#they'd have done anything for each other AND THEY DID and that was the catastrophe

[halyorke-vampiredisaster]

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[otdderamin]

Analysis: Essek's Accent As The Shadowhand Fades

I'm watching the Essek Supercut again, and I noticed Essek's accent and when it starts to settle.

Watch the first few clips, until about about 0:4:40

Mostly this is just Matt settling into Essek's voice, but when he was first introduced, Essek had a very stern authoritative court voice. But once they were in the antichamber together, and Fjord says they need to check their underwear for accidents after that first interaction with the Queen and made him laugh, Essek slips into what we hear as his personal accent.

Essek really did just make up this version of himself to be as successful as everyone pushed him to be, and make really selfish choices to protect that act. But those personas ultimately felt like lies about himself. So what difference does it make protecting it with more lies? Which led himself down some really dark paths until Thw Mighty Nein discovered him and it all unraveled.

Essek is a dramatic theater gay who pulled off a character so well he couldn't stop playing him even when it was turning into a Shakespearean tragedy. Everything he says in these early days is so intensely dramatic and selling his vast accomplishments. Essek is giving them a list of reasons to respect him because he doesn't think his inner self is respectable. Essek always felt like it was the lies people loved and not him underneath, so what would hurt people more would be trying to stop. To be anything less than ruthless.

But this bunch of goofballs, whose very first direct comment to him was a self-depricating joke about being scared, they broke through. And what broke his heart most on that ship, was knowing he'd let them down with those lies. Because he'd let them see his true self, like he hadn't done for anyone in years (decades?), and they loved that one the most. Especially Caleb because they'd shared that instant attraction and interest Essek almost wasn't sure he could feel.

So after he was caught, even if Caleb was telling Essek he could choose to be better, he was obviously hurt and mistrustful and not calling. And feeling like he couldn't go back ate at him.

But then The Mighty Nein call on him again for help with their more dangerous thing ever. These weirdos are going to run headlong into danger not for gain or glory but because it stops someone else making a catastrophic mistake. And they want him to come with them. They want him to show them he's changed. And he has.

And even if they fight it, that attraction is still like magnets. They're so scared of hurting each other again or getting hurt, they can talk in meaningful coded riddles with each other, but not dare cross the threshold where they can hold that pull back. Where they'd have to find out if they enable or temper their worst impulses.

They didn't get there before they parted ways after Aeor. But we know that sometime in the last six months they let themselves pull together. They go back to Aeor to know what it feels like to just be together, the two of them, if no one at all was there. Caleb, down on one knee, holding a magic ring, "[Essek Thelyss], I know we're not relationship people, but will you date me for three months, and then we'll reassess?"

And it worked. Maybe being apart much of the time helps them get perspective on the world outside themselves and the freedom to lead two very different lives. The Essek who visits the man with green beans, no longer sounds quite like the Shadowhand did. He found how to use his power in the world more responsibly, when only a handful of people will hear about it, but they will listen so much closer, and see him more than any accomplishment. With the bustle and fear of the world shut out.

[lightdancer1]

A two part scene from the Ba Sing Se AU:

Zuko laughed at Toph's story that afternoon as hard as everyone else did. Everyone had told one, except him. Even Mai had told hers and it was an admittedly funny and kind of terrifying narrative of the kind he belatedly realized he'd never bothered to ask her.

"So what's your story, Flames?"

Zuko blinked. His would be a more serious, and sadder tale but it still had to be told.

"After everything beneath Lake Laogai," he said reflectively as he stared into the goblet he had in front of him, "Azula told me that I had regained my own honor that day, and that my honor was mine to shape. I thanked Uncle for his wisdom but I never appreciated hers. I was lost, then, to my anger."

He shook his head.

"She's dead now, so there's no risk of speaking of this or admitting some of the mistakes I know I made." His friends' postures subtly shifted at that and Mai noticed this and might have made a point to ask about it afterward had he not continued.

"I thought when she brought me home and said I killed the Avatar that she was playing some elaborate mind game besides that. Toying with me. Playing one of her little 'Azula always lies' gambits." Mai flinched at those words and her fingers rapped on the table slightly but she otherwise said nothing.

"I spent that whole boat trip wondering just what the game was, how she might play it. Father poisoned our lives to the point that when my sister, however misguided, actually did one of the nicest things she ever did for me I looked for the dagger in my back."

He gave a single bitter laugh at that.

"Not that it matters now. But...." Silence paused.

"So the stupidest thing that I did with that was spending a week terrified of how she'd exploit things, of what she would do when we returned and Father was actually happy with me, and proud of me. She was a heartbeat from the throne, from everything she ever actually wanted and she threw it all away to bring me home.

And I just couldn't see that. That first night I got restless with it, so at midnight after inability to sleep I went straight to her room and busted open the door."

The silence before had been one kind of silence. This was a different one, and he did not see the way his friends looked at each other and then at him, let alone the expression on Mai's face and her forcing her fingers to clench so hard she drew blood from her palm rather than giving away anything else she felt.

"She looked...." he sighed. That part of him that knew in the end that his father's approval was the only sign he needed of his mistake as they'd multiplied and the shadows of a greater crisis than that of Yu Dao drew around his people.......that part was in full swing tonight and he wasn't focused on anything else but the ripples in the wine from his stirring it.

"It wasn't like the last times I saw her. Not the Agni Kai, or when I sent her out of the Fire Nation." Mai's expression hardened at that and for the first time his friends saw what the expression of true anger looked like on the stone face. "Her robe that night was....normal. Not the kind of stuff a royal usually wore." Mai's look became darker.

"So I spoke to her about it and she told me the truth as much as she did anything. My sister did something good for me twice, saved my life once. And all I let myself see was the worst shape of everything she did. I was blind. None so blind as those who do not see."

Toph simply thinned her lips and said nothing while Zuko and Katara shared an identical expression and set of hand gestures.

The stories were done and the talks that followed were stilted and awkward, which Zuko detected without fully understanding why. Not until after a strangely formal set of farewells that would be the last time he'd see his friends until five years later his Uncle made a catastrophically stupid decision that would alter a great many lives forever.

That evening Mai stood in front of him in the kind of robes royals were more used to wearing.

"Zuko," her voice was cold and not at all the tone he was used to hearing. "You went into Azula's room in the middle of the night."

He nodded, blinking.

"You talked about her robe."

That tone was colder and he had no idea how she could do that and why he was suddenly nervous.

"Yes. I mean you know she loved luxury, Mai. That was.....an odd choice."

Mai went over to him and they were very close and he saw the tells of her being extremely furious.

"You went to see my best friend, your literal sister, in the middle of the night and barged open in her door without warning?"

In a sudden motion she had one of her knives in her hands, edge pointed away from him.

"If I ever find out about you doing anything like that to someone else, Zuko," from coldness to the steel of her anger, "I'll give a little prick a little prick."

She said "I'll be sleeping in my old room tonight. Good night, my love."

Only Mai could pack more menace into three words of her native language than most people did into an entire speech.

When some of her words registered on him that night at midnight he suddenly sat up with a sudden startled expression and a look of dawning shock and horror. The realities that lurked at the edges were intimidating enough that he fell on the most honored reflex of his family and refused to face them or that there was something wrong and instead went back to sleep pulling his pillow over his head.

-------

Ba Sing Se University Dorms:

Lu did not understand why, two days from the visit she had a knock at her door. She'd expected it might be her fiancee and then she saw her new friends standing there, a look on their faces she didn't expect. She looked down. No, she was dressed in normal university clothes. She looked around. No particular mess.

"Uh....hi?" Her expression flatly showed confusion.

"Lu," Toph said with a strange tone to her voice, "we just want to....visit."

Sokka coughed and she raised an eyebrow. She knew her new friends did things strangely and this presumably was one of those times. Only much later would she learn the nature of the story and the reasons that lay behind things.