Had this on repeat when posing. One of my favorite songs of all time for almost a decade now 💙

Happy (belated) Birthday dear Momo ! 💙

LFG Happy Birthday Cid ! 💙 🤝

Thank you 💙

In PS, I used drop shadow effect with blend mode set to multiply. Distance, size, and spread can all be adjusted, but I kept them low.

What also helped was taking the transparent images in The Burn, as the lighting there is very harsh (white rim light makes the shadow more obvious)

This spiraled into a brief overview on the basis of the ship and how it works in my head, but I love yapping what can I say.

If you read all that, thanks. Back to the void of countless fics I go.

"To reject destiny is to be a coward. To turn away from fate is to betray everything you stand for." It's been drilled into him.

So CHOOSING to be with Vrai, someone who stands in direct antithesis to who he is as a WoL, makes him feel in control of his own personhood for the first time in. Ever.

Since birth, Etienne has felt like he's been denied a choice. Being heir to his clan was not his choice. Coming back to life was not his choice. Becoming the WoL was not his choice.

And every time he caught himself feeling like that was unfair, he thought it was a moral failing on HIS end.

And to top this thread off. I think the reason why they work is because their relationship is something they HAD to choose.

For Eti, choosing Vrai was a direct rejection of the worst thing he's been forced to uphold as a Kaifu and WoL—Destiny and its inevitability.

Vrai can't taste anything except pure aether. This is DEVASTATING for Etienne, because Eti loves feeding the people he cares about.

Well, there are other ways to feed him...

On gifts. Etienne likes giving Vrai pearls and rare feathers, because he knows Vrai uses them as alchemical reagents. He's also very well versed in the language of flowers, so Eti enjoys making bouquets for him.

Voicing his feelings via flowers is much easier for him than using his words. He's shy.

Another thing. The flow of time is warped for Vrai on account of him being alive for so long. At one point Vrai spent an entire moon on the Thirteenth, not realizing he had been gone for so long without telling Eti.

Quite literally Vrai's reaction upon finding out how long he was gone:

Thinking about them because I'm writing but dating a voidsent is hard. So hard.

I think Vrai forgets Etienne is mortal sometimes, and even though Etienne is in great physical condition he still has to sleep. And eat. So it gets awkward when Vrai takes Eti to his domain and realizes. Oh right. Food.