#idk how we got my horror-hating mom hooked on this show and now we're making her sob over gay romance like

[vaguelyhauntedcornfield]

Okay but like I really need to rant about this a bit so like spoilers for ep 3 of tlou below but like

idk I’ve never played the game so I had no idea what to expect going into this, but when Frank showed up, I was like “I can’t tell if Bill is going to kill him or marry him.” WELL. Nick Offerman did such a GOOD job of looking on guard and uncomfortable. His shoulders are like up to his ears the entire meeting sequence and it made me so jumpy, and then we skip 3 years and he’s so visibly relaxed. And my heart started to melt. And I found myself so enamored with these two men who, against all odds, found love in a situation where that should have been impossible. Frank was the last alive from a group fleeing a collapsed quarantine zone, Bill a preper who had decided to be alone long before the pandemic even started. We expect Bill to die the whole time--comments about him getting old faster than Frank, getting shot by raiders. The jump to Frank being sick...they showed so much through his paintings. You weren’t expecting it, and they showed you through his art how his illness has been progressing, and how him being able to see that himself affected him. They showed how Bill broke down and made a deal with Joel to get medicine despite saying he never would. This show. THIS SHOW. I was sobbing up until Bill became weirdly calm during the dinner, because I realized he’d made the decision too. They died on their own terms in a world where that had become nearly impossible. They had a beautiful life together in a world where that had become a pipe dream. Two characters that we never even meet thru the main characters, not in the present day, but who matter so much.

#also i have a lot of feelings as a chronically ill artist about everything with Frank (not bad ones! just like i feel a lot 🥲) #it hit close to home #honestly bill resonated with me too but not bc of the preper conspiracy theorist part lol #more bc of the self-imposed solitude and not seeking out relationships #i know from other posts that this is nothing like how they were in the game but this seems like such an improvement tbh #like this episode deserves awards for how much it hit me in the feels #tlou hbo spoilers #the last of us spoilers #it's 5 am so like i am not coherent but i also cannot sleep #idk how we got my horror-hating mom hooked on this show and now we're making her sob over gay romance like #that right there tells you this show is good lol #i feel like i could write an entire book on how illness can impact art and handwriting #my handwriting became that of an entirely different person when i started to get sick #my drawings changed too #tho maybe not in a way anyone but me noticed #my friend who has a similar health issue just with more presentation had to give up art almost entirely #idk it's a kind of hard i can't explain and that i dont think you can understand unless you've experienced it yourself #seeing the progression of your symptoms in the things you create #seeing how you're unable to hide it even with care #idk man #it's honestly an emotion i dont think i could name #but i feel it so strongly every time i look at more than a few lines i've written by hand #or at a page of studies ive drawn #i feel like they never made frank a tragic character. they never made illness tragic #they just made it real #the tragic theme was the idea of one without the other and it went both ways #they hit on that repeatedly throughout the ep #and in the end they didn’t have to face that tragedy #idk i feel like it’s one of the few depictions of chronic illness/terminal illness ive seen that doesn’t play the illness as tragedy #and i found that…refreshing