#also adding reagan in there. the trio of 'working so long for something only to realize that it isnt what you thought'. it hurts bro i

[swanpyart]

This is so cool! Andre’s especially sounds metal

What do you think the gang's subconscious' would look like? We got to see Reagan's, but I'm curious what you think their would be

OH FUCK THIS LITERALLY TOOK SO LONG TYSM FOR THIS

all sfw!! tw for religion and sacrilege, surgery mentions (glenn’s), drug use + intrusive thoughts (andre’s), existential concepts + death (myc’s), unreality, 

THESE ALL TOOK. SUCH A MASSIVE NOSEDIVE INTO VERY PRETENTIOUS ANGST. IM SO SORRY ANGST JUST FLOWS NATURALLY FOR THESE POOR BASTARDS.

'hypnagogic self-projection of your own mind - it's how you see your own thoughts" WHICH,, ALRIGHT GIVES A LOT TO WORK WITH. Based on Rand + Reagan's it gives the vibe of,, partially based on personality and self-identification, with a little bit of Familiarity in em?? 

SO OH BOISE THIS IS GONNA BE A DOOZY SMDNS. Lots of misc stuff, no real specific plotting? OKIE ENOUGH PRECURSORS LETS  GO

Brett

THEME PARK BABEY

every ride is a different memory!!

it all happens so fast he doesn’t even notice the transition’s happened? Like one second he’ll be on one of those Smaller Rollercoasters and when he blinks hes,, in his 11th grade band practice?

OH and it is,,,, MASSIVE. Like if he gets up high on the ferris wheel he can see it stretch on and on for miles.

It’s also so apparent that something is,, Wrong. Nothing too overt - its not like theres Evil Metaphor Monsters chasing him around but,, its got that Weird Liminal Feel?

There’s all these rides, but nobody but him. Its a ghost town. He didn’t think his mind would feel this lonely.

It doesn’t help that it’s always sunset - at first its super fun and calming but eventually it just feels... Bad. He starts jumping at his shadows pretty fast.

The steps to get up to some of the sadder rides feel like they go on forever - like his own subconscious is actively fighting back against letting him access memories that upset him.

Like if he just really, really, really believes that everything okay, it’ll tamp down that Overwhelming Sense Of Dread. ohyeah babey his Forced Positivity is DEEP IN HIS SUBCONSCIOUS TOO SMDNSD

There’s a house of mirrors and he can’t see his own reflection. It constantly shifts into static. he doesn’t stay in there very long.

Gigi

THIS WAS SO FUN. We don’t get a lotta info on her so,,, ehehehe >:)))) time for Outis to go bananas

from what we see,,  her life is very structured, very organized - she’s got all her shit together!! 

She’s got everything she ‘should’ want, but,,, its not actually making her happy? 

She says herself that she feels completely ignored in the position she’s in right now, despite presumably working for years to get where shes at!!

SO

its a castle - a big, bright, luminescent castle, like the ones she dreamed of when she was a kid. Pristine marble and gold, these big fluffy curtains everywhere <3

its beautiful. she hates it.

she feels bad for hating it? She’s built it from the ground up, right? shouldn’t feel so disconnected from what supposed to be the ‘basis of her entire self’, but she does. 

It’s like stepping back from an artwork you’ve spent years on, only to realize you don’t like how it turned out.

TBH it takes her,, a little while to actually find her memories.

She doesn’t like to think of the past a lot - she’s learned its not good to dwell

tucked away in this,, little corner of a small hallway is this giant darkroom with this big pool of Misc Chemicals in the middle.

RED LIGHTS AND ALL, ITS.... VERY CREEPY. 

She used to spent a lot of time in them, developing photos she’d take,,,,,, in this dinky little darkroom her highschool had. kept using it even as she progressed into more professional journalism!!

she supposes its,, pretty apt? It has that same,, disquieting familiarity that thinking of the past does. ,, nostalgia, but icky.

YEP ALL HER MEMORIES ARE PHOTOS!! she’s gotta toss the photo into the chemical pool and have a hop inside. 

It smells like,, peroxide and cleaning chemicals and that alone brings back unpleasant memories but it passes fairly quickly!!

the more recently she’s thought of the memory, the clearer it is!! If she hasn’t thought of it in years, everythings,, super grainy black-and-white with lots of static around the edges of her vision. If its smth she things of regularly, its,, vivid and bright and,, a little overexposed.

Glenn

At first I was gonna be like ‘well its a warzone bc,, its HIM’ BUT ALSO THATS TOO SIMPLE,,, MM,,, NO.

It’s a war museum

it reminds him a lot of the ones in his hometown AND FUCK THERE WAS A LOT OF EM SMDNSMDN

there was this,, massive military base, barely a mile out of the town he grew up in - one of those places that are created from a necessity for houses for ppl working there, yk? 

The base came first, a long time ago, and houses were built for the families. As farmers began to set, up it became less of ‘vague habitation’ and more of a town!!

that also meant that,,, smdsnd it was drenched in military influence - extremely patriotic, everyone was military, or knew someone who was military, etc

SO YEAH, WAR MUSEUMS FEEL SUPER FAMILIAR. it has almost a religious sacredness for him.

It isn’t as solid as the others - like it isn’t a Specific Type Of Object associated to memories, they’re all different!!

Medals, paintings, dioramas - theres this,, sleek while hallway with framed surgical equipment, and all his memories of medical operations are there. A lot of stuff his from his point of view, others look like someone hid in a corner and sculpted him out. Touching them puts him into the memory!

He’s alright for,, maybe 1/4. Until he comes upon a memory that,, actually shows him. From an outside/third person perspective.

His face is covered in every single memory of his pre-surgery self. He wanders for nearly an hour, tracing back - his wedding, getting the letter saying he was drafted, nothing.

paintings have this thick, tar-like sludge smeared over sections that have his face. Sculptures are decapitated. 

more recent memories, after the surgery? sure! he can see himself perfectly. Everything before then?

:/

yep you’ve got it its because he literally hasn’t looked at a photo of himself since he got the surgery :) and he’s forgotten what he used to look like.

needless to say, he doesn’t linger very long.

Myc

OH THIS WAS HARD. The irony isn’t lost on me that,,, the one who’s a mind reader is also one who’s internal motives and thoughts and feelings we see the least of MSNDMSNDS.

LITERALLY I BLANKED SO HARD ON THIS. BUT I THINK I’VE GOT ONE THAT VIBES?

He’s what he’s always been babey! a stranger in the crowd!

‘crowd’ is generous smdnsmd

its a lot more of a,,, street. This long, infinite street lined with buildings in the middle of spring-summer - it has that nice fresh smell.

A vague combination of all the places he’s been. 

While people do shuffle about a bit, nobody really moves - they aren’t gonna start walking down the street or anything.

Memories are accessed by finding a key person who was in those memories - as usual, the transition to a memory is done through touch!

his mindscape isn’t,,, upsetting in the traditional way? Like there’s no scary room or weird atmosphere. If anything, it feels too nice. Anybody else would feel completely chill in his subconscious.

It feels wrong specifically for him.

It’s like,,,, when you look at a really old black-and-white photo and you’re like ‘damn, all those people are dead, that feels weird. that’s kinda fucked my guy’

except imagine you got to meet those people - that you saw them, a hundred, two hundred years ago.

Not only that, but you could see inside their heads.

Current thoughts and the way they think them, their favorite things - their family and friends. Every hope and dream they had, everything they wanted to accomplish. Their deepest fears. The things that make up a person. All in the time it would take to glance at them, or brush shoulders on the subway.

now come back. look at that photo.

of course, you weren’t friends - you hadn’t even talked to them, but you knew them. Everything about them. Maybe better than anybody who did actually talk to them, because you didn’t have the filter of language and unsaid words.

Do you have the right to mourn someone when you’ve never even heard their voice?

*jazz hands* so yeah Myc’s having a whole time in his subconscious.

 He really has never moved faster in his LLIIIIIFFFFEEEE. He just wants to get in and out as fast as possible.

As miserable as it is, It’s at least a refresher as to why he doesn’t get attached. Those are needed sometimes. He’s been getting a bit too chummy.

Andre

His drug use is implied to be how he copes with his OCD and Tourettes and possible religious trauma? Which gives so much to work with when crafting his subconscious smnsmd

Catholic Guilt x Eyestrain

Just,, this towering, omnipresent cathedral that's been vandalized to all hell? The pews all have these neon stickers and UV lights underneath em? Someone took a giant paintbrush and just dragged it behind them, making streaks of color on the walls? The candles on the walls are replaced with these super bright, colorful flood lights?

The holy water fond has jungle juice in it and that makes him laugh WAY longer than it should have lmao

It's kinda like when you're watching a 3D movie and you take the glasses off and there's that,, Fuzzy Aura that makes your eyes hurt?? Yeah that but its Neon Green-And-Pink and fucking EVERWHERE sdmnsmd

these long, stretching hallways that no matter what will always bring him back to the start. It's super dusty, but the apse is scarily clean.

OH and there's these,, angel statues everywhere around the room - Kinda like the ones you'd see in a cemetery? Their heads are wrapped all the way around with neon tape and glittery chains but he can still hear them whispering.

His memories are depicted in stain-glass windows - stepping through em feels like jumping in a cold lake.

JR Scheimpough

His office. 

I had a few ideas for him, but he's so thoroughly entrenched in Cognito day-in, day-out that I can't imagine it being anything else. 

even HE isn't surprised when he opens his eyes and he's just,, sitting in his office again. just feels like some kind of sick joke. Of course, the thing his mind would conjure is his office, as if his life isn’t already some surreal tragi-comedy smdnsmd.

LIKE,, TANGENT HERE BUT,,

 it isn't even a case like Reagan's, where he cares about Cognito and WANTS to improve it and WANTS to make it the best it can be LIKE NOPE NOPE /ABSOLUTELY/ NOT

Cognito Inc is a beast that's eaten him from the inside out and filled in the gaps and is now shambling around in the body of what used to be JR Scheimpough. It’s a parasite and he is a host unto it.

OH and his mini golf set is still there though so that's fun :)

When he opens the door, it's an endless void. There's a red rotary phone on his desk with a phone book beside it.

Memories are each associated to a phone number bc even his subconscious can't make shit easy for him smdnsmdns

YEP THIS POOR BITCH IS GONNA BE SITTING AT HIS DESK, FLIPPING THROUGH THOSE THIN, FIDDLY LITTLE PAGES FOR LIKE THREE HOURS TRYING TO FIND THE RIGHT MEMORY SMSMNDSMD BECAUSE FUCK HIM I GUESS

when he dials the number, the scene outside changes!! He can step out of his office, into the memory, or he can just open the blinds up and observe from a distance.

He likes the distance. lots of memories have Rand - the less he has to interact with him, the better.

GOD THAT TOOK SO LONG IM GONNA EAT MY OWN SHOE <3333 MDNSMDS IT WAS SUPER FUN THO. lmk if you had smth else in mind!! I may come back and rework some elements one day but who knows smdnsd