I Mean, It’s Just A Thought. . .

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

if you dont have me on facebook you are probably not missing out on any posts but the comment section is important too lmao

Me and shipping presented by Barbossa:

My ship: *in the middle of a heated argument*

Me:

My ship: *Share a single heartwarming scene*

Me:

My ship: *Don’t interact for a whole season/film*

Me:

The producers: *Trying to stop the fans from shipping it*

Me, with the rest of the fandom:

The actors: *Supporting the ship even though the producers aren’t*

Me: 

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

Here's a CAT

So far my favorite bit of re-watching C2 is Caleb being asked about the Academy and immediately deflecting by summoning a cat. "My backstory? HERE'S A CAT, ASK NO QUESTIONS."

!! Spoiler for Peeps who don't know the majority of the M9 Campaign Events !!

I'm sorry, but Molly saying to Toya at the start of the episode that Kyle had something bad inside him, something that made him do bad things and couldn't help it. . .

And I can't help but be reminded of how Molly rises again, way down the line through no intention of his own, and isn't quite Molly no more. . . Someone who does many really, really bad things ;u;

i am laughing at caleb and nott assuring each other that if things go sideways they'll be the first out the door, together, and nott says, "they'll never know who we were!" and caleb confirms, "caleb and nott" which is so hilarious in retrospect because THEY didn't even know who each other were. if they'd left? yeah, the others never would have known who they were. they only would have known caleb and nott, never veth and bren. and neither of them even know they're both using fake names yet

spent way too long making a shadowgast propaganda slideshow for the tumblr ship poll….. EVERYONE GO VOTE NOW FOR THE BEST SHIP IN THE BRACKET!

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.

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.