This Chapter Is Giving Me So Much Trouble But Man .... Man This Idea Is Haunting Me Each Time I Scroll

these for the future boards. going insane.

even in the earlier ones in the gym he's so stilted with his anger? the heavy weight of what they've just all been through, his guilt? they don't even have gus' lil finger guns and hunter's embarrassed blush yet he is just angry. through and through. and it's so jarring, his quiet, compared to the easy sassy talkative vibe of the golden guard. this isn't even that this is just. an emptiness, and trying to make his way through it without flap. the grief trying to eat him whole.

I don't think I've ever posted this, but this comic I've been commissioned rotates in my head every so often

u ever go in to do final reads to look for spelling errors and weird formatting things and accidentally, idk, end up adding five hundred more words

belos' va has that very nice vocal tone that makes my brain go brr, it matches the easy condescending tone that belos hones so well.

that uh-puh-pup sound he makes in young blood, old souls (00:16 in this clip of it) at the beginning of his confrontation with luz is just so nice. the demeaning, mocking ease of it. the okay. i'll play of it all, when luz attacks (first! first! going to talk about that soon too), like he has time to waste on seeing where she's at in battling with her glyphs.

bc it is just a game to him, then. he'd been there the whole time, after all. waiting, expectational, like he'd knew lilith would betray their cause and lead luz there for their rescue. that it was going to happen just like this, the plan of it, and how everything just falls into place, like - how much of this could be seen so clearly? all of them acting like good pawns along a predestined path?

and there's this removed amusement while he fights luz, if you can even call it a fight. he plays with her, toys with her, lifting only a finger the entire time. it's the joy of the catch, the thrill of getting closer to his hands on the portal, what he wants, but there's no rush. how he knows it's going to happen eventually, soon, so he can just chill and go with the flow of things?

it makes me wonder how long he's waited, how comfortable he is now with patience when things are in the works, steadily moving on.

we don't see belos use magic like this in season two. it's a controlled flame, without the anger and emotion that is central to it in king's tide. it's as if here, in s1, he knows what's happening before everyone else, and he flits and melts like light, liquid, almost effortlessly.

there's no reason to try if no one is actually going to test your ability.

it is a game to him, and there aren't any real consequences to any of it until the portal door goes up in flames. he got what he wanted out of lilith, and now he's near enough to reap the rewards of it. but it isn't entirely upsetting either, when he loses it - it just changes the game.

it's similar to this ominous voice trick he does a couple of times - how the visuals turn negative and double themselves atop one another to show the effect - we don't see it again.

it's as if he is a kind of omniscient being, that lingering i will know while they steal borrow the relics, and again during the fight. i love the idea that he has such a control over this artificial magic that he can make his voice actually sound like it is coming from everywhere; that his knowledge, his control, is so overwhelming that it must come from the titan itself / how there are no other possibilities.

go on then. go be a hero, he mocks, but it's such a soft thing. one look, a few words and some oversight and he knows exactly what makes someone tick. i imagine it's why we see hunter do it so well to amity in eclipse lake. he manipulates, so he must know the heart of you.

what a villain! even when we barely know anything about him or his motivations, he's still so powerful and intimidating. and that's good writing. to know just enough to be curious, just enough to be afraid.

i do also truly, truly believe we deserved some final parallel completion w/ hunter and belos. to be created by and outlive your own creator / your family / your "purpose" / your blood? for all of the guards before him, for caleb, for every kindness they should have all been given in their smattering of years before they learned of the truth and were killed for it.

yeah i am one for the idea of hunter being the one to have the final strike. this is not me saying i do not absolutely ADORE the way they did it in the finale. it was absolutely so badass and i do love them but oooooh something in me wanted hunter finally able to show his growth to the man who abused him for so many years. to say look at how far i have come from your impressions. look at me and how you have failed to make me into a monster, like you. how i have healed in your absence. how i have become so much more than you could have made me, and how far i will go from here.

to be made in the hurt of a bone you don't even remember. to hold onto things your body knows but you do not. to finally have that piece be laid to rest after so long.

goodbye, uncle. for your sake, i hope your god is kinder than you.

hunting palismen ending storyboards you will always be dear to me. it always makes me feel something so soft and forlorn. that lil smile? the gentleness of it all, even as it fades into something more pensive?

the cradling of flapjack's staff, the ease already at his presence; tinged with fear and hesitance, but the comfort still there. to finally have something that is freely given, that doesn't have to be continually earned. to have a friend that chose you, even where you are now, even at your most contrasted against the story? to be chosen. not destined, or fated for something, but chosen, freely, wildly, as in i am here, with you, of my own volition. i am yours above all else - i choose you.

no wonder he wasn't expecting that, no wonder he immediately held it close, and then at a wide distance. what do you do in the face of a feeling you have never felt, never really truly believed you'd earned before? you hold it as close as you can. you dream of one day earning it. you push it as far as you can, because you know, you know - it is a day that will never come.

and then it does, it does, it does.

thinking ab the similarities of luz and hunter and how they are so different in their experiences and yet so alike.

they are both so desperate for acceptance. for acknowledgement of who they are, who they want to be – for love, given without terms, unconditional. to be seen, in the light that is all their own, without being asked to cut off corners, pieces of themselves that aren't ... acceptable, by most, that would be easier if they weren't there.

their stories are different and yet their hearts are the same. they want to be strong, brave, enough to get through the next thing, and the next, and the next – still holding on to a hurt that makes them. that changed them, fundamentally, so long ago. how it still changes them today. how there is no separation, even still, even here, in the light of the human world, bright enough to dream by.

so can you see it, the way they are tectonic plates, shifting up against one another, holding up and together entire worlds? the weight of responsibility, of what it means (and what it is) holding on to hope. what it takes from you, and how you have learned not to talk about it, because who else would understand? and how would you hold yet another piece of it, too heavy for your hands?

the earthquakes that would result in them butting heads. the way the story has always led to the parallels of things. the way brothers and siblings will eventually come to this point, the event horizon of hurt and hope. the way the bones of it have always been lying in wait, to return to this, right here - what becomes of us now?

the way it was always going to come to this. the story doesn't know any other way. so it will do it again, it will do it over, and over, and over - until it can get it right.

(including a small snippet of a vague chapter intro:)

it's giving 'what do you want and how much is it gonna cost me' sibling energy and it brings me so much joy

good afternoon we are celebrating the ttt anniversary by writing the most heart wrenching flapjack hurt/comfort fluff fic that i can't get out of my head. thank you for your time

never in my life did i think i could be so into the vibes of and arc of and writing for some colonial ass white boy named hunter, of all things, but alas. here we are, loving and thriving