This is my autism speaking

Ten seconds after this Daph dropped the phone on his face.

If you're here just for the fanart. There. Tom's eye-bags have eye-bags. I can guarantee at some point Daph's legs ended up hitting Tom in the face or smth.

If you wanna stay for the talking nonsense, the rest of this post is waiting.

Hmm, let's see, until now I discovered my posts have the specific format of fanart → rambling about the character/show in the fanart → occasionally complaining about doing the fanart in the tags or postscript. At least I don't have to be original.

The interpretation of shadows is probably the only comic I can say I read (and re-read) on a regular basis because it's just. so fucking good. It has crime, mystery, trauma, queerplatonic relationship and whatever the fuck shadows are and in case you haven't read it... first of all, hi, how tf did this post get to you, second of all:

https://tioscomic.com/

I'm doing you a favour, you can thank me later.

As an aro person, I love the relationship between Daph and Tom, it's so rare to have representation of qrp and this one is done so well it melts something in my heart, I can't wait to actually see these two working together.

Daph is my favourite character, although half the time I'm worried he will end up killed by someone or killing someone. He is very competent at his job but goddammit, fuck you mean you didn't learn shadows can't hurt you until you made one try to slash your throat. No wonder Tom is worried about your ass.

I was re-reading the fight in the car these days and like. I kind of hate how much sense it makes from both perspectives. Now, this is just my interpretation (hah) of these characters and I want to ramble about it bc I have no people to talk with, so don't take it at face value or smth. I work with some yt shorts, twitter posts and 51 chapters, I have like 5% info here and my brain is not that alive in the first place.

Imo, both Tom and Daph are acting in a way that was heavily influenced by their friend death. Tom deals with it by not dealing with it and is worried about whatever tf Daph is doing because yes, it is illegal and yes, It is fucking dangerous. He seems to try to forget what happened, even if It's not really working, and from his perspective, it would make sense for Daph to ignore the shadows and even go back to college. It would be after all the safer option and I don't think Tom is very thrilled about how often his partner can be in danger.

On the other hand, Daph just woke up with this shit a year ago, he lost people because of it, he needed so much time just to re-learn to function normally. He seems to have taken their friend death as a reason to do something, to change something in the world, to help others and these shadows give him the opportunity to do more than other people can.Where Tom tries to live his life as it never happened, Daph seems to live around the fact that it happened.Both of them have the same type of guilt and grief express in opposite ways.

At the same time, Daph is, from what I could gather, extremely lonely. He didn't have an emergency contact until he reunited with Tom, he can see and hear things that (to his knowledge) no one else can, he found out all his old friends don't actually like him, etc. He seems to want Tom to become his assistant because at the end of the day, well. From his perspective, there is no one that could understand him, Tom is the only person that knows the truth. It makes sense how much he pushed for it if you think it's about the fact that literally no one else is there to help him. Daph's whole support system is a single person and it shows.

The scene where Daph tried to speak about Denise's shadow and Tom cut him off was... painful for a number of reasons.

First of all, both just experienced something in the flavour of an old tragedy and both cope with it in such completely different ways that it ends up colliding with each other at full speed. Tom doesn't wanna touch it with a ten foot pole and Daph needs to dissect it like a frog.

Second of all, one of the most painful feelings is to have someone you care about not even acknowledge what you want to say. And then to say he can go back to college... It does make sense Daph thinks Tom doesn't believe him, and from his perspective if his partner doesn't believe him, if Tom doesn't listen to him, if Tom doesn't help him... then there's no one that would. Then, he's truly alone in all of this. Meanwhile, Tom just wants him alive and out of prison.

They care so much but God they are both so stupid.

I don't know where I want to go with this. Something about different reactions and hurting each other and shit. Maybe we just need a forum for shadow seeing people and some good old therapy, but I highly doubt we will get that. Or maybe I'm just projecting.

Also, Daph is so right about Tom's smile, it's uncanny as fuck, I fear it greatly.

Anyway. Complains and words about drawing below.

P.S.: I was today years old when I learned how to use my own body as a drawing reference. I now have several videos of me trying to look at a phone backwards from a bed cosplaying as a sofa. It did help with the hands and arms. I gave up at the 4th arm tho so it kind of just. Disappears somewhere.

Don't even ask me about the feet, they don't exist, they're a lie, there's no such thing as feet, have a blanket instead. #foreverfeetless

I don't think I'm getting better at art btw, I think I'm getting better at being a copy paste machine.

I would have drawn Daph getting hit in the face by the phone, but that would have meant I needed to get hit in the face by the phone and I don't think I'm ready for that type of commitment yet.

Uhh, what else, what else... I used the colors from the carrd website, except they are inversed and/or derived.

Can I just say I love this YouTube series?

Like, genuinely, one of my favourite things, I have exams and I can't get it out of my head enough to learn.

Since the last episode I have been rewatching all the yt shorts. Elliot especially seems like a very tragic character and I honestly don't think it's surprising what he did to Pepper. The guy literally grew up learning that free will doesn't exist. It doesn't matter what you want or what you think, there's only one path and you have no choice in following it. He had no control over his life (or death) since besically forever.

What tf are we expecting from him, of course he would posses people. It kind of makes me wonder how many times he had his own autonomy taken away like this that it's just so normal for him to do it to others.

The other party may have had a genuine reason to leave him, but I do hope this one won't give up on him. He really needs some serious help.

In the end though, I don't think Elliot is evil. But I don't think he has enough agency to be anything at this point.

Don't get me wrong, I don't say this in the way that he's controlled every second of his life or that he has no personality of his own (he has very much personality), but more in the way that he was raised to be this.

He grew up being nothing more than a puppet to a greater force and he can't comprehend anyone being more than that. He lies as easy as he breaths and he probably doesn't sees nothing wrong with that either since is just a thing that needs to be done.

The one time he tried to find a way out of this, he did so by literally trying to end himself and all it did was solidify the "there is no other way" mindset.

He has his own personality, sure, but he never had a choice to be anything else than a tool to whatever thing controls him. He might like ice scream and celebrating a holiday he shouldn't and the people he's traveling with, but it the grand scheme of things, his personality and desires don't matter in the slightest. When things get serious, it doesn't matter who is Elliot, because Elliot is whatever he needs to be to his patron. Elliot was raised as a servent and he behaves as such.

The others may found him charming for now, but his entier... everything is really alarming for himself and everyone around him. He's not evil, but he was taught he's nothing of his own at all.

This is so fucked up, I love it.

I would also appreciated it if we could please stop traumatising Pepper, poor girl is just trying to enjoy her life.

I made a quick drawing of Pomni in a traditional romanian costume yesterday and I decided I'm not doing anything on here anyway so why not post it.

Pomni looks very uncomfortable and a bit like she's being held at gun point. I fear this is not her usual scene. Sorry, Pom-Pom, next time I promise to give you a cool hat or something.

Never in my life I thought I would be doing a drawing trying to represent Romania, but ig working to bring TADC here managed to awaken the patriotism in me:')

Anyway, if you wanna check out how you can help bring TADC in Romania, go over to @canonically47 , especially on Twitter.

Good luck to all of you out there trying to bring this show into your own country! It's certainly a fight, but I find it a quite enjoyable experience :)

I did this some time ago and never got to posting it.

Ride the cyclone scratches something in my brain in the best way possible.

Monique, my beloved! She looks like she's gonna set her hair on fire. I love her.

While it does seems like Jax doesn't want to leave, he still made the final decision in a state of blind panick.

He was already on the edge from the start of the episode, we know that very well. When Pomni explained what Abel said to them, he just handed them the keys and tried to go back in his room, he didn't even thought to go with them before Pomni asked him to.

He did helped them, sure, and he was quite invested in doing his part (going even beyond that by doing Zooble's part), but he didn't seemed very interested in the idea of getting out, per se. Probably, at that point, it didn't even sinked in for him that they were close to leaving, that it was actually happening. He treated more like an adventure up to that point.

When Zooble asked if he didn't have someone out there too, his brain took a moment to pause and be like "Holly shit, this is not an adventure, this actually might be real. Do you remember reality, Jax?". And we all know Jax loves nothing more than to run from reality.

Despite this fact, I want to point out that he wasn't trying to stop or sabotage them. He was growing increasingly more uneasy as they approached the room with the buttons, but he did nothing. Something out there scared him enough to prefer to stay trapped in the circus until his inevitable abstraction (that at this point even he knows it's pretty close), but he did nothing.

He then entered in a very time pressing, atmosphere heavy room.

Nonetheless, I believe that even if he had more time to think before he got in the room, he would have made the same decision, simply because Jax doesn't know how to deal with his own panick. His only chance of actually considering both decisions would have been if he confronted head on his own fears, but that required both time and a strength that at this point Jax simply lacks. At this point in his life, the only way he wasn't gonna press the red button would have been if there was less time to consider pressing the red button. And I believe he was quite aware of that too, at some level.

I think he tried his best to not think about it. I think he hold himself together as best as he knew how in that moment. I think Jax wanted to want to go back, so he tried to not think about all the reasons not to go back, but the moment he got a second alone with his own thoughts (in a very stressful environment, I might point out), that strategy went down the drain in a matter of seconds.

The argument between Pomni and the others simply allowed him just enough time to go from "building the panick in interior" to "breaking into panick on the outside".

And then, they found out it was, in fact, just an adventure.

And some people said he was laughing after because he revealed to the others that he would rather have them all suffering than confronting reality, all for nothing. But I wanna debate a bit on this take simply because he never had a problem with the others viewing him as the villain, to the point I would argue he actively seeks out to make them think the worst about him. Jax might said he's the funny one, but he goes out of his way to make the rest believe he's the villain.

I believe that in that moment, more than everything, he revealed to himself that he would rather die in that circus than confront reality. I think Jax just started to realise how pathetic he was and how he would have taken everyone down with him because of it. And all. for. nothing.

Or, yk, because Caine decided to play with them the "who you love more, mommy or daddy?" game, except mommy is a fucking kidnapper and daddy the abstract concept of freedom.

Ashley's (Zooble’s VA) tier list from like, three days ago (You can check up their livestreems on YouTube if you want!)

So maybe, just maybe, Ribbit is not a horrible abuser that "made" Jax like this? Maybe both them and Jax are complex characters that deserve to not be reduced to... well, archetypes?

We didn't even saw the fella existing on a screen yet, jeez; fandoms sure can be ruthless at times.

Uh, I never liked drawing humanoid figures, but here we are, ig.

The hand that covers his mouth is my favourite part, partially because it freaks me out a bit and partially because of symbolism.

The way I see it, Jax's behaviour, besides the fact that hurts everyone around him, also results in hurting him and making him incapable of seeing another way. Either because he's too deep in his own archetype or because he just doesn't believe in it, the way he is now, he would probably die before asking for help simply because he can't see it as an actual possibility. And that's a very real thing that happens to people. The hand that covers his mouth is, in many ways, his own doing.

I'm not the kind of person that hurts people to be funny, so, leaving that apart:

Vulnerability feels like suffocating. It feels like handing a loaded gun to a five year old and hopping you won't get shot.

Jokes are funny. Unreal, easy, not something the others will think about.

Jokes are safe.

You can speak about yourself all day and night, but the moment you let out something too close to yourself, something too real to be a joke...

It feels physically painful, it make you sick. It's not relief or happiness or even trust. It's just a feeling of completely and utterly danger.

And it doesn't go away with time because time is just the tension you live in expecting the moment your mistake gets you back.

You want to run away so fast, you would abandon your life if you could.

It's especially horrible with friends (because with strangers, they don't expect you to act in a certain way, they don't know you and you won't even see them tomorrow).

And you just feel so STUPID. Like, what the fuck got into you, why would you say that, you're not in a drama show, they will always have that over your head, nobody will respect you anymore, that was so cringe.

I think that's a big part of understanding a person like Jax: vulnerability feels so dangerous that you physically just can't. And if you do, then it just feels like you did the most stupid thing in the world... like you are the most stupid thing in the world.

I don't know how to explain it, but it dehumanizes you.

It's dehumanizing to the people around you as well, because you will apply the same "God, how stupid can you be to tell that out loud" to them.

I almost hope Jax gets a good ending, just so I can see that a good ending out of this exists.

I got a tablet :)

And person A is blocked in time freezing type of shit until they "repair" person B (like they are literally person's B mechanic).

But the problem is, every time they put a wrong piece in, all the pieces fall back off, and they have to start again until they get it right. And person B shatteres in different ways every time.

So, person A ends up living dozens of years in the time freezer every time person B gets hurt, so they keep protecting them, because what else can they do.

Person A grows up to deeply resent person B for that, but can't tell them, or even hint at it, because a machine isn't supposed to know it's nature or it's mechanic and a mechanic isn't supposed to hurt a machine.

So, yeah, I'm gonna keep shoving this shit down my throat like I'm a fucking garbage disposal and you would be fucking grateful for it.

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