Luffy & Zoro in Wano || One Piece ep. 897

"Just as worlds unite, so too do they part." But who's to say they can't unite again? - Zack Fair, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

sometimes people will say “going dark” and then what they’re actually talking about is just people no longer presenting a carefully constructed version of their emotions and experiences.

like. emotional turmoil is not the same as darkness. laudna in this Fictional Universe that has tangibly different stakes wrt to death and killing than our own, is at best like . morally neutral for what she just did like. man has been secretly trying to kill you, and then just tried to do so again, killing him back is a fair choice. and even if i was someone who is excited by delilah’s inability to escape from the narrative, this shit isn’t about delilah. laudna made a choice. if delilah is back or whatever it’s a choice that laudna made because something in that grants her more control than her existing conditions did. this isn’t some Delilah Takes Over, it’s Laudna Expressly Makes The Choice To Call Forth Something within Herself to remedy the lack of control that’s been thrust upon her. if y’all want to Continue to limit Laudna’s agency (as the cr fandom is so, so want to do when a female character makes a choice that isn’t Good according to some weird system of virtue ethics) go ahead.

likewise with orym. little guy is not “going dark” because he has finally made direct action about his emotional turmoil in dealing with a situation which has similarly left him without control and has also placed him in a position where his stalwart conviction towards protecting and honouring those he loves and has lost alike is constantly met with other people he cares for going well.. what if they had a point/we are killing other peoples loved ones/etc. which like . yeah that might be frustrating and in fact might lead him to go, actually, i can’t afford to try and maintain some abject morality where I carry a locket that will literally only provide guilt. orym is completely committed to his beliefs, the locket and what it represents has never been a limit to what he will do, only a reminder of the consequences of what he might cause in those actions. but they Are at war and orym has a billion things on his plate. he can put down the locket. especially when bor’dor is the explicit manifestation of that locket’s symbolism. the subtext rapidly became the text and orym doesn’t need a reminder. it’s there in the fact that team issylra is walking away with two friends, not three.

these are character who have at every turn denied their own emotions in various forms while still being acutely aware of what they deny, whether that awareness was/is fully realized or not. many of laudna’s early convos with ashton show us that there is some awareness to the lighthearted spooky goth girl and how that persona fades when she thinks too much about what has led her and maintained that reality. likewise the entirety of orym’s story thus far is defined by his grief in a very literal sense, it Has extended from that grief to also the commitment he had to the purpose of figuring out the assassination attempt on keyleth but as we have seen, that purpose has fallen apart. paired with the quasi-reopening of his grief that was getting to see will again only to have to turn away, i don’t think there’s a lack of awareness in orym of how much he hurts. but between his actions and 4SD, that hurt tends to get buried under guilt or Responsibility.

and now, finally, both of them have admitted to that Not in the safety of small introspection or one-on-one conversations but with actions that they cannot shy away from or deny. laudna killed bor’dor and orym encouraged her to. and it Is a complex situation but truly I don’t really think it’s a “going dark” one. because they’re not giving into some overhanging Darkness of Morality™, they’re admitting that they are hurt and have long been hurting.

or, y’know, tldr for those who continue to deny laudna and orym agency or fully villainise them for whatever weird reasons . you could listen to laudna and ashton’s conversation that pretty much lays it out explicitly. laudna claims she’s weak for having chosen to kill bor’dor. ashton denies that and affirms instead that, no, she’s hurt.

Part 1 - Part 3

More hugs and more reunions with old friends! ❤️ Includes some of my headcanons, too (for example that Emmet’s Joltik army loves Elesa because she’s statically charged and they like to nomnomnom). I hope you don’t mind lol

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Please do not alter, repost/reupload or redistribute my artwork anywhere! (Reblogging is perfectly fine, of course.)

bitches will still be crying over the high-cloud quintet at 2 am months later and never get over them

its me. im bitches.

Pet peeve: nobody ever includes Timely in the found family :(

i need to talk about speak, prophecy more

You loved me like nobody ever has before.

22-Feb-2018

Skittish (Patreon)

you better be there in a decades time when k3 comes out we need live snap reactions

if i can still be mildly obsessed with P4 nearly a decade after i let my brain melt over it guaranteed ill still be here for rgg

i just realised so many of the parts and lines in [of lattes and dozing generals], esp towards the end of the section where reader was reminiscing in jing yuans office + pretty much the whole of the flashback section, was basically foreshadowing the events of the jingliu vs blade cutscene sequence

.....

fuck now i want to write a sequel to the fic where reader is also invited to the reunion and has this massive emotional burst, specifically at blade, after their fight because this is what you expected, but that doesnt mean it hurts any less seeing the reality you have long since accepted unfold before your eyes.

like,,, it would be so bittersweet and full of unspoken agony and internally you cannot help but to loathe fate more and more for forcing you and your once-companions onto this path destiny has laid out for you

sobbing reader is just... so tired.... and on top of seeing dan heng with faint traces of dan feng within him (but u are able to easily discern the two unlike certain someones), jing yuan with such a conflicted expression the whole time because the only thing he can do is stand by and watch, jingliu with her passive way of speech that bites at certain topics yet softens when reminiscing the past time spent together, and yinxing— no, blade having nothing but the stench of death, anger, guilt, and revenge cling on to his form, so palpable it rolls off in waves.

and when he directs that hostility at you when you decide you cannot take any more and begin to leave... you snap, letting out all the suppressed anger and hurt and betrayal built up over the last seven hundred years for your old friends to see in its barest, most vulnerable form.

The Netherbrain had fallen. Now, come peace, quiet, and the chirping of birds. To be sure, Gale, some several odd years older, had humored these delights to their uttermost measures. He so likes his coffees, will even spike them a twinge with a tot of drink, and on those most quaint of weekends with the months gone balmy? Oh, he'll slumber away until half past noon. Point is, Gale, forty-two, could been seen as soft.

Yet, when the battle quiets and the air crackles with maelstrom?

Oh, no, no, no. Gale, turning back, is anything but.

Plainly, he is at some new indescribable height. He's wicked, warm, and trembling past his skin there bleeds sharp smack of ruin and that deft punch of rain. It's dazzling, seeing the lingering currents of that scintillating lightning. Their enemy lay smote, charred to the point where flash turned to stone and all with nothing but a whisper off his tongue. Mesmerizing, surely. Borderline hellish. "Had I not known any better, I would color you surprised. Of course, I'd rather not suggest you hadn't expected that, to be honest. If it's all the same to you, I'd like to keep our reunion amiable." No surprise is necessary. He was always talented, remember? "Gale Dekarios," he says needlessly. "Humble archmage, at your service." / OPEN.

Been thinking about crisis core reunion and all the damn scenes I cant wait to see remastered (like Sephiroth, Angeal, and Genesis’ fight and when Zack yells at Sephiroth through his fucking flip phone) but THEN I remember that I’ll have to see Zack die again. Except this time it will be in 4k. The absolute cruelty😩