Just wanted to show you few WIPs of my Shadow and Bone playing cards (because that’s one of my favourite fantasy worlds and I’m obsessed and at the same time insane as it takes so long to draw all of them)
My hottake is that people are trying to fit Lockwood into character archetypes he doesn't fit, because they see "traumatized teen boy with a big ego and a passive death wish" and go "oh. emotionally unavailable asshole character" when that's.....not actually the character we're shown.
He's constantly praising Lucy and George. He's often the first one to try and apologize when he gets into a fight with them. The second he clocks Lucy as a "safe person" he becomes super touchy and holds her hand constantly. He compliments George's cooking. He's visibly proud of the people he cares about and publicly defends them on multiple occasions. He repeatedly asks his team if they're okay and tries to get them to open up when they're having issues. He makes an obvious, conscious effort to repeatedly tell Lucy he believes in her and wants her to stay at Portland Row. He smiles and jokes and laughs around with them on a pretty regular basis. He's also emotionally aware enough to tell Lucy "the reason I haven't talked about this subject with you is because it's relevant my childhood, which I don't like to talk about because it's pretty traumatic" when she questions him ahout Jessica's door, and he's kind of astonishingly open about his trauma with Lucy and George despite generally being unwilling to actually talk about the details.
And this applies to characters other than Lucy and George, too. He compliments Kipps' team during the graveyard fight and clearly respects Flo, for example. He's kind to Winkman's son, is generally polite to his clients, and is affected by the death of the undercover agent to the point of having a panic attack. It's pretty clear he cares deeply about the people around him even as he tries to push those closest to him away so they won't mourn him if (when) he dies.
Like yeah, Lockwood has an ego the size of Manhattan, has enough trauma to fill a boat, and is worryingly flippant about the worth of his own life, but he's not the Asshole With a Heart of Gold archetype. He's not cruel or deliberately mean (at least, not to anyone who's not Kipps). He's friendly and pretty kind to most people most of the time, and he openly cares about his team. And it's a little weird that I'm seeing so many people talk about him like he's not.
Okay so, I was watching Lockwood & Co right, as you do, specifically the episode after Lucy and Lockwood jump into the Thames to escape from glitter sword
So, when they get back we see them getting dressed out of their wet clothes and it’s such an important scene that they included and here’s why:
There’s the scene with Lucy and it shows her looking at the necklace, but not putting it on. She picks it up and she gives it a sad almost regretful look before she puts it down and we know that she was fiddling with it with the Penelope meeting which is what clued Penelope in so to her it signifies Lockwood and their relationship and she isn’t putting it on but she isn’t throwing it away either. She’s mad at him, she definitely hasn’t forgiven him, but she’s not tossing him away either.
Now Lockwood, this is the one that got me excited. We have seen him wearing “normal” clothes in front of Lucy before. It would seem to be the obvious decision that, since they believe everything is over and the next step is to go to sleep, to get into comfortable clothes. But Lockwood doesn’t do that. Lockwood is one of those individuals who use the way they dress as a defense, a sort of armor, and when Lockwood gets dressed he dresses in his usual suit and tie, in his armor before he goes down to talk with Lucy. He has no clue where he stands with Lucy anymore, that ease he shows earlier with that sweater and t-shirt is gone and he’s preparing himself for the worst case scenario. He’s preparing himself for Lucy to leave him and then he walks in and Lucy’s wearing regular Lucy clothes (but then again, she doesn’t use her clothes as armor) and she’s not facing him and he’s so nervous and scared and you can see it on his face. He’s not wearing his coat, he still has hope that maybe just maybe he hasn’t completely fucked everything up but he doesn’t know and it scares him
IDK Lockwood and him using clothes as armor makes me emotional everytime does anyone else see this???