#what john wanted the most?

[fantasyhurts]

“Paul would do almost anything for John.” — George Martin

[jimjamjomjum]

Be right back.

[sygneth]

game of deduction

[s0fter-sin]

soap and ghost, after months of flirting, of having each other’s backs and saving each other’s lives, of knowing the other better than they know themselves, finally getting together

ghost letting himself free fall onto the bed, soap following, always following his lead. they barely pull apart enough to get their shirts over their heads, hands running over muscles and scars and holding close

soap kisses every new scar that’s revealed to him, from the thick keloid divot over his ribs from some kind of puncture to the innumerable slashes and stitch wounds holding his torso together until he’s mouthing over his collarbones; the tips of his fingers lightly caressing the edges of his mask

ghost who’s been so quiet, so overwhelmed by soap’s touch that all he can do is sink into him, panting gasping breaths, finally pushes out, “don’t ask me. please…”

soap freezes, mouth hovering over his skin. “ghost…?”

ghost’s face is tilted away, eyes held so tightly shut they tremor while the rest of his body stays lax beneath his. desperate. resigned. “please don’t ask me, johnny.”

soap lets his hand fall from the mask, coming to run soothing circles over his clothed hip. “why?”

“because i’ll say yes,” he confesses and it’s great and terrible; a warning and a relinquishment laid at soap’s feet. “i’ll always say yes to you.”

for a long moment, there’s nothing but their shared breaths, nothing but their hearts beating for the other. until soap finally leans down to press a kiss to the corner of his hidden mouth; his lips meeting faint raised scar tissue he might never see

“i’ll never ask.”

ghost’s eyes drift open and they catch on soap’s; on a sea of promise and fierce protection

“i swear… i’ll never ask, ghost.”

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

i'm not an amputee so absolutely tell me to stay in my lane if applicable, but it seems to me that there's something really unique about the way that black sails handles silver's disability and the narrative role of his prosthetic. as in, it's one of the only shows i've seen (although i'm sure there are more out there) where 1) a character's mobility is more impaired when using a prosthetic, and 2) where using a prosthetic is explicitly portrayed as an effort to appear more able-bodied to others in a way that's harmful to the amputee character: silver insists on wearing the leg in front of the men to the point of giving himself an infection and limiting his mobility in a fight because he's worried about maintaining his authority. while he doesn't choose to stop wearing it, i think it's telling that he also doesn't try to have a replacement made after he loses it or otherwise seem bothered by being seen using his crutch after he establishes the myth of long john silver by crushing dufresne's skull with his metal leg for mocking him as "half a man," symbolically tying the myth to his disability

[theygender]

TLT fans: did you guys know about the real Wake? I hadn't heard about her until we covered World War II in my world civ class this semester

Nancy Grace Augusta Wake (1912-2011) was a covert operative who was at the top of the Nazi's most wanted list in WW2, nicknamed "The White Mouse" for her ability to repeatedly evade capture. She was born in New Zealand with Māori heritage, grew up in Australia, and joined the Resistance after traveling to Europe and witnessing the harsh treatment of Jews in Vienna by the Nazis

Wake worked in the Pat O'Leary Line escape network until her Resistance organization was compromised by the Germans in 1942. After that she fled on foot across the Pyrenees—with several close calls that she escaped by flirting with German soldiers—and made her way to England to join the Special Operations Executive. She was part of a three person team codenamed "Freelance" which parachuted into occupied France. During this operation she got stuck in a tree after her parachute became tangled in its branches. The local Resistance leader who found her reportedly said “I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year" to which she replied "Cut out that French bullshit and get me out of this tree"

While working in the Freelance operation Wake once biked 500 km (310 mi) without stopping in the span of 72 hours across Nazi territory to retrieve a new radio and codes after her team's were destroyed in a Gestapo raid. Without this feat, Freelance would not have been able to communicate with London and there would have been no more supply drops to support their Resistance organization. During the war she was also part of a raid which destroyed the Gestapo headquarters in Montluçon, in which she reportedly killed a Nazi sentry with her bare hands to prevent him from raising an alarm

Wake's fellow operatives described her as "a real Australian bombshell. Tremendous vitality, flashing eyes. Everything she did, she did well. She was an excellent shot, excelled at fieldcraft and put the men to shame by her cheerful spirit and strength of character." "She is the most feminine woman I know until the fighting starts. Then she is like five men." "We both came to the conclusion that she was 10 times the man I would ever be"

By the time of her death in 2011, Wake had been awarded the George Medal by Britain; the Medal of Freedom by the United States; the Médaille de la Résistance, the Croix de Guerre (x3), and the Légion d’Honneur by France; and the Badge in Gold by New Zealand. Due to a complicated relationship with Australia, she originally refused to accept any awards from the Australian government, saying that they could "stick their medals where the monkey stuck his nuts." In 2004, however, she accepted the honor of Companion of the Order of Australia as well

[ghouljams]

reading the fae au has my daddy issues REELING-

i dunno do i want to be held and comforted by one of them or fucked dumb😭🙏

could you maybe do some like paternal/father figurey stuff with any fae boy you want… cant prove the stereotype daddy issues right guys please im more than wanting old me to make me worse…

As previously stated I asked my friend for help writing the original fae!Price post. Gave me the main pointers on how it all worked.

Do you want more actual dad stuff with Ghost and baby? Or is this just wanting older men to be nice to you?

I'm just gonna have Price run some aftercare on his Witch.

You're still a little floaty, still fuzzy at the edges from having your own magic turned against you. You hear Price opening a window to let the smoke out, and you feel sort of cold without him holding onto you. Your whole body aches like you just finished working an overly complicated spell. You turn your head to rub your cheek against the couch, the worn fabric just rough enough against your skin to start to ground you back in your body.

You've done this enough times. Grounding. You stretch your fingers out and- oh, hm. Your hands are still tied behind your back. That explains the ache in your shoulders. Right. Right, you remember. You were bad at following orders, so Price had to- Why does that thought make your heart hurt a little. A small noise escapes you, somewhere between upset and need.

Price is by you in an instant, crouching to be sure he can look in your eyes as he slips his hand under your cheek to hold your face. "You're alright sweetheart," He tells you softly, "we're done, you did good."

You roll your shoulders wordlessly, your throat hurts, he nods and pushes up to reach over you and untie your wrists. You sag with a sigh feeling the pressure around your wrists disappear. Price reappears, looking over your face, checking for signs of distress. The gentle touches are so far flung from the bruising grip he'd had on you not long ago.

"You ok to sit up?" He asks, and you nod, "Good girl, up we go." Price helps you ease into sitting, his hand pressing between your shoulders to take some of the weight from the movement. Your head spins a little, and you make another upset noise at the pain of it. "I know, sugar, I know." His arm slides under your knees, the other wrapping around your shoulders.

You haven't been lifted in years, but your brain is a little sluggish in processing the soft grunt from Price before you're no longer on the couch. You rest your head against his shoulder, ground yourself a little in his scent. Or you try to, but the lingering tobacco and morning glory give you another shot of the brain fuzzies.

You drift for a while, settled at some point on the edge of your tub. The rush of water and smell of sachet herbs doing little to pull you back to earth until you are actually submerged. Magic sloughs off of you as you sink under the warm water. You hold your breath and stare up at Price through the refraction.

When you pull yourself back up to oxygen you feel like you're in your body again. At least magically. Price's hands catch your shoulders before you can tip forward back into the water. "Easy sweetheart," He tells you, his hands are rough and calloused, another feeling to ground with. You take a deep breath, trying to pull yourself from the non-magical portion of this. The soft dreamy space you'd settled in, the need to please him with little care to your own needs. "Not in a rush," Price presses your shoulders back against the end of the tub, "Just breathe, I'm not going anywhere," You close your eyes, rest your cotton stuffed head against the edge of the tub, "You did so good, I'm so proud of you."

You don't really know why he's telling you that, but it helps. Makes your ribs unwind a little. He pulls one of your hands from the water and digs his fingers into your palm, dragging and rubbing the ache from your hand before moving up to your wrist. Price pulls the pain out of your limbs as easily as he pulled the thoughts from your head, whispering soft sweet things to you until you're starting to doze.

"All mine," He murmurs, pressing his lips against the pulse in your wrist. You hum assent. All his.

[pasta-pardner]

spotify | john marston's revenge quest, set to music from 1960s spaghetti westerns.

Fun detail: the opening cutscene for Red Dead Revolver (2004) features an instrumental version of "His Name Is King". The lyrical version is oddly fitting for John, given that it's a song about seeking vengeance for a dead brother.

[vaguely-concerned]

Thinking about the symbolic weight of smoking in the TLT universe that comes to the fore in The Unwanted Guest -- the way it moves through from person to person: Pyrrha smoked, and Augustine wanted to impress her in all her stone cold fox MILF James Bond glory (and tbf who wouldn't) so he started too. and even though as far as he knows she's been gone for a myriad and is never coming back, he keeps the habit. Ianthe sees something in the hollowed-out Faberge eggshell of Augustine that resonates with her, all that gilded eloquent emptiness and disdain through the ages, so she picked it up from him to try to emulate it. She picked it up so hard that Palamedes -- the exact spiritual antithesis of the 'smoking! on a space station! what a powermove' ennui Ianthe so admired -- spontaneously unnerded enough to even known how to, simply from a sort of contact contamination of the soul.

G1deon and Augustine sharing a jittery smoke after their near-Harrow experience during soup night, and it's the closest thing to any real sense of brotherhood that remains between them. Pyrrha going ten thousand years dying both literally and for a smoke (and then Camilla sold her fucking cigarettes (for a third of what they were worth, probably Pyrrha's own good, and also more importantly grocery money). what an entirely haunted time to be alive etc.). Augustine and Mercy trading a cigarette back and forth in the middle of their collusion over the love and murder of god.

An act of small and measured self-destruction in the name of something a little bit like connection when you're stuck somewhere in yourself where love itself dares not or cannot tread (ritualized, transmissible)..........

[mayasaura]

I just want to talk about the nursery being painted and the purpose of the Tomb to be without a door. Anastasia had a family - and putting to the side the pact with Alecto there's some implicit symbolism to John asking for the workers of the Ninth to die constructing the Tomb with that image of new life. (Still can't articulate my disbelief that he went and didn't think that asking Anastasia of all people, The one who lost her cavalier to him, would have problems)

Yeah. Especially finding this out about the Ninth, where nurseries becoming tombs is a thing we're sensitive about.

On one level we've always known Anastasia had a family. Like, we know she's Harrow's direct ancestor. You can't be heir to the line of someone who never had children. But the nursery.... Yeah. It really hammers it in. Her friends painted a nursery mint green for her children.

And now it's a tomb.

[doom-dreaming]

High Flakes Combat

“Blue Lead,” Linda’s whisper cuts across TEAMCOM, crisp and several degrees colder than the icy landscape. “Hostiles approaching your position.”

Fred, tucked behind the trunk of a towering pine tree, exhales a slow, measured breath. Waiting. Listening. Without his motion tracker, only the crunch of footsteps in the snow—and Linda—could tell him when their opponents were closing in.

There. Fifteen meters out. He motions to John, positioned behind an adjacent tree. On my signal.

…ten meters…

Cover me. Go high.

…five meters…

John nods. Fred tightens his grip on his weapon.

Now.

As one, they pivot, breaching cover. Fred drops to a knee, attacking swiftly, before their adversary has a chance to retaliate.

The snowball hits Ash directly in the center of his chestplate. Active camouflage flickers briefly, then recalibrates, as the young Spartan crashes dramatically to his knees before sprawling backward, motionless.

Fred doesn’t let the theatrics distract him. The other two had to be nearby and the round wasn’t over until— A snowball whizzes past his head, followed by a sharp curse—out loud, close. He catches a shimmer of white on white as Olivia leaps to find cover and “reload,” but John is faster.

The snowball hits her thigh before she can complete her maneuver and she slides to a dejected halt in a snowbank. “Dammit! Mark!” she calls out. “You’re on your own!”

Fred doesn’t hear a verbal response. He knows he won’t, Mark’s too good to give away his position— Thwap. Fred’s vision goes fuzzy and white as Mark’s snowball connects with his visor, splattering on impact. Fred groans and flashes a red status light across his team’s HUDs. He’d be out until the next round.

“He’s on the move!” Linda barks over the comms.

Fred folds himself cross-legged into the snow and wipes his visor clean just in time to see Kelly bounding over a nearby ridge, clutching a snowball in each fist.

“I’ve got him!” She goes streaking across the snow toward a barely-visible figure—also sprinting.

Mark wouldn’t be able to outrun Kelly—a fact Fred knew the S-III was well aware of—but he was certainly trying his best.

Kelly nails Mark with both snowballs, one in the shoulder, the other in the back. He stumbles just enough that Kelly’s momentum sends her into him at full force. The clack of their colliding armor echoes like a shot as both Spartans go tumbling to the ground, sending up a minor flurry in their wake.

“Aaaaaaaand match!” Roland’s voice rings out over the simulation deck, followed by a buzzer. “Blue Team takes the win!”

“Again,” Olivia grumbles, pushing to her feet and dusting snow off her armor.

“It’s three against four,” Ash reminds her, still lying on his back a few feet from Fred.

Olivia crunches her way over and offers him a hand. “Can we make Kelly sit out the next round?”

“If you’re not having fun, leave,” John quips.

“Or maybe you should switch Kelly to our team and see how it feels,” Livi bites back, helping Ash haul himself to his feet.

“Fighting over me?” Kelly rejoins the group with Mark close behind. “I’m flattered.”

Fred chuckles. It was good to see Olivia trading barbs with John. The Gammas had warmed up to him quickly—and he to them—and it wasn’t hard to understand why. Fred was sure the S-IIIs had given him some new streaks of gray hair, but at the same time, they made him feel younger. He hoped they were having the same effect on John.

“So…” drawls a familiar voice, raised just loud enough to carry, “this is the reason my fireteams can't train today? A snowball fight.”

Every Spartan in the simulated snowscape whips toward the entrance. Commander Palmer stands at the far edge of the scene, arms crossed. She looks odd and out of place, a lone figure in a techsuit against the stark white surroundings, but no less intense than usual.

“Thought we’d try something different from the typical drills, ma’am,” Fred coughs. He’s not sure why he feels guilty; they’d requested the time and blocked out the schedule and followed protocol…even if they hadn’t said precisely what they’d be doing…

Before anyone else has a chance to speak, a snowball goes sailing over Fred’s shoulder, on a collision course for Palmer. She’s too far away to hit, but the aim is dead-accurate and it lands with a wet plap several yards directly in front of her.

Even at this distance, Fred sees her eyes narrow. The vague guilt solidifying in his gut crystallizes into ice. He knows who threw that and he’s already, reflexively, preparing for the necessary damage control—and for Linda, no less. Kelly he was used to, but Linda?

Palmer shifts her weight and fixes the seven of them with a hard stare that lasts long past the point of being uncomfortable. “Don’t go anywhere,” she eventually orders, leveling a finger in their direction. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.” Without leaving any opportunity for rebuttal, she turns on her heel and swiftly disappears from the deck.

Immediately, Linda’s status light starts blinking rapid-fire green across Blue Team’s HUDs. Kelly follows suit.

“Really?” Fred grumps over TEAMCOM.

“Can you blame her if it worked?” Kelly retorts.

“Yes! You’re making an assumption and setting a bad example.” He switches to his helmet’s speakers. “Gammas, don’t throw things at your commanding officers.”

“Unless you’re sleeping with them,” Kelly adds, with enough tact to keep the comment on Blue Team’s private channel.

Another green light from Linda.

Fred willfully ignores both of them.

“...we’re not in trouble, are we?” Ash removes his helmet and shakes out his hair. “To be honest…I don’t know what just happened.”

Kelly seats herself on a tree stump, legs akimbo, smugness oozing from every seam of her armor. “Palmer’s getting suited up to come play with us.”

Ash seems unconvinced but Mark shrugs. “She’ll balance the numbers. We might even start winning.”

Only Blue Team can see—and appreciate—the red light John flashes in silent response.

**********

As threatened, Palmer returns exactly ten minutes later, fully armored aside from the helmet tucked into the crook of her arm. “Okay, here’s the official story.” She strides up to the group. “We’re running an unorthodox but fully sanctioned training exercise all day.”

“I’ve cleared the schedule and put out an open invitation,” Roland chimes in. “As requested.”

Palmer nods her approval. “Figured I’d let you have your fun on the condition that the rest of us could get in on it too.” She raises an eyebrow. “Sound fair?”

“Fair enough,” Fred answers, echoing the array of green lights on his HUD. “Alright. Ground rules—we’re running blind for this, Commander. No motion trackers.”

She looks pleased. “I like a challenge.”

“If you get hit, you’re out for the round,” he continues. “Once you’re out, you can’t help anyone still standing. Round ends when a whole team goes down.” Fred nods toward the ceiling. “Roland’s keeping score.”

“Huh,” Palmer hums. “So you knew about this, too, Roland?”

“I…was informed the exercise would require a scorekeeper instead of a handler,” the AI answers, somehow managing to achieve the verbal equivalent of tip-toeing. “And I volunteered a mere fraction of my copious attention to the task.”

Palmer just rolls her eyes.

Ash clears his throat and steps forward. “If you wouldn’t mind, ma’am, we’d greatly appreciate it if you joined our team.”

“They’ve been wiping the floor with us,” Olivia adds, somewhat ruefully.

Palmer looks back and forth between Blue Team and the Gammas with a hint of a smirk. “Well.” She slips her helmet on. “Allow me to level the playing field.”

**********

And indeed, the tide began to turn. Quickly. It wasn’t that the Gammas couldn’t hold their own, but Palmer was a different flavor of ruthless and even numbers did make a difference.

Kelly, as Blue Team’s sole survivor, was in the midst of a valiant stand, but she was up against Palmer and Olivia and they were going in for the kill. Up to this point, Kelly had been relying on her speed to evade them, but Fred doubted that would be able to carry her any further.

Palmer and Livi split around the back of the snowbank Kelly had hidden behind, falling into synchronized step with each other, timing their paces perfectly. Palmer’s boots fall heavier and louder, covering Olivia’s near-silent glide around the other side.

The strategy is obvious, at least from Fred’s position of passive observation—Palmer would draw Kelly’s attention, Olivia would come up on her flank and take her out. And it would work, too…on anyone less observant than Kelly. Fred has a feeling she’ll see right through it. But one of them was going to hit her either way, so it didn’t really matter as far as the outcome was concerned.

Surprisingly, a third option presents itself. Fred realizes after a few seconds that he’s been holding his breath, expecting Kelly to explode out of the snow and make a run for it, but…she doesn’t.

Palmer reaches the other side of the snowdrift and slows, confusion evident in her body language. She paces around the area, making sure not to stay still for too long, obviously reluctant to let her guard down completely. Fred can see the hazy mirage of Olivia’s SPI suit still moving in with careful deliberation.

There was no way Kelly could have moved. She hadn’t had enough time. More importantly, she would’ve been spotted if she’d tried to flee, so why couldn’t—

Palmer disappears. One second, she’s standing on the other side of the snowbank, visible from the waist up, and the next second she’s gone. Fred can’t see much of anything, but there are sounds of a scuffle and the blur of camouflaged armor as Livi sweeps in to assist with whatever the hell had just happened.

Barely a breath later, Roland announces the end of the match. “And Gammas-Plus-Palmer emerge victorious! …or should I say Olivia, specifically, seeing as she is the last Spartan standing. You know, you really oughta come up with a better name for your team—”

There’s a burst of indignant exclamations and flustered cursing from Palmer. She reappears only to rip her helmet off and kick some snow back in the direction from which she’d escaped.

Olivia removes her own helmet; Fred is surprised to see her laughing. “She got you good!” There’s a giddiness in her voice that Fred’s never heard before, but she seems to remember who she's talking to a moment later. “...ma’am.”

Kelly pops up beyond the ridge. She remains helmeted but Fred knows there’s a shit-eating grin on her face just from her posture alone.

“What happened?” He shouts the question out loud.

“She buried herself in the fucking snow and pulled my legs out from under me,” Palmer growls as she trudges over.

“And then I hit Kelly point-blank in the face!”

Olivia’s gleeful comment is backed by Kelly’s laughter over TEAMCOM. “Worth it.”

“Hey!” A different voice cuts into the conversation, once again pulling everyone’s attention toward the entrance. “Heard there was some kinda free-for-all goin’ on in here?” Gabriel Thorne stands flanked by the rest of Fireteam Majestic, all in full Mjolnir. “Got room for another team?”

Palmer waves them in. “Come on up, Majestic. We’ll get you briefed on the rules.” She sighs and fits her helmet back on. “Hope you’re ready to get your asses kicked.”

**********

An hour later, after Majestic had carved out a few victories of their own, Crimson shows up. Rules are recounted, home bases are realigned, play resumes. Within another two hours, there are four more Spartan fireteams on the field. Alliances are formed, both openly and secretly. Several hours are devoted to building snow forts. Play evolves. Forts are defended and captured, sabotaged and reinforced.

And then Lasky arrives.

“Captain on deck!” Roland bellows.

The silence that blankets the simulation deck is instantaneous and absolute. Nobody moves. If the snowballs already in flight could have frozen in midair, they probably would’ve. Instead, they land in a chorus of muffled thwumps.

Lasky stands there for a few seconds, small and unimposing by the distant doors, sporting his trademark expression of beleaguered amusement—presumably at being called out. “Don’t stop on my account,” he eventually says. “I just wanted to watch. …unless there’s a team looking for a liability,” he jokes with a self-deprecating chuckle.

Everyone on the field exchanges glances and shrugs. A sea of status lights blink across Fred’s HUD—most amber, some green. Finally, someone from Crimson waves Lasky over. “We’ll take you, Captain!”

He seems genuinely surprised by the invitation, but begins the trek across the snow. “Try not to kill me, alright?”

That draws laughs from most of the Spartans, but it’s John who actually banters back. “No promises, sir.”

[therighthandofvengeance]

Delenn pops out of a cocoon, takes one (1) look at Sheridan, and has the most human thought ever:

“Yeah, I could probably domesticate that.”

[uncanny-tranny]

Femininity isn't even one percent as degrading as the men who police other men's perceived amount of femininity with micro-levels of scrutiny

[beatcroc]

excessively long and complex read on pillar john, and the larger john collective

there are a lot of things in pizza tower that, to one extent or another, Are John. some, like the pillar johns, have known and stated canon; but there's a myriad of other things, from mini-johns to the tower itself, that could also be argued as Being John. this post aims to reconcile all of those things as different facets of the whole being that is "John".

now right out of the gate i want to be real. i want to level with you for where im coming from with all this. i do think john is akin to some kind of god. i don't mean this in a super literal sense, but this dude is absolutely [conditionally] immortal to me. he's been around for a very very very long time, and will likely continue to exist almost indefinitely. barring specific circumstances.

i don't have an exact image for the first type of john, so i'm using this scrapped type of block from betas bc it illustrates the concept well enough

this is what i'll henceforth be referring to as "john tower"

this is john in his purest essence; the tower itself, and/or a power or a presence or just a vibe contained in and by the tower's walls and bricks. john tower is 'where' it could be said john's true consciousness and memories lie, but by itself it isn't really "alive" and doesn't have a will its own.

i'm not taking the brick itself Too seriously/literally since it's from beta, but i think it works for the general idea of "John is, and is within, the tower at its most fundamental level; and left to its own the tower will just sorta start making John-type things." Such as the following:

this one i will be calling "real john" this john is the physical, living manifestation of john tower, and what i would properly consider to be "John, Brother Of Gerome". he's a sapient guy with a personality and will and all the stuff that usually comes with being alive. this john is probably the most important type, and under normal circumstances there's only ever one of them at once.

these are just "dead johns". yknow because of the.

yeah. past incarnations of real john that died or got killed, or perhaps just wore out after awhile. real john dying isn't a particularly huge issue because, again, the tower just sorta Makes these things. and boy have there been a lot. they never seem to look quite the same between bodies, but they're all the same john with the same memories nonetheless, and so long as the tower stands, there will be more johns.

these are the pillar johns. this is known. these, as far as i know, are canonically clones of a cursed state of real john, and are mentally all the same guy by way of a hivemind. no speculation to be done here!

this "original john" is also stated canon the current real john, under a curse from pizzahead. physically the same being as real john, so the tower isn't just going to make a new one because this one's not technically Dead. i like to think john is closer to just being another brick of the tower like this, in something of a suspended state between being john tower and real john. still alive and sapient like real john, but much more connected to and in tune with the general sense of Energies of john tower. Has direct control over bits of it, which is primarily expressed as:

mini-johns! as real john is to john tower, so mini-johns are to pillar johns. there is no way to make this less confusing. mini-johns are essentially just random ass bricks and blocks of the tower that pillar john went 'ok little fucker you're gonna be alive now'. they're not part of either the pillar john hivemind OR the john tower collective and operate on their own agenda, which is i suppose is why they attack you, despite john generally seeming to be on your side about what you're doing to the tower. the little guys are a little more removed from their host, and aren't too thrilled about you tearing everything down. or maybe john is just pissed about getting killed over and over since there's no doubt that shit hurted. the john ghost certainly doesn't seem too happy about it either but honestly he's allowed to be a little vengeful in my book.

an aside note but there's also definitely some weird connection between them and [pillar] John Being Dead since they only ever appear during escape, except for in the graveyard-themed level [scrapyard] where everything is already dead... though interestingly not the JOHN graveyard level [john gutter] until pizza time? whatever. i don't have much of a sensible framing for this aside from it just being a general thematic thing and the mini-john section is too long already so i am moving on.

this john i frankly have no fucking clue about and am generally leaning more toward the idea that it's maybe not a literal thing that exists. more just a visual representation of one thing or another?

since it dies when you kill the final/original pillar john my initial read on it was that it's just sorta like an alternate view of original john so you could get a good look at the whole thing not restricted to the space in the 2d plane the player is on, but, crucially, it is missing real/original john's hat, which feels like too central a detail to leave out.

my alternate read on it is that it's a representation of the... overall state of the tower. emotionally, or perhaps structurally, which really might mean thing when you are talking about an arcane structure that is an undetermined amount of alive. either way, it's clear john, the tower, its energies, anything relating to such have been under duress and steadily, irreversibly decaying for....however long it's been since pizzahead took over. bit of a dour note to end on i suppose but that's just the way the tower crumbles man.

you may ask me what all this means for gerome. and i would answer, hell if i know?!? they're said to be brothers and clearly the same Kind of guy, but they don't seem to be cut from the same cloth, as it were. gerome doesn't seem to have Powers:tm: like john does, or pizzahead certainly would have been using him for shit as well, and there's also not a million versions of him lying around to land him in that weird pseudo-immortal space like john.

my best guess is he's something more intrinsically connected to the treasures, and something of a life support system or failsafe for the tower. i'm not sure how to Coherently articulate my thoughts here, but it's something like...little guy fundamental to but also entirely separate from the tower, made to help with its general upkeep [janitor stuff] and also to protect itself in dire straits [treasures]. not in any way attached to the john collective so that if something goes wrong there, at least gerome's small part of the tower's vibe remains untarnished. something about shaping and fragmenting the tower's energies into and across each of the levels by routing and/or stabilizing it through cloned johns; by proxy still this taps in to the gerome part of the tower's energies which manifests as its own separate door/room within that space that can't be altered by any other force re: the background in the treasure rooms always just being normal purple tower brick. treasures being condensed physical standalone bits of the tower's energy, enough of whatever's been channeled into that area to keep john going when given back to him should something disconnect/destroy the energies of the rest of that area. something like that.

honestly, i still have a bit of a hangup in saying gerome is of the same tower origin as john simply because he's not same shade of purple as all the other john tower stuff, but that's really kind of nitpicking at that point, so. hwatever.

ANYWAY all that said and done the most important thing you should take away from this post is that at one point gerome might have had a brother that looked like this

[cookie-de-baunilha]

Most people agree that John should move on with his life, let go of Jamie and find happiness in a real relationship. But there are some takes on this subject that really piss me off.

I’m sorry but “oh I know John will never love someone like/more than he loves Jamie, but I really wish he could find a great guy and have a nice relationship with him!!” is not the good argument that you think it is.

That’s not getting over Jamie, that’s settling for second best. Well, he can’t have Jamie, poor thing! So he will have to take someone else who he won’t love as much as he loves Jamie but at least he will have someone to cuddle with at night 🥺

Why can’t John actually get over Jamie?? Why should he settle for the second best? Worse, why should his partner accept being the second choice??

I damn well don’t want John loving someone else like he loves Jamie because that shit is completely unhealthy imo, but I know that’s not what people mean.

Jamie being the superior god-like man that everyone is in love with/is attracted to/wants to fuck is kinda ridiculous imho, but I understand the appeal that a character like that has for the audience of a romance book/show. But to put Jamie so high up in a pedestal and to think that John should be forever in love with him and not ever get over him because oh lord nothing is comparable to King-of-Men-Jamie is… a choice.

Listen. I know that’s on Diana. She is the one who wrote John like this. But I wish people would be more critical of Diana’s writing of him instead of swallowing that shit up like it’s chocolate. Everyone knows how problematic the books can be regarding certain topics, this is just another one of these things.

Instead of accepting that John won’t ever get over Jamie/won’t ever love someone as much as he loves Jamie, you should be asking yourself: why is that Diana writes him like this? Why does she insist in the stereotypical cliché of the gay man having unrequited feelings for his straight best friend? Why can’t John truly move on and stop having romantic feelings for Jamie? Why should Jamie be John’s greatest love?

Outlander is essentially a romance (idgaf about what DG says). Love of all types is a running theme: not only romantic love, but the love that exists within family and friendship. And yes, there’s a lot of platonic/friendship kind of love between J/J.

But romantic love specifically has a huge role in this story. We have straight couples left and right in this series: Claire and Jamie, Bree and Roger, Fergus and Marsali, Ian and Rachel, Dottie and Denzell, Hal and Minnie, Jenny and Ian, hell, even Brian and Ellen are getting a spin-off.

So I’m sorry but it’s really freaking weird that, in the middle of all this, people say that John (the character with his own book series and one of the main POV characters in the main series, mind you) won’t ever be able to love someone like he loves Jamie, or more than he loves Jamie. It’s really freaking weird that people say that John has to settle with second best — because that’s essentially what’s being said every time someone says that John won’t ever love someone like he loves Jamie but he should find someone else to be in a relationship with anyway.

All of that for what? Keep the cliché of the gay dude in love with his straight best friend and who never moves on? C’mon now. Don’t piss me off.

[carbon--14]

game director john johanas confirmed that chai is disabled!