that made him mad in the first place was Wei Wuxian saying that he and Lan Wangji slept in seperate rooms. He thought they were together! He's mad because they're not!

At no point does Lan Xichen say he individually considers Lan Wangji's feelings for Wei Wuxian a mistake. If he ever did, it's clear he accepted them regardless long ago. Mistake or not, what he wants is for his little brother to be happy.

[orchid-n-petals]

So I've already shared parts of this on a discord server, but I have to scream about Ketheric Thorm on here as well. Obviously spoilers about the character under the cut! It's a long one.

The entirety of act 2 is about him, right? Jaheira, Shadowheart and numerous other NPCs shit on him for his fickle faith. First Selune, then Shar, then, as we meet him, Myrkul. You hear about his changes of faith on a whim, you hear that he's the person responsible for the shadow curse, he is painted as a villain, plain and simple.

You can figure it out pretty early on that Isobel was resurrected and that she is his daughter; the detail as well that he wants Isobel alive is so on the nose, it gives him away completely but there are still a few questions that remain unanswered, mainly about his faith.

And then you get to the mausoleum and the picture assembles; this entire tragedy, the death of hundreds if not thousands and the complete ruination of a landscape was all, ALL because you had this absolutely wrenched, heartbroken father who had lost everything and nobody answered his grief. He was left woefully alone, the Goddess whose daughter his daughter was involved with did nothing to save Isobel.

Imagine outliving your wife and your daughter. Imagine dedicating your life to fight the Lady of Loss, your Lady of Silver's enemy, and then be left so completely alone and in silence with your grief, with your loss. It's so, so poetic how and why he turned from Selune, and it's so understandable as well; he broke. His spirit completely broke. He couldn't deal with that void of having lost the only two important people in his life, seemingly undeservedly so. He was going mad with this and a lot of his ire was likely targeted at Aylin who, in his eye, represented Selune; she's literally her daughter, after all, and it was implied that even before the deaths of his family, he sort of saw Aylin courting Isobel as Selune taking his daughter from him, despite his service. This relationship was clearly not seen by him as a boon of "giving his daughter to the Moon-maiden".

His ways in the past clearly didn't spare him from tragedy and having to cope with it (which he clearly didn't, he snapped under the weight of his grief). He was clearly angry and unable to do anything, furious and helpless, which is a dangerous combination. A good part of his first change of heart must have been fuelled by a sense of revenge.

But then Shar didn't provide any balm to his aching heart either. If you read his letters in Grymforge and in act 2, he is so focused on enacting the will of Shar because he believes that healing lies in oblivion. Everything would be easier if he could just forget, if the damn world could just forget, if nothing was remembered because without Melodia and Isobel, nothing was worth remembering.

Then came Myrkul. Literally the only god who was not only able, but WILLING to give back his daughter to him. Imagine spending your all, EVERYTHING you have to serve two gods who would not give a single shit about the greatest suffering in your life. You were basically nothing, your loyalty didn't matter for shit, everything that was taken from you amounted to no recognition whatsoever: you should simply cope and seethe. Your grief will not simply go unanswered (which is not inherently antagonising) but ignored.

And then comes this supposedly evil entity who can alleviate your pain just like that, snap of a finger and it's a done deal.

I am so serious when I say that I believe Ketheric's main incentive was to extend Aylin's immortality to Isobel as well. You can read in her diary that she feels a taint after having came back, and there are things not even Selune can cleanse, but at this point, Ketheric doesn't care about Selune, vengeance is secondary if not tertiary, he's done that war during his Shar years and what did it give him? Literally nothing.

He doesn't even care about the fact that Isobel is still her cleric. He cares about the single most important fact: Isobel is back. Life is worth living again, there is something for him, and it was not Selune or Shar who gave it to him but Myrkul, and for this singular gift, he would raze the world for the Lord of Bones. Like people can clown on him for being disloyal but the man has the loyalty of a dog bonded to its owner.

He is powerful and is willing to go to insane lengths for crumbs. What is raising a single life for a god? Nothing. It has happened and it will happen again. But Ketheric will go to the ends of the earth to serve the single god who actually listened to him. The one god who didn't ignore him.

He knows that what he does is not the morally upright thing! He is so insanely self-aware that allying with Orin and Gortash and doing this entire plot with them only to then betray them is morally reprehensible at the best of times, he knows that people hate him, etc-etc. He was a Selunite at one point and he's not stupid. He just doesn't care; it could be literal Asmodeus and he wouldn't care as long as he got what he wanted, no matter the price.

He is probably the only one from the three of the chosen who has complete clarity over his situation, he almost sways (if you pass the check during his confrontation), he is not an inherently evil man blinded by power.

But he is inherently loyal to those deserving, and as of the story's standing, completely broken by his grief. In his eyes, at this point, the only one deserving loyalty is the one who actually listened to him. Isobel lives. It doesn't matter that she hates him, that his entire life has fallen apart, that literally nothing else that is good has come of it, because Isobel lives.

I don't think he regrets a single thing. His consciousness might tear at him at the end, but I believe he would do everything over again, exactly as he did, because in the end, his daughter was brought back. Because what would a grieving, broken parent give to bring back their child? Everything. Absolutely everything. And it's such a simply given answer, no second thoughts, no doubts.

Nobody can tell me that this man is fickle. Nobody. This man was willing to burn the world to the ground, create a Boudica destruction layer all by himself for the one single thing he wanted. For any God that would listen.

I don't know, I just have a lot of thoughts about his character.