#i am in paiiiiinnn

[shirks-all-responsibilities]

"...one of the things I kept saying to him was because you're so naturally tough and gruff and masculine and Joel, the more you can show me a scared, sad, frightened kid inside of you, the more I will connect with you and feel everything else." Craig Mazin on directing Pedro Pascal early on in The Last of Us (from the official podcast for Episode 1).

Joel's microexpressions that float across his face in this moment—when he sees a girl in Jackson that looks so much like his long-deceased daughter—absolutely broke my heart. I was immediately transported to this moment I giffed of Pedro's raw performance as Ricky Hauk in Touched by an Angel? Joel's repressed "inner child" and emotions that have been buried under all the unresolved trauma and sheer horror of the reality he now lives in, how it's this expression that he accesses in this moment of the most poignant, overwhelming grief? How it's so muted, so subtle, all these many years later, in such a broken man? My heart?

The way that grief never truly leaves you? Something about the echoes and contrasts between the two performances hits me in the feels? Seeing echoes of sweet larval-stage bby Pedro in 50-something Joel is so fkn sad? 🥺

And then, look at how his expression shifts in each scene...his eyebrows morph back down to that furrowed baseline, back to his hardened shell? It's incredibly subtle in his younger self, obvious in his older self, and heartrending in each.

#joel miller #ricky hauk #the last of us hbo #tlou spoilers #pedro pascal #in my joel feels #why pedro #why make this acting choice #i am in paiiiiinnn #mygifs #just fer illustrative purposes #masterpieces they are not #the way this show makes me meditate on grief #time does not heal all wounds #i have more to say #but i can't put it into words #how this is distinctly different from the shoe shop scene #throwing this into the void #look at larval-stage bby pedro tho #i think tumblr hates these gifs #i've given up

[spicybi-tm]

I have spent the entire day weeding my front and backyard. It was satisfying but at what cost? I got fucking tan lines on my wrists from my gardening gloves, and like, back pain, I guess?

But those tan lines are going to haunt me.

#paiiiiinnn #i am shitposting #shitpost #tw cursing #why why why #i have no cute everyday gloves #:( #and i got company tomorrow