love me a good ol fake out make out

started this before act 2 aired, but I’ve lost the will to draw the second page of this sorry :’)

A lot can be said about Silco, but one thing is for certain; he is gender.

Love a physically weak man who's down with murder

Joel thinks he needs to be the ultimate protector, but doesn't realize how invaluable he is to Ellie as a provider and a nurturer

I keep thinking about how Joel goes through aalllll of that in ep 8, the torturing and the killing and the tracking, thinking he's on the warpath, probably thinking he's either gonna rip some bitches apart right in front of Ellie or simply avenge her -

Just for the end goal of simply being there for Ellie. He doesn't even get there in time to pull her off of David, or to guide her out of the burning restaurant. He's only in time to be someone safe for her to hug and hold onto.

Joel is forever stuck in this place where protection is the one thing Sarah needed from him on outbreak night, that he couldn't give her. On day 1 with Ellie, he defaults to the trauma of failing at being that protector, and throws himself at that FEDRA guard, tells Ellie to be careful, etc.

But he does not provide for her - Marlene provides, for a bit. He definitely doesn't nurture her - Tess does, however briefly and gruffly. Joel thinks he's just there to be a trigger finger and a pair of fists. And he WILL use those things to protect this little girl - the absolute bare minimum that he failed to give to Sarah. To prove he can. That he won't fail like that again... until he does. Over and over again.

But I wonder - does Joel ever think about how he was able to provide for Sarah? Working a blue-collar contractor job to support her as a single parent, give her a home, posters on her wall, cute clothes, money for fixing broken watches and eating eggs for breakfast? Working so hard that he forgets to buy a cake on his own birthday?

Does Joel ever think about how he was able to nurture Sarah? He was emotionally available. He made her smile and laugh. He was a tough man's man who still hugged and held his daughter and talked to her and apologized to her and teased her and carried her in his arms. She could tease him back and scold him and go through his things without fear of him snapping at her or stonewalling her. They watched bad movies and took care of their neighbors together.

I love that Joel eventually taught Ellie to hunt. How to keep watch and be alert and keep herself alive. He probably thought that needing to transfer his skills to Ellie means he's already failed at protecting by default, but he SUCCEEDS at providing! Where so, so many other characters in this show fail!

To Joel, the happy fun times with Ellie - however brief they are, just little bright spots in a few episodes - are probably detours, little distractions he allows himself, but he's there for her again and again. Apologizing to her. Making her smile. Giggling at her stupid jokes. Teasing her. Asking her about herself. Telling her stories. He's not all the way there yet, but he's been there enough that Ellie CHOOSES him. Even when Joel may not be the best choice - the best protector.

And now at the end of ep 8, there's ultimately nothing Joel can do. But he goes through hell - to nurture her, in the end, after Ellie spends weeks protecting him and providing for him. But that nurturing, loving nature is what Ellie needed the most, the one thing Joel thought was worth the least, and I am. Unwell.

Another Caitlyn character bit I love is her friendship with Jayce and what that tells us about her. There’s a lot of plaintext and context clues that Caitlyn is pretty socially isolated, struggles finding common grounds with her peers because of her social status, and we see her trying really hard with forced smiles and “I don’t know how else to contribute to the conversation so I’ll divulge trivia” with the other enforcers. And with Vi and in the undercity we see the focused mission future-sheriff side of her, and the kind and thoughtful altruistic human that she is and one day I’ll write that essay about both of their How It Started How It’s Going arcs but original point:

With Jayce we get the glimpse of what Caitlyn is like when she’s affectionately relaxed, because she knows the other person well enough to act like this around them. There’s no caution or awkwardness, just the straight forward genuine. And what I love about what it shows of her character?

Like, yes, the twisting his arm because of the hat tap is textbook sibling teasing back and forth, but afterwards when Jayce tells her he gets to give the speech, something important to him, what’s her reaction?

“Lol. Lmao, even.”

This is how Caitlyn shows affection with someone she considers a close friend! She doesn’t say “congrats” upon hearing what for Jayce is big news, that she must certainly know is big news, she says “fr? are they nuts?”

And she does this again when he tells her he became a councillor, immediately laughs and insults the idea of it. Oh they made you a councillor? Of what, the Idiots With Hammers division?

And Jayce just brushes it off because that’s just their thing. He knows that Caitlyn doesn’t find joy in politics and that the big news happening to him sounds absolutely dreadful for her, and that she’s not actually insulting him or his news; this is just how Caitlyn shows her affection. Her love language is negging the shit out of you.

I’m certain season2 is gonna be a whole lot of tragedy, but I do hope we get to see this side of Caitlyn again.

had to make this meme because these fandoms are too similar.

adora asked catra to go with her multiple times while vi was captured and imprisoned before she could go back to powder, and spent years in the prison blaming herself.

not to mention, no one ever addresses adora's and vi's trauma but woobifies and coddles catra and jinx instead. they act like adora/vi didn't care about their sisters even though catra/jinx are the ones who literally tries to murder them.

Don’t know if ur still drawing arcane stuff but I’d love to see a trans jayce in ur style ;;

i’ll do you one better

trans sibling solidarity 🏳️‍⚧️

edit: new art blog is @toytle

Kinda obsessed with Jinx washing Ekko's hair??? Especially after days of not showering since his last dumpster dive(@oreo-oro-orero)

She massages his scalp and learns how to retwist his locs from him. She drys his hair, then carefully shaves his sides to freshen up his fade.

She made him loc jewelry for his hair and adds them as finishing touches. She inhales his hair deeply then releases a satisfied sigh.

"All done, Little man!" she hands him a hand-held mirror. He looks himself over and admires his reflection.

"I love it," he turns to her and smiles broadly. "Thanks, beautiful." He kissed her cheek and then she giggles happily.

I present to you a floppy/fluffy haired Silco ^^

Jayce is already panicking here when he cant see Viktor. Now imagine that concern but on a certain s1 finale scale 🫠

vi can get it

yknow this is a thought that has been rattling around in my head for a long while, so i figured i may as well share it.

almost everyone is very well aware that the dream smp is a very morally grey narrative. we all know that, there are no perfectly righteous or purely evil characters, etc etc.

the thing that's been grating on me of late is that the fandom reactions to significant lore events don't really.. reflect this knowledge. hear me out.

ever since the red festival i've felt acutely aware of this. one of the longest-running debates in this fandom was who was in the wrong for tubbo's execution. techno for pulling the trigger, tommy and wilbur for not helping him. i saw post after post after post debating it the rest of that year. and i heavily disliked it. seeing people watch these characters have to improvise with an unpredicted circumstance and react to it imperfectly, reacting how their characters would be expected to, and then deciding to label some as right and some as wrong. to put them on those levels of morality, rather than viewing it through the morally grey lens the narrative has pushed. again, it just grated on me. treating these characters' decisions and actions as either wrong or right instead of treating them as decisions that move the narrative in fascinating ways and give us a window into their character.

i. dislike. when characters are made to embody either good or evil and have their flaws made respectable and palatable and easily overcome instead of more.. human i guess? it doesnt work for me, thats why i love the dsmp like i do. it's so human.

my brain started revisiting this train of thought after the c!wilbur and c!eret stream in may. the fandom reaction to that was.. a lot. again, post after post i saw opinions on c!eret did worse and c!wilbur's apology didnt make sense, or c!eret was right to be angry at c!wilbur for villainizing them, or any other number of thoughts that stem from the view that one of these characters are right and the other is wrong, that some actions and words were morally justified and others weren't.

very little did i see posts stepping back to look at this conflict in its purest form: a part of the narrative. talking about how fascinating it was that wilbur decided to apologize to eret now, how eret finally admitted how his words had hurt her. every discussion i saw was riddled with the question of did eret really deserve an apology from wilbur, was eret in the wrong for forcing a better apology out of him, who hurt the other more and who really deserved an apology from the other.

i could not help but think back to tubbo's execution after that stream. morally grey characters, morally grey decisions, viewed through the lens of sorting out who's right and who's wrong. who deserves what and how much do they deserve it. what moral box can we put this character into next.

and i've seen this pattern with so many other conflicts!! tubbo's decision to exile tommy, techno betraying pogtopia, doomsday. the narrative places absolutely no blame or condemnation on either side of these conflicts, it doesnt label either as wrong or right, so i guess people just. draw their own conclusions on it? it's weird to me, this need to discuss and debate the rightness and wrongness of these known morally grey characters and their morally grey actions and decisions. which one is better than the other, which one deserves to be listened to and the other condemned, which ones deserve to fight for forgiveness for the rest of their lives and which ones get to recieve it straight away. obviously, i'm not saying people shouldn't have opinions on these topics, i suppose just the constant insistence on subjectivity rather than objectivity when discussing controversial lore events like these irritate me.

i don't particularly know what i hope to achieve with this. i'm certainly not trying to attack anyone who's done this, just expressing my not understanding. it's just a weird way to discuss a morally grey story to me. i'd like to know if anyone else shares this sentiment, or if i'm just spouting nonsense. i don't think i am. this habit in the fandom has been frustrating me since i joined it in august 2020.

Was scrolling through hot pics of Vi from arcane on pinterest, and instead of saving one of them to my camera roll, I somehow sent the image to my MOTHER

But in other news, I just learned that I apparently have my mom added on pinterest! Time to remove her!

wait hello?