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Leeches will sometimes attach themselves to you if you spend a long time in the water or the swamp.

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Changes

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Works in progress

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Faraway Woman

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Animal toybox

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Animal stamps

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House upgrade for Lace and Eyelet

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do you still have that diagram you made of all the different gosling character pussies? just.... curious

I don't believe I made this as its existence is news to me. But whoever did might like to know that it's still remembered. Maybe someone knows where to find this Gosling Pussy Diagram?

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Two girls from an ancient lineage

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The loving leech doesn't know how to let go

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Will you be posting more Arthur content in the future, perhaps Folie À Deux content of Arthur, whether it’s art, creative writing or META? I enjoy reading him from your perspective, it’s a tremendous honor to have been following the growth of your content. Arthur is my world. Until next time!

Thank you! The reality is that things are planned but there is little time to do them. Since meeting @kissaubleu I'm no longer as alone with my thoughts as I once was and the need to constantly make things in order to feel close to another person isn't as pressing. It's not a loss of motivation or interest so much as a compulsion now more easily abated by voicing a thought to someone and exploring it together. I'll reintegrate dedicated time for art (and Arthur) soon, I can feel it.

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Variants of Mouth and Eye

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hi, i've been following you since 2019 when the first Joker movie came out and being able to analyze Arthur, write about him and read what other people write about him (especially your writings in particular) has been a very rewarding experience. i don't think i've ever immersed myself in fandom like that before. so thank you so so much for dissecting every little bit of Arthur and for making me consider things i'd never considered about a character (and real life people in general) before ♥️

anyways, my question is: how did you cope with Arthur's canon death? i know characters live forever, in a certain way but seeing him dead in canon felt so melancholic. he really felt like an old friend to me, as weird as that sounds. thank you for answering and thank you for sharing your art and your thoughts with us for the past 5 years

Thank you so much! I am pleased to know you've enjoyed yourself with Arthur… That what I make inspired further engagement is wonderful. Fandom is an interesting creative space. We are all rubbing against one another's preferences and interpretations and this can be seen as either a benefit or a downside. I really enjoy being made to see a character in a light that is outside my scope or personal interpretation, even if I disagree with it, and I am happy knowing that others are out there who are also drawn to new or different perspectives. Vacuuming up a large collection of character interpretations feels beneficial… it feels additive.

As for the meat of your question:

Learning that Arthur dies convinced me to see the film. I had no intention of seeing it until reading a synopsis.

I personally like stories where main characters die, especially when that death is narratively, emotionally, or visually satisfying. Arthur dying was pushed toward and hinted at in the first film (it could be said that he metaphorically died before his physical transformation into Joker) and the story consistently argues that Arthur is incapable of surviving within a society that is hostile toward him. The sequel takes this idea further by being creatively antagonistic, attacking Arthur physically and mentally in precisely targeted ways. He gets everything he wants but everything he wants torments him until, ultimately, he resigns himself to being himself. The worst fate of all; it represents a relinquishment of hope for something better.

The way it is shot is sadistic compared to the more sympathetic framing of the first, we aren't given much opportunity to be in Arthur's shoes, we're positioned as bystanders or even as participants in his abuse. This is most obvious when contrasting the subway car attack to the prison rape (these are twin scenes: Arthur is stripped of an identity and assaulted). And, importantly, Arthur does not fight back. Arthur accepts absolutely everything that is done to him very passively as if he deserves it, including his own death.

I loved the ending. The mystery visitor suggesting new connections that are immediately made irrelevant. The prolonged, silent, struggling bleeding out. I've always felt that Joker should have ended in graphic public suicide, but that couldn't happen because the film is weighed down by its primary narrative intention being an origin story. I'm happy they found a way around that. For me, part of loving Arthur also involves the undiluted themes and arc of his story, so the missing piece that was his (suggested) death felt like I was being denied something important. But now he is actually dead… what is there to hope for next?

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Ideal position for eating fish flakes

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Lace bravely climbing the sticks in her home.

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Have you seen Joker: Folie à Deux yet? If so, what are your thoughts?

Spoilers, obviously.

It was tonally and philosophically very similar to the first. And I suppose I have to come to terms with the fact that I'm part of the closest thing to a "target audience" that it has. Personally, I would have felt spat on and kicked like a dog had it depicted a charismatic criminal duo leading a revolution. My displeasure at the concept of a sequel centered around my belief that it would abandon its nihilistic, antagonistic perspective to give the average fan something they can easily get elsewhere. It's a belittling, hateful couple of films, which is what interests me. Whether they're good or bad is irrelevant. Whether they respect me as a person is even more irrelevant because I am not meeting them where they are at.

In many ways it was deeply erotic, fetishistic, and honestly pornographic. The treatment of Arthur is gratuitous in its sadism, it's often lip-bitingly intense. The pleasure it takes in torturing him is transparent, and so openly sexual. In the most obvious case: hands grabbing and clutching his clothing to strip him bare, the display of his contorted body and exposed stomach, water and paint dripping down his neck and onto his chest. If you prefer fandom terms, it's whump. There were a few instances where I thought it should have gone much farther, where the way it held back felt cowardly or dishonest. Was any of this its intention? Difficult to say. The line between the emotional intensity of sex and the emotional intensity of pain is hard to distinguish.

Arthur's relationship with Harley mirrors his relationship with his mother, someone else he has to put a mask on for. Her painting his face before allowing him to fuck her is the equivalent of her having put a paper bag over his head. I enjoyed her manipulative and unpredictable nature. She's attractive in the way Lou Bloom is. And the very immediate and inappropriate whirlwind relationship that spawns from two people who connect entirely through their own suffering is familiar.

Hurt and pain is an intrinsic part of Arthur as a character, he's simply designed to suffer alone. This is what makes him so incredibly easy for certain people to like. Maybe they feel similarly about themselves, maybe they like the idea of healing him, maybe they just like to watch harm befall a man until he breaks. There are many reasons to find him beautiful just as he is, even if he was never intended to be.

To me his story was taken to its logical conclusion, a conclusion it could easily have reached in the first. A different outcome would not have made sense. And despite it being so logical and obvious I didn't expect it to happen at all. But it did.