#so hopefully this is the turning point

[sollucets]

@userdramas event 15: something new

something old: ramking, who i've loved for a while something new: ayluna, who i love now something borrowed: layout inspiration and something (cyan) blue! 🩵💚

[orykorioart]

From Aug 2022

Sliding in right before pride month ends with some old Blup sketches that I really liked.

[ID: 3 sketch illustrations featuring Barry and Lup.

The first sketch is Barry and Lup, with the trans flag wrapped around them. Barry is leaning in to press a kiss onto Lup's cheek.

The second sketch is Barry and Lup doing a fist bump, smiling.

The last sketch is a full body of Barry and Lup, out on a walk. They are holding hands and smiling at each other. Barry is holding a coffee cup in his other hand, while Lup is holding an ice cream cone. Lup's skirt has the trans flag colors.

End ID]

Also I’m open for sketch suggestions yall I’d be happy to draw Taz fanarts.

[jackdawsdrawings]

Drawings for some of the songs in HNOC, will do the last 3 once i can figure out what I even want them to look like :D

[tennessoui]

brain will not let me sleep until I say

same age padawans au where they’ve been in a weird wired frenemies thing for ages but now that they’re both mature adults (all of 24/25 years old) they’re more friends than enemies….

And it’s Obi-Wan that Anakin tells when he’s decided he’s going to leave the Order, not anyone else. He has a wife. There was a pregnancy scare a few weeks ago and it made her want their relationship to stop being a secret so they could really have kids. He has to leave the Order. Doesn’t Obi-Wan understand?

Obi-Wan, who has been a little in love with Anakin since they were younglings, does not understand. Not one bit. Instead of wishing him well and helping him pack, he goes to the Council and requests a mission in the Outer Rim….perhaps a month long or more…perhaps undercover? No contact with anyone on Coruscant. And maybe they could assign Anakin Skywalker as his back up? He can help with the undercover aspect.

And at first, Anakin is pissed because he was planning to resign from the Order in the next few days, but Obi-Wan convinces him to go on this mission with him….one last mission as a Jedi. To say goodbye to the Jedi life.

Obviously, Obi-Wan sort of wants to go on one last mission with Anakin because in his dreams, he wants the mission to go so perfectly that Anakin stays with him the Order. But realistically, he mostly wants to go on this mission to say goodbye to Anakin and then let him go, soaking up all his warmth and light, memorizing every casual touch bestowed on him because he knows they’re ticking down to the last handful of seconds together.

But then obviously the mission works TOO well and Anakin falls in love with Obi-Wan but doesn’t admit to it even to himself before they’re on the ship about to head back to Coruscant and Anakin realizes he doesn’t want to leave this planet because he doesn’t want to leave Obi-Wan if it could always be like this so he crashes the ship during take off so they can stay longer because he’s 24 and doesn’t know how to handle the immensity of his love except through destruction

[raiiny-bay]

but I can't wait until I see your face and my brain thinks that it's looking at a stranger

[dailykeiji]

today's keiji is: floormaster :)

[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.

[marcmorrigan]

@fenglianweek day 6: memories/growing up

the best thing thats ever been mine

[wigglecoin]

help im trying to concentrate on writing an essay but my brain wont stop thinking about an In Stars And Time AU where after everything the color red just... stuck around?? like, the world isn't ending anymore but its still there for some reason and all of a sudden some things are red, or what they would call 'the color'. like they wouldn't notice at first cause you don't find it in the sky but they pass by an unpainted brick house or something and its just.. red? and the person who owns it or has noticed first is just like 'yeah it happened a little bit after we all got unfrozen and it just stayed like that.'

imagining the introduction of a weird shade on a whole set of people and how it would influence things, vanguard add bits of red to everything cause its cool and new and i just have to wonder how the group would take it cause on one hand it could be a little triggering but on the other hand its cool when it doesn't mean the world is ending.

[odinsblog]

R.I.P. Astrud Gilberto, March 29, 1940 - June 5, 2023. Seen here, performing "The Girl from Ipanema" in 1964 with Stan Getz on tenor sax, Gary Burton on vibraphone, Gene Cherico on bass, and Joe Hunt on drums.

[marclef]

my art trade for @oddpizza because i have no self control and i finished it today already!!

also whoops uuhhhh my hand slipped

[katotaines]

⭐HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUBARU!!!!⭐ (ﾉ  *≧▽≦)ﾉ *:・ﾟ✧

[charhuahuakelly]

Happy Sunnyween!

My piece is a collab with @cowboycharmac and is Ingrid and Dee based on Junji Ito’s Venus in the Blind Spot cover <3 (check their blog for one inspired by “Ribs Woman”!)

@sunnyhalloweenzine for more!

[slumbergoblin]

:)

[ongsasuns]

guys this is going to sound really heavy? insane? but. first of all going on a hiatus. i’ll put the rest in the tags because idk. it feels really weird doing this but also unfortunately it is very very necessary at this point.

[pepprs]

gonna have to delete this later due to the redacted horrors but moving out update. today and yesterday i toured apartments. the one i toured today was smaller yet more expensive and had lower ratings and is very far away from campus plus the actual tour itself was… a very distressing and disturbing experience and not just bc there were literally dead bugs in one of the units 🤢 but like the place just had bad vibes i guess. i don’t know why it was so awful for me but i had a terrible feeling in my gut the whole time and then was almost in a scary situation getting back to campus (totally unrelated to the tour / property lol) but it was ok and i made it back completely safe in the end im just still extremely like. triggered i guess and i can’t talk about it to anyone at home (bc they can’t know im trying to move out lol) which is making me want to cry. like my nervous system is disregulated as my therapist would say. in fight or flight mode. but anyway none of that is even important bc im not going to live there because you know where i think im going to live???? THE APARTMENT I TOURED YESTERDAY!!!!! it’s like 3-4 mins away from campus (not to mention literally RIGHTTTT next to a campus shuttle stop) and right down the street from a whole bunch of cute restaurants and stores etc etc including my former therapy place (lol) and my favorite restaurant near campus, the apartment is bigger, rent is lower, and the property is beautiful imo. the only problem is that the only 1br/1ba apartments are on the ground floor which in my mind means im more vulnerable to a) ppl trying to like break in or do whatever god forbid a million times b) bugs ☹️ but tbh id be willing to try to deal with that and see how it goes. it’s gotten consistently 4-5 star ratings from residents for the last year and it has in unit laundry too 🤯 im so nervous and excited. now i just have to work up the strength to actually like. move there and tell my family that’s what im doing when they don’t want me to move without being able to drive and they don’t want me to live alone. but omg im so excited i just want to make it official nowwww