High-ish Quality Scans Of The Silco & Vander Pages From The Artbook

what compels me the most about jmart in TMA is how they’re the exact contrary of the “fall in love in every universe” trope. no, they’re not fated to meet, much less to even remotely like each other. they met under these extremely weird and specific circumstances from their world, and as jon himself said, if weirder circumstances didn’t happen they wouldn’t even get along. tmagp furthers this by making a point to showcase how, in protocolverse, they lived and died without ever knowing of each other’s existence.

they don’t fall in love in every universe. they only have this one. this one chance to make it work.

and they’re not perfect! they’re fucked up! they’re messy!

their communication is flawed, martin is jealous and manipulative, jon is too emotionally distant, they are each affected by their own traumas and it bleeds into their relationship, and they keep trying! and failing! and trying! until their tragic end. and you know what? that makes them EVEN MORE COMPELLING both as a couple and as characters!

we don’t need to ignore these aspects of their romance to make them interesting, and i’d argue that these complex factors and their flaws are the exact things that DO make them interesting. they had one shot, and it was flawed as hell, but they did their best to make the most of it under incredible stressors, such as the literal apocalypse. is that a less interesting kind of romance story than the others, just because they’re flawed and not always healthy and not at all fated? do we have to pretend they’re something they’re not to be enjoyable?

Imagine you're some skinny revolutionary twenty-something in Zaun. Your whole life you've been disadvantaged and born into a place where your very life is considered unimportant, but you desperately want to be treated with respect, and a life of comfort and luxury is secretly so appealing to you after working yourself into dust since you were old enough to stand. You worked in the mines, your small body struggling to keep up with your brick shithouse colleagues. But you keep up, because you have to. It isn't all bad, you make friends. Good friends. You and your best friend start writing plans and working to give your city the dignity it deserves. You fall in love. Your lover / best friend is practically double your size and filled with righteous anger but you love that about him. You trust all of your people, especially him, with your life.

Tensions with Piltover get hotter and you and he plan an uprising. You've never seen that many enforcers in one place, Zaunites are always easily able to overpower them. You are certain you've got this in the bag. But there are more of them than you expected on the bridge, and the conflict starts immediately with tear gas and bombs. You throw a Molotov at one of those pigs and they're set on fire. You're proud of yourself until bullets come showering down. You're skinny and quick, you're not an easy target, you can hit the ground. But your brick shithouse colleagues can't. You see two of your closest friends, parents to two little girls, dead on the ground. You don't know where your partner is. You keep fighting. At some point a bomb, a grenade, something goes off and shrapnel peels away your eyelid and half the skin off your face.

The smoke settles. You can't find your partner anywhere, but you don't see a body. After looking for hours, you find him wading in the Pilt. People often bury their dead at the Pilt. You figure he saw your dead friends and is here to mourn. You try to join him. Your face is killing you but there's no medical care to be found, your chest is crushed with the agony of seeing your friends' corpses and knowing in some way, it's your fault. Maybe if you didn't throw that Molotov, maybe they wouldn't have shot, maybe your friends would still be alive.

But you're relieved, so relieved, to find your partner alive and uninjured. You want him to hold him in those ridiculously huge arms and you want to mourn with him, for him to make you feel safe like always. But when you approach him, arms outstretched to receive him, he looks at you like you're a monster, like he doesn't recognize you, and before you realize it, the person you love more than anything in the world, one of your only remaining friends, has his hands around your throat and is holding you underwater. You've never experienced his strength like this. You can't believe it's real. He must have lost his mind. You try to get away, but he grabs your neck and shoves you in the water again. You're swallowing it, it's rushing into your eye, a hole directly to your brain, water filled with corpses and necrotizing bacteria and toxic chemical waste. You don't understand why. You only understand that you need to escape.

Then you finally manage to get away and somewhat recover only to learn that everyone you knew and cared about took his side, and blames you for the losses at the bridge, and you're no longer welcome in the thriving district you helped build.

No fucking wonder Silco had a catastrophic crash-out.

Crowley: Do you want to know your gay name? Aziraphale: My… my gay name? Crowley: Yes, it's your first name- Aziraphale: Haha. Very funny Crowley- Crowley: *gets down on one knee* And my last name. Aziraphale: Oh- oh my God.

viktor arcane has to be one of the characters ever.

he's gay. he's terminally ill. he's suicidal. he's from league of legends. he's in a toxic relationship with an orb. he also might be the orb(???). he bullshitted his way into the academy by pretending he went there. he rizzed up a guy so he wouldn't kill himself. he then tried to impress said guy by breaking into his boss's lab. then when he got caught he tried to play it off by saying he thought this big intimidating door was his bedroom door and he was just trying to sneak a guy in there. he nearly died because hetero sex was happening like a mile away. kinda. he took illegal drugs. he's also the apprentice of the guy who's making the illegal drugs and never mentions it. he's inspired off of the tale of frankenstein's monster. he got shot by a missle and fucking died. when he came back to life he immediately broke up his messy gay situationship and became jesus fucking christ.

truly one of the characters of all time

EDIT cause i made this pre-act 2:

he started a cult. his ex came back from purgatory and shot him straight through the fucking chest. he got revived by his illegal drug making mentor using mutant furry blood. he turned everyone into fucked up magic robots. he got neutered by magic orb. he fought with his ex and choked him freaky style. a time travelling guy threw an orb at him and then he found out he and his ex were inextricably bound in every universe and timeline. then they went to super heaven.

If I imagine me and my partner doing an escape room I know I'd take charge and read the initial prompt out loud to try to get us both started. Then I'd immediately start brainstorming out loud on solutions. And I'd hope my partner would "yes and" me and match my energy. But they wouldn't. They'd just follow my lead, so I'd end up solving the puzzles close to solo. And it isn't necessarily great for either of us, because they'd feel left behind with how fast I charge ahead, and I'd feel alone in my enthusiasm and skill. And that just... It matches up with nearly every relationship I've had so far. I just want someone to bounce ideas with. Someone who will take charge with me. An equal. But I always end up in a leader/follower dynamic. And I really gotta reflect on whether I need to slow down or have being at the same level as a must have in a partner, or just continue leading in what I wished was a level playing field.

as a former escape room host i highly recommend doing an escape room as a first date. its a great way to learn how ppl react under pressure and how well they collaborate with you right off the bat. also more than once ive seen people enter an escape room as a couple and exit broken up LOL its a fantastic litmus test

Heinrich Unheimlich created the furby. Send tweet.

Zaun vik and Jayce

do we agree that celia is not doing all that for Jack out of some kind of innate motherly instinct, some need to care for that child she was given, but that she's doing it because the identity she was given as a mother has to mean everything to a person who got stripped of all she was over and over, who cannot remember if she ever was a mother in the first place and cannot afford to care, it's something to hang onto that she cannot let herself be divested of, and that's way more believable and interesting to me than just saying "she has to protect her kid"

Something I find really compelling about Zaundads is the fact that you can clearly see the division between their ideologies in the way they show their love. When Silco and Vander were still a pair, Silco loved Vander for his brutality. He loved Vander because he was angry at the world; because he was fierce and tenacious and capable of devastating violence. He respected Vander's willingness to fight for the cause and his loyalty to their shared ideals. And we know from Silco's parenting of Jinx that when he loves someone, he uses them. That's not to say this is a good or bad thing, but just an observation. He loves people for the potential he sees in them - in Vander, it's his capacity for violence, and in Jinx, it's her capacity for chaos and destruction - and a big part of how he shows love is by fostering that potential. Creating the means and motivation to use it. He lives by the notion that "there's a monster inside all of us", which started with his perception Vander, and extended to Jinx later on. He sees a monster in himself too, but he's not a naturally violent person, so he surrounds himself with people who he does see as strong and capable, and channels his indignation through the people he trusts most.

Meanwhile, when Vander loves someone, he's gentle with them. He has this innate protective instinct that drives him, and he's capable of summoning his brutal side when his world is under threat, but his default is care and affection. With his kids, it comes out mostly in the form of guidance; being a calm voice of reason when it's needed. We don't see it as much with Silco given the lack of insight into their past, but we do have hints of it in the flashback - with both Silco and Felicia. Silco already has a bowl of soup and a cup at the start of the scene, which, based on context clues, were most likely prepared for him by Vander. Vander also pours drinks for the three of them, and upon finding out that Felicia is pregnant, he replaces hers with a non-alcoholic option. His automatic response to her distress is to comfort and console her ("you're going to be a great mother"). In contrast, Silco listens silently for most of the conversation, and contributes in the only way he knows how - by agreeing to continue the fight for Zaun, no matter the cost.

And I think, ultimately, this would have always created a division between Vander and Silco. Whether or not Felicia and Connol were killed in the explosion. Whether or not the kids were even in the picture. It was inevitable that somewhere down the line, Silco would keep pushing the limits, and he would reach one that Vander couldn't exceed. Felicia's death might have been the catalyst for the betrayal, but it seems like the ideological rift ran a lot deeper than that - particularly noting the line from Vander in S1E3; "You had my respect, the Lanes' respect, but that... that was never enough for you." The phrasing makes it sound like he was already fed up with just how far Silco was willing to go for justice.

Vander regretted the violent way he went about the split, but I don't get the impression that he ever regretted the actual decision to part ways with Silco. Which actually creates another interesting contrast in itself, because Silco's perspective was the complete opposite. Silco had already forgiven Vander for the drowning incident by the time they met up again. The murder attempt was brutal, and Silco is unquestionably traumatised by it, but he never stopped respecting Vander, nor does he ever ask why he did it. Because that isn't the part he's hung up on. He understands why Vander went about the betrayal in such a vicious manner. Anger and violence were what he loved about Vander in the first place, and as such, Vander trying to drown him was consistent with everything Silco knew and respected about him. The Vander he didn't understand was the one who gave up on fighting out of fear of what he might lose, and that was the Vander he resented.

Reconciliation is definitely possible between them, and that's clear even without regarding the S2E7 AU, because it happens in the main timeline. Silco is given a choice between his dream and Jinx, and the first place he goes to deliberate is the Vander statue, because finally, he does understand. He understands why Vander bent to the Enforcers' will just to keep his kids safe. But he only understands it because, by that point, he's lived it himself. In an alternate timeline scenario, if Silco were to forgive Vander, there would need to be some other catalyst that triggers that understanding. It would take a lot more than simply reading an apology letter - not because of how terrible the apology was, but because Vander was apologising for the wrong thing.