#ry does meta

like take this scene from episode 28:

this bit is still hilarious to me, even to this day. i love how ready she was to throw hands at the sight of clownassery (courtesy of aiden, ofc)

can you imagine the disconnect, of being so used to hearing hundreds and thousands of his brothers' laughter, of being able to see his own face greet him first thing in the morning, of constantly being reminded that he is one out of a thousand copies of one singular person, only to wake up one day to complete silence.

he's all that's left.

and he's all there ever will be.

one last surviving clone out of millions.

sometimes i wonder if tyler heard the laughter from the other room when mike lifted him in his arms.

would he have mistaken the warmth of mike's hands for his dad's?

would the thought of finally being carried to his bedroom after years of doing it on his own bring him any comfort?

she was a lot more in control and confident with her driving before, but in the recent panel, you can clearly see her hands are shaking as she started the car, and that little pep talk she gave herself has me bawling, cause she wasn't even telling herself she could do this, she was telling herself she has to.

my poor girl has been going through it since s1, and her guilt over tyler's fall (and potentially dooming her friends) only amplifies her nerves, even after tyler assured her his fall had been an accident, she very clearly does not think so and still blames herself for it.

i say traumatic response in the sense that everything regarding their family was placed upon him after ethan's funeral. tyler had to set his own grief aside in order to find a way to raise himself and taylor without mariana's help, and when you've spent years without any anchor or guidance, when you're constantly living in survival mode, you tend to neglect everything else.

self-indulgence becomes off limits, especially when he has more important things to prioritize.

can't begin to put into words how significant it is to have them share this moment together, where tyler is the sole receiver of ashlyn's moment of vulnerability.

and the fact that she had been crying not too long ago from the weight of responsibility and her guilt for leaving him, her emotions were all over the place, and the first thing she does is go to check on him as soon as she felt something was off.

you can see just how worried she was in this panel

ough they make me insane, actually.

and yet.

he did not fight back when ashlyn calls his paranoia out, and listened to her.

he is the first one to spot barron bullying logan and is the first one to step up.

he has offered to teach ben how to play guitar after learning about ben's past willingly.

he has indulged aiden's penchant for humor (even at the worst of times)

he has comforted ashlyn more than once when she starts to doubt her leadership or blame herself for getting them into this mess.

he took on the role as taylor's primary guardian at a young age right after taylor tells him she was hungry, and he's never regretted his decision once.

so frequently are the bleeding heart characters portrayed in media as someone emotionally intelligent/intuitive than logical-analytical, and so their worldview is often implied to be a consequence of naivety, childishness, or wishful thinking.

so for a character like tyler to be so explicitly compassionate and also explicitly logical, closed off, and guarded actively fights off against that stereotype and says yeah, empathy is actually a conscious choice. compassion is not a magical tool only wielded by those who wear their heart on their sleeves, it is a decision. it is an active one at that, because the character is only given two choices: either choose to offer or show empathy, or walk away from it.

and we constantly see tyler choosing the first option time and time again in the webtoon.

like, he's definitely far from being the most emotionally intelligent in the group (that title obviously belongs to tay), but i think people don't give him enough credit for always choosing to be empathic despite all that's happened to him.

Hernandez twins: s1e13 // s2ep54 parallels