Durge and Gortash progressively playing a game of chicken as their relationship progresses where they continuously do vaguely threatening yet innocent gestures to test each other’s (dis)trust. It starts with something simple like Gortash placing his hand on Durge’s shoulder near their neck. He just wants to see the Bhaalspawn squirm, he justifies. Of course, Durge plays along- they won’t show weakness. So, it becomes a game. They do things like playing with a dagger while they talk, cutting the loose thread off each others’ shirt collar, bringing each other food or drinks with no guarantee it’s not poisoned, Durge insisting on shaving Gortash’s quickly growing beard for him after too many long nights planning. In the end, it just becomes habit, and they’ve just tricked themselves into allowing this intense domestic affection, allowing vulnerability and showing unquestioned trust. Oops. They still think it’s edgy though. Anyone else who sees it thinks they’re just married.
1K notes
·
View notes
What I think is particularly heart breaking about this episode, is that Esteban is immortalizing a memory that Cecil doesn’t get to experience. Esteban knows about his grandfather, because he has heard the story several times before according to Abby, in fact they all just heard it. Cecil is experiencing, second hand, remnants of a memory that slides off of him. It refuses to stick.
There is something so poetic to me about Cecil being a reporter, a journalist, an observer, and doing everything to piece together a story from literal scraps of his own life, only to find its already been written for him. The story has already been told. Cecil doesn’t listen to stories, he tells them. I can think of nothing more infuriating than a story being told and not having a satisfying ending, or an ending that makes sense. Nothing within the story justified the ending. And yet we have seen it before throughout the show.
I am reminded of the episode It Doesn’t Hold Up, where Cecil watches the last few minutes of his comfort film Cat Ballou, changed and different. He has seen the same movie over and over and over again, and now the ending is different. In the drawing Esteban drew in 245, there is a shovel stuck into the dirt, and there is a boy climbing into a tree. In the ending of Cat Ballou, there is a man digging into the base of the tree. Just like in the episode It Sticks With You, when Abby, Cecil and their mother journey into the woods, and Cecil climbs into a tree over and over and over again until he can no longer remember the outing with his husband and son. Just like in Cassettes, when a young Cecil’s story is cut short, in an ending that Cecil refuses to listen to, immortalized on tape.
Just like in Liminal Spaces, when Cecil enters a space that is neither here nor there and is haunted by someone who tells him that he wants Cecil to remember. The very face that Cecil saw in Cat Ballou in It Doesn’t Hold Up. In fact, he tells Cecil he has no choice, before once again, he is pulled from the story.
Cecil’s whole life is one long interrupted narrative. It’s as if he is an old cassette that isn’t rewound all the way before pulled out of the slot and put back on a shelf. The next person to listen to the tape, unknowing, doesn’t realize where they’re starting off is not the beginning. There are things missing. Cecil has gotten so good at forgetting (and justifiably so) — has forgotten how to stop. He’s recording over the same tape over and over again until the tape inside is no longer coherent. I’m thinking, of the sound of a cassette being rewound, and how it could sound very much like how Cecil is often describing owl sounds.
So, how disquieting, to have your own family stare back at you, privy to information about yourself that you do not get to have. Cecil is there, quite literally, to construct a story for his town, but who is there to construct a story for him? A man you used to hate? A sister you aren’t sure you even like? A husband who you have forgotten before? Children who see and hear more than you realize? The listener?
No. Instead he will sit until dawn comes, and be made a fool out of trying to create a story, maybe even a better one, out of scraps of memories.
202 notes
·
View notes
I’m a big fan of Durge having some more animalistic qualities, regardless of race, like fangs meant to tear or a real, inhuman growl. But ya know what? I’m also a big fan of this vicious Bhaalspawn being able to purr. Maybe not like a house cat. Maybe it’s a deep, rumbling sound that comes out with a contented sigh. Either way, it’s a shock to Durge when one day it happens for the first time, the Chosen of Bane’s fingers carding through their hair.
What could That Sound possibly be? It wasn’t a growl. But if it wasn’t a growl, what could it be? The Dark Urge is no house cat! But Gortash knows exactly what it was, and he makes it his life’s goal to make it happen more often. He’ll tease Durge at first, justify his efforts to himself by claiming to exemplify how he has subdued even the Bhaalspawn. In reality, it means Gortash spends copious amounts of time pampering and doting on Durge until it becomes too obvious he just thinks it’s cute, a proud smile and a bit of color coming to his plaid cheeks every time he succeeds.
493 notes
·
View notes
Got a sweet kofi request to draw OCs/Anything so here’s some “new” ocs :D I’ve been drawing them for months but never post anything - Their names are Jackdaw and Fleet and they’re gay but terrible (i love them)
1K notes
·
View notes