#Auehg. Aoguh. eueuuaaauugh. augh. alas. travel friends.

[lakesbian]

ok listen. one of the best things about infinity train’s animation is that it does microexpressions very well. there are a lot of well-written animated shows where the emotional impact of certain scenes is limited by an unexpressive animation style. infinity train is not one of those shows. the characters are constantly emoting in intense detail, including microexpressions, to the point where many episodes rely on depicting character development almost entirely through blink-and-you-miss-it facial expressions.

that means framescrubbing is really fucking fun. and you GOTTA look at this little lake character detail i discovered while i was looking through the parasite car

the parasite car is a look at lake’s first time having a friend in her entire life. it’s obvious in the black market car that she’s desperate for connection--she starts small-talking with the first living thing she meets, a deer, and then she starts venting to the deer, and then the second the deer disappears she becomes incredibly emotionally distressed. so in the parasite car, where she’s got a deer friend AND her very first ever person friend? holy shit she’s having a great time

and you can tell because there’s this really fun microexpression she keeps doing where every time she has a Successful Fun Social Interaction with jesse in the episode she pauses for a fraction of a second and just, like...grins with fully unrestrained glee before the rest of her reaction to the interaction hits. this is going under a cut cuz i am about to post so many fucking screenshots

jesse bein her friend...

Unrestrained Glee

actual response

(also love how she looks a little self-conscious about the singing like she Knows they’re being sillie and she thinks it’s dumb but she’s still absolutely lost in the sauce of the critical life experience of being a 13yo doing dumb shit with her best friend)

again, successful friendship:

stare of Unrestrained Joy at jesse

and Then the laughter hits

(also a jesse autism moment. i’m telling you, the hypersensitivity to the cold is sheer autism)

she makes a joke

lil flatfaced for a second while she waits to see if it hits

and then when it does, another big smile before she actually starts laughing

bonus points:  jesse “i have a deep-seated fear that if i’m not constantly following what other people expect or demand of me i’ll be rejected” cosay awkwardly doing his best to assert that they are, in fact, friends and lake “i’m really traumatized and unused to + flustered by even basic human interaction” infinity train responding with her embarrassed little “...yeah :)”

I Am Not Immune To Narratives About Lonely Kids Forming Friendships