#this chapter is literally like

[fluffydice]

Guy with Generalized Anxiety Disorder be like

[raddestrose]

Shoutout to Shen Yuan the only man who actually read porn for the plot

[egophiliac]

we were fucking ROBBED

[ash-and-starlight]

Sokka baulked. "I'm not getting on that." "That," said Zuko, "is my baby." Zuko's baby, a fifty foot dragon, huffed. Great white plumes of smoke issued out of his nostrils and buffeted around Sokka. "Play nice, Druk," said Zuko, laughing

for The Mercy of Magpies chapter 2!

as always written by thee wonderful showstopping incredible @ranilla-bean ✨

chapter post || cover || map and characters

[bicheetopuff]

Horikoshi please I beg, even if you don’t release another manga, GIVE US A HARD COPY OF THIS SCRAP BOOK. I DONT CARE WHO DRAWS IT, I JUST NEED TO KNOW WHATS IN IT

[amaranthdahlia]

[we can always meet again within one for all. romantic, right?]

[keferon]

Chapters 46 and 47 were…….oh my god

[lschmidtartblog]

I've been rereading the YuGiOh! manga and I love this freak. I wish they had kept him at this level of creepy for the entire series

[tommdale]

My poppy playtime sketches because chapter 3 just dropped 🫶

[reds-skull]

Needed to see this man beaten and bruised, but in pink this time

(Also hey I actually have free time again)

[thatsitso]

So I finished orv

[infinite-beginnings]

The line when Charles said, "Edwin's told me loads of stories about Hell," and him seeming to know he'd find a map in Edwin's book always hits me hard.

Now I acknowledge Charles might’ve been posturing to reassure the Night Nurse he could navigate Hell, but let's assume this fact was real.

Because that means that Edwin felt comfortable enough to talk about all of his trauma to Charles. He mentions Hell a lot in passing in front of the girls, but he never goes into specifics. However, it seems as if he actively told Charles quite a few details about Hell. I also noticed that Charles is very calm when he's going to find Edwin. Yes, he's studying the book a lot, but he is also navigating the space with a certain amount of confidence. I'm sure it's partially due to Charles' tendency to do things without thinking and project confidence. But also, it seems as if he might have at least a very basic level of knowledge or familiarity with the levels of Hell based on the stories Edwin told.

I think this is probably another reason why Edwin struggled to believe the fact that Charles had faced abuse in his past and never shared it with Edwin. Because Edwin was always up front and honest with Charles. He told him the very first time they'd met that he had just escaped Hell. I'm sure Edwin did not want to relive his memories of Hell, and maybe it took him decades to feel like he could share. But I bet when he started talking about it with Charles, he felt relief. Because sharing your trauma with someone who accepts you and loves you no matter what is always a relief after holding it in and pushing it down.

So I just imagine Edwin feeling that relief after sharing his stories from Hell and feeling closer and more bonded with Charles because of it...and then he finds out that Charles has this huge amount of trauma from his past that he has been keeping inside. It probably breaks Edwin's heart that he hadn't been able to offer Charles the same relief he'd felt.

And yes, Crystal mentioned that Charles was probably denying the trauma even to himself. We all know that Edwin knew something was off with Charles and that he was probably frustrated in himself because he hadn't been able to figure it out, but Crystal apparently had.

But I also think there might be another level to it. The boys have been solving cases for 30 years. I find it hard to believe that they never had another case involving abuse or at least someone with a controlling personality that would've reminded Charles of his father. Maybe Edwin thinks back to a couple of those cases and how Charles was acting strange and withdrawn during them and realized he'd missed a huge clue about how his friend was feeling.

All those years of sharing his stories from Hell and being comforted by Charles and Edwin hadn't been able to do the same. Edwin is definitely hurt that Charles didn't feel like he could confide in him and heartbroken to think about how much pain his friend was going through alone.

[kasieli]

Hear me out: MC and Seb exploring the underwater caves together

[fumifooms]

I don’t like minimizing the importance and gravity of Laios and Toshiro’s fight into just being a childish squabble, even if to a degree it is framed that way, because to both of them it has a lot of personal significance and emotional weight and runs very deep to their characters… The fight isn’t nothing it’s a LOT, they made up but it’s not something easy to express and to get over for either of them which makes it all the more meaningful! I’m on both sides but there very much are sides, there’s no "they’re both having a ball, Toshiro and Laios hand in hand yay" side to the fight, that comes after

The fight with Toshiro WAS very scary to Laios, almost existentially so, but it’s moreso the "I thought I’d made a friend!!" bit and my god. My god actually

Like it’s not "just" about oh his friend liking him less than he thought, THAT IS SO MUCH. It’s a bond he thought he had being a lie it’s all the time and moments spent together either being a lie from his perspective or marred now looking back. It’s not only being upset at Toshiro for lying but upset at himself that he’s so easy to fool, it’s being upset that there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even tell if your "close buddy" even actually likes you or not, it’s like. Holding my head. He can’t trust his own vision of events that happened do you see. There’s always this film of distrust that it could be a lie that should be there when he interacts with people there’s always this sense of cloak and dagger to expect backstabs out of nowhere because you CAN’T see it coming you CAN’T you CAN’T there’s something about you which makes it impossible so you CAN’T-

He’s so scared of not being able to read people. He knows it’s a weak spot he has, he’s always known. All of these bits are centered around social expectations and betrayals, the assumption that he doesn’t belong either in society or with other humans.

And Laios’ level of awareness is actually sort of complex to analyze, but it’s there, there’s how out of him and Falin he was the one sensitive to the ~aura of hatred~ he felt from the townspeople, there’s of course his nightmares whispering to him about the mocking looks, and how yeah actually he realizes that his gold stripper coworker was taking advantage of him. There’s of course the Winged Lion speech about his trauma and how he fundamentally mistrusts/dislikes humans to some deep seated degree, this distrust that he still keeps under control always. There’s how pre-canon he often wanted to suggest eating monsters but never worked up the courage to bring it up with the others. There’s how he gets across as stoic when he isn’t being enthusiastic…… We don’t know how aware and wary he is exactly in the moment but we do know he has some anxiety around social stuff, and looking back he does notice and aughh augh, the sense you have to hide yourself to not get hurt and be on your guard and shit and.

When you don’t know what to look out for and when to look out for it, the general ‘common sense’ of not always trusting people or noticing when someone’s messing with you becomes hypervigilance in social settings

"Man they really know what you hate huh". Being socially unaware literally plagues him, he knows, he knows it so well.

It’s so quick that it’s almost hard to digest how literal and blatant Laios summoning his monster to crush all the people who’ve hurt him is. His literal go-to coping mechanism for comfort in his literal monster-induced emotionally intense nightmares, saving him by taking away the upsetting element (the humans)

"Monsters are his coping fantasy, where they can whisk him away from humanity, all the hurt it’s caused him and its arbitrary rules" with the subtlety of a brick. Monsters are his comfort safe zone "because they kill humans" yes but no it’s because he pits them as the guardians against humans who to him are in the role of the agressors. To him they represent freedom from the shackles of what it means to be part of humanity, a fundamentally social species

[yeehawpim]

meet you on the way out

hi candela ch2 finale gave me emotions and now I'm making it everyone's problem 😂

[purplebehittindifferent]

I have added a quirky comment here for the last year and a half, however now… I have no words.

jk I have all these words 👇

I know it is very bitter sweet, but this is the end of Reconnecting. Thank you all for coming along on this journey with me. I plan on making a behind the scenes video on my YT sometime soon. Feel free to send any asks you have I want to answer them all!

Please know I am not going to dissapear! I still plan on making content consistently, and my original comic RULE 5 is already underway, and if you’d like I’m certainly not against writing some exposition fics for Reconnecting 💜

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