I bring you Maui smiling! I might refine it later but I’m happy with it for now
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YOOOOO!!! this is so cool I’m in absolute awe. The little bounce of his hair I cannot stop staring I am. he. I love him so much. He looks so innocent you’d never anticipate that he is deeply disturbed!!
The folds in the clothes look so nice. That’s such a small detail compared to everything else but like. I keep looking at it. Very proud of him for the buttons not being fully together i hope he enjoys his slutty, slutty behavior.
The blinks! He do be blinking, so glad his eyes are staying moist that’s very important. but seriously it looks so smooth I have no idea how you successfully achieved that. Whatever suffering you underwent paid off and if you sold your soul it was worth it because it’s so??? smooth?? I just keep staring it’s so satisfying to watch
and then the smile!! it’s so sweet he looks so nice. it starts by dabbling into a little side smile before growing and honestly? so cute. I know he’s deeply troubled and in desperate need of therapy but at least he’s pretty. You have done him so much justice in here on this day.
also all the colors just go so well together. It’s like you absolutely nailed the saturation and everything’s got slight hues that tie together. The off-white of the shirt compliments his skin which compliments his hair which matches the brown of the eyes, letting the green half pop without standing out in an offsetting way
Truly, this is so impressive on so many levels!!! Thank you so much for sharing it with me I love him dearly and also you /p. Every time I’ve scrolled past him in my inbox since you sent him I went :D
thinking a lot about ofmd’s use of theatre to talk about identity
because you have ed, who is still in his own toxic/unhealthy patterns and one of those patterns is assessing what aspects of himself will make people happy/scared/etc and then enhancing those aspects or hiding parts of himself in order to keep himself safe and/or to keep from being entirely alone.
it’s not that he doesn’t know who he is; it’s that he knows far too well other people don’t want the whole of that self for a million reasons. he also knows that people like people who remind them of themselves, so he tilts into social mirroring and codeswitching as an outlet for his whole natural entertainer thing and a mode of protective camouflage.
a man who spends time thinking about how to to use fear to keep people from getting too close or seeing what’s behind the fuckery is somebody who understands human nature, and needs to be able to read people and accurately assess fears in order to use them.
to know what people fear, you have to get a sense of what they want. ed’s a performer, and up until canon he’s only ever performing the parts of himself people want or the parts they fear; pieces of identity that will keep him safe or get him what he needs in the moment instead of embracing the whole of his identity and being able to forgive himself for what he did to survive, and move on from there.
anyway s2 and ed’s road to self-actualization is going to make me insane give it to me N O W hbo
I have so many fic ideas for them and I don’t wanna overwhelm my love! Especially when he’s like “I have no idea who these people are but they pretty sometimes”
