Putting My Head In My Hands. The Grief. The Grief Of Not Knowing Now Where You Belong .... Of Trying

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.

this chapter is giving me so much trouble but man .... man this idea is haunting me each time i scroll by it.

if we're putting the weight on luz's insecurities in the w&d nightmare scenario, that this is what she feels she is: trying to always be more than what she can be, always wishing to be understood but always falling short? she has made this world into a story of her own making, her own narrative, playing god, just like belos.

to have it pushed back at her, to hear hunter say no, no you can't save me, i'm not a character, i don't have a place in your silly stories - i don't deserve it, like something too honest to hold. to heavy a truth to handle, hurt and horror and everything terrible.

because here, it means - failure. who is the hero if they don't save everyone? if they leave someone behind?

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:)

you leave your home behind, but you take your ghosts with you. don't you see the problem? how the story has already begun to unravel, before your eyes, in your hands: the way the world is too gentle, the light too bright, how your reflection doesn’t really look like you? hunter expects the human realm to be at least somewhat similar to that of life on the boiling isles. it isn’t, and he struggles to come to terms. or: times hunter does domestic human things the wrong way, and how over time he begins to get it just right (in his own way, which means kind of, not really, not at all).

hope u all enjoy some time in the human realm + trying to adjust to it after king's tide angst n comfort vibes. i have a handful of chapters for it lined up and outlined further so far, so buckle up, we're in for a ride >:)

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

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

the alt. thanks to them opening boards are going to emotionally scar me for life. look at his face. luz is terrified but desperate with a hope she feels is unfounded, needing that optimism to imagine a way out of this that doesn't hurt; that doesn't end in more tragedy?

she thinks they're on the same level of bad but sad. that she did as much as hunter in the name of helping belos, without knowing the whole truth of who belos was, who he is. she's traumatized by it.

she needs to not be alone in it.

the i'll keep your secret if you keep mine is a knife to the heart. we are in this together, she is saying. whether we like it or not, at least we have each other. at least i'm not alone.

but what do you say to that? how do you make a witch's oath without magic? you take it to heart. you hold it closer to anything. there aren't words for a devotion like that, the kind of devotion hunter has led with his entire life, and now, here, it's for luz. it's for everyone, for protecting them, to be able for them to get home again.

it's reminiscent of that good old golden guard loyalty, but remade in the light of this new world, new life. it's a cause to live by, a goal, a dream; and as the story goes, we can see - there isn't much he isn't willing to sacrifice for it, especially if the cost is only himself.

(he has nothing to return for, after all. he has a graveyard, filled to the brim with bones and masks and a future he only narrowly escaped.)

sacrifice - that is something he's been waiting for his whole life. so of course he's willing to risk everything for them. what better ending is there, where at the very least, his friends can go home to where they are loved? where no one has to be afraid, anymore?

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

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

love writing belos even though there is such a difficulty to it? the haughtiness of it. the melodrama. the ever-constant feeling of everything else being inferior to him. the carefulness of it at the same time, like a craft, a honed weapon.

there is such a calm terror to his tone? he doesn't stress his words often, but the intensity is there throughout. he speaks like a preacher, always on the side that knows more, knows better. each word is specially chosen for the most precise of messages, vague and specific and layered alike. never a mistake, always a parable.

even his outbursts only come through expressing more intense emotion, and there comes the stress of things, syllables sharper and tone more volatile, hard in it's setness; like a story that cannot be moved from it's predestined ending. he's so removed from his emotions, from his humanity, that you can literally pick it apart in his speech and speaking patterns.