@stacksofsstuff - Tumblr Blog

leetle-bloo-tiefling

dairon: he's volstrucker? that's bad news, beau. if he realizes you're cobalt soul………

beau, standing there in the full cobalt soul vestments she's been openly wearing this entire time:

depressedtimtam

Widogast casts bisexual maelstrom

disarmonia

A quick fan art of Essek Thelyss from Critical Role campaign 2 and The Mighty Nein animated series. Character belongs to Matthew Mercer, obviously. Just wanted to do something for myself this morning, after another horrific night, as 600+ deadly drones and missiles of different types were launched at my home city of Kyiv. I am very tired. I can't just keep repeating myself every day. Just have to keep going.

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If you want to support me and me art - my tip jars are HERE along with links to trusted foundations to support Ukraine.

road-rhythm

"Essek comes across as so YOUNG here!"

Yes, he does, and the problem with that is he's meant to be one hundred and twenty

road-rhythm

Between this and Da'leth getting swapped out for Ikithon, it feels like the goal is to recreate Caleb's arc on Essek—to make them stronger foils, to provide a way to show how Ikithon operates in the present rather than telling us in flashbacks, to make Essek more sympathetic, whatever.

But the problem with *that* is that Caleb's arc makes very little sense grafted onto Essek. Essek is not 15; he's 120. He's not the child of farmers in a feudal farming village; he's an aristocrat from the highest eschelons of his society. He's not dependent on Ikithon for education and the necessities of life; he's a fully independent adult with money and the ability to teleport who wants something very specific from a man he conceives of as a peer. He's not physically and socially isolated by a revered teacher-cum-father figure over a period of years; he's in Ikithon's immediate company for a matter of days, and despises the man from the first minute. He's not a patriot; he's an apostate, religious and political. He might be an idealist, but he'd deny it—and did—and whatever idealism he has is enough different from Caleb's that Caleb, across many a painfully clunky charisma check, never did find the lever of it.

None of that is to say that Essek doesn't have vulnerabilities for the Assembly to exploit. Rather, what makes Essek a worthwhile foil for Caleb is that he had a distinct, in many ways opposite suite of vulnerabilities, and the Assembly found a way to exploit him anyway. "Thinner than a razor" speech notwithstanding, Caleb and Essek are very different people, which is in fact why they can have an interesting relationship.

Perhaps I'm making too many assumptions too early, but if the virtue of the hyper-compressed format of the animated series is that it's heady, the challenge is that there's next to no margin for error.

road-rhythm

"But 120 is a tender age in the Dynasty!"

Episode 1, we see Essek tasked with retrieving the most significant object in his nation's history by its head of state. Even if he was just one of many, as I assume he was, that does not happen if your society does not consider you an adult.

"But Bright Queen Leylas Kryn, absolute monarch of the theocracy named for her a millennium ago, was condescending to Essek when they spoke!"

I've had bosses with a couple years on me and unimpressive CVs be quite a bit more condescending than that. More condescending than I'm being about takes I disagree with in my mentions right now, even. Not only did it not make me more youthful, I would even say it did the opposite.

"Let Essek be traumatized!"

Good news (?), adults can be traumatized.

Is this what "At 120 years old, Essek was just a wee bab" is about—an underlying belief that youth is the only acceptable form of vulnerability? Do folks think that at some magic number, we become immune to being taken advantage of, or are meant to, such that past that age any abuse is our own fault for failing to stop? It's certainly the case that on a societal level, common adult traumas like employer abuse or incarceration or xenophobia or indeed caring for a parent while receiving negative amounts of support from the society around you are less likely to evince sympathy than (mythologized versions of, at least) traumas commonly suffered by children as a function of their inexperience and lack of agency, even if our policy response to the latter undermines the idea that society actually cares more. So maybe what makes "120-year-old character is not a callow youth" controversial is a conviction that being a callow youth is a prerequisite for being exploited, or deceived, or understood, or forgiven, or made vulnerable by isolation and unhappiness and terror and nonconformity in the first place, I dunno.

Whatever the case, Essek's entanglement with the Assembly is more interesting (and sympathetic, for that matter) as something that takes his particular circumstances into account—including the significant power and agency he entered the relationship with that ultimately added up to only an illusion of safety—than as a sort of watered-down speedrun of Caleb's. Blumendrei's arc was about how nationalism will twist precisely the salt-of-the-earth youthful idealism it claims to honor to serve power. Essek's was about how no amount of rationality and cynicism will save you.

#well said

I think people are also complaining about Essek in this latest episode in that it goes against Mercer's direct word of God that essek would never open up even if he desperately needs support, and is extremely guarded.

Granted the show writers can make their own characterizations, especially to streamline arcs or broadcast motivations, but it'll mean people have trouble suspending disbelief.

#essek #essek thelyss #m9 animated #m9a spoilers #the mighty nein animated

scattergoriesofevil

It’s possible Essek didn’t tell Deirta the brumestone was a gift from Verrat for devious, selfish, controlling reasons. Absolutely. Essek is certainly capable of those.

However, typhros looked a lot like dementia in the scenes with Deirta. I can tell you, based on my own conversations with a parent who struggles cognitively, it felt all too familiar. I inferred she probably doesn’t remember Verrat. Or gets him confused with other people. Or would contact him to say thank you and get something scrambled in the message.

Essek is basically in his early 20s. He has hit a dead end on the research he wants to be doing more than anything because it’s taboo. He does not trust the religion his culture is steeped in. He is a new soul among people who have lived many lives. He has a high status job, one dead parent whose death he blames himself for, and one living parent suffering from a condition so threatening the queen executes people to keep it secret. Hiding his mom’s situation isn’t a great choice, but I’m not sure he can see any better ones right now. It feels like a desperate situation, and he feels very young and isolated without a support network of his own.

Is he hiding their mother’s condition from Verin, too?

And with all this going on he helped Exandria’s creepiest wizard steal a beacon! Oh no.

lost-in-the-hawthorn

I lost my grandmother, the woman who was basically my mother to a stroke. At the end she was behaving a lot like Dierta. When I saw it, I had to pause for a bit heartbroken. I don't think Essek is being manipulative here. I think he's genuinely afraid to loose her. I think he hasn't quite acknowledged that her time on this plane is over. That it's time for her to be ended outside of the beacon so she can finally rest. Finally join her god, and finally join the woman she loved.

(The phrasing of execute her makes me think the intent was to end her away from the beacon so she doesn't come back even more scrambled as execution usually means to end the person away from the beacon from my memory within this culture: so worse he's not looking at his mom being reborn, he's looking at never ever seeing her again. The final death as it were.)

stacksofsstuff

Yup it's a permadeath :(

falconscry

desperately need azune and julien to not die for many reasons, but one important reason is that i need to see their dynamic evolve over the course of 100 episodes into one of genuine friendship and loyalty. i need julien stepping in to take a blow meant for azune. i need azune to cradle him close and heal him and when julien comes to in a panic, for azune tell him ‘it’s okay’. to say ‘i’ve got you. you’re among friends’. and for julien to truly believe him this time. i am manifesting it i am speaking it into the universe i am planting the seed and i will see the harvest!

depressedtimtam

changeling Julien?

You know I still don't really buy the idea of fae Julien, but!

If he's a (secret?) changeling, helps connect:

The glowing fae nail, the childhood age difference, Aranessa's "missing" faerie, thimble calling him a constant liar, the lack of mention of Julien's mom, and potentially Azune's dirt on him (Julien changing to trick Thjazi and Azune seeing it? Someone he trusts who Julien can mimic, for example his childhood friend Aranessa? His Thjazi!sympathizer father?)

Especially with the hints that fae aren't safe here.