Clayton tolerates the most hurtful, vile shit that Luke says to him with a wince at most before repressing it, dealing with it gracefully, and not taking it out on anyone else. Luke hears Clayton say that he doesn’t need a veterinarian in a high-class scientific research facility and Luke immediately makes it everyone else’s problem.
Chilchuck analysis speedrun: As a hardworking half-foot who grew up poor and discriminated against and had his gullibility taken advantage of multiple times in his early adventuring days, Chilchuck thinks optimism is a dangerous flaw. He’s stressed and strict all the time because his job is noticing details like traps that could get everyone killed before anyone knows it, he takes the lives of everyone to be on his shoulders, and with the way he speaks about it that probably partly reflects how he felt about taking it upon himself to provide for his family too. His life’s always been pretty centered around work and has become even moreso now that his wife left and everyone is independent, and due to past events he’s very iffy with bonding with coworkers. He thinks feelings and job are a disaster mix. Like with his wife or with parties hiring him as sacrifice, being open or having good faith is vulnerability which can get you hurt, so he processes and shows all his stress as anger instead of worry. Doing strict dieting probably isn’t helping the irritability what with hunger, and on top of being a hunger suppressant alcohol might be the main stress reliever he has.
see the thing about Astarion to me is I don't actually think he has a clue who he actually is beneath all of the everything he's got going on. he's got impulses, he's got drive, a will to live, he's got desires and amusements and cravings, but an actual selfhood?? no. there's a blue error screen where the person of him should be, the person -- whoever that was, I'm personally of the mind he likely wasn't good then either, but we'll see where the story takes us -- before Cazador. the man in front of us today is this mishmash of interior delight at freedom and sunlight but also capable of true unapologetic cruelty and willingness to be ugly in a multitude of ways. so he follows the impulse. he follows what intrigues and amuses, and nothing will take that freedom from him again. and he reflects back onto others the violence that was done unto him. a lack of power kept him down? now he wants to accumulate power, so it can never be turned on him again. but he also misses the sun while he's underground. he's mean and desperate and ruthless and it's interesting because he's unapologetic about it, he's unflinching about it. he's vindictive and mean and desperately floundering around throwing stuff at a wall to see what sticks in terms of personhood because who is he now. 200 years of horrific servitude and now he's just out and about and he's in the mud.
and he can be horrible. and yet when you take the routes of prying open the faaairly shallow veneer he has of smug and snark and snappiness, he'll give you pieces of the raw and the desperate -- "I want to know what the world sees when it looks at me. what you see." is a line you only get if you're earnest with him. any other path in the dialogue will have him continue the shallow persona you've come to know. and in all of that I think nothing is "this is real, this is an act," set in stone because I just don't think he even knows, I don't think he has a CLUE what's his and what's the protective measures and what's the real delight and what's the cruel mockery of his surroundings and what he's willing to give vs what he needs to hide vs what he lets slip out on accident. the inconsistencies in his own ideas and what he says and what he does. I think most everything about him is in a weird place of deeply uncertain. is it a lie? is it a glimmer of truth? for me, I like to interpret him in this weird menagerie of half-truths and shallow lies and omissions, because we've only known him a short while and maybe also he doesn't even know the answer yet. who is he? fuck if HE knows. anyways. smash.
i can't stop thinking about the first episode of season 6, when sam tries to convince dean to come with him, to come back to hunting. he says "it's just better with you around, that's all." it's an interesting line because sam is soulless, obviously. and even though he doesn't understand the details yet, he knows something's wrong with him.
"it's better with you around" he says, citing dean's compassion and care for others as the reason why. and how interesting is that? sam's working with plenty of other hunters who still have their souls—they're all more than capable of caring about the people they save. but sam needs dean specifically. he knows he's missing something, and he sees dean and recognizes that something in him. even cold and calculating and unrelentingly logical, sam recognizes that dean, alone, can "complete" him, give something back to him that he's supposed to have.
in episode 8 he tells dean he "needs his help." he doesn't elaborate; he never explains what he means by that. he has a whole family of hunters who'd be willing and able to help him, but still he needs dean. even without his soul, his hyperrational mind knows he needs him.
soulless sam isn't capable of caring about dean. but he doesn't need to care to know they need to be together, no matter what—to know dean is good for him, dean completes him, dean needs to be there for him.
it's like a sick reversal of season 1. sam drags dean back into this life because he can't keep going without him. because he needs him. because when you think about it logically, and sam has no other choice, there was never any other option for them.
I joke about being in love with crassus, but I actually carry around a postcard sized illustration of mabini that I bought from a hole in the wall bookstore in dumaguete inside the front cover of my current sketchbook
Apparently if you utterly destroy Rafayel at kitty cards too often he'll just start going full chaos goblin and start throwing wrong cards in the coloured cups to taint them so neither of you can get the doubled points.
This man pulled the kitty card version of a fuCkINg board flip because he was losing
of ten’s companions, if the doctor couldn’t handle losing them and crossed his own timeline to trick them into traveling with future!him instead of past!him so that he’d have a little more time with them:
rose would do it. first because bless her but she has the situational awareness of a rock, and legitimately would not realize this isn’t her doctor until his facade starts to break down and he starts bleeding grief-laced love for her at every turn. but once she does realize it, she’s both deeply sympathetic and a little scared that she could make him into this. it’s a lot to be confronted with having that much power over someone, to break them so thoroughly. rose would try to get back to her doctor, but while she’s with the future version, she tries to do what she can to ease his pain. (she also tries to figure out a way to subvert her fate. she fails.)
i think martha would be harder to trick. she can smell desperation on the doctor like a bloodhound. she is so tapped into the fact that this man wants to off himself so bad and that she’s 90% of his self-restraint, so present her with a doctor who is lacking that and she’s onto him immediately. however, assuming he gets her to come with him, explains why he’s doing this, there’s like. a minute where she’s kind of. not flattered exactly, but surprised, giddy with the realization that he’d come back for a little more time with her, especially if this is early season 3 martha. which would all come crashing down around the time that he reveals that he wasn’t pushed to this by losing her to some tragedy or her death or anything- but that she chose to leave. that is the point at which martha goes ‘oh i need to get the fuck off of this tardis right now’ and ghosts the past!doctor that she was also traveling with because holy shit, man.
donna, like rose, is easily bamboozled into following the wrong doctor home, provided that he shuffles her along into his tardis too fast for her to argue. but she catches on far quicker than rose does. like, three minutes tops of watching the doctor move through the tardis in a way that’s definitely not enthusiastic piloting and looks more like guilty panic. and then she yells at him for lying to her. and she yells at him for kidnapping her. and then she stops yelling because he’s gone sort of still and quiet and his eyes are just broken. and he doesn’t explain himself, he confesses. donna is going to try to stay with him after this btw. because how do you go back to looking your best friend in the eyes when you know he’d take everything you’ve become away from you, even to save your life? and this is still the doctor, he still did that to her, but he regrets it. regrets it so much that he can’t live with it, he’s breaking time and space just to hear her say his name again. and donna doesn’t want to lose him anymore than he wanted to lose her.
Goddd. Something about Ecaf "loving" Fabian because it's just reflecting what Fabian says he wants and Fabian LOVES it, Baron "loving" Riz because they're just reflecting what Riz says he wants and Riz is HORRIFIED.
Ecaf is nonthreatening because Fabian wants to be loved so badly he doesn't even care if it's from a mirror, Baron is murderous because the idea of romantic love threatens Riz so much.