CyberLife’s Latest Prototypes: The RK Series

look man. look

essek saying "bren" out loud, claiming a position on caleb's side as the mouthpiece of his regards to astrid, did something to me. i can't tell if it opened a wound or punched me or gave me a hug. all i know is that i am feeling so many emotions right now

more under the cut because i'm about to get rambly:

"bren aldric ermendrud" is a separate character from caleb widogast. he's a young boy learning how to make magic. he's a deeply traumatized and indoctrinated teenager. he's the boy who curled up with astrid and eadwulf in a freezing tower for warmth all night.

essek never met bren. he met caleb and he's never known him as anyone else. if i'm remembering correctly, caleb never even said the name "bren" to him during the campaign, and neither did any of the nein.

essek knows caleb widogast. he knows the man who held up the object of his worst crime and then kissed him in the bowels of a ship and made a floor of infinite stars for them to walk through together. he knows the person who healed over bren's wounds—thinly, but enough. he knows the man that the boy has become.

astrid knows bren. she barely knows who caleb is. she still calls him bren after hearing him referred to as caleb repeatedly. she can't know him as the man he is, she only knows the boy. there's some of bren in caleb, but there is no caleb in bren.

essek saying "bren sends his regards" is him gauging astrid's reaction, on one level—if she freaks out, which she did, she's in opposition to caleb's cause and thus a threat. on another level, it's essek delivering a very different subtextual message from caleb: "the boy who loved you is giving you one final warning."

because essek is a threat to astrid. their last meaningful interaction was slinging spells at each other in the blooming grove. and that's funny in a "current boyfriend vs ex girlfriend exclusively fight each other" kind of way, but it's also deeply tied to caleb's recurring theme of transformation. "bren sends his regards" also means "i have healed enough to love enough for someone else to know this name and use it with my consent. and this someone else is your enemy. what does that make you think i've become?"

it also does a fantastic job of communicating subtle offscreen discussions that have happened over the years since the end of c2. we don't have the details of when or how caleb told essek his birth name, but we know that he did, and we know from all of c2 that the name bren occupies a place of immense emotional weight for caleb. it functions similarly to a deadname in terms of who uses it and for what purpose. trent exclusively calls caleb bren to wound him and place himself in a position of power. astrid calls him bren to remind both him and herself of who they used to be—same with eadwulf, though obviously he's not here.

the first time we hear essek say "bren" is on caleb's behalf and confronting one of the narrative representations of caleb's trauma. it's four words that manage to communicate "i, your enemy on a hundred levels, can speak for both the man i love and the boy who loved you, because i know him in his entirety."

astrid knows bren and essek knows caleb, but only essek can speak for both. because at some point, caleb gave bren to essek. and we know this from four words. four IMPROVISED words.

god. this moment is just so fucking good

A Very Cursed Thought;

So, Essek has his wrist pocket spell, yes? I have read a few fics where it could be dispelled, but most usually in the Fanon I've seen it has been ruled that it drops when he is killed.

Please please imagine that Essek gets got (and no worries, he has 2 (two) Clerics and a whole rest of the Nein invested in his eventual survival, he'll be fine), but yeah he Gets Got and, as the stuff spills out of his dimensional wrist pocket, please imagine the sound Sonic the Hedgehog Makes when he gets got and the golden rings pop out.

That is all XD

i think actually the key to successfully doing tumblr (and especially doing fandom on tumblr) is realising that your blog is your little house and you can post about whatever you like there. once you realise you are just living in and decorating your very own silly little online house you start focusing on what makes you happy rather than constantly performing for & compromising your tastes for & placing all your self worth on little scraps of clout, and you will be a lot happier for it

Hank: In light of what you did for me... you can hug me for four to five seconds.

Connor, immediately grabbing him into a huge bear hug: Forty-five seconds?!

Hank, already struggling: NO! FOUR TO FIVE SECONDS!

Essek really do be a Starboy™, huh?

Okay, so this is an extremely stupid thought, is in no way plausible, is totally a crack theory/headcanon, and I’m not gonna do anything with it. But it was 3:30 AM when my brain came up with it, so just take a moment, don’t think, and just imagine this concept with me:

Essek is the physical embodiment of the beacons that have already been found.

I keep seeing this on my dash and I Die of Laughter a little more each and every time so hdjxjdksk I Must™ Reblog XD

I know you guys wanted Atla fan art from me, and I promise I have some more in the works but… masters on a string..? 

 [ http://Patreon.com/Helixel ]

Ludinus your ex correspondant traitor / grooming victim and Ikithons runaway protege are in love now. yeah they're making out. they live in a cottage with cats and have a couple portrait.

Everybody: -*Arguing over the Clocktower vs Apple Imagery*- Me: -*Waiting for the Lady in Glasses analysis to start up again*-

essek's disguise getting dispelled in front of bells hells has the same energy of that comic panel where some villian is shapeshifted into the flash and he takes of his mask to discover the secret identity and is like 'i have no idea who this is'

God, I'm still laughing about Jester blatantly lying about realizing Essek was there. I love the entirety of Vasselheim apparently watching this silly and bewildering exchange. Some random guy in disguise just helped this wizard—from the party the Bright Queen endorsed—resurrect somebody with dunamancy, revealed himself to be of Kryn origin, and immediately evaded a very sudden and pointed attempt at capture by the Kryn contingent. This party who no one in Vasselheim actually met, but who was, to reiterate, endorsed by the Bright Queen, blatantly lies to their benefactor about knowing who this guy was despite the fact that he was basically in the wizard's lap. The Divine Gate shattered ninety seconds ago and here on the ground the most unrelated minute-long melodrama is playing out for seemingly no reason.

The rest of the world suddenly remembers why they stopped inviting Wildemount to anything.