#Just Eira

[nightcatssketchbook]

I was hitting some art block so I felt like drawing some fanart of @abd-illustrates’ Heartless characters!

I realized I never actually watched the final installment of the Concept Corner series, so that’s what I had playing when sketching these. It’s just so fun listening to the brainstorming and cool character connections

[anatomical-puppet]

get back up. that’s all you’ve ever been good at, isn’t it? knocked down, beaten, forced to pull yourself back to life. nothing’s ever changed. nothing ever will. just get back up. it will happen again.

[abd-illustrates]

It’s Been a Minute | SKETCHBOOK SESSION

Grab a cuppa and get comfy, ‘cause Sketchbook Session time has arrived once more! ☕✏️  Today I wanna do some doodling and catch y’all up on how 2024 has been going so far – (Spoiler: it’s been a bit of a mess but I’m muddling thru sgdfdfgh 🫠)

[annabelle--cane]

I really like. fiction podcasts.

[gomzdrawfr]

Recruitment | based on this thingy I wrote awhile ago

Recruitment Bribery?

[bisclavret]

what SICKO wrote the last scenes between gwaine and merlin is what i want to know. because even lancelot's last episode with merlin - which had to have been intentionally gay-coded since it's obvious the man is grappling with his feelings for merlin morphing from platonic to explicitly romantic - is still subtext because he doesn't have the tools to healthily express his feelings so he goes for the biggest romantic gesture he can think of: sacrificing his life to save a loved one. the writers also make sure to root this gesture back to gwen by adding a scene where she's inadvertently asking him to make that sacrifice first, so although it's very obvious that it's more for merlin than for gwen that lancelot dies for, she is there to add some plausible deniability, thus keeping his sexuality within the realms of subtext.

i don't want to delve too deeply into arthur's last scenes with merlin as there is both so much to unpack about what they mean to each other and there is also somehow nothing left to say that hasn't been said before. my point is just that there's so much at stake that if the viewer doesn't want to deal with the romantic subtext between them they can hang onto the 38 other dynamics merlin and arthur have represented to each other that the writers spent 5 years plastering on top of the gay subtext. basically, while the romance feels textual emotionally-speaking, it isn't "canon".

i don't mean to say that any relationship is better than another (even though i obviously have a preference) but that in gwaine's final scenes with merlin there's just no subtext anymore. his becomes the most explicit expression of romantic love towards merlin, and therefore the most explicit acknowledgment of homosexual love and the existence of queer people on the show:

it starts out with merlin suggesting that gwaine saved a girl from the saxons and then looked after her because he has a more than platonic interest in her, and they show us that merlin is right - gwaine and the girl eira slept together - even as gwaine half-heartedly denies any interest (which, why even deny it? merlin saw them holding hands! unless the lie is part of the point). then in that very same scene and directly after this exchange, merlin needs rescuing from the saxons, calls after gwaine, and gwaine performs the exact same role for him that he performed for eira: he saves him from the saxons and looks after him (for as long as merlin lets him).

the parallel between merlin and eira with such quick cause and effect (it literally all happens within the same minute) is where the shift from subtext to text becomes undeniable. yes, there have been other moments on the show where a character's affections towards two different genders are beat-for-beat the same, but, again, there has always been plausible deniability. in this case the parallel is meant to be taken at face value: the core point of it is to show us how gwaine expresses his attraction.

then, the dialogue they chose to bookend this scene with takes it a few steps further by functioning as a textual love confession to merlin himself: the scene opens with gwaine thanking merlin for everything he did for eira, and merlin saying that there is no need to thank him as it was the least he could do. a minute later, after merlin thanks gwaine for protecting him from the saxons as both merlin and the show just concluded gwaine did for eira for romantic reasons (even as he denied it by outright lying), gwaine parrots what merlin said when gwaine thanked him: no need to thank me, merlin, it's the least i could do.

but this comes off as the opposite of dismissive: in fact, this echoing of merlin's words is meant to jolt both merlin and the audience. by saying this right after saving merlin from the saxons, gwaine has now intentionally pointed merlin's attention towards the explicitly romantic parallel between himself and eira. gwaine is directly implying he just did for merlin what merlin correctly deduced he did for a woman because he desired her sexually and romantically, and he is using merlin's own words to challenge him into seeing past the initial flimsy lie that there is nothing between them. and what's behind the lie, of course, is that gwaine has done all of this and more because he desires merlin sexually and romantically. the camera even lingers on merlin, allowing him and the viewer to absorb what just happened. that for as long as we have known gwaine, his motivations have always boiled down to "i want to be there for merlin". and now both the audience and merlin finally know for sure what was motivating him the entire time.

what's more, by using merlin's own dismissive words, gwaine also implicates merlin's penchant for repression and denial and never allowing himself to be given credit where it's due. this unfortunately never properly gets dismantled on the show, but this moment shows that gwaine knows merlin well enough to know that he goes above and beyond for people, and that merlin's reasons for this ring as false to gwaine's ears as gwaine's reasons for saving damsels do to merlin. it also bittersweetly implies that gwaine has accepted that these are the platonic, repressed terms on which he can have a relationship with merlin. but i think the way in which he explicitly points all of this out to merlin is meant to imply that he isn't entirely happy about having to accept that. or, to circle back to eira, that merlin seems to be cheering for him to enter a heterosexual relationship when gwaine would clearly rather be with him.

what's additionally interesting to me about this is that this is one of the only scenes on this show that touch on same gender attraction that isn't using magic as a metaphor - because merlin doesn't have magic at the moment, yes, but also because gwaine is the more active character in this sequence, and he's an adventure hero, so he simply fights the bad guy to protect the person he loves. there is no metaphor to wrap this in, so he just gets to explicitly state his bisexuality. in the next scene, the very last one he and merlin share, it all becomes about magic again, which is both representative of merlin's sexuality and the show's "plausible deniability" approach to gay-coding, and so neither gwaine or merlin are permitted to acknowledge it. also, and this is for another post altogether, but all things point to "gwaine knew". not least because he gets to come out as queer without the complications of the magic-as-gay-metaphor which in turn emboldens him to ask merlin for the truth as directly as the metaphor-suffocated narrative will allow it.

tldr gwaine textually and canonically expresses and then confesses his feelings to merlin in a shockingly well-written and layered scene which makes gwaine the most explicitly queer character on bbc merlin and it's entirely because he exists outside the magic-as-gay-metaphor plot while loving someone who embodies that entire metaphor and it's crazy to me that we don't talk about this more. once again i ask what SICKO wrote this and where were they for the entire rest of this fucking show

tldrtldr at least gwaine is bi. its like i always say. at least gwaine is bi. at the end of the day. gwaine is bi. dont cry ok? gwaine is bi. at the end of the day. gwaine is bi. when all else fails. gwaine is bi. we'll always have. gwaine is bi

[fadedsweater]

First Line Challenge

@mel-0n-earth tagged me in this a couple weeks ago (thank you for the tag! 😊💛)

Rules: post the first line of your wip, the first line you worked on today, or any other “first line!”

I'm cheating because this is more than one sentence, but it's technically one line of dialogue so 😤

Anyway, post-Veilguard solavellan be upon ye:

"Is that what we are?" Solas asked, with no trace of derision. He spoke softly, plainly, as if he were asking her opinion on the weather. "Married?"

Tagging @darethshirl, @broodwolf221, @luzial, and anyone else who wants to join in 💛

[heartless-brainrot]

i may or may not have forgotten to post this for a solid 3 days

also rip the quality

[eirawashere]

Tried something different this time! I just drew whatever I saw on the ref and I think it turned out neat! And slapped a watcher eye to keep it in theme lol

(would appreciate it if you guys dont tag it as life series or related. Reblogs are fine but since its just a photo I found randomly I dont want to claim it)

[fridayyy-13th]

having several sleep-deprived Thoughts and Feelings about a series that technically doesn't exist yet how are y'all doing this morning

[bnjillustration]

I said I’d draw ships, didn’t I?

[weird-unlimited-ramblings]

Alchemy is the type of chaotic to me that is like very subtle until it’s not like if they were to prank people their pranks would be like those people who replace one photo in their house for a day, that is like how I view it, and I had a vision of alchemy just sudtley doing things to the other members until they notice, but specifically with eira going out of their way to use their magic to make his boots slightly taller every single day. Eira seems like the type to be observant about everything but any matter related to himself so I can imagine it taking long enough and one day he is putting them on and is like wait.

I don’t know if alchemy is the type to prank? It feels like more of Doppel’s area of expertise, but I feel like if they did it would be the more subtle things. That or if you consider making flint and eira room a prank then subtle or just hilarious things.

[anatomical-puppet]

weigh down on me, stay 'til morning

way down, would you say i'm worthy?

[characters belong to @abd-illustrates]

[abd-illustrates]

So glad the new MICO song finally dropped 'cause I've been absolutely chompin at the bit waiting to put it on my Eira playlist

[m-m-m-myysurana]

Don't mind me, I'm just smooshing my favs together in photomode...

[gomzdrawfr]

Captain John "don't touch my gf" Price and Eira Raven "my personal stress ball" Liu

do you want bear!Price too? then check it out here