AHFNAIDNG HI RED UM GLAD YOU LIKE THE IDEAS BOTH ME AND MY PARTNER ARE SCREAMING

AHFNAIDNG HI RED UM GLAD YOU LIKE THE IDEAS BOTH ME AND MY PARTNER ARE SCREAMING

my partner doesn't have tumblr but i was given permission to share this so here we go!

we are both normal about aurora btw. analysis of chapter 2.2.32, specifically on erin and his story because silly :)

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i mentioned that erin was having a crisis, and the analysis follows:

He has been this entire comic. Because one of his first lines to Kendal was he was the only one who could fix it, and yes the others can HELP him but they can't help him with the problem only the symptoms. They can minimize the damage but they can't get rid of it. Erin is desperate and he'll literally rip himself apart to fix it. Because he is alone in this, he is right. Only he has those powers, and he's pushing himself past any limit against all judgment out of fear. He's afraid. And we almost never see him angry, but he's screaming at the only people who can stop him. They can't help him for all their power. They can stop the dragon from destroying the world but that's not what Erin needs.

He needs it gone.

So we see him at the end of every rope for once, screaming. "Nobody can help me in a way that matters." He's correct.

And he does it while doing some of the most powerful magic ever seen in the comic ever, like what a terrifying moment, because he's currently channeling so much magic, possibly more than that's even necessary as it was an emergency and he did it without much thought. He's not trying to prove anything really, he's just trying to keep going out of fear, his ego isn't a part of this, he truly knows they can't do anything to help and he can't bring himself to delay the trip. Because of fear.

But a corner stone of Erin is his fear and inadequacy complex almost as much as his ego and people don't realize that. He's also petty and vindictive and is ready to do everything he can to prove himself right. Or just to bring someone lesser down a peg even to his own detriment (Tynan and Walter). He's a mess of character traits that conflict because he tries to be the egotist without fear, and he is to some degree. But his entire arc he knows he's out of his league and it scares him.

He is both a terribly petty egotist who has to be right, but also an impulsive afraid 19 year old with too much power.

see no evil

Jrwi really is such a weird experience because on one hand everything is a complex metaphor for a real world issue and you can connect the characters so easily to your own lived experiences, nothing is ever as surface level as it might seem and every character is so much more complex than you might first give them credit for. But also the council doesn’t realize that themselves half the time and Gillion once gave birth to a horse.

Virgil as a character is absolutely hilarious to me because this is a man who - if you stare into his eyes too long - you’ll experience the most mortifying existential dread in your life. He’s the physical manifestation of something so primal in the back of your mind, borne from millions of years of evolution. He alone terrifies you when there is nothing else that terrorizes you just to make sure you know he’s there.

And this is the same man that does Secret Santa with his friends, wears onesies, bickers like an angsty teen, and God forbid if he’ll ever correct a waitress if she got his order wrong.

oh this is EVERYTHING

MORE BILLFORD LOCEIT

Thinking about how Alinua, Erin, and the Champion are in very similar situations magic-wise. All of them have a primordial in their soul, and all can access its power. But Alinua and the Champion are on the same page as their primordials, and Erin and the Void Dragon are in constant conflict, and this is limiting his power.

Before chapter three, Alinua was like Erin, in that she and Life were fighting, with Life trying to break out, and Alinua needing to push her down for the good of everyone around her. Now, after her overload in chapter three where she and Life stopped fighting, Alinua scares the Void Dragon.

The Light Dragon said that the Champion is still more powerful than Erin, but that Erin could grow to surpass the Champion.

In the cave arc, Erin managed to access Void magic to cure Falst's cave corruption, and the Void Dragon let him. Erin also presumably intimidated the Void Dragon into keeping quiet and helping Erin survive.

I think where Erin's arc is going is him becoming more skilled at Void magic, and eventually coming to the same point Alinua is with Life. It will be more gradual, and Erin would never trust the Void Dragon, but they will be on similar pages in the short term. This will probably unlock new voidy magic, and give Erin the same baseline power as Alinua and the Champion, plus the six elements he already commands.

(sorry if this is formatted badly, i types this out on a whim and i don't want to edit)