#two and a half boys

[wulfhalls]

corrupted godhood. reluctant false messiah. prophecy as a creeping all consuming malady. does the oracle see the future or make the future? the horror of trapping yourself inescapably on purpose. the chains of destiny dragging you towards the path you are fighting tooth and nail to free yourself from. there never having been a chance to begin with. no other choice to make. but making that choice regardless.

[machinerot]

[egophiliac]

LET THE BOY HAVE AN EDUCATION

officially at the point where we're starting to see where it's all headed and I am just going NYEEHEEHEE in delight at it all. ahhh...next week can't come soon enough...

[risibledeer]

boat boys, shortgrass and greenbeans- what more could you ask for?

(ps-drawing reqs are open btw i need inspiration helpp)

[hinamie]

congrats on your recovery n all yuuji but unfortunately for you I thought the scars were cool >:/

[shegoesbyjoy]

the quiet show of support from kim despite his own nerves... the playful ribbing between the two of them... the image of kim lending a crying harry his handkerchief, doing what he can to dry this broken man's tears....... these moments are really making me feel some type of way alright

[collophora]

"Let's fix this drawing" *redraw the whole thing*

[wombywoo]

#OC Vincent~

[cozylittleartblog]

had a(nother) nightmare

[mrtequilasunset]

Tumblr really did not want to let me upload this file. Anyways. Phys Skills!

in case you haven't seen the other designs they're here: [Psyche] [Motorics (currently redesigning)]

[chloesimaginationthings]

WHY ARE SUN AND MOON SO CUTE IN YOUR STYLEEEE

I stand by that Sun and Moon are the best to draw

[teethlordd]

Putting some guys in some fancy outfits

[essektheylyss]

One thing that I feel is really interesting and often forgotten about Essek is that fundamentally, his characterization has been from the start based upon his desperation for external perspectives and connection, which, along with much of his narrative and mechanical positioning, means that he actually has an extraordinary and almost (but not actually, as I'll show) counterintuitive capacity for both growth and trust.

(Buckle in. This is a long one.)

In particular, I would argue, knowing now that many places where the plot touches Ludinus have long been marked for connecting back into the current plot, that he was quite possibly built as a prime candidate for radicalization by the Ruby Vanguard. He felt isolated from his culture, he was desperate for other connection, and he was certainly of the type to believe he was too smart to be drawn into such a thing, given his initial belief that he could control the situation and the fallout. If things had gone any other way, he easily could've been on the other side by now.

As such, he has been hallmarked by being fairly open to suggestion, perhaps for this reason, but the thing about that kind of trait is that it is both how people are radicalized and deradicalized. This is certainly true of Essek, who experienced genuine kindness and quite frankly strangeness from the Nein and was able to move from the isolation the Assembly had engendered to meaningful and genuine connection, largely propelled by his own internal reflection. By the time Nein are aware of his crimes, he's already begun to express regret to an extent and, furthermore, doubt in the Assembly, including explicitly drawing a line against Ludinus, even in a position where he was on his own and probably quite vulnerable.

Similarly, when the Nein reach the Vurmas Outpost some weeks later, he has moved from regret for the position he's ended up carrying a heavy remorse. This makes sense! He's fairly introspective, seems used to spending a lot of time in his own head, and was left with plenty to mull over. It's not some kind of retcon for him to have progressed well past where the Nein left him; it just means he's an active participant in the world who has done his own work in the meantime.

This is another interesting aspect to him. I've talked about this a bit before but I cannot find the post so I'll recap here: antagonists in D&D have significantly more agency than allied NPCs. Antagonists are active forces, against which the party is meant to struggle; allies are meant to support the PCs, which means they tend to be more passive in both their actions and their character growth. Essek was both built as an antagonist, in a position that gives him significant agency, and also was then given significant opportunity to grow specifically to act as a narrative mirror for Caleb's arc. Even when he becomes a more traditional D&D ally, he still retains much of that, though he occupies a supporting role.

I believe that this is especially true because of the nature of Caleb's arc, which I've already written on; the tl;dr of this post is that Caleb is both convinced that he is permanently ruined and also desperate to prove that change is possible. Essek is that proof, because he is simply the character in a position to do so. But this also means that his propensity for introspection and openness is accentuated! He has to do the legwork on his own, for the most part, because that's where he is in the meantime.

But he still ends the campaign necessarily constricted; he is under significant scrutiny, he's at risk from the Assembly, and he goes on the run fairly soon after the story ends. He spends most of the final arc anxious and paranoid, which is valid given the crushing reality of his situation. It would be very easy to extrapolate that seven years into this reality, he would be insular, closed off, and suspicious of strangers, even in spite of the lessons he's learned from the Nein and their long term exposure.

So seeing his openness and lightness now is surprising, but at the same time, given this combination of factors in his position in the narrative over time and his defining traits, it's not by any means unreasonable.

But one thing that I found so delightful is how much trust he exhibits, which is obviously a wild thing to say about Essek in particular, given much of what he learns is both earning and offering trust, which was something he says explicitly in 2x124 that he's never really experienced: "I've never really been trusted and so I did not trust." It makes up much of the progression of his relationship with Caleb, and the trust that he is offered by the Nein in walking off the ship is the impetus he needs to grow.

But I think it's easy to talk about trust when it comes to people who have proven themselves to you or to whom you've ingratiated yourself, and that's really the most we can say about Essek by the time he leaves the Blooming Grove. There is this sense in a lot of discussion of trust (not solely in this fandom) that it is only related to either naivete or love, but there's far more to it. Trust at its best is deliberate—cultivating an openness to the world at large is a great way to combat cynicism and beget connection instead. It allows a person to maintain curiosity and be open to experience, but it can be incredibly difficult to hold onto.

It is clear that the Essek we meet now is a very pointedly and intentionally trusting individual. He trusts Caleb and by extension Caleb's trust in Keyleth, as he shows up and picks up a group of strangers from a foreign military encampment and walks in without issue. He trusts the Hells to follow his lead moving through Zadash and to exhibit enough discretion so as to avoid bringing suspicion upon all of them. He trusts that Astrid will respond well to his entrance, but he also trusts himself and the Hells enough to execute a back-up plan in the case that she doesn't. In the end, he even trusts them enough to give them his name and identity.

He doesn't scan as someone who has spent half a dozen years living like a prey animal, afraid of any shadow he runs across in an alley, withdrawn into himself and an insular family, which would've been an easy route for him to take. He scans as someone who has learned the kind of trust borne of learned confidence and a trained eye for good will and kindness, which are crucial weapons one would need for staving off cynicism in his circumstances—as if he has survived thanks more to connection and kindness than paranoia and isolation. (If we want to be saccharine about it, he scans quite poignantly as a member of the Mighty Nein.)

So it is easy to imagine this trust and openness as a natural progression of his initial search for perspectives external to his own cultural knowledge. Though he makes those first connections with the Assembly to try to vindicate his personal hypotheses, he finds in them exposure to the deepest corruption among Exandrian mortals, which could've—and did, for a time—turned him further down that same dark path.

But it's also this same openness to exposure from the wider world that allows the Nein to influence him for the better, and in spite of the challenges he's certainly faced simply surviving over the past seven years, he seems to have held onto this openness enough to move through the world with self-assurance and a willingness to extend the kinds of trust and good will that he has been shown.

(I would be remiss not to mention that I was reminded about my thoughts on this by this lovely post from sky-scribbles and their use in the tags of 'light' to describe Essek's demeanor this episode, which is really such an apt word for it.)

[egophiliac]

IT'S BUNNY TIME EVERYBODY

(feat. Dilla)

(bugle accompaniment by Yuu)

[shaylogic]

[somethingsomethingstarward]

no but like. if we are going to be talking about the yaoqing trio-

feixiao and moze are in the middle of a crisis. they came to secure a prisoner, and not only is that prisoner not secure, he has in fact escaped! and is now holding their ambassador hostage! and that's if said ambassador is even still alive- for all they know, hoolay might have decided it's not worth waiting and killed him anyway. they are dealing with not only a massive diplomatic issue, but a massive threat to the security of the entire xianzhou alliance, especially to anyone who's foxian. the only silver lining is that hoolay is, for reasons they don't know, still on the luofu, but that also means that they cannot afford to make mistakes right now, because it's basically their only chance to prevent this from spiraling completely out of control. they absolutely have to be at their best here.

and also- that's their friend. he hates coriander and he makes them hot pot and he's had his heart broken too many times. he mourns every person he's ever healed and sent back out to die on the battlefield- and he came back anyway, to try and save someone who he knew was dying. how long do you think it took for him to believe that caring about them wqs worth the pain? how long do you think the two of them spent trying to figure out how to walk the line between being a soldier and having someone to come back to? how long do you think it took, for a general and assassin and a medic to decide there was something worth caring about anyway between the three of them- that even though they knew it would hurt in the end, it was worth trying?

and now one of them- that wasn't even a frontline fighter, that was never supposed to be in this position in the first place- is either dead or captive with the worst enemy of his entire species. if he's alive, then he is actively experiencing the effects of a fear toxin and surrounded by enemies who think he's property at best. so if they want to get him back, he's going to have to survive all of that and give hoolay a decent reason to keep him alive long enough for them to rescue him. and maybe the worst part is, if they have to choose- and I think all three of them know this- they cannot prioritize his safety over neutralizing the fact that hoolay presents.

on some level, of course, they had to be prepared for this. fexiao is a general. moze and jiaoqiu are her retainers. you are inevitably going to end up in a situation where one of them is in danger and the other two just have to deal with it. it comes with the territory. moze was ready and willing to leave jiaoqiu behind, and i think that's not because he doesn't care, but because that is the deal you make when you choose to care about somebody within this situation. your higher priority has to be the safety of your general and the xianzhou, in that order. and feixiao, as the general, has to prioritize the safety of the alliance above either of them.

but i think about what it must be like to try to make those plans, knowing all of this. because they were never going to be safe- not as the general of the yaoqing and her retainers- but none of that changes the fact that feixiao and moze know, keenly, that somebody they care about is being hurt. and they might, if they get this right, be able to save him- but the damage is being done as they speak, and every second they take is another second jiaoqiu suffers.

i think it must kill them, just a little bit.