Love Writing Belos Even Though There Is Such A Difficulty To It? The Haughtiness Of It. The Melodrama.

belos' va has that very nice vocal tone that makes my brain go brr, it matches the easy condescending tone that belos hones so well.

that uh-puh-pup sound he makes in young blood, old souls (00:16 in this clip of it) at the beginning of his confrontation with luz is just so nice. the demeaning, mocking ease of it. the okay. i'll play of it all, when luz attacks (first! first! going to talk about that soon too), like he has time to waste on seeing where she's at in battling with her glyphs.

bc it is just a game to him, then. he'd been there the whole time, after all. waiting, expectational, like he'd knew lilith would betray their cause and lead luz there for their rescue. that it was going to happen just like this, the plan of it, and how everything just falls into place, like - how much of this could be seen so clearly? all of them acting like good pawns along a predestined path?

and there's this removed amusement while he fights luz, if you can even call it a fight. he plays with her, toys with her, lifting only a finger the entire time. it's the joy of the catch, the thrill of getting closer to his hands on the portal, what he wants, but there's no rush. how he knows it's going to happen eventually, soon, so he can just chill and go with the flow of things?

it makes me wonder how long he's waited, how comfortable he is now with patience when things are in the works, steadily moving on.

we don't see belos use magic like this in season two. it's a controlled flame, without the anger and emotion that is central to it in king's tide. it's as if here, in s1, he knows what's happening before everyone else, and he flits and melts like light, liquid, almost effortlessly.

there's no reason to try if no one is actually going to test your ability.

it is a game to him, and there aren't any real consequences to any of it until the portal door goes up in flames. he got what he wanted out of lilith, and now he's near enough to reap the rewards of it. but it isn't entirely upsetting either, when he loses it - it just changes the game.

it's similar to this ominous voice trick he does a couple of times - how the visuals turn negative and double themselves atop one another to show the effect - we don't see it again.

it's as if he is a kind of omniscient being, that lingering i will know while they steal borrow the relics, and again during the fight. i love the idea that he has such a control over this artificial magic that he can make his voice actually sound like it is coming from everywhere; that his knowledge, his control, is so overwhelming that it must come from the titan itself / how there are no other possibilities.

go on then. go be a hero, he mocks, but it's such a soft thing. one look, a few words and some oversight and he knows exactly what makes someone tick. i imagine it's why we see hunter do it so well to amity in eclipse lake. he manipulates, so he must know the heart of you.

what a villain! even when we barely know anything about him or his motivations, he's still so powerful and intimidating. and that's good writing. to know just enough to be curious, just enough to be afraid.

u ever go in to do final reads to look for spelling errors and weird formatting things and accidentally, idk, end up adding five hundred more words

he's stupid and he's biased, your honor.

these for the future boards. going insane.

even in the earlier ones in the gym he's so stilted with his anger? the heavy weight of what they've just all been through, his guilt? they don't even have gus' lil finger guns and hunter's embarrassed blush yet he is just angry. through and through. and it's so jarring, his quiet, compared to the easy sassy talkative vibe of the golden guard. this isn't even that this is just. an emptiness, and trying to make his way through it without flap. the grief trying to eat him whole.

this chapter is giving me so much trouble but man .... man this idea is haunting me each time i scroll by it.

if we're putting the weight on luz's insecurities in the w&d nightmare scenario, that this is what she feels she is: trying to always be more than what she can be, always wishing to be understood but always falling short? she has made this world into a story of her own making, her own narrative, playing god, just like belos.

to have it pushed back at her, to hear hunter say no, no you can't save me, i'm not a character, i don't have a place in your silly stories - i don't deserve it, like something too honest to hold. to heavy a truth to handle, hurt and horror and everything terrible.

because here, it means - failure. who is the hero if they don't save everyone? if they leave someone behind?

i do also truly, truly believe we deserved some final parallel completion w/ hunter and belos. to be created by and outlive your own creator / your family / your "purpose" / your blood? for all of the guards before him, for caleb, for every kindness they should have all been given in their smattering of years before they learned of the truth and were killed for it.

yeah i am one for the idea of hunter being the one to have the final strike. this is not me saying i do not absolutely ADORE the way they did it in the finale. it was absolutely so badass and i do love them but oooooh something in me wanted hunter finally able to show his growth to the man who abused him for so many years. to say look at how far i have come from your impressions. look at me and how you have failed to make me into a monster, like you. how i have healed in your absence. how i have become so much more than you could have made me, and how far i will go from here.

to be made in the hurt of a bone you don't even remember. to hold onto things your body knows but you do not. to finally have that piece be laid to rest after so long.

goodbye, uncle. for your sake, i hope your god is kinder than you.

whyyyyyyy would it be flesh. why would it be flesh!!

like i get it, all magic comes from the titan and everything is bodily and physical and real in that way. but belos' kind of magic is artificial. it's mechanical, all pipes and metallic and machinery.

so if it's flesh, it has to be a kind of artificial magic that uses real magic, but - falsifies it. uses it to create a kind of mockery of itself. something tinged red, made wrong. powerful in execution but not quite right.

i do love the idea that anything his artificial staff magic creates is golden (aesthetic themes bc belos is just Like That, it's good vibes) but why must it be flesh. is it an intimidation tactic? is that just what magic is like? could he do something else and just decided hey, this one is gonna be flesh for funsies! he would do that, wouldn't he.

because you're a weapon and weapons don't weep / what is a lineage if not a gold thread of pride and guilt / if i let him do this to me, what else will i allow? anything, anything, anything / nothing else matters when he loves me and nothing else matters when he doesn't / i know i should go but i follow you like a man possessed / i am the sword (if i'm not the sword, who am i?) / i will wait for the next time you want me like a dog with a bird outside your door / i am dirty, infinitely dirty, this is why i scream so much about purity / grief taught me inhumane things / if you're raised with an angry man in your house, there will always be an angry man in your house / but you have to satisfy the monster. the monster has loved you for longer than anyone else / anything i've ever let go of has had claw marks on it / if you killed me, would you make it good? would you make it holy? / god loves you but not enough to save you.

still feeling emo about grimwalkers

is he a witch hunter or hunter...the witch? Was every grimwalker named Hunter?

he would sacrifice himself for them. listen to me. listen to me, he would, he did, and even still he would give everything. he would choose to give everything.

do you understand what i'm saying? he would choose.

everything he has ever lived for has been chosen for him. a guiding light to live by, a glowing halo of rightness that was always out of reach. never crowned, but close. always having to earn and work and prove to be there. to have the the right to it.

with the others? he's - he doesn't have to. for the first time, he doesn't have to work for their care, their attention. he can just be. he can be whatever he wants. do you realize how insane that must feel for him.

what do you mean you don't want me as a tool. i can do things, i can give you things, i have worked my whole life to be the sharp edge of a blade and you want me to be soft? you want me to be whatever i am, however i come? how does that make any sense?

to never have that, and now do, so fast and so decisive it must feel like leaving something integral behind you for it? here, in it, almost a near-thing, like dusk, like dawn, the cusp of everything new?

of course he'd give them everything he has. they'd do the same for him. and what do you do, with that, other than do it first? to grasp the chance with both hands and say thank you for finding me?