#i'm just venting don't mind me

[silverloreley]

I'm having a second-hand anxiety attack because my brother has put himself in a mess (nothing illegal or anything, but it's going to be a huge deal here) and I have no idea how our parents are going to take it or even how to explain what happened without it all turning into a shoutfest, and I will likely have to help him fix it, provided it's fixable, and I'm trying to stay calm and not let it show but my head feels light and the last time I felt like this I fainted and I didn't need more problems now so idk what to do or how to calm down.

[spoopy-sloth]

I am in so much pain. It hurts to move, and I am basically bed ridden again 😢

It's really hard to do anything when there are incisions scattered on your abdomen.

[dead-core]

craving validation from exactly the wrong person. slay

[2hoothoots]

i was having a chuckle to myself last night about Gristol, and how his plans are basically:

Restore Ford Cruller's memory

Find Maligula

???

Profit

but then... of course they are, right? this is Gristol we're talking about. Fatherland Follies drives home again and again that he's still operating on a child's logic, a warped and reductive version of the world that he never bothered to grow out of. both of his memory vaults center on the images of his childhood, this idealized version of the past that he clings to no matter what. and that's still how he remembers Maligula, too - as this saviour figure, who rushes in to help him when he's in trouble.

[ID: Two slides from Gristol's memory vault, Glory to Grulovia! Left: Gristol clings to Maligula's back as she summons waves to sweep away his assailants. Right: Gristol and Maligula waving from a balcony as the people cheer. Gzar Theodore brandishes a dagger in the background.]

like so much else, Maligula represents a return to this idyllic childhood - to the peace and simplicity of his youth, when he was free from worries and responsibilities. in his mind, he doesn't need to make any further plans - once Maligula's back, everything will go back to normal. Maligula will make everything better.

...is what i thought, but then i remembered this line:

[Screenshot source. ID: Gristol, in Truman's body, bows on his hands and knees in front of the newly-awaked Maligula. The caption reads: "Yes, High Priestess! I am here to correct the mistakes made by my father!"]

and that's kind of interesting, right?

to be clear: this happens directly after Maligula sees Helmut-in-Gristol's-body, and recognises him. her line before this is:

"Little Gzesaravich! Have you come to pay for your father's sins?"

my first thought was that Gristol hadn't expected to still be in Truman's body by the time he managed to find Maligula, and this was him trying to placate her and buy some time until he could explain the situation. but watching the cutscene back, that's clearly not what's happening here. Gristol is answering as himself, and his response of throwing himself to his knees before her is, as far as i can tell, genuine.

so what is going on here?

in Fatherland Follies, there's this line in the ride narration that stuck out to me:

"Why didn't the Gzar help Maligula in her time of need? No one knows, but historians agree - it is Gzar Theodore's biggest failure."

other lines mention Gzar Theodore's "mistake", and it's wording Gristol himself echoes in the screencap above. evidently, he believes that his father abandoned Maligula, leaving her to her fate at the hands of the Psychonauts, and it was that mistake that lead to them being driven out of the country - that mistake which he seeks to correct. maybe he even feels like he has a debt to repay to her for his family turning their backs on her all those years ago.

the 'High Priestess' thing, though - that's kinda weird, and threw me for a loop the first time i played the game. it took me until my second playthrough to connect the dots, and remember how the room in the Lady Luctopus - Gristol's room - was full of Delugionist scribblings and symbols.

[Screenshot source. ID: left, the walls of the hidden backroom in Gristol's hotel suite, covered in scrawlings of eyeballs and Maligula's name. Right, the pinboard from the hidden backroom. On its surface are photographs and newspaper clippings connected by pieces of string.]

i mean, look at this stuff! he had a whole conspiracy board and everything!

we learn very little about the Delugionists and their beliefs as a whole during the game, but i think drawing the connection here suggests two important things. one: that Gristol was in deep with this stuff. i don't know how he linked up with them - maybe via old family connections, or just good old-fashioned digging (we know he's skilled at worming his way into peoples' good graces, after all) - but it seems likely that he's begun to internalise their ideas, maybe even warping his own memories of events. and two: the Delugionists themselves are, if you'll pardon the pun, pretty far off the deep end.

like... i understand why PN2 didn't go heavy on the "mass-murderer cult worship" aspect of things, in the end, but man this is such a tantalising glimpse into the wider mythos around Maligula. Gristol is proud and haughty and thinks himself above everyone else; the fact that his first reaction seeing Maligula is to throw himself to the ground at her feet says so much about the way he's come to see her. he's not just trying to bring back Maligula, his childhood bodyguard. he's trying to bring back Maligula, the High Priestess of the deluge, the semi-mythical figure whose supporters believe even death couldn't stop. he doesn't even flinch at the way she confronts him, and maybe it's because he's bought in so completely to this deified figurehead, this idea of Maligula; more a living force of nature than a person. and it all comes back to the same place: an abdication of responsibility, not just to the person who protected him when he was little but to this avatar of floods and destruction. Maligula will make everything better.

i'd write more about my thoughts on the Delugionists but that'd be taking a hard turn into speculation, and this is already kind of long and rambling so i'd better end it here. but what an unexpected and evocative line, right? it's some of the only stuff we have to go off of regarding the Delugionists as a whole, but i think it does such a good job of hinting at the wider story - at teasing another layer to the mythos surrounding Maligula, one whose ripples we see throughout the game but which never quite breaches the surface.

[kiirous]

I just now figured out why I prefer not to read from the viewpoint of my favorite character, but rather from the viewpoint of the ship partner I read about. It's simple, really. I just want my favorite characters to be worshiped the way they deserve, and the best way to do that is by reading the viewpoint of their shipping partner. I do prefer to read my favorite character's viewpoint, though, when I'm in the mood to read about them suffering. Or it's none shippy.

[statusquoergo]

why do people post anti-ship things in the ship tag? why would you do that? why are you coming into my house to criticize the furniture? "so my post reaches more people!" no but for real like. get the fuck out of here.

seriously, what do you think you're accomplishing? a poll about darvey is not going to reach the right audience in the marvey tag. not to say there aren't people who ship both, but the venn diagram has a very small area of intersection compared to the sizes of the respective fandoms and you are much more likely to annoy and/or piss people off. and, i dunno, i have this sneaking suspicion that even people who are fans of both don't go into the tag for one of them when they want content for the other.

also, thinking that marvey fans are on drugs because mike and harvey "were like brothers" is...fine, i guess? as an opinion? i mean it's a little rude, seems kind of unnecessarily aggressive, but if that's the level of passion you have for your perspective, well, congratulations on your life choices. kindly get the fuck off my lawn.

...i've not been having a great week.

[fayeandknight]

Pity party, table for one

This feels so stupid to admit, but today really hurt my feelings.

All the trainers piled in the van and went on a training out. Without me. I was not invited. I watched them call another trainer on the walkie to be like "impromptu outing, grab a dog and let's go". I was standing outside setting up training for a dog around car manners but hadn't started. I was literally right there.

One of them even called out the window that they'd pick up ice cream on the way back and asked me to have the others text what they wanted. So it's not like they didn't see me.

But I dutifully did so and when they came back, oops the shop must have forgotten my order. Everyone else got ice cream but me.

And it's so stupid to let my feelings be hurt by this. I know it is. And I honestly don't think anything intentionally mean spirited happened. But between usually being the one left out, hello autistic experience, and old high school trauma, it's just feels overwhelmingly lonely.

And that old trauma is particularly hard to combat, because it lends truth to the common fear that everyone secretly, or not so secretly, hates me and wishes I would die. Short version is that I had a falling out with my best friend and she led a school wide campaign, including teachers, to bully me with the admitted to goal of having me become so depressed and isolated that I'd kill myself.

I know this is not that. I do.

But it felt like it. The memory of how it started with people being nice enough to my face but never including me holding hands with how I never seem to make it into the inner circle anywhere because there's something slightly off about me. (It's the autism.)

And it just fucking sucked.

So I cried in the bathroom, invoking my superpower of being able to bawl my eyes out without making a sound. But it felt overlaid with the past where I used to eat lunch in the bathroom to avoid the bullying once it got really bad.

I barely slept last night so being very tired on top of everything else definitely did not help.

I wish I knew the secret to being included. To have people actively choose my company outside of needing something from me. I wish I wasn't such a baby over not getting ice cream. I wish I could pry the past's sticky fingers off of the present.

[fuckyeah-bears]

you know 99% of the time i get nice, totally reasonable, polite, and frequently kind asks on bearotonin. but every now and then i get some asks that just make me wanna reply snarkily so badly lmao

[revenantghost]

Life stop kicking my ass challenge (impossible)

[elmhat]

.

[crow-posting]

A bit ironic that Petra tells Crow "Mara wanted to protect you from Uldren's memories" when in Season of the Lost, Mara told Petra to treat him gently so Uldren could come back "bit by bit" (I don't remember the exact line but it was pretty much that) and also told the Young Wolf that "if all players had done their parts, [she] would be wielding Uldren Sov, Lightbearer." Whereas the Vanguard basically put a gag order on the YW to give Crow as much of a fresh start / second chance as possible, and withheld so much info about Uldren that Crow had to bug Mara and Petra for it instead.

Maybe I'm being uncharitable towards Mara again, but uhh Petra, the math ain't mathing.

(Yes, I'm aware that Mara kept her distance after Crow got Uldren's memories, but Petra was specifically referring to this. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

[sysig]

He’s my little meow meow, my darling, my bbygirl (Patreon)

[jankwritten]

yall wanna know how fucked up my anxiety is about some shit

i scroll past a post that's about a topic i don't like. whatever, it's fine. i scroll past a video that's a topic i don't care about. that's normal.

i scroll past a video that's a topic i don't like or care about but the person presenting it is a person of color? i IMMEDIATELY feel immensely guilty and need to "compensate" by "proving" it wasn't because of race by also skipping other random posts, JUST IN CASE someone thinks I'm racist because I didn't want to watch a video on a topic I didn't like or care about, that happened to be presented by a person of color.

this just in on: the police in my brain are loud and i'm scared of them

[chaos-bites]

There is this really cool thing where you can keep your angry, bitter comments to yourself and no one is actually forcing you to reblog a post that someone poured their entire soul into to make, and I just feel like some people REALLY need that reminder today. 🖤💚

[x-adoringvoid-x]

Apparently that's called the 'irresistible force paradox'

[numbknee]

this isn’t a new hot take of mine but it still blows my MIND that I’m in the minority in the kyman fandom when it comes to thinking of Kyle as a dom/top and Cartman as a sub/bottom. From what I’ve heard from veteran kymans the fandom barely had ANY sub Cartman truthers in its earlier years, and dom Cartman is still extremely popular to this day. There's so much art/fics where Kyle is like... a pain slut (????) or gagging for Cartman’s giant dick (?????????) but any time I see that stuff I get a visceral, skin-crawling HELL FUCKING NO 😬😬😬 reaction and have to back out immediately.

A mutual once told me something like “I can’t write Cartman as a dom, I think I’d break out in hives or something” and that’s p much exactly how I feel lmao 😆

y'all do you ig, but it's not my cup of tea at all.