to friends, here and not.

i spread like strawberries i climb like peas and beans 🫛

tattoo and jewellery-less version too:

we're still normal about catsuit Veth, right? Okay good just checking

finally finished a painting i've been cooking in my mind for a few years! shadowgast as The Devil, one of my favorite tarot cards and one of the three cards i associate with their relationship

i'm not much for divination but i love the story-telling aspect of tarot, and one of my favorite visual metaphors of The Devil is how loose the chains around the two figures' necks are. they're not kept bound. it's that possibility to choose that i find so significant, and so fitting for the story of these two wizards. to say you're not defined by your past is to say you're born with all the choices you make; but to say you are forever defined by it is to deny yourself the right to change. the chains around your neck might be very heavy, but the choice to shrug them off is always yours to take.

Like, listen. Beau and Nott are burdened with the truth about his past and his parents really early on. Like episode 18 I think. But the others?

It’s not until episode 49 that he tells the others that he ever was trained as a killer/assassin. Forty. Nine. And he doesn’t tell them about his parents or get into any kind of detail. He tells Beau and Nott how bad and cruel he was but he barely even hints at it with the others. He focuses on what Ikithon did to him (putting crystals in his arms and such).

He doesn’t tell Fjord until around episode 100. One hundred! Even in game that was like years into them knowing each other. And he only tells Fjord because Fjord had gone through his own little morally bankrupt arc. He doesn’t have to be as ashamed around someone who has also been a bit evil.

He doesn’t come clean to everyone until episode 110. And only because they are about to go have dinner with Trent himself and he’s sure Trent will say something.

110 is only like thirty episodes from the end of the campaign. Like I need people to understand how close to the chest Caleb kept his past despite actively believing that these people were his new family. He loved them and that is why he couldn’t get himself to tell them. He didn’t want them (Jester especially, since he saw her as so good) to know who he really was.

To Jester, he even says:

“I have considered sharing all this for a long time but… you cherish your family so much. And I suppose I enjoyed being seen as I should have been. Or could have been.”

He enjoyed being seen as a nice guy. He wanted these people to see him as something other than he believed he was.

But!! Even with that said!! He doesn’t actually show his true colors about who he could be and the ruthlessness he could have until episode 127.

He ruthlessly goes out and hunts Owelia in the show. And they all barely know him. He’s just some weird wizard guy they met in a jail cell. In the campaign, the Mighty Nein do a lot of questionable things, but Caleb never goes further than the others. Until they fight Volstruckers for the first time and Caleb absolutely destroys them. It’s one of my favorite episodes of all time. Jester goes in with him like “yeah haha we’ll just charm the guards to make them our friends” and then Caleb is using gravity holes to crush people’s spines. It’s horrifying. And Jester, who has known Caleb for years at this point, is horrified.