A Happy Little Family

neverafter tonight like

Hi! I’m pluto passingnights!! I’m super into Dimension 20, Worlds Beyond Number and Glass Animals :D

I binge a lot of the D20 campaigns and so I write character studies and analyses here!

I’m always going a little bit insane about the current season I’m watching so I might write more on that but I’ll catch up on the ones I’ve watched before eventually :)

D20 campaigns I've watched:

I yell about other random things, usually untagged, on @plutomn!!

Oh there is so so much to say about the ending of Burrow’s End but Tula’s lined up a shot right into the core of my being so;

She’s back in the fields where she found her husband, dead, lifeless, cold. It’s winter and the snow has piled up so high and she runs around after the terrifying sounds of lightning in a clear nights sky.

It’s Blue and icy when she falls asleep, oh so tired and she hadn’t even begun to process the grief. Her mother’s response: “Where were you?” to a “Geoffrey’s dead”. She‘s a mother of two. She gives into her exhaustion. She sleeps. Everything is so quiet in the cold, the Blue.

And a few years later, neither dead nor alive but with a renewed sense of hope and peace, things Tula has never given herself space to feel after her husband’s death, she walks to his resting place and talks about their children. She talks about accomplishments, hopes, about dreams.

“I can’t wait to find out what’s gonna happen tomorrow”, she says. She means it.

(and Brennan as the player breaks just the tiniest bit)

Tula finds softness, she finds comfort. The cold, the Blue melts under spring’s warmth and the grass below finally drinks. She is happy.

karna and amangeaux's relationship absolutely ruins me. they both develop in opposite directions until they converge in the finale. amangeaux's struggle sharpening her until she's stone, keeping herself alive through connection in a literal sense. but karna's life post FDA has been better than anything she's ever known. she's been rotting for as long as she can remember, shes living on borrowed time with the people (mainly deli we're talking about deli here) that she loved. her time is softening her, in both an emotional and a literal sense. by the finale they've effectively gone through opposite arcs. even their designs are extremely similar at this point. by the end they've swapped spots. karna at the softest she's ever been. in a literal sense: her body fully rotting away before her death, and in an emotional sense: confessing her love to deli. trying her best to save the one she cares most about in the best way she knows how. amangeaux continues to harden even after the battle. she shifts into karna's place, slipping in and out of shadows and disguises, running on what she thinks is borrowed time.

its about sisterly love to me. its about looking out for the other in the only way you know how. amangeaux WANTS karna to be soft! she encourages her endeavors with deli! she wants her to build relationships and let down her walls. and the opposite is the same for karna. karna wants amangeaux to toughen up. she wants her to be stronger and more secretive and tougher because thats how she knows she won't get hurt. she wants her to be safe. they both care for one another so much but neither of them understand the depths of the other until the end, when they've experienced it for themselves.

Evan and Jammer, Raphaniel and Deli

Something something about Brennan and Lou’s friendship across the table

A flower, clutched and crushing in her hands, the blue-white staining and eating her fingertips— a cyanotype. She gazes across the battlefield. She sneaks into the bedchambers of a beloved she kept too close, kept too far. 

Karna stands in replaced positions. A Colin sized position. An Ariana sized position.

Her heart skips a beat as she skims over Deli’s haphazardly hidden notes. She finds motes of anger, of resentment, of despair and heartbreak at the corners of rapid heartbeats. She pulls and tugs at them, rearranging herself. Presentable. Useful. Disposable. 

She slides her note underneath the pillows of Delissandro Katzon’s bed. A quiet confession. A hopeful confession. She must survive.

She is dying, she is a child, she is in love. She hopes and she fears as tears crawl down her face and the rot eats her body. She knows the ways of war and the smell of murder better than the scent of a well prepared meal in the comforts of home. She knows the quick breath of death and the slow of a pulse better than the warmth of a family and the embrace of a lover. “She died nine years ago”.

At the bottom of the earth, in the embrace of Heart of the World, her story ends in a realm unknown to the rest. All the fighting to survive, the lies and the murder, the whispering of secret secrets and the blood dripping from the end of a blade. It all comes to a rest. Karna gives in to her exhaustion with an exhale (exhale, exhale). Eyes closed and a prayer to no god. A Hunger greets this tired warrior.

Cold steel rips apart her torn body. She dies and no one will mourn her. She dies and no mother, no sister, no lover will leave flowers by her gravestone, no eulogies sung, an insignificant name. 

She dies and she looks at the face of her lover. A letter remains underneath his pillows. Will he mourn for her?

“The only secret I have left, is that I love you” and in a title that was never made for her— “Signed, Sklad Karna Solara of Scoville”.

The Pawn resigns.

Thinking about Evan Kelmp and Raphaniel

Not me absolutely bawling my eyes out at 3am after a very unproductive day listening to the first 10 minutes of Worlds Beyond Number, The Wizard preview

Podcasts are my least favourite form of content cause purely auditory concentration is my weakest but this is so so good for me and my mental health

The bit with Ankarna after the fight where she’s asking them if they want her sword but no they don’t want or need her sword but they need her and Justice isn’t always angry and violent but Justice can be a soft and sweet embrace and a whisper of “it’s okay, you were hurt in the past and your feelings are justified, your pain is justified, I am justifying them and you don’t need a sword but a shelter and I am that shelter” you know I’m going kind of crazy

What if we were both immortal and we knew each other for centuries and hated each other's very bones for just as long? What if we made a pact to spend a date together with the condition we'd both die together afterwards? What if I invited you to my cathedral that I built with my own hands just in front of your castle so that you have to see it at all times? What if we sat and chatted and waited for my government assigned pet to decide when we'd die, saying how good of a time we had and how glad we are to see each other killed? What if the last thing we saw was each other's eyes, the last thing we heard was each other's voice? What if death doesn't mean that much to us other than knowing the other suffered? What if I'd be ready to die a thousand times and lose everything if it meant you'd be slightly weaker?

What if we'd find any and every excuse to kill each other, repeatedly? What if the slightest provocation led to manhunts and bloodsheds? What if your death was my favourite sight, my deepest relief, my preferred past time?

What if you were there to comfort me when my son disappeared, to hold me and say we'd find him with enough reassurance to set me upright? What if you were the only one by my side when I had to say goodbye to my daughter, crying as much as I wanted to? What if we were all that's left at the end of the world, only to move on to another one and meet again, and start this whole dance over again?

What if then? What would that make us?