#toastyglow

Warning: Major spoilers, violence, flashing lights

Title: wait for it

Editor: ToastyGlow

Song: Wait For It

Artist: Leslie Odom Jr., Original Broadway Cast of Hamilton

Cartoon: Avatar: The Last Airbender

It’s more important than breathing that he says (wheezes), “You’re here.”  Her fingers on his throat (pulse, checking his pulse - obediently it vaults back into a driving pace) drift away reluctantly. She swallows whatever she has to say, turning back to - ah. The splashing was not his assailant approaching to finish him off, but Trinket chasing after her, snarling with more fury than he’s ever seen. Correction: Vex’s expression, when she looks up, is the most fury he has ever seen.

i want to be more than this devil inside of me

[first pass under the cut]

Ahn from Escape from Divinity

Who is he?

He's a friendly ship's captain who lives on an island and has many interests, including boxing, martial arts, dancing and striking up conversations with everyone and anyone, especially if they're cute; he's generally liked but also considered a bit of a ne'er-do-well.

Fake IDGAF-er Propaganda

His IDGAF-er image is intact until he befriends the two Most Traumatized people on the island, fellow Voa Ash and the human Sanga, both of whom recently escaped a violent cult on the mainland called "Divnity".

Ahn is struck by the mortifying realizations that a) it's probably a bad idea to put the moves on either of them at this stage and b) he really wants to get to know them properly. By the end of the series he's totally lost his IDGAF-er credentials by going totally ride or die for Ash and Sanga (see below).

(all images courtesy of Escape from Divinity by ToastyGlow)

This is the video that first introduced me to Six of Crows.

I always find the cool characters, dark world view, and stylish art to be wonderful.

I was fourteen-fifteen when that first animatic came out, and I was awed and in love. I had never and still have never felt so emotionally tied to a piece of art. Ashivon had felt so familiar, the story of a child made to be a monster to fulfill this "divine" purpose. It was like having a mirror shoved into my face, gently forced to look, actually look, and I have never been able to stop since. I watched that first animatic so many times it is ingrained in my soul.

That animatic helped me survive my teens. That may seem an exaggeration, might seem hyperbolic. But I watched that animatic weekly, if not daily. Tears in my eyes, huddling under my blankets, curled around my 3DS to hide away from the mother who had just beat me. I watched it secretly on my barely cracked open school-issued chromebook slumped over my desk at school as I sat with wet eyes at the back of class. I watched in the late hours of the night, the pale blue screen of my parents' Samsung tablet illuminating the dark living room when I couldn't sleep.

That animatic was a reminder. You could get out. It was possible.

And then more animatics followed. Each one I watched with bated breath. Each one expanded on what I believed possible for the future. It was no longer as bleak. I didn't have to die young, exhausted, and depressed wasting away in a prison of a home. I could get out, yes. But not only that, I could get out and be okay.

I could survive. I could heal. I could learn. I could find love. Real unconditional love. I could thrive and grow and be the truest version of myself. Be happy. And fulfilled. And safe.

Because I got out. I might be struggling, I might be lonely, I might be without goal or mission, left adrift in a world that I don't know how to live in. But I know it gets better. That my people will notice. That they care. That I can heal. That I just have to keep moving forward.

Each part of that series has been released right when I needed it. A beautiful coincidence.

And that angry abused child that clung to the first animatic with desperate clawing hands now stands a homeless college student cradling the same, now finished, story with tears in my eyes. Because I was losing sight of what this is all for, and then here comes this story to remind me again.

I watch that same hurt character from my youth, dear to my soul, I watch him win. I watch them both win. Both of them. They win. They get carried home, bloody, and hurt, but they are loved and free. Free in body, mind, and soul.

Curled up on an air mattress, sheltered by a friend, free from that home that I survived. I watch the end of that story. And I cry.