you were not born with venom in your veins

what can I say. liam obrien characters be loving men, processing grief, and loving their friends.

A better future is possible if we have the courage to pave the roads to it. Also libraries are punk as fuck, pass it on.

+ Sam taking emotional damage

(template by @/lextr44 on twitter)

Please tell me more about Shadowhand Essik

astrid and caleb. she pities him. she resents him for being free. she loves him. she chose him in the end. do u get it. she chose him over ikithon. and caleb loves astrid. and he resents her for never wavering. and he pities her for it too. he wanted so badly not to have to fight her and he didn't really need to. because she made the right choice. they are never going to be normal about each other. HELLO

like i don't think caleb has it in him to be disappointed with her for still being a volstrucker and trying to undermine ikithon and take his place i truly think that his perspective on it is that she is in far too deep to ever even dream of being anything else. he understands her. and he pities her for it. she's never going to get out. it's not her fault. but she isn't even willing to try, all she wants to do is climb the ladder. she is so stuck in the cycle she is never ever ever going to be free of it - in her defense it took a major tbi and a restored memory for caleb to get out. they had to turn him off and back on. they restarted my guy back to factory settings and he still doesn't feel free of it. she didn't get that and i think that the stars aligned for that to happen to him at the exact moment in time that it did yknow. she's never getting out. he doesn't blame her for it. he's sorry. he's a tiny bit judgemental because sometime down the line she figured out that her memory was modified and she kept going. and he pities her because she's a weapon. she hates ikithon and she is still a weapon. with all that in mind i don't know how she had the self control not to fucking kill him sometime in c2 out of honestly very valid resentment because he looks at her like she's wounded while she is ikithon's right hand. she is doing Everything Right™ in the world she is in, that he failed out of, and he's telling her she's wrong. she chose him in the end partially out of love and apology and partially because she saw it was her chance to strike at ikithon. but she had to hate him so so much. doubly after the post-campaign ikithon fight where he basically fucking killed ikithon idk how she did not kill that man. after he told her that she couldn't. i wish i could have been a fly on the wall when he broke that news to her. my god.

#yeahhhhh#and (somewhat beside the point) but i keep thinking about c3 astrid not knowing that ikithon got out#weeks after it happened#i think she would probably try to kill whoever delivered her that news. Trent got out and didnt think about her for one second#if i were caleb i would also put it off until revivify was working again - @widogast-ta

snort laughing at the last tag. yeah. a very good decision on his part

wulf is another story. he's a soldier. caleb can't fault him for that. he's just lucky that wulf's loyalties lie with astrid instead of ikithon

do you think they envy him. wulf. for being so resigned to it all. for having his faith. for feeling like he has a purpose past what he is. he doesn't hate ikithon any less than them but. so it goes. such is his lot in life. there is more to life than the living, in his opinion. but through it all he has loved and respected and held faith in astrid. it's not a "she can get me out of this" mindset it's truly. just. she's astrid. she's brilliant. she is the only mf who understands him and visa versa. he goes where she goes. yknow.

don't mind me while I pierce the fucking sound barrier

WE GOT CALAMITY FOLKS!!! WE GOT ZERXUS!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I AM. CHEWING AT THE DRYWALL. WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN J'MON. if they meet zerxus and he mentions the ring of brass i will level the surrounding 8 city blocks ijkskdjskjdk

look me in the eyeballs. astrid and caleb (imo wulf is a slightly different story but that's another post) are textually, canonically narrative foils. i think a better, less literary term-y way to put it is that they're variations on the same person. like. canonically. astrid is caleb if he didn't fail the training. caleb is astrid if she got out. they're like if you took one person and laid out two seperate options on how they would react to a major life-changing incident (hmm. i wonder what that might be in this context). astrid. caleb. they look at each other and see themselves. caleb is alright with this. astrid was holding on for her life for a little bit, trying not to lose her shit, because. he is who she would be if she was free and she figures that out during c2 yknow. caleb always knew that he was almost astrid so he just had to. like. look at this woman he loves dearly and fucking. wretchedly. and cope with the fact that 1. he loves her 2. she's awful 3. she could be so much better than she is 4. she's too far gone for that. but he's been coping for a long time, and she's not unreachable she's just. she's never gonna be him. meanwhile she has to grapple with the fact that she will never be as free as him- i don't know if she really wants to be, but he's proof that her life didn't need to go the way that it did and that's brutal. anyway. they're the same guy. it is so so important to consider that in relation to the dynamic they have going on. is this mic on

My list of characters I think Matt should voice in Mighty Nein animated:

Vox Machina S3!!! Still making my way (makin' my way) through all their cards. Hopefully I can get one done soon!

my parents everyone