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✨Critical Role is a makeover show ✨

#hot boi #YES

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4 hours into essek supercut and chill and i am on my disabled essek bullshit

critical role wiki: elves do not require sleep, nor can magic put them to sleep

essek: is visibly affected by a sleep spell, explicitly tells jester he's trying to sleep when she wakes him up at 2am to ask for pastries

#hot boi #DISABLED ESSEK IS BEST ESSEK

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Dorian: Yeah everything is bad :) Yesterday sucked. Uhhh Cyrus? Dead ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ ͡⁠°⁠ ͜⁠ʖ⁠ ͡⁠°⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯ Opal? Bad guy 乁⁠|⁠ ⁠･⁠ ⁠〰⁠ ⁠･⁠ ⁠|⁠ㄏ It's fine, I'll figure it out, y'know, we all have bad days.

Orym: 🥺🥺🥺😶😶😶😶😶

Laudna: I HAVE SOUVENIRS FROM THE MOON

#cr spoilers #amazing

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#hot boi #dorian #I LOVE THEM

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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

#cr spoilers #caleb #meta

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Intersections of Boston.

by @barelymaps

#literally fuck this city planning in particular #what the actual fuck #this is just an ancient untranslatable language #this is hieroglyphics #drag them

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Antimagic field I wanted to draw both human and drow Essek, so I compromised with mid transformation

Available on InPrint

#cr spoilers #hot boi #IT'S HIMMMMMMMMM

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here are some interesting surnames I have seen on old graves:

*they’re not inherently “weird” or “rare”, they’re just names I noted for possible future use in my writing

#writing reference

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Xarlo entering the casino:

"How do you fellow gamblers?"

#cr spoilers #daggerheart

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rasputin didnt become a fucked up sex wizard until he was like 30. your life doesn't end at 25 <3

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HILDA

Homage to the 50’s pinup Hilda with my beautiful friend María, who is damn proud of her body and is never scared to show it.

©2021laurabfernández

#happy #god i love people #elementals

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You recently moved to the countryside. Your child was playing in the woods, and came back with a large green egg you thought was plastic, so you agreed they could keep it if no one claimed it. Your kid said it was a gift. You thought nothing of it. Then the egg hatched.

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ewamaka.art on Instagram

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#comics #stardust

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man left without meaningful tasks for a week seen walking around with a notepad to critically assess all the wall-ceiling angles in his home with genuine contempt

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#this is me when people see mountains for the first time #every time i drive along the highway and see some of the most awe inspiring sights #i try and remember how much i can take it for granted #about me