#The last 2 posts were with no thoughts

[atlantis-area]

TAEMIN - Guilty (Waterbomb Seoul, 240706) [x]

[pineapple-frenzy]

Book 2 au: sparring sessions and short hair katara

They like to have sparring sessions in order to keep their bending skills sharp. They allow themselves to go all out and not hold back at all cause they know if anyone got hurt, Katara could just heal them

But anyways, wouldn't it be kinda funny if Zuko accidentally burned Katara's hair tho? Aofkqldkkajfjd

The "I think we can save the hairloops" line is from @linnoya-writes thank you for that!! :>>

[soupysundae]

🐍🐍🐍🐍🐍

[boygirlctommy]

i knew going into it that the 15 years of mcyt video had tommy in it but i was Unprepared for the dsmp clips...

[sashthesloth]

I'm going to rotate them in my mind.. the angst potential for my poor poor Rook . .... .

[mrsfitzgerald]

richard & paul | tour'23 | part I ♡

[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.

[seafoamsol]

Process gif for the [ last piece ]! It was a bit of a rough ride.

[lemongogo]

college … wasted on the youth (me)

[aropride]

disabled queer pride flag edits !!

gilbert baker pride + progress pride / gay + lesbian / pan + bi / trans + genderqueer / genderfluid, agender / bigender + nonbinary / aromantic + asexual / polyamorous + aroace / queer chevron + intersex

[glowspider]

teen wolf sketch dump pt. 2

[kelocitta]

Tangentially related to some of the discussion i posted earlier but quiet literally the first RW Art Month i participated I did it completely on whim like, one day before it started. And I mostly did it because I hadn't drawn a ton of rain world and wanted to draw more. Fandom presence was a lot smaller than and I was one of a handful of artists who did the entire thing. Fast forward and I still do Art Month and I've gotten to work with VC directly. But it was quite literally something I decided to do completely on whim that set the ball rolling, and for something a lil more niche and certainly with a lot more dev/fandom art involvement than most. It's really random how and why you might get noticed more than usual, especially with the "toss it into the search and hope it pays out' mechanism of Socmed

[fivewholeminutes]

Now that we have the whole alphabet, we know how to write 'XD' with it

[bunnyboy-juice]

im ngl i think my favorite headspace to be in is "want to be annoying"

[laugtherhyena]

Continuing the rant-iness of last post's notes onto this one i think (I appreciate if they're read, i think I'm too self-conscious to have them in the post itself)

[morrigan-sims]

What a difference a few years makes...

Rook at age 17-18 vs age 26 & Val at age 17 vs age 32

Not a whole lot changed appearance-wise for Rook, except for getting a few more ear piercings and a lot more scars (most of which you can't even see in these pictures). And he started wearing rings/necklaces, which you can't really see. And started wearing increasingly slutty shirts. Val also gained a scar or two, plus several tattoos. Their horns were broken when they were 17, so pre-17 they had full horns. Oh, and the eyepatch. That's a big one. And they got enough money to buy themself a big hat and a lot of fancy coats.