I Believe The First Thing Eli Would Do If He Ever Became 'mortal' Again Is Get Drunk

speaking of c!dream, man is so weird about exile in a way that i think is actually kind of delightful and hilarious to see. god forbid he admits he crossed a line, he'd rather give you a boss battle and lots of item and your discs back and two of his lives, that's-- that's fair, right?

absolute moron. just say you're sorry! well, i mean, he isn't sorry, to be fair, he definitely isn't, but surely that's better than squirming every time it gets brought up? how the hell did he survive c!sam's questioning he was being awkward about it even before the prison

oh, sure, if he can bring it up to use it as weapon, that's fine. except he also just kinda skirts around it. of all the awful shit this guy has done, bullying a teenager for two weeks is the one thing that gets him disconcerted. and of course it does, of course. king of making up reasons for everything and all he can give c!tommy in the finale is the stupid ass excuse of ermmmm ummmm welll but i could've revived you so that didn't matter-!

nice try, bro. took you two fucking years to come up with that one and you couldn't even do a better job at it. go on, speak up. tell us why you did all that. drop the excuses, tells us with your whole chest what the reasons for your behavior in exile are. go on. you know you got nothing my man, you know you can't bear looking at it in the face. little coward put himself in a torture box but can't handle guilt. and then he has the audacity to insist he was always a villain. you can't even handle the weight of your one unjustifiable sin because the idea of being responsible for this kid's suicide is something you can't stomach. oh c!dream, who are you even trying to fool? he had you the second he brought up that tower.

How jdj is the side story. I know that LHH is the protag there and most focus is probably on him and his companions. But I just wanted ask for your opinion?

consulted my wife friend about this list so that i wouldn't miss the important moments. a little heads up this post will have side story spoilers

when hsy opens the door at the end of chapter 551, kimcom are sent to a snowfield with two doors in it. in one of them theres a happy ending. kdj woke up and is waving at them. in the 2nd door, kdj didn't wake up. yjh was the first one to enter the 2nd door, Unnoticed by anyone might i add. he's the one who opens the door and says "if it was him, i knew he'd pull something like this"

when we get 49 kdj's pov at the end of season 1 of the side story there's a small scene of yjh bringing 49 food. the scene is not described with full details however we learn that 49 has forgotten most things about yjh, to the point he doesn't even rmbr if yjh has cooked rice for him before. yjh then says this line to him "You don't need to be anything. All that matters is what you want to be" next morning 49 decides to go to the 1865th regression turn in order to help kimcom get back 51.

yjh comes back from a second journey of searching for kdj fragments together with biyoo. he notices that hsy has failed to stop the 41st round, and ignoring lsh's warnings that he's too strong to descend into the 41st worldline bcs the probability will kill him and destroy the worldline immediately once he descends. he says that hsy and ysa need to create conditions for him to descend because "Kim Dokja is mine to bring back" kr fans have noticed that this sentence has two major tones to it. 1, possessive and 2, arrogant. "kdj is mine to bring back since you (hsy) couldn't"

season 3 of the side story has a lot of focus on dkos kdj. he's now lhh's sponsor and talks to him thru midday tryst. and he brings up yjh So Often that even lhh is bored/baffled. not to mention he refers to yjh with a lot of affectionate terms "joonghyuk-ah this, joonghyukie that" recently even selena kim and christina page were all "????" when kdj called yjh "joonghyukie" in front of them

in the beginning of season 3, yjh noticed a source of light enter the "curtain of the 41st worldline" (listen mtl is hard please bear with me) and he immediately slams himself into it, trying to follow after the light. seeing as the curtain is burning him and "grilling him like fish" jaehwan (aka the mc of the world after the fall) has to forcefully pull him back as he shouts "are you crazy" at yjh. spoiler alert, yes he is crazy

not exactly an explicit moment per se, but every time lhh incites himself as kdj or yjh his first thought will always be of the other

in order to subdue an overpowered 41yjh hsy decides to give him happy memories. those memories included a scene where yjh was cooking for kimcom and hsy described it as "yoo joonghyuk was dying from happiness." then the scene quickly puts kdj in the center where he comments about how good yjh's food tastes and that next time they come here (a picnic) they should bring more beef. she succeeds in subduing 41 even though he has never actually met kdj before. later on we learn that 41 also got the memory of the rooftop conversation between kdj and yjh. and like. dare i say. he really sounded a little jealous/sulky abt it. not to call him sp or anything..............

there's a small flashback of a (not written in orv) scene set during 1865th turn. it's about lost memories. yjh tells hsy that he forgets lots of memories whenever he regresses but it's okay because even if he forgets that guy (kdj) will remember them for him.

recent addition: ORV: yjh: you bought a useless skill (preserve humidity) / lsh: but dokja-ssi also has this skill / yjh: kdj has this skill?? *contemplates buying it* |||| SIDE STORY: lhh: this guy (kdj) actually purchased a useless item? (neck pillow) / kdj: but yjh also has this neck pillow / lhh: yjh has this pillow? *after learning its advantages thinks it's a good item* (also kr fans speculate that it was kdj himself the one who bought a neck pillow for yjh)

Very very much inspired by this artwork

There are three types of misinterpretation of c!Dream in my opinion; and by that I mean anyone's take ever, whether it's a c!Dream anti or a c!Dream apologist or a c!Dream enthusiast. That's right, I'm making an essay about how in my mind everyone is wrong. This is how I lead debates please don't unfollow me-

1. misunderstanding or overdramatizing evidence

c!Dream apologists; g-guys. I'm not saying he isn't traumatized, but look. I really used to believe he was just everyone's victim and hurt and mentally unstable, and I'm not saying he isn't at all, but I changed my mind because I feel like the evidence doesn't,, point that way at all. Your emotions are valid, but your takes are very removed from what the rest of the fandom thinks because you take little hints and try to make them into some big angsty point within canon.

The evidence we have proves he is more ruthless than anything; even the content creator says that. He doesn't say why he does progressively more ruthless things, and he does say it's for his ideals and out of good intentions, but he doesn't say anything about him being hurt into doing it.

I'm not saying he isn't hurt. But making analysis of an entire character based on something that is barely supported by canon isn't the way I roll and I feel like it's one of the reason why people assume all c!Dream apologist are going to woobify the character,, because some of them really do that.

I don't mind portraying him as hurt by what's happened in canon, because that is a completely safe conclusion, but jumping to the victim side of the scale seems a little bit like painting a completely different picture than what actual canon says. (Note: talking about pre-Pandora c!Dream here.)

There is tragedy in someone being driven by the environment, circumstances and themselves deeper and deeper into corruption, but it feels like by only considering that the entire character is limited to one side of the argument.

I like to also see the side of him that will hurt people because he thinks he has to, because he wants to succeed above all, the side that will ruthlessly murder and manipulate and be calculative and clever and even self-destructive about it because he believes that'll get him towards his ultimately selfless goal.

That's my morally complex bastard.

A lot of people seem to be mistaking or ignoring that for the sake of saying he is just... hurt and that that is an explanation of his actions, and even though they don't use it as an excuse, it feels a little cheap.

And here we come to the core of the problem: an emotional vs. rational explanation for the character's actions.

Because the thing is, with enough evidence, you will see that nearly (we'll get to that in a bit) everything he does can be explained rationally. Everything is connected, everything is the most logical and efficient and merciless route straight from point A to point B, because c!Dream is fascinatingly smart when you look deeper into it.

He knows what he's doing. He knows his actions are awful, and he doesn't care - not because he would be some evil person, but because his mindsets cause him to justify such things, and mindsets are more complicated than feelings.

There is a lot to explore in that direction of the character, but that is material for another essay.

In short, people seem to enjoy removing all of his agency in favor of explaining his actions emotionally rather than from a rational standpoint which results in inaccurate analysis.

Do I think it is completely understandable he attacked L'Manberg?

Absolutely.

Do I think c!Wilbur painted him as a villain to benefit his own power?

Yes.

Do I think he utilized the villain persona as an intimidation tactic and often went overkill with no regard for anything but accomplishing his goals and that he slowly became more and more willing to do bad things of his own accord because he became determined and distrusting of the world to the point of committing horrible actions?

100%.

Analysing that part of the character is the most interesting part, when you consider it - and an important one as well.

2. ignoring evidence

c!Dream antis; please. Stop saying he doesn't care or explaining his actions with obsession or assigning him personality traits or motives that he literally doesn't have in order to demonize him I beg of you.

It's so many basic and easily debunkable assumptions that can be explained with what we actually know of his motives. People will ignore both canon and the authors' words to paint him as some monster with no nuance, which he is not.

We only know so much about him, but people will ignore and deny even the little bit we have for the sake of making him the literal personification of evil and erasing the fact that he is a complex and human character. Just accept he can be accurately analysed beyond hate and let people do it if you don't want to do so yourself.

3. assuming the evidence we have is everything you need to determine a final approach and that nothing outside of the presented evidence exists when certain details prove otherwise

c!Dream enthusiasts; this was the only and biggest problem I've had since being introduced to much more rational interpretations of the character - which is emotions, and one of the biggest reasons why c!Dream gets dehumanized in the first place; the fact that we have little to no showcase or explanation of them in canon.

You see, c!Dream is a reserved character. He likes withholding his plans, withholding his feelings and information from the world.

However, since all we can really get out of watching his actions alone is the rational side (and that is deliberate by both the writer and the character, narratively and personality-wise) people slowly begin to assume there is no emotional side to his actions at all.

Which I find,, untrue. Between the people who erase the rational side of the character and those who erase the emotional side, there is little middle ground, but I don't really find either of them right either.

Because neither would be an accurate representation; just because he doesn't actively showcase his feelings doesn't mean he doesn't have them, and the few inconsistencies that are too small a detail for us to put everything together show that he does have an inner emotional world beyond what we see.

The character does work beyond what we know, and expecting that everything can be explained purely by rationality because that's all we see of him seems a little bit jumping the gun.

It leads to a less person-like view of a character who in reality simply doesn't like showing people the way he feels, and I don't really find that fair to him. It is best to accept there are things we can't say for sure, or to say an emotional interpretation can also be valid at times.

It is both important not to deny him agency and not to deny him the ability to be genuinely hurt by others or changed by his environment.

Both of these can coexist, especially in

the correct interpretation

Ok this is a joke.

I have literally no idea. I'm just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks - he confuses me beyond belief. The only person who knows about both the emotional and rational side of the character enough to have their interpretation unquestioned is cc!Dream - but when we do try to find answers, it is important for us as well that we do not ignore any aspects or possible aspects of the character, because that is the only way to get useful results out of our analysis.

Sorry this was crit of basically every take about the character I have ever seen but I needed to get my thoughts out.

This is going to be a long ask, I just wanted to share my feelings about Eli and how other show helped me understand his character better.

I honestly really felt for Eli, one of the major reasons I have such sympathy for him and why he ended up becoming my favorite character is because while I was reading the books I was watching an adult swim

Series called Moral Orel, it’s about a kid living on a very abusive and religious environment, I just developed such sympathy and respect for the main character Orel 1/6

hi Anon! I’m copy-pasting all your other asks here so I can answer them all together (and since the post is quite long):

2/8 That character just reminded me a lot of Eli or more like Eli reminded me of Orel, both boys grew on fundamentalist households, and their dads were physically abusive towards them wherever their fathers did something they deemed as “bad”, while their moms although they weren’t bad per-se they didn’t helped their sons, both Eli and Orel used their faith to get through those situations and both only wanted to do the right thing (they also both died and thought god was the one to bring them back)

3/8 But while one used their faith to justify their horrible actions under the false belief they were doing god’s work, the other was able to raise above the abuse thanks to the guidance of a few people and partly because of his own faith becoming a much better person in the process, this is silly because no one knows or talks about Moral Orel, but I found incredible how it’s main protagonist Orel Puppington helped me understand and sympathize with a character I wouldn’t have had liked otherwise (Eli ever)

4/8 it’s also funny because I have seen threads where few people talked about the show and one of the most interesting topics to discuss were the following quashing:

What would have happened or what kind of person could Orel have had become if he didn’t have the tiny support system that he had?

Orel had three very important persons in his life very much like Eli, who guided him towards the right path, one of them who was his grandfather which was supposed to die from illness, this also reminded me of how Eli lost his family.

5/8 Another interesting questions would be what would have happened if Ore had internalized all the indoctrination that was been fed to him side he was little? on the thread some answered the question by mentioning and theorizing that due the upbringing he had, Due the the toxic patterns he was exposed to and because of the religious zealotism he was raised in they could see him become something akin to a serial killer who killed because he thought he was “saving” the victims.

6/8 This made made me realize even more how similar this characters were, on personalities, upbringing and in relationships, now I headcanon that Eli is something like a bad end Au of what Orel could have had become on the worst possible scenario, thankfully this wasn’t the case and he was able to break the cycle of abuse that was going on his family, by being able to remain a good person and becoming a much better person, husband and father than his own father ever was, sadly the same cannot be said for Eli and there is something very tragic about this.

7/8 When I first read Vicious I didn’t like Eli, but boy my opinion on him changed completely after reading vengeful, it surprises me almost all of the fandom (a tiny one on that) seems to still hate him.

8/8 Now that you mention it, I hated Serena, it was mainly because she attempted to kill Sydney, and how she manipulated pepole, like something felt very personal about it and I just disliked her for it, I can kind of understand why (I mean Eli tried to kill her) but I also hated she basically raped him and no one bated an eye, only tv tropes seem to semi acknowledge what Serena did to Eli. but never outright says it just says that their relationship was mutually toxic.

I had never heard of this tv series (from what i’ve understood after a quick research it’s basically a US an adult stop-motion animated series), but I’m glad it helped empathize with Eli more, especially because from what you’re telling me these characters do share a lot of similarities. 

Eli is a character that I loved from basically page one, even before knowing his backstory, because Victor’s storytelling was so obviously biased that I just couldn’t help waiting for Eli’s point of view and voice in Vicious. So I never disliked him, he was my favorite character in Vicious and my attachment towards him became stronger and stronger throughout my reading of Vengeful (which made the ending just more painful :) ). I wouldn’t say that he uses religion to ‘justify’ his actions tho, more that his beliefs and trauma propel him to act the way he does (and the difference is slight, I recognize, but ‘justifying’ an action implies a process of rationalization ex post which I don’t think happens in Eli’s case, or at least it happens, but religion also plays its past ex ante [I hope my thought is clear but I’m afraid it might not read so lmao]).

The thing you said about support systems and what can happen to people when left alone is incredibly true and it’s something I think about a lot when looking at my favorite characters and characters in general, which is one of the main reasons why I so strongly resent the ‘heroes are better than the villains because they have loved ones’ (because it seems to idk punish certain people for the simple reason that they don’t have people who love them. which isn’t great, considering the implications). Of course you can write a compelling narrative with this trope you just have to be careful imho. But yeah I definitely agree with you that sometimes this can make a difference in a character’s development and growth.

I cannot say I ‘hate’ Serena, but I honestly don’t like her and I wouldn’t be able to properly explain the exact reasons why I don’t, but surely one of the mean reasons is what she did to Eli, which I agree isn’t talked abut nearly enough in the fandom. I agree that she raped him, because she used her power to make him want to sleep with her (which is rape, objectively speaking). The fandom is strange silent regarding this aspect but given the burning hatred everyone and their moms feels towards Eli (which is weird tbh, especially given how much everyone seems to love Victor and thinks him as a better person than Eli when they are at the very least equally awful) it is not surprising. I have endless bones to pick with Eli’s treatment by the fandom and this is just one of them (along with almost everyone calling him a psychopath when... he really isn’t?)

These asks were really interesting! If you want to chat more I’m here, I hope you have a nice day!

Fine art enthusiasts

Thanks to @felidaefighter for providing the screenshot of the painting here

I think it's worth observing that Eli as a character had an established backstory and principles even before Victor while Victor's whole character and narrative predominantly revolves around Eli and going against him. Even during Lockland, he found a way to make himself the main focus of Eli's project, twist his thesis into their thesis. He forced himself onto Eli's narrative, made himself the main focus. While Eli's 'kill all EOs because they are an affront to God' was because of what he experienced with Victor and their falling out, he was still more independent a character in terms of purpose. And then there's Victor on the other hand whose whole purpose in the first book was to kill Eli. It's so fascinating and is also incredibly funny considering Victor is the main character.

a couple snippets from a presentation i gave at school this past week on storyboarding!!

‼️DISCLAIMER: I am still a student and have only worked on student and indie projects! This is just stuff that I personally find helpful as an amateur, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt!

Happy boarding, friends! ✍️💕

Ran to draw them as soon as V.E.Schwab posted that story.

Bonus because Eli deserves to be a silly guy.

He's so extra

Other versions and a bit of rambling under the cut

Untoned version

Textless version

I've been finding it so damn hard to draw Victor which is mainly why I draw more Eli than Victor. I think it's because I've got this image of him in my head which is hard to translate to paper. Blonds am I right?