Imre and MC

Nia and MC

Lorcan and MC

the heroes of morella are tired !! let them rest !!!

Nia is so hot + my wife

Tyril: These are my partners, Mal and MC, this is Mal and MC's girlfriend Nia, this is Nia and MC's girlfriend Imtura, and this is MC's boyfriend, Aerin Tyril: I hate Aerin

Yes yes virginity is a particularly stupid social construct and shouldn't matter unless it's a kink you're sharing with partner(s)

But also BOLAS MC fucked two virgins and seems to be on their way to fuck a third and 2/3rds of those virgins were evil and all three have tried to kill them at some point and I can't explain why this is so funny to me but it is

So in chapter 8, when MC has their flashback of being held in Valax's dungeon, it's your LI who helps them come back to their senses. And if it's one of the main four, they all say something sweet along the lines of, 'It's alright, I'm here for you.' But if it's Aerin, he says, 'I know what you're feeling.' And I mean, obviously, who else can relate to MC's experience more than the man who spent the year locked up in a dungeon himself, but omg. The writers are so real for adding this detail.

Screenshots from Abhiro on Yt @masked-alien-lesbian @ganakoo @lantsov-vanserra (and me lol).

Illustration for Blades of Light and Shadow! ⚔️

This is the project I was working on to push myself to work on backgrounds/landscapes.

I finally figured out why all the party members in Book 2 come out as so frustratingly self-focused to me.

It's not because they're all struggling with their own stuff. It's all about shelving your agenda- that thing in a relationship where you go, 'You need my support right now, so we're going to worry about my thing later.'

And MC does this constantly.

I just barely escaped death and found out a year passed, but is Kade recovered from the Shadow Court?

I just almost drowned, but it's time to comfort this owlbear cub and unpack Valax's trauma!

I just almost died twice to the Ash Empress, but is Nia coping with being corrupted okay?

Which can be okay. Shelving your agenda is part of a healthy relationship of any kind.

The problem is that no one does it back. I think Tyril and Nia kind of sum up the whole group's attitude:

But I don't think MC was ever going to be 'ready.' Someone else was always going to have to 'unshelve' it for them and make an effort to put the focus on MC.

Now, adventurers don't tend to be particularly well adjusted people. The full party has got maybe 1.5 healthy childhoods and 4 living parents between them (judged pretty generously). But it still feels like the others can't get it together enough to ask if MC is okay. Not that MC really makes it easy! I see MC as someone who is so used to pushing their feelings down to focus on whatever work is in front of them, they almost can't access their own emotions.

Which is why we had the brief glimpses of panic and the breakdown moment in Chapter 17. I think the breakdown makes sense mechanically. Kade is the one character your MC is guaranteed to have a strong connection to and this way it's not gated behind any diamond choices (like some really crucial character moments with Aerin and Valax, no I'm not bitter about it). But that makes it feel like the whole party has been neglecting MC while Kade immediately sees MC and goes, "Dude, you are not okay. Talk to me.'

And MC tries to turn it into comforting Kade! Kade has to actively argue with MC to make them actually acknowledge that they're having a hard time.

MC for some reason can't or won't talk about their own trauma and Kade (who's only been around for 5 minutes) is the one who has to actively force the issue for MC's own good. Which is not a great look for the rest of the found family.

Afterward, Mal and Nia both seem to address it without really getting the point. Mal says, "We know things didn't go the way any of us wanted." (Which could mean... anything. But I'm feeling generous.)

Protecting MC from death is not an equivalent exchange to talking about feelings! It is in fact dodging the feelings by focusing on practicalities again! Y'all better get it together in Book 3, I swear.

Overall, MC constantly delays addressing their own vulnerability and issues to focus on everyone else. And the others don't know how to do the same thing for MC, so the pattern just gets more engrained and damaging.

Except for Kade, my perfect boy.

Sources (they're fun, I promise!):

Screenshots from Neckrone Shen's playthroughs of Blades on YouTube, my go-to for whenever I can't remember something or don't have the screenshots myself.

I think @oh-so-youre-a-nerd's incredible piece 'Take Take Take' kept rattling around in my head until I figured out how to articulate why it felt this way: https://www.tumblr.com/oh-so-youre-a-nerd/736449955360899072/take-take-take?source=share

The language of 'shelving your agenda' came from the very good Cinema Therapy video about Kristoff from Frozen:

can i speak my truth ? can i keep it real ? there shouldve been more in-party conflict in blades 2. like obviously mc should’ve gotten to cuss mal out in particular when he was like You Dont Know What We’ve Been Thru as if getting kidnapped and forced into a magically induced coma and getting your blood stolen and having constant benadryl nightmares is a walk in the park lmfao, and also just gotten to talk more about what they went through and how it’s impacted them

but also there should’ve been way more beef between the other party members. like girl if i’m nia and i’m spiralling scorning sleep and food constantly hunting for a way to free MY GIRLFRIEND (!!) from the clutches of some goth elf cunt on top of making the fantasy catholic church christlike again and repressing my inner shadow demon and one of my friends is like “hesdeadjim.png give up also fuck you” and then fucked off to be an alcoholic pit fighter, i wouldve actually just thrown hands when we saw each other next. no magic no nothing just me and my nasty little fingers (covered in paper cuts from all the arcane shadow tomes ive been reading) coming straight for her eye sockets. staff of silverlake should’ve been nia’s weapon and she should’ve leapt into the pit in chapter 4 and clocked imtura in the skull with it.

like you bitches should be CRAZY!!!! you should all have DISORDERS!!!! you should be begging ravens perched on busts for RESPITE AND NEPENTHE from your memories of me !!!!!! the moon should never beam without bringing you dreams of ME and the stars never rise but you feel MY bright eyes. tyril should be half-mad with grief and stress he should be mumbling to himself and seeing mc’s silhouette in dark corners. nia should be clearly and obviously off her fucking rocker and constantly on the verge of self destructing and taking us all out with her. imtura should be constantly blind drunk so she doesn’t have to feel her grief or anything at all really. mal should have been in the wind the second it started looking like mc wasn’t coming back and nobody’s heard from him in months. kade should be in a bottomless pit of grief bc when he was stuck in the shadow realm we never gave up hope and we went to rescue him but now that the tables are turned he’s slowly losing hope and day by day and night by night we recede and he becomes more faithless. threep and loola should be inseparable sleeping in a pile together never beyond a wing-length from one another and keeping obsessive tabs on all the other party members no matter how far-flung across morella they are because they’ve already lost everyone and everything they knew to the shadow court once and they’ll be damned if they lose anything else. also kade and aerin should’ve built up a weird semihostile rapport bc once everything fell apart and everyone went their separate ways it was just the two of them in the whitetower palace and kade would go to his cell and sit out of arm’s reach to vent about his time in the shadow realm and his grief and hopes and fears. they both knew and loved mc, in their own ways, despite how aerin hurt them, and now they’ve both lost them, maybe for good. maybe one day aerin starts talking back

where is the SPICE where is the FLAVOUR? where’s the DRAMA where’s the OOMPH where’s the PANACHE? you cannot look at me and tell me these dysfunctional bitches wouldn’t fall back into their worst habits once the one person who held them all together up and vanished into the void. why am i not ending each chapter feeling like i’ve just gotten punched in the dick bc the love is so obviously still there and that’s why it hurts so bad. they should’ve put their whole budget and pussies into forcing the party to fit themselves back together even though they’ve all grown new sharp edges and keep cutting each other up. they should’ve gone full dark no stars about it. grief is an amputation but hope is incurable hemophilia you bleed and bleed and bleed, plants that are split down the middle dont heal they die, you are a language i am no longer fluent in but still remember how to read, what lived and died between us haunts me still, if someone asked me at the end i’d tell them “put me back in it”, i care what ghosts think of me, come back even as a shadow even as a dream, someone has to leave first this is a very old story there is no other ending to this story, etc, etc, you get it you understand. also the mc should’ve come back WRONG.

starting march with my favorite butchfemme pairing👍

How would Nia react if, after becoming a brain surgeon, MC sat her down and asked her if she thought it was a good idea if they (MC) got lobotomized or not. And if it was a good idea, would she like to do it herself, or prefer someone else to do it?

Lobotomies are illegal in 1994 Nia would lose her license and lobotomies don’t work mc would become a shell person they would become a ghost that’s why they’re illegal 😭

Nia would say with all due respect “you’re a fucking idiot.” And that she would report any corrupt doctor that would be willingly to do it to the board

I chose to recombine the two realms so that my human MC and Nia don’t die at fucking age 40 or something.

my reaction to this information:

Nia lip biting consumes my every single thought

BLADES 3 POSSIBLY IN 2024??!!

You can't tell me that every single romanceable character in BOLAS wouldn't have the craziest praise kink ever

the only thing the six of them share is the fact that they'll shatter the second they get a bit of positive reinforcement

In a much earlier chapter, when Nia is struggling with Shadow corruption, you can say “Maybe Aerin can help” and that option actually gives you XP as though it’s the correct response (along one other dialogue option which is also correct and gives XP).

So that is completely hilarious and ridiculous now that we realize all Aerin would have been able to say to Nia is “Okay, if you have a Nerada Stone embedded in you, you have to forcibly rip it out of yourself. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, but so much worse.”

“I do not.”

“Ah, then I got nothing. Okay hahah good luck with that.”