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Mmmm thinking about Stan waking up in the woods post Bill's defeat and his only "memory" is just the faint and disconcerting feeling of a gun against his skull; it's not an unfamiliar feeling, either, and neither is the fear that rises within him moments later. Stan who is at this point nothing but four limbs barely working in tandem and the unshakeable instinct of being hunted coursing through his veins--- he has no choice but to run. He's in a forest, sun setting, darkness creeping up on him as strange sounds emanate from the trees, and he runs.

Ford, watching the sun set and desperate to find his brother before dark--- no idea what kind of state he's in, no idea if he's even alive, seeing the flash of his own trench coat through the rough, needle-coated pine trees and running after him. Not realizing how it would seem to a memory-less Stan for a man in a suit, with a gun, to run after him, calling a name-that-might-be-his. Stan running harder, faster, breaths heaving in cigarette-smoke-damaged lungs and itchy red turtleneck sweater constricting around his carotid, pounding in time with his quaking heart.

Stan tripping on the root in the dusk and going to his knees, pain rattling through his aged joints; Ford finding him on the ground, rushing to him desperately, but Stan only has distant and distorted images of pain and fear and death in his mind. Ford reaching out for his brother and Stan flinching back, mouth forming airlessly around sobs for mercy. Ford watching his brother, who he has known only as bright and loud and unshakable, shrink away into himself, beg for peace or at least a quick death. Ford shuddering to a stop, realizing that, even if not on purpose, his brother sees him as nothing but a threat.

Mabel and Dipper seeing all of this too.

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🐉

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Drew my beautiful and amazing and wonderful Mabel

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Hey so uh have we talked about this yet

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Whoever believes in Him is not condemned,

but whoever does not believe is condemned already,

because he has not believed in the Name of the only Son of God.

John 3:18

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“Mabel, on the other hand–her, i like. “Fun” is just another way of saying CHAOS, and I’m the master of that!“

~Bill Cipher (Dipper’s and Mabel’s Guide to Mystery and Nonstop Fun!)

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Losing my mind watching people not understand why Jax treated Pomni like that, yes he was awful to her, yes he absolutely said things he shouldn't, but he's VERY BLATANTLY self isolating, he's not being a dick for dick's sake, he's BLATANTLY trying to villainize himself to Pomni so Pomni leaves, but she is able to correctly call him out for the fact he's lying because he's scared of the fact he let her in even a little, and while Pomni doesn't have to take it, it's clear she is unsatisfied with the narrative Jax is clinging to and is wanting to push Jax out of that comfort zone because she sees the damage it's doing to everyone including him.

It's sloppy and messy and bad for them, but it's not Pomni being helplessly gaslit, Jax isn't trying to subtly manipulate her, he's trying to self harm with her, he's literally trying to get her to shoot him in the head without him fighting back. He's hurting himself on her to make her leave and to make him not want to reach out to her.

Which is still again, unhealthy as fuck, but in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT way to just Jax being a manipulative jerk and the fact she doesn't seem to want to give up isn't a sign of jax "winning" or "manipulating her" it's her seeing through his bullshit and going "nope, you are a person, a terrified angry person lashing out, and i dont have to take this, i wont let you walk over me, and i won't let you do this to yourself unchallenged."

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Alright, here's my thoughts on episode six of The Amazing Digital Circus. Short version: it was awesome with fantastic character moments. Long version (and spoilers) below the cut.

Zooble canonically wants to be able to fuck. I Have No Cunt, and I Must Cream.

I like Caine's growing apathy towards the adventures as the players continue to reject everything he does. It's especially interesting because the others flat-out tell them what they like, as seen here with Pomni saying she and Zooble enjoy the low-stakes adventures. If Caine's primary purpose is to make the players have fun, he should have no problem fulfilling that request, but his own ego is preventing him from accepting that the players prefer those over the adventures he comes up with.

A lot of people - I mean a lot of people - were worried about Pomni going into this episode, both about her and Ragatha growing apart and how Jax appeared to be "corrupting" her based on the last episode and the trailers. Nope! Pomni is still the same kind-hearted jester we know and love. Her becoming "evil" here was just her getting into character as one of "the bad guys." And Pomni even reached out to Ragatha first about wanting to be on the same team, only for Ragatha to sabotage herself due to her own self-loathing.

Speaking of Ragatha, her scene with Kinger in the Loser's Corner was everything to me. As someone who struggles with his own self-loathing, I can't tell you how much I loved Ragatha finally letting her guard down and opening up to someone about her issues. The fact that Lucid!Kinger returned and was the one to help talk her through it made it that much better.

Then there's Zooble and Gangle's heart-to-heart. It's always a treat seeing these two bond, especially over the shared issues with their Circus avatar gimmicks. Zooble being the one to assure Gangle that she has to choose to love herself, even the parts that don't make sense, was especially poignant given Zooble's own issues with their in-game body.

On that note, seeing Gangle so genuinely happy when she got her hands on that Tommy Gun warmed my soul.

Finally, the big confrontation scene between Jax and Pomni. I love the contrast shown in this episode between Jax and Ragatha. Ragatha deviates from her "archetype" as the Cheerful One and lets herself have a moment of true emotional vulnerability with someone, and ended the episode in a slightly-better place mentally because of it. Jax, meanwhile, threw away all of the camaraderie he and Pomni had been building in this episode and last, forcing himself back into his archetype as the Funny One just to avoid having a genuine human connection, and came within a hair's width of abstracting because of it.

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AAAH! Sasha Sasha Sasha SASHA

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Suddenly, he doesn’t know anything anymore.

What is going on? What is this place? Was he kidnapped? Why his mind is in blank? Why he can’t remember anything?

There are too many faces. One of them is even his own reflection but his mind can’t compute anything useful besides “stranger danger!”

So, while they are not watching he runs away. Fast, fast, faster! His mind just screams his survival.

Ford always thought he liked mysteries and he would solve one if he encountered them. He never imagined he would have to solve the mystery of why his own twin ran away or where the heck he was.

Stanford is beginning to notice something is wrong with his brother... but they never keep secrets from each other so surely Stan would tell him! Which leaves the only possibility that Stanley doesnt realise something is wrong with him either.

Stanford is determined to solve this mystery.

Stanley knows he is stupid, always has been, always will be... but when his memory starts failing him far more than usual and he starts forgetting reaaaally important stuff he starts to worry.

Stanley is determined to keep it a secret...

He has a feeling he can't let others know hes dumber than they already know.

(Or: Future brain wipe messes with a kid Stanley somehow. Is it a different dimension? Some time travel shenanigans? Who knows?)

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updated banner and put dividers in my pinned pos :D

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I drew a crackship between these two, now I added the breakup

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Look at that

Look at that absolute expression of anger and disgust when she suggests that he's not being genuine about who he is and what his intentions are. Look at that seething rage when someone doubts his care for someone else. Only for him to turn it around later in the episode:

Because he knows now that this is a plausible defence. He accuses HIMSELF of being disingenuous, but HATES when other people do it to him because that would mean giving up control. 'How dare she take away my control over the intentions behind my actions by assuming anything about them' kinda thing. He also, I bet, hates it because this is probably the second time this has happened. Stay with me here.

I bet you the way other people interpreted the situation or the way he interpreted what happened was something along the lines of:

Jax and Ribbit spent a lot of time together -> Jax 'corrupted' Ribbit in some way -> Ribbit abstracted because of how Jax treated him or because of who he became after spending time with Jax

I bet you Jax was a lot more tolerable before Ribbit abstracted because he was more real, but then Ribbit abstracted after getting to know him, and he blamed himself or others blamed him, or he projected his self-hatred onto others and read everything they did as their hate for him because of it. And now... Ragatha is accusing him of doing it (again?).

And this is the second time Ragatha SPECIFICALLY has "brought it up"/brought it to his mind (unintentionally)

The only way to turn this from accidental-percieved-consequence intentional-controlled-action is to own the idea that he is changing people on purpose to corrupt them. He sees the cycle repeating and he wants to make sure it's on his terms this time.

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TADC EP 6 SPOILERS!!!

this just might be my favorite scene in tadc ever right behind kinger comforting pomni and ragatha. The voice acting here is just so good michal kovacj is insanely talented in making jax sound like a broken deranged individual

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eepy as hell

i drew this to test out a trick i saw on pinterest

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Notice how quickly Jax wipes the smoke off his face and puts on a smile the moment he hears Pomni’s voice?

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i feel so bad for the both of them