i think it's interesting that astarion has a tendency towards apathy. or at least, on the surface - this is the identity that he believes suits him best. that his roguishness and selfishness and otherwise immoral character is all born from apathy. it's always a song and dance, a show of who can care less. i can't speak much of astarion pre-spawn but post-cazador there is always this bitter cat-and-mouse game.

nothing matters except me. nothing matters except my safety, and the only reason it's worth concern is as it pertains to me. i do think some part of that's genuine. i think 200 years of vile abuse does that to someone and astarion, without debate, was once a very shitty person.

but then, astarion gets company. meets people who are annoying and heroic and silly and empathetic. he meets you - someone who is at some point willing to give his agency back to it, or has some interest in maintaining it. someone who at a baseline just respects him as an autonomous being. and then the mask of apathy, very quickly falls apart. the apathy, the anger, the bitterness - it's all there. it's still there, even when there's someone who cares for him.

but admidst the ending world there's. someone. just someone. and that's as little as it really takes to break astarion in such a particular way. and then you come to realize that he is actually so inconceivably far from infallible. there's something quite pathetic to him. to all of him. underneath of all that is such gripping and miserable loneliness that all it takes for him to care or want is something as basic as respect - you start to think of him very differently.

you see him for what he is which is afraid. always. perpetually. ingrained deep into his bones, terrified. the mask of apathy is worn with the explicit purpose of redircection. if astarion can convince you that he cares for nothing but himself, maybe he can convince himself too. maybe you won't notice all the ways in which he is broken down. maybe you won't notice the way he lingers in hugs and the way his voice breaks trying to assure you want him. maybe if astarion wins at this - nothing will be taken from him.

maybe, maybe - if astarion can play at apathy he can convince himself he doesn't want you love him at all. not once. he can convince himself that the warm feeling of your hands and the self-assured firmness of your love isn't something he wants to fall back on. maybe he can convince himself he'll move on when he outlives you.

maybe if astarion never shows that it all matters to him so much nothing will be taken from him again. what a poor defense mechanism though, really - because all of it seems to matter to him so much

i love writing cecil because theres this fun balance between making him a totally normal dude combined with enough weirdness / instances that you question that

when i write him i want his experience to feel SO human but from an outsider it looks a little removed from what is classified normal or even a little monstrous. i like drawing him with extra eyes but when i write him i usually like to create weirdness around his experiences and behaviors instead. bc its fun!

mainly i was thinking about why lubelle might want to study him — and came to the conclusion that its not him but rather that unfortunate experiences and situations hes gone through or been a victim of. why he is a hub for all this weird time distortion and how his Voice works in the context of the town and the ghosts that follow him and why hes been at the beginning and at the end. Etc etc

Ie. Cecil himself is not weird, but he is weird when placed in the context of his town and in his inability to approach that. (Hes also like normal weird tho he super has weird habits that make carlos go ????? And abby is like ‘yeah man idk where he got that from sure wasnt me’)

Homeless doodles because I have neglected my boy 😔😔

Will Byers sitting on the couch watching TV to pass the time..... he's just like me fr

I just had a thought but I bet Izana smells like firewood and vanilla and nice things like homely stuff like homemade biscuits

“Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?”

Hermes and Poseidon both struggling to stay away from their sons and being haunted by what the Fates have in store for them meanwhile Hades click clacking around the underworld palace with his little heels thinking of sea puns to tell Percy

sometimes you will spend 30 minutes thinking about a character and you will expect to have something coherent to say by the end of that time but the best you can come up with is "they are sooooooo shaped they are so silly i love my blorbo"

*you opening the love letter* what does your damijon look like, pls pls pls pls pls pls pls, i know it would be so cute, i just know it 🙏🙏🙏

here you go! thank you for the ask, this was a lot of fun to do! they're working on a case together ^^

literally the king of oneliners

[part 2]

dont got much to offer for The Holiday but have these sillies!

happy valentines day :D

The Allegiance of the Ascended Vampire and the New God of Magic

listen there really was just something about how in the book, snow’s 3-page descent from hesitant lover boy to deluded psychopath happens entirely in his mind. lucy gray gives him no indication whatsoever that she suspects him, that she’s going to leave or betray him. he’s just sitting quietly in the cabin waiting for her to return when that seed of calculated suspicion, which he has needed to survive the capitol, takes a hold of him and chokes the life out of any goodness left inside him. it really drives home your terror as a reader that “oh my god did he kill her? did she escape? what happened to her? why would he even think that?” in a way that when the movie had to adjust for visualization it lost some of that holy shit this guy has lost it emphasis.

sometimes while i think about that while a lot of adults did not treat me very well as a kid i also get a lot of 'in hindsight this person was so good to me and i didnt even realize it until now' as an adult. today i was thinking about how the first anime convention i ever went to was when i was 10 and i asked the man working the manga cafe what manga was/what a good place to start was (because the con was very overstimulating for me and i had gotten lost) and he asked how old i was before recommending yotsuba and asking if i wanted any water or something to eat. its really simple but theres a lot of bad things that couldve happened or he could've been careless in his recommendation, but instead yotsuba has remained one of my favorite manga for years, and probably a large portion of why i continue to read manga as an adult... i think adults who try to involve kids in the world safely/kindly even in little ways make so much more of a difference than they ever really know.

while we wait.

may i offer you all a pubby?? lil bby barns?

FNAF puppet and Michael Afton got beef,,