arcadecoconut

She/her. 30s. Aussie. Many fandom interests.

[vethbrenatto]

“You came for your stupid stone”

“I did. And I’ll get it.” CHILLS

[redjennies]

vaelus: okay so i don't care about any of this but you're saying these crow people might have my rock?

[burr-ell]

man thjazi going in to get staves to bring back to arm his people absolutely fucking SLAPS this man only gets hotter

[stickandthorn]

Travis instinctually hitting that “DOWN!!” was crazy.

[captainofthetidesbreath]

I love that Murray is very correct. Thjazi WOULD have loved that someone almost died touching mysterious artifacts upstairs at his funeral.

[redjennies]

"do you want to be a gift???" Thjazi I'm in love with you.

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Occtis saying he doesn't know who Vaelus' god is and her response being "how sad for you" and then going back to matter-of-factly asking questions is SO GOOD actually. Wild that there are people alive who never knew the gods. That almost all of the people alive never knew the gods??? Like... how fucking isolating.

[captainofthetidesbreath]

Brennan, handing Teor the banner flown during the rebellion: Travis, you are tasked with positioning Teor to fill both Loza's and Thjazi's shoes. Get it done.

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

I've been rotating a specific exchange between Thaisha and Vaelus in my mind: the one where Thaisha bitterly comments on Vaelus's lack of funerary decorum by noting that, as an immortal elf, Vaelus probably hasn't experienced enough loss to know her behaviour isn't appropriate, to which Vaelus, a woman explicitly described as wearing mourning vestments and who announced herself as a follower of a dead goddess, sarcastically replies that yes indeed, she has never experienced any loss ever. It's only a few lines from each character but throws the massive gulf in their perspectives into sharp relief.

Because Thaisha isn't wrong that Vaelus is acting the way she is because she does not understand nor appreciate the gravity of the event she's crashing, but rather than being borne from simply not experiencing loss because her people don't die unless they're killed, it's borne from the fact that everyone but her people will die even if they are not killed. Vaelus doesn't understand why everyone is so devastated by an event that was inevitable simply being moved up the calendar, especially because as an ancient elf specifically, the average humanoid lifetime is nothing to her. The 70 years that have passed since the Shapers War is a blink of an eye to her. It's a callous approach to the feelings of others brought about by her experience of watching the lives of non-elves pass in the blink of an eye to her, and by the fact that both she and they know they will die eventually, so a sudden death of such a mortal being doesn't register as anything that would be especially devastating to those that knew him.

But Vaelus is also justified in being defensive about the fact that she has experienced profound loss, she's been very explicitly clear in her introduction of herself and in her dress that the Shapers War took someone precious from her, and that she's still actively in mourning. And in keeping with her inability to consider an inevitable death as something to mourn, Sylvandri's death wasn't something that was guaranteed to pass, she was a timeless being like Vaelus that was killed. The last of the Shapers to fall.

But of course this loss doesn't register as anything major to Thaisha! She's a part of the generations born after the Shapers War; the only world she's ever known is one which does not have gods. While she as a druid loves the world and the divinity nature has in its own right, she's never known a divinity that also has full personality and intent. The idea of a god you worship being a person you have an intimate relationship with would be incredibly foreign to her, so the idea that Vaelus is mourning a loved one in much the same way she is mourning Thjazi probably never even crossed her mind.

Both Thaisha and Vaelus are women deep in grief trying to hold onto the pieces of the person they lost, but their perspectives and life experiences are just so vastly different that neither has fully recognized that in the other, and I am fascinated to see where this relationship goes because tiny snippet was already so good.

[burr-ell]

the light being described as "a divinity without the inconvenience of a voice or perspective" is a CHOICE

[ithinkthiswasabadidea]

Sir Julien "well he ain't gettin' any dead-er" Davinos

[mgrover]

“all the c4 characters have children” factoid actually just a statistical error. Average players has no children. Aabria and Liam, who love drama and do not fear god or man have somewhere between 4-6 children between them, are outliers and should not be counted

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

"When he died, I hid"

She loved him even after he led a rebellion against her family, after refusing to run away with him. She loved him enough that she could not bear to watch him die, and she loved him enough that its clear she feels guilt that she couldn't be there in his final moments

[essektheylyss]

The grief in this episode is so palpable throughout, but god I LOVE specifically Thaisha and Occtis's introduction and their grief, because they are rationalizing the entire way to the home. They sound so distant, so intellectual, but it's clear that they're in shock rather than uncaring.

And then they get to the home and Thaisha sees Hal—who she loved, who looks so much like Thjazi—and her voice cracks. She lingers too long in the hug. She steps into her duties of the rites, but she also gets hammered with a demon she just met and keeps doing her rites, and then she sobers herself up because her kids are here and she has to be responsible. She's sloppy, and messy, and who could possibly blame her, under the circumstances?

And meanwhile Occtis is intellectualizing this, as he seems inclined to do, because it's the easy thing to fall back on, but then he sees the body—something he's seen many, many times, up close and personal, but not like this, not someone like this—and he just freezes up. He can barely socialize without Thaisha or someone else familiar at his side. The moment an opportunity arises, he leaves to keep intellectualizing, to find a problem to solve. He panics and tells a demon that she isn't welcome, in someone else's home.

It's messy, it's not necessarily what's "appropriate", and it really makes them both immediately so intricate and grounded in their characters in such a fun way.

[stickandthorn]

good episode 👍

[revvethasmythh]

HOT SEXY INTRO ASHLEY. SHE BROUGHT THE NIGHT. INTO IT.

[mgrover]

“all the c4 characters have children” factoid actually just a statistical error. Average players has no children. Aabria and Liam, who love drama and do not fear god or man have somewhere between 4-6 children between them, are outliers and should not be counted