[10:35 PM]
you quickly walk over and wrap your arms around nico as he gets home from his game. feeling his body sag against yours as he leans in for a tight hug, holding you close like he's afraid you could disappear at any moment.
"hey baby," you whisper as he relaxes a bit against you. you know that all he needs is your love and support in this moment.
“you know i’m proud of you no matter what. no matter what happens on the ice you’re still my number one.”
you can feel him take a deep breath, his face buried in your neck.
“no matter what happens i know how talented you are, the team and your fans know it too. you’re an incredible player and an incredible leader. you always give it your all on the ice, you play amazingly and that doesn’t go unnoticed.”
a silence falls between you run your fingers through his hair, feeling him relax even more as you do.
“i wish i could take away all your pain. i wish there was more i could do for you. i'm sorry my love.” you sigh.
he looks up at you, his big, glossy eyes meeting yours, and you can see the tiredness etched on his face. he holds your face gently with his hands, his fingers tracing the lines of your cheeks as he looks deeply into your eyes. he leans in and plants a soft, slow kiss on your lips, and then rests his forehead against yours. the heaviness of his chest eases as he takes in your words.
"i love you."
"i love you more," you respond as you both stand there, holding onto each other tightly.
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Analysis: Lance Dur Webtoon Episode 5, The Third Death
(aka, Ronik's "let's try reading too much into some comics, and the Lance Dur series" challenge)
TW: Discussion of Child Abuse (physical, emotional, psychological), Filicide, Patricide, Child Neglect. Just the usual things that come up when talking about Lysmee, Agard, Lance Dur, Kerubim, God Ecaflip, and Joris, and their character parallels.
When looked at from the lens of symbolism and motifs, this comic is one of the more important pieces of Kerubim lore we have. And I really, really mean it. I need to talk about it.
But to talk about it... I will have to do something bad. Something I really wanted to put off for as long as I could:
THIS POST WILL SPOIL THE ENTIRETY OF THE LANCE DUR CARTOON, THE LANCE DUR WEBCOMIC, AS WELL AS THE CIRE MOMORE WEBCOMIC.
For this reason, I will be placing this analysis under a read more.
The thing that really gets me about this comic, is that it explicitly makes Kerubim a character foil/parallel for Agard and Lysmee.
Once or twice, I might have said things like, "Joris parallels Yugo, Atcham parallels Joris," and so on, — because of similar troubles, or character beats, — but let it be clear when I say "parallel" here, I don't mean conjecture, or correlations. What is happening here, is a bit... different.
Through his inclusion in this comic, and the role he takes in it as a victim of the Cire Momore curse, — the same way Agard was, — an explicit parallel is drawn between Kerubim and Agard.
And, by that logic, between Kerubim and Lysmee as well, — for Agard is already her foil and parallel.
In a way, their being a trinity really enriches the way one can understand these characters, — they form a sliding scale, I think, — because for every mirror image they have, there is a small deviation.
From Lance Dur's genuine love for his son and failure at showing it for all those years, and Ephedre's hatred of everything, to Ecaflip's godly "love" being both cruel and transactional.
In a way, despite Cire Momore not actually picking victims in-universe, symbolically speaking, she is the unhealable, unbeatable wound of parental trauma, personified.
It's no wonder, her long-term targets, within canon, are Agard and Kerubim.
Something can have many different symbolic meanings in the same story. From the march of death, to the weight of parental trauma.
The past, with all the horrible things that happened in it, is as real as the future, and the ending it holds. And it's always coming for you.
Sometimes, they are actually two in the same. At least for Lysmee and Kerubim.
This is the level of parallels that Lysmee, Kerubim, and Agard operate on. Even though Kerubim being their parallel is only a minor thing, because Agard and Lysmee's stories are mostly intertwined between one another, it is still a good way to analyse things.
(I hope someone makes a similar post to mine, but mainly about Agard and Lysmee. I'm too much of a Kerubim fan to be talking about them...)
All three of them grew up with parents who weren't supportive of who they were as people. The onee person who was supposed to nurture them, treated them like an object at best (Agard, Kerubim), — or derived pleasure from their suffering at worst (Lysmee, Kerubim).
Between the two, Kerubim seems like the middle ground. Agard has a toxic, distant parent, Lysmee has a horrible, physically abusive mother, and Kerubim has a toxic, emotionally and psychologically abusive parent.
Their stories diverge, yet remain reflections of one another.
Lysmee dreams of breaking free, but is killed by her own mother in the end. Kerubim cannot die, or get rid of, his father. And Agard kills his father, — obtaining a tragic sort of freedom, an actual ending to their relationship.
Lysmee and Agard reflect one another with violence, with poison. They both plan their parents' death, but for different reasons, — a want to be free of abuse vs. a twisted way to show love.
Kerubim and Lysmee reflect one another in inability to die or move on, — cursed to live forever by their parent, out of hatred, or out of love. But it differs, — for Kerubim, an eternal life, marred by death, by disease, is a pleasure, because he has his loved ones. But Lysmee... isn't living. She is suffering, forever.
Agard and Kerubim reflect one another by loving their fathers despite how bad things were, but having a way to move on, just a little, and try to be better fathers themselves, — separate from their toxic parent. But Kerubim will always have to look behind his back, to police his speech, to try and please Ecaflip, — because he is always watching, and he can always take all of Kerubim's freedoms back, at the snap of the fingers.
The way Kerubim experiences his haunting by Cire Momore is emblematic of his relationship with Ecaflip — everpresent, clouding over his thoughts, yet, if he focuses on moving forward, he can ignore it, if just for a bit.
The way it ends, is also a reflection of their relationship: only Ecaflip can choose, when, exactly, Kerubim stops suffering, — and he will keep him in danger, until Kerubim gives him what he wants.
Kerubim tries to free himself of the pain that his relationship with Ecaflip brings him by using fatherhood, but only ends up mirroring the dynamics that caused him pain. Joris wishes he could help him, but he is literally seven, and he has no idea how, — besides staying by his side, together, for eternity. Suffering from a very similar pain to Kerubim, but because of Kerubim himself.
Forcing himself to parent his own parent, to try and lead him from his pain.
Lysmee tries to free herself from the pain of her mother's abuse with romance, but the circumstances against them are far too strong, — Gustav can't even begin to help her. No matter how much he wishes he could. The only thing he could do for her is to die and be cursed together for eternity.
The same way Ecaflip is the only one who can save Kerubim, and the only one who could have saved Lysmee was Ephedre, the only one who can save Agard is Lance Dur, — because, as I had pointed out, all of them are the reason of their pain.
But the difference is that Lance Dur truly loves Agard. He might not have been the best father, he might have hurt him, but he loves Agard, enough to make sacrifices.
And if it took her mother's hate to doom her, it's quite poetic that it took a parent's love and determination that can finally set Lysmee free.
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A little about Lace and Cire because idk just. Thinkin abt them.
My lovefell boys. They simultaneously have a better and worse relationship than a lot of my other fell brothers. Sans (Cire) was much more protective of Papyrus (Lace) when they were younger, which led to Papyrus being a lot more dependent on Sans as they got older. Unfortunately, Sans still kept a lot of emotional walls up, so while he was more supportive of Papyrus, he still didn't exactly "let him in", which left Papyrus feeling isolated more often than not.
Their age difference also complicated things, as Sans had to start working to support them when Papyrus was young enough to still really need him around more. Of course, he was old enough to understand, but that didn't really make it any easier.
While things in LF were...better, in some aspects, they were also worse in other ways, which complimented a lot of Papyrus' issues in the perfectly wrong way. Without receiving solid guidance, he tended toward unhealthier coping mechanisms and mindsets, and since they'd grown apart by the time Papyrus was a teen/young adult, trying to intervene usually just led to arguments and lashing out.
They both knew what was wrong, but not how to fix it without making things worse, so there wasn't much to do, especially considering they were sort of both right about knowing what was wrong...but not entirely. Like each had a different assortment of puzzle pieces, but both thought they had the whole picture. Which, of course, only made communicating that much harder.
In a happy ending scenario where they surface and both receive the help they need, they certainly wouldn't ever be as close as they could've been, and might even end up more distant than other fell brothers, but they'd probably be able to talk more healthily and clearly with each other whenever they did have the opportunity.
There's a lot more going on there but it deals a lot in specifics that I don't want to get into bc they're pretty heavy, but! Overall they could at least manage to salvage a decent relationship, and probably have quite a lot of fun poking fun at the other au brothers together in mv settings lol
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