#grieving characters

[autumnmobile12]

All right, this scene is a contentious one to say the least.

I want to look at the elements that make up this part, starting from the very beginning.

After waking up in Gresit, Alucard had one goal:  Kill Dracula.  Throughout Season 2, he’s determined, he has points of dry, sarcastic humor, but as a whole, his personality is pretty grim.  He is absolutely unwavering in his determination.

Once Dracula was dead, though, he now has to live with the guilt of not only killing the father who loved and raised him but also the guilt over being unable to save his mother when she needed him.  When Lisa was taken, Alucard was traveling, and though he never explicitly says this, I would bet anything that ever since that night he has asked himself, “Why wasn’t I there?  What could I have done differently?  If I had done _______, she would be here right now and none of this would have ever happened.”  Alucard is a rational character.  He understands that what happened to Lisa was a cruel accident of fate.  She was accused of witchcraft, and he and his father were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.  They couldn’t have predicted her death, they couldn’t have changed it.

But this is how the Bargaining Stage of Grief plays out.  This is what sets him apart from Trevor and Sypha by the end of Season 2.  Between the three of them, Sypha still has her family waiting for her.  She still has her people and the optimism to still see the brighter future.  (Which is a trait she never fully loses.)  As for Trevor, he had already lost everyone he’d ever loved, and so he definitely already went through all the messy stages of grief to the point of sad acceptance that his family is dead and now he has to live with that.

Alucard can’t identify with that kind of acceptance yet, for either of his parents. The grief is too raw, and so I believe his decision to remain behind while his companions left without him was a form of self-punishment.  In spite of the understanding it wasn’t his fault, he doesn’t believe he deserves to be happy after everything that happened.  Sure, he says he needs to protect the accumulation of his father’s knowledge, and while that might have been true, I feel like he had other options.  The show demonstrates that magic is capable of the impossible, so I feel like there should have been some kind of spell that could be engineered to keep his father’s/the Hold’s collection from being destroyed or looted.  If he asked Sypha and Trevor to stay and help him, I think they would have.  Instead, he watches them leave without asking them to visit or even expecting to see them ever again.  And we leave him finally breaking down over his losses.

All this to say he was not in a good headspace when Sumi and Taka showed up, which they picked up on and exploited to their advantage.  (The guy was talking to dolls he’d made to resemble his friends, and he was mimicking their voices in pseudo-conversation.  Funny conversations, yes, but damn, that coping mechanism…)

The first thing Alucard tells them is he ‘will not be hunted,’ but there is a disturbing irony here.

Attacking them indicates that his guard was up and he was ready to end lives if he had to.  Self-preservation is on point.  It’s Sumi and Taka who de-escalate the situation.  “We mean you no harm.  We came to ask you for help.”  They’re smiling and laughing by the end of this initial encounter.  They tell him their story.  “We’re these poor, innocent waifs from a distant land searching for a way to save our people.  Pity us.”  They present themselves as non-threatening, wide-eyed victims who only need help, which is a ruse he unfortunately falls for.

“It’s time for your reward.”

It makes my skin crawl how despicable that one line of manipulation is.  This is the chink in Alucard’s armor:  the idea of guilt that persists after the mother he couldn’t save and the father he killed, especially the latter.  Understandably, although Alucard recognizes what he did was necessary, the fact he’s committed patricide is weighing on him.  There was Sypha’s words of comfort at the end of Season 2 that was it was ‘okay to love the man,’ but neither she or Trevor are around.  This leaves the opening for the toxic, false comfort of Sumi and Taka’s manipulation.  Here they are introducing the conflicting idea that what he did is worthy of praise.

Couple that with the factor that at this point, he’s only known them for a few days at most.  Obviously, that’s nowhere near long enough to establish an emotional connection that’s strong enough to say,  “Yes, I want to be with this person.”  But his silence is not consent; in fact, I see this as fear that if he does not go through with this like they want, it will make them leave him like Sypha and Trevor did.  Again, they are playing on that fatal loneliness.  Coercion.

Soft words, soft voices, and that is he what he needed to hear.

And Sumi and Taka knew exactly what to say.

Back in their flashback about Cho, Sumi and Taka talk how they ‘studied’ her, studied the way she fought, and learned about her weaknesses for years.  This is the subtlest bit of foreshadowing I’ve found so far in the series.  It shows that Sumi and Taka don’t hunt vampires the way Trevor does.  They’re formidable fighters, yes, but they were not born and raised to hunt like the Belmonts were.  They don’t have that specific training or discipline, so they make up for it with deceit.  They ingratiate themselves with their prey, observing them and looking for the weak point.

Alucard said he would not be hunted.

But he was.

The entire time they were there, Sumi and Taka were studying him the way they studied Cho.  They saw Alucard’s loneliness and they took full advantage of the trust he gave them.  He invited them into his home, fed, and looked after them, he saw himself as their friend while the whole time they were looking for a way to kill him.  They were continuously asking about weapons, magic, off-limits rooms in the Castle, when the Castle could be fixed, etc.  They were trying to zero in on the ‘kill room’ where he would be at his most vulnerable.

It’s hard to say how much of Sumi and Taka’s story was true given the outcome, but I’m inclined to believe it was but with one caveat.  I don’t think they helped their fellow prisoners escape.  I think they were the only survivors.  There’s no evidence of this other than the fact I think it’s suspicious that they left their friends behind to seek help.  Okay…Japan is a long way from Wallachia.  They couldn’t find anyone closer?  They didn’t try to smuggle more people away?  They don’t even mention their people in their angry ranting before they try to kill Alucard.

There’s also the brief line where they say they were given to Cho’s court as children.  It’s not clear whether or not their parents were forced to give them up as tribute to Cho, but that’s irrelevant if they themselves felt betrayed and abandoned by the people who should have loved and protected them.  There is the later line where they say everyone lies to them.  With that, I think they were so far in the fog of grief and anger that in their minds, they were unable to recognize Alucard could have been a genuine ally to them, and they only saw him as just another vampire who was evil and needed to be killed.

The beauty and the tragedy of both Alucard and Lisa’s characters is that they are both so incredibly kind and selfless, and they want to believe in people.  Even when the Bishop’s henchmen came to her home, Lisa didn’t immediately jump to the conclusion of witchcraft and fear.  She asked if the Archbishop was ill and if they needed her help.  When they started tearing apart her home, she told them whatever they wanted she would give it to them.  She didn’t try to run.  She tried to explain calmly about her medical practice and that what she did helped people.  Her undoing was a man who meant her harm.

Lisa’s arrest is mirrored in the moments before Alucard kills Sumi and Taka.  Even though he realizes what’s happened and the situation he’s in, realizing they aren’t with him out of love and this was all a manipulation, a trap, and even rape——even though he realized all that, he still wanted to help them.

Right before they die, he is begging them to listen, that is their friend, and he can help them. The world is not against them.  These aren’t the words of a man trying to save himself.  He is living admirably up to the virtues he learned from his mother.  He waited until the last possible moment before choosing to save his own life over theirs. And his last line to them is, “I never lied to you.”

There’s no condoning what Sumi and Taka did to Alucard, that is an undeniably fucked up thing to do to a person and the plot accounted for it by killing off their characters.  However, I do feel these two are a testament to how anger and hatred will destroy a person and are a kind of foil to characters like Isaac. Isaac was horribly abused in his past and he had every reason to resent humanity, and yet by the end of his arc, he was beginning to let go of his anger and start a new life where he could be happy.  This is the lesson Isaac learns by the end of Season 3 whereas we leave Alucard again weeping alone with the memory of people he couldn’t save:  his mother and father and the two people he thought were his friends.  Again, he is grieving.  “I was a good friend to them, wasn’t I?  I helped them, didn’t I?  What did I do wrong?’

The answers are yes, yes, and no, he did nothing wrong.  Grieving is coming to terms with that.

And finally, we have the gruesome way in which he ‘displays’ their bodies outside the Castle as a means to warn off other travelers or intruders.  Impalement was a very degrading means of execution.  It was excruciatingly slow, extremely painful, and those who faced this sentence would suffer for hours if not days in public.  You see the rage and humiliation he feels, and so by impaling the corpses, he in turn inflicted that humiliation on Sumi and Taka.  It’s probably as close to the ‘eye for an eye’ mentality as he gets.

A recurring theme throughout the series is innocence against the brutality of a cruel world.  Characters like Sypha, Alucard, and Lisa can give all the kindness they have to offer, but they can’t change the fact that people like the Judge and Bishop exist.  Characters like Trevor and Isaac lost their faith in humanity and found it again with the help of people like Sypha and the Ship Captain.  And characters like Dracula, Carmilla, and even Sumi and Taka, lost their way entirely and were swallowed up by their rage and pain.

#castlevania #alucard tepes #sumi and taka #lisa tepes #cho #castlevania netflix #character analysis #character development #alucard and lisa #isaac #castlevania dracula #character comparison #trevor belmont #sypha belnades #grieving characters #grief #this one was hard to write

[allthewhumpygoodness]

Big fan of when a character's grief/trauma/guilt manifests as physical symptoms. Big fan of characters keeping things so tight inside them that it makes them sick. Big fan of when the line blurs between a character's mental trauma and physical illness until it's hard to tell which is which anymore.

#whump #k once i did a fic where a character had pneumonia #and also was in Big Mental Distress and mentally going over all the people he'd lost in his life etc #and i gotta say i'm proud of myself for bringing up the recurrent motif of his chest being pianful...like is it from being sick & coughing #or bc he's grieving so badly it's putting him in physical pain #ANYWAY

[deviousdayz]

I kind of hate seeing people say that the locked tomb series has no romance because like no there’s not kissing and fucking but it’s about love and almost nothing else

when you love someone so much you die to become a part of them but they love you so much that they ruin themselves to not accept your sacrifice

when two people love each other so much that they willingly lose themselves becoming one another so that they never have to be apart

when the body you’re in belonged to a person who loved someone else so much that you can feel that person’s warmth

When you love someone so much you’re upset at the fact that they didn’t love you enough to consume you so you could be one, but they only couldn’t do it because they loved you too much to lose you.

that series is so chock FULL of love it’s just that a lot of it is. not straightforward

#like yeah there’s other shit going on but come on #the entirety of htn is the way it is because harrow literally lobotomized herself so she wouldn’t have to grieve gideon #bc she loved her so much that she wouldn’t be able to handle it #even down to ortus loving that book character so much that he brought it to life?? like cmon #the locked tomb #tlt #the locked tomb spoilers

[kinkymjolnir]

c3e92 at 29.47 laudna tells liliana "you ceirtainly had no control over otohan" and ashton says "gosh i hope that's true" with a stare that KILLED ME

#critical role #ashton greymoore #critical role spoilers #cr 3 #cr #taliesin jaffe #cr spoilers #c3e92 #i love angry characters #they are GRIEVING

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

While you were fighting in the war, I was falling in a pit.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

#poorly drawn mdzs #mdzs #wei wuxian #nie mingjue #jiang cheng #lan wangji #jin guangshan #blood #Not tagging wen xu because I...I don't think he ever comes back in the story after this. #Minorest of characters despite his significance in the wen sect. #You guys ever think about how the three months WWX was missing was probably the closest LWJ and JC ever were? #The missed friendship between them is so deliciously painful! They really do have a lot in common! #Maybe it is because they are similar that they can't make it work past the war. #Maybe it is the similarities that make JC feel even worse about WWX drifting away from him and towards LWJ. #This is all to say I think the dynamic between LJW and JC is very interesting and not something I see talked about. #In the *end* it becomes something along the lines of 'LWJ ignores JC' but god. Missing the same person so painfully. #The grieving takes very different form but they both still grieve the same person - essentially in isolation from everyone else. #Other notes I *need* to add: The end of ep 13 took me out with the falling scream. Why did they do it like that? #Genuinely the funniest thing I have heard. #I like to imagine he fell plinko style. Bumping around on random branches and ghosts for 3 months.

[ender-selfships]

Friendly reminder that it is COMPLETELY NORMAL to feel extremely attached to/have intense feelings for fictional characters.

The human brain cannot differentiate the feelings and attachments we have to irl people from the feelings and attachments we have to fictional characters. Chemically, the feelings are the exact same

More to the point, if a character you love ever gets hurt or god forbid dies, it is absolutely normal to feel genuine grief and hurt because of it. As far as the chemicals in your brain are concerned, you genuinely just watched your friend/partner/family member get hurt.

Your feelings are valid and normal.

#Inspired by the fact that a ton of people in a server im in are grieving a character rn #selfship community #selfship #selfship positivity #❣️positivity❣️ #💠admin rambles💠 #f/o

[mimi-saurio]

Jonathan, Will, and Chester Byers

#stranger things #jonathan byers #will byers #byers brothers #byers family #I hope they bring at least a mention of chester in season 5 #those boys did not grieve their dog and that haunts me at night #and they are such dog people HELP!! #digital art #my art #illustration #artists on tumblr #character design #fan art #digital painting #digitalart #digital artist #small artist

[dontbelasagne]

desperately need to do a presentation on why the Twelfth Doctors journey perfectly represents the transfem experience

their previous eleventh incarnation being suave and hypersexual (i know moffat is mostly to blame but!) is reminiscent of attempts to fit into heteronormative ideals of masculinity. whilst it is not completely insincere, there are obvious signs this does not fit you as a person, it is acted out of desperate need to being seen. as Vastra put it, eleven wore that face, and subsequently that form of masculinity, to be accepted. on becoming twelve, realising even an "idealised" masculinity does not inherently serve them, they retreated into themselves as a person for self-reflection and trying to understand why they feel so detached from who they are.

the "am i a good man" arc mirrors being closeted and having to present as something not inherently tied to your sense of self, but still wanting to be the best of your perceived gender as any failure could leave you spiralling into self-doubt about simply being like any other "man". you ignore your gender dysphoria/questioning by trying to claim a moralistic view of gendered expression. made even more clear by Twelve rejecting Clara's heroic view of them, establishing that even though they have made efforts to be a "good man", that is just a placeholder for their loss of identity.

Missy appearing as she does, who as a character serves as a parallel to The Doctor on what they could become, and her eventual arc in trying to become good is symbolic of the fear around transition regret that internalised transphobia can create when you are closeted. Missy never gives importance to their fem existence other than nonchalant jokes, rather showing a more free and expressive personality devoid of any frustration. this immediately dismisses the transphobic assumption that trans people are only focused on their gender. also, Missy representing trans femininity is inherently tied to chaos and upsetting the status quo, she is the embodiment of what society considers accepting your womanhood as someone previously labelled masculine. what many others, and The Doctor themselves, saw as a need for attention and senseless disruption is Missy not needing to serve a false version of who they are, that they can now focus on becoming whoever they want to be now without losing energy to performing a gender that society has imposed on you. Missy could never have made the decision to stand with The Doctor if she had not given importance to her own queerness.

it wasn't coincidence with meeting Bill, she was the perfect foil for The Doctor to finally let go of their anxious attachment to masculinity. i would even argue for the majority of s10, The Doctor is largely ambiguous in their gender identity and does not fit into any construction of masculinity or femininity. whilst they still present as something socially labelled as masculine, they do not internalise that gender expression. they are uncaring about and not needing the validity that comes with heteronormativity, and thus is free to finally accept the decision they have to make. as Bill says, it is so hard to let go of The Doctor, and that rings true for twelve themselves. but they begin to realise The Doctor can be anyone. yes, they are tired, it would be so easy to simply rest and not give value to who you can become. but choosing to let go of everything you once were to survive is better than oblivion. it is better to let go, to choose another lifetime where the only person that dies is your falsity, to finally get it right and choose kindness. for yourself and for those who you love. they regenerate, not just into another person, but into someone who (if only tv scripts...) can now move forward.

#can you tell the only thoughts i have are of twelve? #this is why im kind of disappointed with the thirteenth doctors arc #like sure they're allowed dimensions as a character and to have dark moments #but there was a chance to show the nuances with relearning how to live and accept joy for yourself #as someone who has grieved and suffered loss and is detached #i know these themes arent just about transhood but dont you think they fit so beautifully? #this makes me want to bounce off the walls #doctor who #dw #twelfth doctor #peter capaldi #12th doctor #thirteenth doctor #jodie whittaker #13th doctor #long post

[daydreamingmiller]

joel miller 13/?

#feeling so incredibly abnormal about him today (everyday) 👍🏻 #girlies who grieve fictional characters like they’re real lemme hear some noise!!!!! #joel miller #tlou2 #the last of us part two #tlouedit #joel & ellie #joelmiller* #tlou2* #*

[rochenn]

Sometimes I think about Dooku's dislike of spiders and the thematic beauty of the guy who killed his Padawan making himself spider legs but as always, letting Dooku actually confront Qui-Gon's killer and having Maul rage at the man who replaced him is too much to ask

#we had some PRIME lay-ups for drama and character growth #between sidious' shiny (and grieving) new tool and sidious' scorned and abandoned child soldier #IT COULD'VE BEEN SO TASTY #count dooku #darth maul #star wars

[slavhew]

Posting my thoughts here too.

PPS; there is something about BGD still looking the same while jake has so clearly changed in appearance. I don't have anything clever to add, except that that stupid fingerless-gloved hand is so quintessentially Dirk, it looks like an aesthetic choice that belongs to a man much younger than Jake. Because it does. Because Dirk stopped, while Jake had to keep going.

#homestuck #hs beyond canon #homestuck^2 #hsbc #upd8 spoilers #hs^2 #upd8 #homestuck 2 #brain ghost dirk #dirk strider #dirkjake #bgd #jake english #not art #admin rambles #this is all over tbe place partially bc of the character limit #but i need to get it out and i dont feel like paraphrasing for here. im just. man. oh man. oh fucking man. #this part got me ok it fucking got me so hard. #its about so many things. its about self hate and feelings of inadequacy #about falling into old coping mechanisms and finally finally grieving #the dynamic between jake and bgd here is so. so fascinating you could write a fucking dissection on how he coaches himself through this #i dont even read beyond canon really im not even done with my rereas not even close #but man. fucking man.

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

Y'ALL IM ACTUALLY CRYING OVER RE:DRACULA

ive been listening to the audiobook on road trips and i just got back from a con this weekend so i hoped to finish it on the drive back

When i tell you. That the finale battle where Quincey died just at the moment of sunset. Where Giancarlo Hererra wrung my heart out like a wet rag with his acting in those few lines he got.

That that scene not only finished at the exact moment that i got home. But that it was also exactly at sunset.

I wasn't just listening to the audiobook yall I was there

#my posts #re: dracula #dracula daily #dracula #i intended to get home with time to like do chores and stuff but i cant fathom being able to exist like a normal person tonight #i need to grieve this fictional character #quincey didnt get nearly enough screentime but giancarlo herrerra made me cherish every second of it

[erros429]

going to get a bit personal and a bit political here.

over a week ago, before hamas’s retaliation on israel, my jewish friend passed away. before their passing, they were always quite vocally pro-palestine and anti-apartheid.

before and after the attacks, i’ve mentioned my own pro-palestine stance on my personal social media accounts. but now ppl leverage my DEAD friend against me, saying nonsense like: “your friend just died and you’re defending the terrorists that would’ve wanted them dead???” and i just. the AUDACITY to fucking weaponize MY friend against me when they knew nothing about them.

it’s sickening. it’s outrageous. and my experience is TINY compared to the innocent lives that are trapped in a warzone. TINY compared to the family members of these victims who fear that they may never see their loved ones again. and yet?? people are using this tragedy as an excuse to spew antisemitism and islamophobia every which way, and it is repulsive to watch.

my point is, if you’re living in the western world and only watching this from the sidelines, through the lens of mainstream news sources, then i have a message for you: check your privilege, grow the fuck up, and educate yourselves before you open your damn mouths.

#palestine #my hands are shaking while i write this #i am angry. and i am upset. and i am disgusted. #please respect that i am currently grieving the loss of my friend and these insensitive attacks on my character before you interact w/ this

[benoitblanc]

no no you guys don't get it. the x files cancer arc was, excuse the pun, a fucking white whale of a tv plotline that would not have worked nearly as well on literally any other show. it was a complete hail mary. the writers' room nearly didn't make it happen because they were worried it would fall too deeply into soap opera territory. and on any other show, it would! but the x files is about four key things: mistrust in the government, faith in both science and the otherworldly, building a life around trauma, and the fine line between love and codependency. it is the only show where the entirety of this situation- a government experiment on an unwilling young catholic leads to a terminal illness that is counteracted by a literal scientific miracle in the eleventh hour due to her partner's refusal to accept her impending death- could both happen at all and happen well. none of the themes in the cancer arc were new to txf at all. they'd all been lurking, to some extent, in the background since the pilot. the cancer arc wasn't merely milking a left-field catastrophe for the drama, it shoved the overarching themes of the show to the front and said look. look what these people are to each other. look how impossible it is to face the darkness alone. regardless of when the plotline was conceived, it was always going to happen. it was the only way the story could have ever gone. they were always doomed from the beginning

#the writers also- and this is going to be a very unpopular opinion i'm sure- did themselves HUGE favors #by keeping mulder & scully still SO emotionally uptight and miscommunicative even though it would be so easy not to #because it feels REAL. this is how these characters would really react to these circumstances #they wouldn't suddenly become all sappy. they wouldn't talk to each other. they wouldn't know HOW #mulder would always just grieve and grieve and grieve and throw his life away to save her #wail silently into her bedclothes so his anguish doesn't burden her further #and scully would always insist that she's fine. she wouldn't leave him for anything not even her own health #she would never be able to tell him that she's scared of what he'd do when she was gone. she loves him far too much #anyway. is this coherent #arwen.text #the x files

[physical-manifestation-of-spite]

I keep thinking about Arthur's regression at the end of Season 2 and then into Season 3. I keep thinking about how victims of trauma tend to get worse once they escape their traumatic situation. How their body and mind start to crack and shake under the weight of the horrors, now safe enough to escape the survivorship mindset but now forced to endure the fallout.

I keep thinking of how hard Faroe's death hit Arthur. How his guilt and grief were so intense that he wanted to kill himself, so low that he drank himself into a stupor for who knows how many years to just dull the pain. I keep imagining how hard it was to pull himself out of that, to work with Parker and find a new meaning in life, to walk away from his guilt of killing his daughter, and instead to help people.

(I keep thinking of how Arthur finds a vial of alcohol in the Dreamlands. How he sniffs it and recoils in disgust.)

I keep thinking of how long it took for Arthur to build himself back up from his lowest point, to tuck the guilt of Faroe in the deepest corner of his mind just so that he has enough room to breathe, to live, to be a better person. (And yet, Faroe is every facet of his life. It's his first memory in Season One, when he plays Faroe's Song, when he doesn't even remember his own name. It's the last name on his lips when he dies on that boat. It's his only memory when John is torn away from him.) I keep thinking about how Arthur is consciously repressing her every second of every day just so that he can keep going.

And then John pushes, and asks, and asks again. And finally, after almost dying twice with this entity, after surviving time and time again, he thinks he can trust him. He thinks he can share his deepest secret, to pull open the wound he keeps stitching over to protect himself. How he risks feeling the grief he's suppressed for years to trust someone. I keep thinking how John seizes it and, because he is ancient and young and inexperienced, childlike in his tantrums and his fears of responsibility and consequence, he uses it as a weapon the moment he's backed into a corner. I keep thinking of how not only the trust is torn away from Arthur, but how his wound is stretched and torn, and not only does his guilt and grief come back, but it's like a tidal wave that he cannot suppress this time. He's opened that wound and John has pried it wider, and now Arthur can't shut it. He survives in those pits, but she is all he thinks of. He escapes those pits, and ("Goodbye, Faroe.") she is all he thinks of. He slits his throat and she's all he thinks of.

He enters at icy cabin (a small gurgle, a bundle of blankets in his arm, a warm hum rumbling in his chest as he lulls his whole World to sleep) and he thinks of her to keep going.

And then Yellow enters, a blank slate, a John before he was John, and the pain is too fresh. This is the thing that tortured him. This is the thing that starved him. This is the thing who asked who his daughter was, and when he told him, the thing called him a killer. John and Yellow and the King are all the same in that moment, and Arthur's too fucked up and traumatized to separate them tangibly, as much as he insists that he can. His hatred grows and grows, all from himself, until it bleeds into Yellow, and he remakes this entity in his image, in his self-pitying hatred.

So when Yellow finally calls him a monster (and Arthur knows, he's called himself that the moment he saw the water spill from the bathtub onto the tile below), Arthur holds it close to his chest, and becomes it.

#fuck twitter's limited character amount #so i came here #season three has actually fucked me up #i genuinely thought season three would be my least favorite season when I first listened to it because I was still grieving over john #and then it became my favorite #it's such a great look into ptsd #malevolent #spiteful musings #meta analysis #malevolent podcast #arthur lester #john doe #malevolent john

[bangtanjjks]

I have this irrational fear that the only reason why Lucien is so good as a character is because Sarah leaves him alone. Because I saw what happened with her male leads (Tamlin, Rhys, Cass) and how they went from characters with a lot of potential (ACOTAR Tam and Rhys, ACOWAR Cass, I am a firm believer that ACOWAR Cass would sucker punch ACOSF Cass for his appalling behavior towards Nes) to the hot mess we have now.

I am scared shitless that the reason why my baby Luci is so good is by accident. That because Sarah didn't focus on him since he's not the main "love interest" is precisely why HE'S SO GOOD AS A CHARACTER. And that's why I'm kinda dreading the next book (if it's really going to be about Elain because that means Lucien is bound to be showing up a lot in it no matter what she chose to do with the mating bond).

God pls protect my man Lucien Vanserra. Sarah have a track record of ruining her own male lead (for me!!! They're kinda ruined for me) and I can't have that happening again. THRICE IS ENOUGH HEARTBREAK FOR ME

#sjm critical #rhysand #lucien vanserra #tamlin #seriously this have been in my mind since 2019 after i finish acosf #i NOTICED THE PATTERN #ANYTIME SHE LASER FOCUSED ON THE ML HE GOT RUINED FOR ME #sarah. it's bad when your side characters are more interesting than your MC #y'all maybe we should do a prayer circle #rip. im already grieving for my man #THE BEST MAN PRYTHIAN HAS TO OFFER #acotar #acowar #acosf #a court of thorns and roses #a court of wings and ruin #a court of silver flames #acowhattt #cassian