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#this is only my second attempt..........
nickyandstuff · 5 days
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I didn’t know which of Cassie’s hair lengths is preferred by the fandom so I drew her long hair because I never draw long hair.
Speaking of hair, I absolutely adore the way Bart’s hair turned out.
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bunnieswithknives · 1 year
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“David, what the FUCK.“
part 2
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thiefkingyall · 3 months
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Reth to go along with the Jel I did prior~
handsome soup boy
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seventh-district · 2 months
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This Evening I Will Not Forget
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“I jumped into the fray with the intention of helping you and next thing I know I’m standing there uselessly watching the first person I’ve dared to love in two fucking centuries take a warhammer to the stomach!”
He turned to face you as he emphasized his last few words, now standing all but frozen in the middle of the tent with his hands held out, gesturing toward your injury. You’re about to pipe up and insist that it wasn’t his fault, but the words dissipate before you can speak them as another part of his sentence echoes in your mind. You repeat them back to him in a disbelieving whisper.
“The first person you’ve dared to love?”
His tense, frustrated expression instantly falls flat.
“I didn’t say that.”
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An injury and an argument lead to you revealing far more of yourself and your unspoken past to Astarion than you planned to.
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Pairing: Astarion x Reader
Word Count: 3,292
Content Warnings: [injured Reader] (not graphically described, just mentions of bruising and pain) [mean/avoidant Astarion] [argument] [mentions of Reader's scars & non-specific allusion to their Tragic Backstory™] [vulnerability] [possibly (probably) OOC Astarion]
Author's Note: This is an excerpt from my fic An Evening I Will Not Forget, but can be read as a standalone one-shot. The only context I think you'll need is that this fic is written in the style of reliving memories, hence certain lines will mention Reader "looking back" on them.
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“What's important is this evenin' I will not forget
Purple, blue, orange, red
These colors of feelin'
Give me love, I'll put my heart in it”
You’re lying on your back as cold, pale fingers press against your sensitive skin, pulling a small pained sound of protest from you.
“Sorry, sorry…”
Astarion retracts his hand, fingers curling into his palm. You reach out to catch hold of him before he can completely pull away, your voice tense with pain as you reassure him.
“No- no... don’t be. I know you’re just trying to help.”
You bring his hand back toward your exposed stomach, his fingers still coated in the healing salve he was attempting to apply. His hand hovers hesitantly over your bruised and broken skin.
“Yes, but- I’m not very good at it.”
Your thumb brushes across his wrist as you hold onto him, suspecting that if you let go he’d just retract his hand again.
“What do you mean? Of course you are.”
He shakes his head insistently.
“No. It seems like every time I try to help you, I just end up hurting you even more…”
Confusion is clear both in your voice and on your features.
“That’s not… that’s not true, Star.”
You tug lightly on his wrist to get his attention, your voice soft as you ask him a question.
“Is this about what happened today?”
He pulls his hand out of your loose hold and you let him, watching as he stands and begins pacing circles inside the tent.
“No, I’m in a bad mood because the weather isn’t quite to my liking- of course it’s about what happened today!”
The initial sarcasm in his voice gave way to frustration near the end. Not with you, but with himself.
Now that you’re observing this memory from his perspective as well, you can see the moment you sustained the injury playing over and over again in his mind, working him up further and further.
“I jumped into the fray with the intention of helping you and next thing I know I’m standing there uselessly watching the first person I’ve dared to love in two fucking centuries take a warhammer to the stomach!”
He turned to face you as he emphasized his last few words, now standing all but frozen in the middle of the tent with his hands held out, gesturing toward your injury. You’re about to pipe up and insist that it wasn’t his fault, but the words dissipate before you can speak them as another part of his sentence echoes in your mind. You repeat them back to him in a disbelieving whisper.
“The first person you’ve dared to love?”
His tense, frustrated expression instantly falls flat.
“I didn’t say that.”
Your eyes widen, nodding slowly.
“Yes you did.”
Nervous laughter escapes him as he takes a step back, distancing himself from you.
“No, no, you… you must have heard me wrong. I didn’t- I was talking about helping you, I didn’t say anything about love, what’s love got to do with this?”
You hate to push him, fearing he may bolt like a frightened deer if you double down, but you know what you heard. It wasn’t like the first time you heard him say it, slapping it on the end of a string of pick-up lines, the word obviously carrying no weight, no truth. No, this second time was different.
“I think it has more to do with it than you’re willing to admit, Astarion.”
He falters, one of very few times you’ve seen him truly caught off guard, truly speechless.
“Those are…” He searches for something to say that’ll cover up the truth that’d just spilled out of him. “...bold words for someone currently bedridden.”
You bark a laugh and it turns into a low groan at the pain it causes to flare in your lower ribs.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
If he’s being honest, even he’s hardly sure what he meant. He’s truly floundering here, for the first time in… forever.
“It means… it means that I can walk away from this conversation right now and there isn’t anything you can do about it.”
Stooping so low as to resort to childish threats, you can feel the embarrassment radiating off of him.
“Would you truly be so cruel as to do that to me right now? Walking away, leaving me vulnerable and confused just because you can’t handle the truth?”
You’re pushing your luck too far and you know it. Surprisingly, though, he takes one step toward you, moving away from the exit.
“Cruel?! If you think that me simply walking away from you counts as cruelty then you truly haven’t suffered enough.”
His words are suddenly laced with venom and they hit you harder than the barbarian’s warhammer did today, leaving a chill colder than ice in their wake.
He seems to actually hear what he said a moment later, the careless words ricocheting off of you and coming back to slam into his chest, nearly knocking him over and crushing him beneath the weight of his sudden regret.
A furious wave of heat and adrenaline courses through you as you bolt upright in the makeshift bed, ignoring the sharp pain that flares inside you in response to the sudden movement. Reaching down and grabbing at the tail of your shirt where it’s bunched up around your ribs, you hastily yank it up over your shoulders and head, tugging your arms out of the long sleeves and furiously tossing the garment directly at him.
“Suffered enough? You think I haven’t fucking suffered enough, Astarion? You don’t know the goddamned HALF of it! You’re not the only one in this tent that’s been abused, you know?! Oh wait- that’s right- you DON’T!”
Your voice cracks under the pressure of volume and emotion as fat, hot, angry tears roll down your cheeks against your will. Astarion stands there like a deer in the headlamps, your balled-up shirt having hit him softly in the chest and fallen anticlimactically to the ground. As his eyes rake over your heavily scarred arms, the angry purple markings showing no signs of lessening as they curl over your shoulders and disappear behind your back, it suddenly starts to make a lot more sense why you were so damned insistent that no one remove your clothes while treating your wounds earlier.
Shadowheart rips open the flap covering the tent’s exit, a very concerned looking Halsin ducking down behind her. Part of you is grateful that at least not everyone was currently at camp to witness your sudden breakdown, but even the sight of the two of them is enough to have you panicking. Pulling at the blanket gathered around your waist and shouting in an admittedly very childish, vulnerable voice, you demand they leave as you choke on your tears, hastily covering yourself up.
“GET OUT!”
Unsure of what to do, Shadowheart surveys the scene before her with a critical eye before sighing, seeming to understand that the best thing they can do right now is give you back your privacy. She knows that if you needed her, you would call. Turning to shoo away the concerned man behind her, she lowers the flap back down with a quiet murmur of “They’re… fine. Let’s give them some space.”
Astarion finally breaks free from where he’s been stood like a statue, slowly moving toward the exit as well with an unsure glance in your direction.
You bury your face into the fabric clutched in your hands, shouting into it in exasperation.
“NOT YOU!”
He freezes, no longer knowing what to do but wishing that the ground would simply open up and swallow him whole. Back under six feet of soil feels like where he deserves to be after what he just said to you.
He racks his brain for the right thing to say, coming up empty handed and eventually deciding that honesty might just be the best policy in this situation.
“I… I’m going to level with you. I have no idea what to do right now.”
In spite of it all, you laugh, a broken sound that cuts through your tears, causing you to cough, then the strain from coughing causes more tears to fall. Though he can’t admit it, Astarion knows right then and there that he never wants to hear or see you in such pain ever again.
“I… I’ll level with you, too.”
You pull the blanket away from your face, looking at him with watery, bloodshot eyes.
“...Neither do I.”
You glance down at the floor, attempting a deep breath and failing spectacularly as another broken sob escapes you. Dropping the fabric still held up against your chest, you press your hands down into the bedroll beneath you in an attempt to support your upper body and ease the pain radiating through your core.
Astarion takes one cautious step toward you, his unsteady voice the only thing filling the silence aside from your soft crying.
“I need… to apologize. For everything.”
You shake your head in disagreement and clear your throat.
“No, you don’t. You’ve been through a worse hell than I could ever even imagine. It’s… stupid of me to try and compete with you in that regard.”
He takes another step forward, insistent.
“That isn’t true. You have… clearly been through your own hell, and it was… stupid of me to assume you hadn’t. Even worse of me to try and downplay my avoidance by… holding my past over you like some sort of… like some sort of excuse.”
You shift your weight to the side in order to lift one hand, reaching out to grab at one of the small cloths stacked beside your bed. Astarion sees you struggling to reach them and rushes forward, closing what remained of the space he’d put between you as he lifted a cloth and handed it to you without a word.
You bring it to your face, pressing it to your eyes in a useless attempt to dry the tears that were still falling. Then, moving it down to blow your running nose into the cloth before you could make an even bigger mess of yourself than you already were. Finally able to breathe a bit better, you counter his point.
“Yeah, but- the thing is, I feel like you kinda have the right to do that, given all that you’ve survived. Of course you’d see the pain of walking away from a conversation as trivial when you compare it to… literally anything you’ve experienced.”
Now that he’s returned to your side, Astarion’s head angles to drag his gaze across your exposed back, finally seeing the full extent of your scarring as you lean forward a bit to toss the dirty cloth to the floor of the tent next to your shirt. Nausea swirls deep in the pit of his stomach as the upsetting sight of your marred skin burns itself into his memory.
“I believe… that’s called a double standard.”
You throw him a sad, confused look, and he explains.
“You’re trying to give me some sort of… free pass based on what I’ve been through, but I’ve never once seen you give yourself that same sort of leniency.”
“That’s… not the same thing.”
“I’m not saying we’ve been through the exact same thing, but…” He gestures vaguely to the entirety of you. “...clearly you’ve gone through something. If I get to lord my baggage over you then surely you’re permitted to do the same.”
Your tears begin to slow as you consider his words.
“I don’t… want to do that, though. Obviously. That’s why I haven’t told you. I don’t want you giving me special treatment because ‘poor pitiful me’ has gone through some shit. I don’t think that excuses any of my current behavior.”
The silence hangs in the air for a moment before he gently drives his point home.
“Yet you think it excuses mine?”
Hm.
“...okay. I guess you’ve got me there.”
You sigh, body beginning to feel heavier than lead as the sudden rush of emotion and adrenaline fades from you. You ease yourself back down, hissing at the pain as your bruised ribs and torn muscles protest the stretch and movement. Astarion wants to assist but truth be told he’s afraid to touch you. So, he watches on helplessly, still berating himself in the back of his mind for the role he feels he played in you sustaining today’s injuries to begin with.
Once you’re laid down and relaxing into the bedroll as much as you can, you make no effort to cover yourself up, not caring how long his eyes wander across your exposed skin. Silently, he tries to read the countless jagged lines and dots carved into you like they may eventually come together to paint him a picture of all that’s happened to you.
No picture anyone could paint would ever do the pain justice.
He settles himself down next to you as your tired eyes stare a hole in the ceiling of the tent.
“You do not have to accept my apology, but I will not rescind it. I do have the wherewithal to know that what I said was wrong. It was cruel. I…”
He exhales, the heavy sound full of the weight carried by a man that hasn’t been this honest with anyone in centuries.
“I…  tossed aside any consideration for how you may have felt, letting myself get lost in my own… stupid fears. It wasn’t right. It certainly wasn’t fair to you.”
Your head lolls to the side, appraising him with lidded eyes.
“You know… you’re surprisingly self-aware when you aren’t being a pompous ass.”
Your words draw a surprised laugh out of him and after a moment of consideration, he nods slowly in reluctant agreement.
“I’ve… had a lot of time to sit with myself and think. Eventually you get to know yourself pretty well.”
He looks down, idly picking at the loose threads on the edge of your well-worn bedroll.
“All of that self-awareness apparently doesn’t make me any kinder though, does it?”
It’s a rhetorical question but you answer it all the same.
“I still stand by my statement that you have good reason to be so… abrasive. Just being aware of those reasons doesn’t mean that they suddenly don’t affect you any more.”
Your hand raises from where it laid lifelessly beside you, reaching over for Astarion’s and pulling his anxious fingers away from attacking the weak points of your bedroll. You don’t release his hand once you direct him away from the loose threads, holding onto him as you continue to muse aloud.
“I think that a lot of us are just doing our best to not allow our past to affect our present, to varying degrees of success. Sometimes we fail. But- I believe all that truly matters at the end of the day is that we’re trying, though. … And, Astarion?”
“...yes?”
“I can tell that you’re trying.” You squeeze his hand. “And I accept your apology.”
You take a slow, deep breath, and listen as his voice comes out softer than you’ve ever heard it.
“Thank you.”
You nod your head in a silent “of course,” laying in thoughtful silence for a few moments before speaking.
“I… feel like I should apologize as well.”
Now it’s Astarion’s turn to be confused.
“What ever for?”
You weakly raise your other hand to gesture all around the room.
“Just… this. The scene I just made. Heaping all of this emotion onto you when you were obviously already struggling with how you felt about me in the first place.”
He doesn’t take long to respond.
“No, I don’t think you need to apologize for that. This… seems like it really needed to come out. I could never be upset with you for sharing it with me, regardless of the… unideal circumstances.”
He then seems to realize something.
“I hope you don’t regret it, though. Sharing this with me.”
You shake your head decisively and the motion causes your impending headache to flare.
“No. I don’t. I- uh- you were going to find out eventually with how… close we’ve been getting. I just couldn’t find the right time to tell you- or- well, show you, I guess.”
Your hand releases its hold on his, reaching up to carefully brush your fingertips across the mottled skin of your stomach. You raise your head up, angling it down to look down at the injury with a thoughtful gaze. Glancing over toward Astarion, you ask him another question.
“Can you hand me that salve from earlier? It never really… got fully applied.”
He immediately reaches behind him for the container, but holds it in his grasp as he stumbles over his words.
“I- I, uhm… wouldn’t mind trying again, if you want me to. If you don’t I’ll understand, though. Just… want you to know that the offer is still there.”
Your eyebrows raise in surprise, but you’re completely willing to let him do it.
“Oh… sure? You’re welcome to, I just… assumed you wouldn’t want to.”
He holds his other hand up and only then do you realize he never wiped the salve from his skin.
“These fingers are numb already anyways, might as well spare yours the same fate.”
You vaguely remember Shadowheart’s words as she passed Astarion the container earlier, cautioning him to not leave it for long on any skin he didn’t want to temporarily lose feeling in.
“But hey, at least we know that it works now, right?”
You give him a tired smile, appreciative of his efforts to lighten the mood.
“Mmm, I suppose so.”
You pull your hand away, exposing your injury to him once again.
“Have at me, then.”
With your permission, he sweeps a scoop of the healing and numbing mixture across your sensitive skin and you notice how feather-light he keeps his touch this time. Looking down to observe his work, you note how the messy mixture of the massive bruise’s dark colors stand in stark contrast to his pale white fingers that brush across it.
A thought slips out of your exhausted mind.
“Pretty…”
His eyes flick up to meet yours, unsure if he heard you correctly.
“Hmm?”
“The colors. They’re pretty. Purple, blue, even kinda orange…”
You look away from the bruise and up into his ruby eyes.
“...red.”
He’s silent for a moment, his hand pausing its gentle motion. Then he scoffs, looking away and internally dismissing your words as the ramblings of a tired mind.
“You’re talking nonsense, dear.”
Your filter has all but completely vanished, feeling almost drunk on your current mixture of exhaustion and relief after such a hell of a day. Sleep beckons you and your eyes fall closed as the pain in your ribs fades, on its way to being numbed out by the potent salve. A hazy thought surfaces, reminding you to give your thanks to Shadowheart when you next awake. For now though, you relax, no thought given to the words that slip from your lips.
“But you love my nonsense, don’t you…”
His heart feels like it jumps in his chest as he hears you so casually speak the word that he’s still reluctant to even think to himself, let alone say aloud. As he finishes massaging the salve into your skin and pulls his hand back, his eyes pass over the expansive unspoken history of pain evidently etched into your skin, up across your chest, over your shoulders and down your arms. He figures the least he can do is answer you honestly before sleep pulls you under.
“I… suppose I do.”
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End Notes: If you'd like to read my commentary on this scene, you can find that in the end notes of Ch. 5 on AO3 - right here!
Header Image Source: x
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braisedhoney · 1 year
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uh oh someone’s unhappy
an attempt to animate my boy walkin' around in the most dramatic way possible <3
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saradika · 3 months
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me telling myself I can’t get mad when the new craft /hobby I’m learning isn’t perfect the first time I do it
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tswwwit · 6 days
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How would dipper propose to bill? -without any devious intentions, just pure love 😍
He'd absolutely overthink it to hell and back.
We're talking making notes and charts and a list of Everything That Must Go Right for the Perfect Setup. He's made a list of seventy-three options and eliminated half of them. He's fussed over the ring and has three different options stored in his sock drawer, one in the bottle of shower gel Bill doesn't use, and one up in the rafters. There's an excel file with probabilities for weather and temperature and the mood Bill might be in at that exact moment.
Of course, all these things completely fall apart in the most chaotic manner possible, with a high chance of 'near-death experience' to boot.
Dipper ends up blurting out 'Marry me' after the battle, seizing Bill's hand while his own are all sticky with the blood of their enemies and the survivors groan in anguish in the obliterated wreckage. And it's the most romantic proposal Bill could ever ask for.
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finngualart · 10 months
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sketch, lino block and test print i did yesterday evening
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artsy-1diot · 1 year
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i made a funny today, i might clean it up if this post does well
(audio is from the Sonic Riders fandub by SnapCube)
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berrymascarpone · 1 year
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A rare, unguarded moment
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springypaws · 18 days
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School started up again today, so I didn’t have time to do any fancy digital drawing, so take my first ever jmart sketches and some side profiles of the two I did of them during class today for the last @jonmartinweek prompt, day 9, AUs | Free Day 💅✨
Now that it’s actually the end of Jonmartin week and I’m not cutting it short, I just wanted to say thank your you again to @/jonmartinweek for making this event!! It was so incredibly amazing, and kept me surprisingly productive :DDD
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Also, I just started listening to the Magnus Protocol… 7 episodes in out of the episodes that are out so far, and I am so extremely excited that I might be unable to avoid ranting a bunch of nonsense about it on here (with the proper spoiler tags and such of course— just wanted to give a fair warning cause I have A LOT to say/pos)
ALSO!!! ID in alt
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another drama-free psa: do not attempt to correct a writer in the comments of their fic, especially without being very sure that you are correct
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radiantaerynsvn · 9 months
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this came to me in a vision
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ajlockwood · 1 year
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I love how stroud created a sort of tied ending for the books and symbolised the development of lockwood and lucy’s relationship through necklaces. each one of them is a physical representation of the feelings blossoming between them, and since neither of them is emotionally able to put these feelings into words, I wrote a very tiresome 1700-word essay about that
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[WARNING: major spoilers for all five books + the netflix show]
the first necklace is annie ward’s, in the screaming staircase. it’s a locket, a materialisation of a tumultuous love between two people, a toxic passion that leads to tragedy. extreme jealousy led to the loved one’s death. this necklace is a kind of presage of what’s to come in the next books, because from the moment lucy meets annie, she feels a sort of connection to her – that beautiful metaphorical image of lucy and annie underwater in the show speaks for itself – and this will also be reflected on her own romantic story.
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this quote was a foreshadowing all along, but we only realise that much further. stroud suggested the importance of the necklaces given as gifts throughout the story – and their romantic meaning that should not be overlooked. (plus keep in mind george’s implication that lucy doesn’t know anything about love. it’s important, I promise).
[in the netflix show, this connection between annie’s relationship with fairfax and lucy’s with lockwood is foreseen when lucy relives annie’s last moments. she begins to caress a conflicted lockwood as if he were her lover, and this moment made it even clearer that even though both relationships were very different, they are correspondent. plus, the locket was replaced by a ring, and they also added a ring on lockwood’s finger. coincidence? I think not. but keep reading, I’ll elaborate on that later.]
the second necklace is a gift from lockwood to lucy in the whispering skull, and is the first one directly connected to their relationship. this necklace is made of silver, meaning purity, healing, patience, perseverance, balance, peace. the diamond too is a symbol of purity, commitment and faithfulness. in short, this is the first material implication that a healthy and easy affection is growing between them. even if it’s for the sake of a case, they’re going to a party, and all is well.
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however, here I remind of george’s quote about lucy not knowing anything about love – though I wouldn’t say she’s ignorant, but more like unaware of it. lockwood is also unaware of it. the whole point of locklyle being so good is that they’re unaware of their affection’s depth for 70% of the story even though it’s so OBVIOUS. they’re young, and they work too much – lockwood’s life had been his job until then –, so much that what could have been a lovely moment with his gift is quickly dismissed in the book because they have a mission. so they don’t really have the time and mental health to dwell on it. we don’t have lockwood’s pov in the books (shoutout to mr stroud), and lucy knows she feels something for lockwood but denies it – though later we find that she preferred to keep wearing the necklace full-time.
[the show also made a really important addition by showing lockwood entering jessica’s room to fetch the necklace, an indication that his love for lucy is making him have to face his trauma. and the moment when he gives lucy the necklace was much more meaningful: it was right after lucy had told him for the first time about norrie. he wanted to tell her about jessica as well, but he hesitates – he says, “it belonged to… someone I was very close to.” he wants to open up to her, although he’s still not ready to do so. jessica’s door being opened by the end of the book/season is obviously a metaphor for the door to his inner self, and just when he is ready to at least try leaving a crack for lucy to enter, stroud wrote the next book.]
the hollow boy is where everything begins to falter. lucy still wears the necklace – as skull points out right at the beginning – and she even uses it to save them during a mission, but it’s the last time we see it. in fact, the very last time it’s mentioned is a scene where lucy is watching lockwood fondly; she touches her necklace out of reflex, and then he makes the decision that (as he will think later) ruined it all: to hire a new agent.
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holly’s arrival is conflictuous for various reasons, notably MISCOMMUNICATION and JEALOUSY. remember what I said about annie’s necklace being a presage? yes, the prophecy is fulfilled! these two aspects almost led to lockwood and lucy’s ruin. however, in the end it wasn’t jealously that made them part, but very ironically it was their love. the “come off it, lucy, you know I’d die for you” was one more of lockwood’s not-so-subtle occasional demonstrations of how much he cared about her, but given the context, lucy was scared. because for the first time she realised lockwood really was committed to her, in his own way. the silver necklace was forgotten: their affection (which had been easy before) became heavy on lucy’s heart and conscience. she didn’t want his commitment like that. so she left, hoping that it would make it go away – and with that, leaving a hole in lockwood’s heart.
the creeping shadow tells us that their departure made it worse for both. and amusingly, even though this is one of the books with most deepening on locklyle, it’s the only one without a single quote from any necklace. why? because they’re confused. everything to them is nebulous and indistinct regarding the other. for the first time they’re beginning to acknowledge the fact they love each other, as they feel the effects of it directly on their skin, but they simply don’t have a proper conversation so they don’t know what the other is really thinking. lucy missed lockwood and co more than she would care to admit; she wanted to keep in touch with them, even if she was away for a good cause, but lockwood didn't make himself reachable in a way that wouldn't suggest his wish of her backing down from her decision. he fortified his walls again and became obsessed with a plan of getting her back no matter what, and only then he’d think of how he could earn her affection. I like to think that lockwood only realised he truly loved lucy in her absence; I imagine him lying awake at dawn repassing every conversation, every moment (especially the argument at the cafe); wondering when did it all begin to crumble and when was it he got so inattentive to her, sinking into new cases to run away from these feelings and to ironically have an illusion of self-control (add that to his trauma and consequent perspective that everyone he’s ever loved is taken from him). and somehow lucy is even more oblivious than him, so this moment is one of confusion and maybe even self-discovery for them. as a rule I wouldn’t gift someone a piece of jewelry meaning “hey so I’m a mess rn I kinda like u but idk? anyways lol let’s go to work”, therefore the lack of promises or anything like it. but when lucy comes back – and lockwood reaches the goal he had been planning all winter for – they are not the same anymore. their feelings didn’t change: they matured into something they still cannot name, but a lot more tangible than before.
at last comes the empty grave. after everything they’ve been through (see literally going to hell and back), though they haven’t officialy settled what they are to each other now, it’s clear to both of them that they’re not only coworkers, or simply friends. the shared trauma made them even closer than they were before, as lucy states here:
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and this same shared trauma made lucy – with her self-consciousness and all that – doubt even more if lockwood truly loved her, or if it was something else. it’s fair; they hadn’t been on good terms for a while, he suddenly appeared on her doorstep again and then they nearly died together, now all of the sudden they couldn’t be apart?
of course their relationship would never be the same again, but all this situation just reinforced whatever affection they already had before. for once, lockwood was finally allowing himself a few moments of vulnerability around lucy (like when he showed her his family’s grave, or in that scene of quiet solace when he allows her to sit beside him in the library and he shares his theory about who killed his parents); but as stroud himself has said, “lockwood is a nightmare”, he never talks openly about his feelings.
so what does he do to declare that his love is true, tangible, eternal and devotional?
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he gives her a necklace. again.
but this time, the act carries much more depth than before with the silver necklace, of which we don’t know much about in the books. because while that one was a reminder of someone dear to him, this one has its own story, a story that really touches lockwood inside. it represents his parents’ love, seen by him and his sister as an example since their childhoods. his father gave it to his mother as a symbol of his undying devotion. gold represents happiness, peace, stability – something lockwood and lucy did not have by the time he first tried to give her the necklace, since portland row was about to be attacked (and that’s why they were interrupted by kipps), while the last part of the book (paradoxically called “the beginning”) was the perfect moment to do so. the sapphire summarises everything lockwood wants to say out loud, but never does: it brings serenity and peace of mind, symbolises truth, restoration of balance, celestial hope, holiness and connection to the heavens.
this is lockwood's conception of the apex of love, and he is sharing it with lucy because she is the one that completes him, that makes his days have a meaning, the one with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life with. after five books, he is certain she is the one for him – and has always been. even when they didn’t know so.
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and even after all this, lockwood doesn’t say it out loud, for fear of being rejected again. this moment is too important for him (he’s even put on his new coat I mean, honestly, just for a stroll?? he wanted to look good for her), and he didn’t want to ruin it. he hesitates, leaves the necklace there for lucy to find. rather than force her hand or try to influence her, as he had done before, he gives her a free choice. she can go for that stroll with him if she wants. she can also not go, if that’s what she wishes. if she wants the necklace, if she accepts him and his love, it will be her choice. he’s practically on his knees, begging her to say yes and accept him; he needs her, but he doesn’t want to impose himself on her: he wants her to choose him voluntarily. the necklace is a silent question. a proposal. and even though it took lucy the whole book, the whole series to realise that this love was real and mutual, she is ready. it’s not with hesitation that she says yes to him twice.
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[and remember lockwood’s ring? the books begin and end with a necklace – tied ending! – and my theory is that the show might intend to do so as well. it all started with a ring and it will end with one, but a ring is a lot more clearer to read through the lens of romance. as of now, the show is constantly focusing on subtle hand touches – pride and prejudice fans howling –, which I found a rather suggestive detail, and at some point by the end, he will take it off his finger and put it into hers, an explicit exchange of vows, and my heart that has survived of only crumbs from jonathan until now found this change brilliant.]
so yeah, this is just one of the hundred reasons why I consider locklyle to be one of the deepest relationships ever written. good night, listeners, good night
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skeletalheartattack · 5 months
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Devil bottles takes control of your dog for revenge clawing and biting its horrible
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not my fuckin dog man leave him out of this
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rain13121 · 9 months
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I'm sure your friends will show up this time.
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