Some aspects of Laudna's behavior from the most recent ep have really started to stand out to me re: her backstory. We're told basically that after leaving Whitestone she roamed to different cities and was subsequently run out of many places by the townsfolk for being...well, a creepy undead witch. This is really all we know of thirty years of her life, we have nothing more detailed than that until Gelvaan, which is also not very detailed on what exactly she was doing there. And it's interesting because this backstory feels like it's meant to elicit a lot of sympathy on Laudna's behalf--i.e. she is being wrongly chased out of places for the crime of being/looking different. But something about the way she approached Imahara Joe's establishment--sending in the creepy whispers, specifically making a bunch of terrifying "rattling noises", and responding with a smile and saying "It works every time" when they heard a noise in response--really has me like. okay. Laudna, did you get chased out of places because you were terrorizing people in those places? because it sounds like you've done this before, potentially many times, and what's "fun scary" to one person can so very easily be "scary scary" to the people on the other end of the schtick.
Laudna clearly loves people, but I do have to wonder if she experiences a certain amount of dissonance about the effects that her actions cause. She very much has this Manic Demon Nightmare Girl persona thing going on, and that delighted, manic energy mixed with her penchant for the macabre, often directed at other people where she enjoys their freaked out reactions? I think, perhaps, there were reasons she kept getting run out of places that we have not, uh, unpacked as of yet.
To go deeper with this, Laudna is a character who rarely feels like she's in charge of her own destiny. Some of this is intentional, like the repeated puppet imagery re: Delilah. But I wonder if, perhaps, Laudna is someone who has had so many things--bad things, terrible things--happen to her that she had learned to erase her own role in her life. There was nothing she could do when the Briarwoods took over Whitestone, there was nothing she could do when she was murdered by Delilah, and there was nothing she could do when she was resurrected as the undead creachure that she is today. But there are thing she could have done in the intervening thirty years to change her situation. She could have pursued threads about getting rid of Delilah for thirty years, long before meeting Imogen. She could have (somewhat) altered her behavior so she wasn't freaking people out wherever she went and maybe she could have stayed somewhere. She could have been proactive in making changes and pursuing things in her life and I just wonder if she has forgotten that she can do that for herself and that the things she does do have consequences. In ep 49, she told Imogen, "The gods have never kept us from our ability to have a choice." But she only says this to Imogen. When does Laudna finally make an active choice? When does she realized that her behavior and the consequences of the behavior are in her control? When does Laudna decide that it's time to stop being a spectator in her own story, a person that things happen to? Soon, I hope. She should be the main character of her own story, and right now she simply isn't
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also. can i just say how much i love falin's sloped shoulders. like shoulder angle is something i have never thought about when doing character design, but falin's sloped shoulders are such a notable part of her silhouette and they're sooo pretty
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the pjo/omori brainrot have unfortunately come for me at the same time so i'm going to make it everyone else's problem. sorry
soooo... assuming the di angelos were a well-off family (which i think is implied, but don't check me on that), it wouldn't be so far-fetched to believe that bianca would have had the opportunity to learn the piano. and nico, who adores his sister and wants to be closer to her, thinks they can bond if he learns an instrument too, right? but he can't impose on the piano. that's hers. so he takes up the next best thing, something he can play by her side- the violin.
in a hypothetical AU where bianca di angelo doesn't join the hunters, she and her little brother nico spend their time shut inside the big house's piano room, going over the same pieces again and again. to bianca, it's her last connection to her mother, to the life they'd had before the lawyers and the lotus hotel and camp half-blood. to nico, it's a way of desperately trying to bridge the distance he can feel growing between them. to both of them, it's everything.
but it isn't enough.
and so she practices harder and her temper gets shorter and one day she snaps at nico because his violin doesn't sound right, just what aren't you getting, nico? and nico is only ten and just wants to make his sister happy, because everything should be alright as long as they're together- but what was supposed to be a shared hobby has only driven them even farther from each other. you can probably imagine what happens next, right? he storms away from her, maybe to a secluded part of the forest, and relishes in the way his violin shatters against the big rocks when he swings. and bianca is so, so angry and she's coming closer. her face is red and she's shouting at him, and nico does the only thing he can think to do in his panic and frustration- he pushes her. he pushes her into the same rocks that hold the splintered pieces of his instrument and can only freeze in horror as the snap of her neck makes the same sound.
maybe in this universe, he'd also befriended a certain son of apollo a little earlier on. will solace isn't very popular with the other campers- they love pointing out how ironic it is that a son of apollo couldn't play an instrument to save his life and he knows, even if they try to hide it, that his older siblings are embarrassed by him too. but then this enigmatic new demigod shows up, with nothing but his mythomagic cards, his violin, and a big sister who takes will under her wing, and they offer to let him listen to them practice- and all of a sudden, he isn't so lonely anymore.
nico is will's first and closest friend. so when he follows the sound of their argument and sees nico push his sister in a fit of anger, all he can think is nico wouldn't do that to her.
kind, earnest nico, who loved his sister more than anything... couldn't have killed her. it had to be something behind him, and he can't let them punish nico for what SOMETHING else did. will has to help him. everything is going to be okay.
everything is going to be okay, he says when he shakes nico out of his grief-induced stupor.
everything is going to be okay, he tells himself when they steal a coil of rope from the stables.
everything is going to be okay, even as tears blur his vision and he swears that the lifeless body swaying in the wind is looking at them.
he takes nico's cold, shaking hand and lies to himself.
everything is going to be okay.
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Lmao, Vee sees the theories about Luz and is just thinking “This is an insult to kids who grew up chained up in basements. I am so much more functional than that.”
FJDJFJ YEAH. vee has a few uncharitable moments of being like "luz. you have GOT to pull it together. if i can pull it together then so can you" and then upon finding out luz's best-friend-slash-life-partner died horrifically, is like, "well, okay. this does in fact explain some things. YOU STILL NEED TO PULL IT TOGETHER IN PUBLIC, THOUGH,"
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