#definitely Psychonauts though

[aestheticallynotdeerlightful]

Style swap- Invader Zim and Psychonauts

Cause I thought it would be fun and practice

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(Please do not use or repost my works anywhere without explicit permission from me first thank you <3)

[maplemaplemaplemaplemaple]

there was a really loud bad sensory party at my flat tonight so i redrew a doodle i did all the way back in september of last year. drawing autism sasha cures all my woes

bonus sashas from earlier this week::

[erigold13261]

consider: lizzie/dion

Personally I don't like those two together, but I can see why people might light them both in a relationship!

The two seem like opposites but not. They push people away in different ways. Dion is a dick to people while Lizzie pushes jokes too far and tries to scare people away.

It is hard for them to get close to other people in a meaningful way, and that might be why the two get close together.

They both at first try to push the other away, but because of how they are neither backs down as the one getting pushed. So they just stick together and slowly grow close over time.

Um, I don't really have much else in my head for the two. I do like the idea of Lizzie giving Dion a tattoo, either a temporary one or a permanent one that they did themself.

Also Dion and Lizzie making stories together. Like short horror stories or just creatively writing together. I can see the two of them really pushing the envelope when it comes to stories and going into some pretty dark but interesting places.

The two would LOVE to scare campers/kids that visit the mother lobe or circus when they are together.

[dammarchy211]

Sorry I live in oc land. Yay yay yay yay yay yay yay

C.R.I.M.E. Gets a style guide though isnt that cool wooaaahhh.

Now that they have a different logo tho I should definitely remake the psycho-portals. The ones that aren’t Wanda’s look like ass (Cheri’s a psychonauts one but it also looks kinda good)

[artmolonara]

Did more doodles at work today. Getting a final design for Psychonauts AU Waldo. He's definitely as tall as Loboto with a similar structure. His eyes would probably be like Bob Zanato's in concept, though having it also be on the lenses only would be interesting. And I was feeling like drawing Spamton today, specifically Spamton Neo.

If you like my work, consider supporting me on Ko-Fi via the link. Commissions are open!

Buy me a Ko-fi

[alexanderwales]

I've started playing Persona 5 Royal, my first Persona game, because it was ridiculously cheap on Steam. Back when I had GamePass, I installed it but never played past the opening, which I think is a bit weak. I'm about 20 hours in, through the first two palaces, and I'm not sure that my opinion is going to change too much, but I'm registering it now just in case (with some spoilers for the first fourth of the game):

I think having a division between the physical world and the mental world, which is physically represented, is super cool. I used it in Dark Wizard of Donkerk, and am overdue for using it in something else. Psychonauts did it too. Inside Out as well. I will always love this concept.

I don't think I like the gameplay. The last major JRPG I played was Final Fantasy VII Remake, and I thought the same there, so ... I don't know, maybe just a whole genre that I don't have that much of a taste for. It's mostly the random inventory items and pointless mob fights that I'm frowning at.

Severe lack of harmony between the battle stuff and the story. The mob fights have fuck all to do with infiltrating someone's mind. There's stupid elemental shit. The mob designs are interesting but mostly disconnected from each other and any theme.

So far, the psyche stuff has been surprisingly shallow, given that it's the main focus of the game. First palace was a gym teacher (Kamoshida) who's abusing students (physically and sexually), and sees the high school as his castle, but ... I don't know. I wanted more. We're literally walking around inside a character's mind, why is the character study so shallow? He should have layers, like an onion, each more horrible than the last. Kawakami is the other teacher we know best at the start, and there's no sense of how he views her, whether she's a sex object to him, or a non-entity, or someone he's worried about, or what, and I kept expecting that narrative beat to happen. I don't know, I think my fanfic would just radically change the entire palace concept so we get ten times the interplay between real world and mental world, and so we can turn these characters inside out and see all their gross bits.

I wish that Joker spoke more often. He's not really a blank slate protagonist, but there's very little personality there, as much as I'm trying, and that means that other characters are driving the plot and scenes and in general being more interesting than him. This is just a matter of personal preference, and a place where I definitely depart from what the average JRPG enjoyer likes.

I generally enjoy the slice-of-life elements, and to a lesser extent, the time management, though there's a part of me that's just screaming that I should be looking at a guide to maximize values. And if I do that, I'll no longer be playing the game, I'll just be watching scenes and doing inputs. I am definitely not playing this game twice, so if there's a difference in endings, or a big chunk of content I might miss, so be it.

It's relatively low on the anime shit that I hate, though there's still plenty of time for me to be disappointed. The way they're handling Ann is ... kind of not great. She was sexually harassed and then immediately after they have this whole "nude modeling" plot that's played for laughs and titillation, and it's possibly just a me problem here (avoiding spoilers for now), but "girl who was leered at and sexually pressured by her gym teacher being then jokingly pressured by her friends to do sexual stuff she's uncomfortable with" is ... not how I would write it. (The answer to "how I would write Ann" would certainly be pretty long, and I haven't finished the game yet, so maybe it gets better, or gets given more meat in the hangouts or whatever.)

There's still time, but I sort of assume that we're just never going to go into the minds of the protagonists, which is a shame. Tons of possibilities there, and I think if they were going to explore any of them, they would have done it by now. I guess I feel the palaces are underdeveloped enough that I probably wouldn't be satisfied by how they treat the protagonists anyway, but it's what I would have done. Let me see a physical manifestation of how Ryugi feels about his alcoholic father. Let me see Joker's defiance. Let me see Ann's self-image. Show me links between these characters, the differences in how they see the social web.

The frame story for the game is an interrogation by the cops, and I am not a fan. Half the time they're just yanking me out of the story I was in the middle of to signpost "hey, this guy is important". Possibly this will all payoff later in some interesting way, like halfway through the game we reach the "present" and the frame breaks. I usually like that. I've had thoughts on the interesting ways the frame story could be used, and so far they haven't used it in those ways. (Also, there's a bit of weirdness where ... I am pretty sure that I was fighting shadows and using powers outside the Metaverse? Unless the interrogation is actually taking place within the Metaverse. Unsure whether I can register a prediction on this basis, or if there are just more mechanics/wrinkles later on. So far, the interrogation taking place within someone's Palace doesn't seem like it would comport with the rules/expectations that have been set up, but there's still time. I'd prefer not being spoiled if there is a clever payoff or twist.)

This game is apparently 100 hours long, which means it's going to take me forever to finish it. I am enjoying it in spite of any quibbles above, but I'm also feeling like it's only 80% of the game that I want it to be, partly down to execution and partly down to personal preference.

[laowaek]

marina|15|🇷🇺

Tcc : Andrew, Dylan n Eric, Vlad, Roof, James, and others but mostly the ones I mentioned

Interests : horror movies,games, true crime community, drawing, psychology, astronomy and history,breaking bad, my blood valentine's, trainspotting, creepypasta

Music : Nine Inch Nails, Soundgarden , Powerman 5000, Deftones , Superheaven , Type O Negative , HIM , VV , Lifelover , Këkht Aräkh , Psychonaut 4 , Lumen , my bloody valentine , System Of A Down , Limp Bizkit , Nirvana

I freaking love knives and weapons. I can talk about them for hours, just describing different knives and their features. I also collect knives—though my collection isn't huge yet, it's definitely going to grow much bigger over time

Languages : Russian, English, Romanian , Ukrainian

discord - laowaek

[be-fae-do-crimes]

Intro Post

You can call me Bac (not my real name)! I use fae/faer or it/its since I'm not out to enough people irl to hear those a lot.

Not an 18+ only blog but I am an adult and it's a blog about my experiences, so if I ever post anything iffy I'll tag it #mdni.

Labels I'm vibing with currently:

Otherkin/kintypes: faekin, shapeshifterkin, mycanthrope/funguskin

Archetrope: storyteller/narrator archetrope (both my role in my fae community and a crucial role in my life now)

Paratypes*: lives that I lived for a long time as a shapeshifter (see below)

Otherhearted/kithtypes: lives that I lived briefly as a shapeshifter that were still meaningful (see below)

Copinglink/copingkin: I'm aware that my identity is largely a coping mechanism via intense autistic special interest

Quoiluntary: my experiences are somewhere between voluntary and involuntary

Otherkinnity: This blog is mostly about my otherkin journey. I'm still early in my awakening, plus being a shapeshifter makes things confusing, so things may change.

I'm a faerie made up of mycelium who used to be able to shapeshift. My theory is that most of my memories were being held elsewhere in the mycelium, so I have limited access to them now that I'm in a disconnected human form. As I got older, I tried to stay in each form for longer periods of time and fit in with families of animals to collect information. I call these periods my "lives", even if they were only for short periods. They're categorized further by whether they're my kintypes (core to my faekin/shapeshifter/mycanthrope identity), my paratypes (lives I lived for long enough that they're inexorably connected to my kintypes), or my kithtypes (lives I lived for a short time but still identify with enough for them to make the list).

Lives I've lived (roughly in order):

Mycelium in a mycorrhizal network - kintype

Shifting mushroom (still connected to the network, but then disconnecting myself to become more mobile) - kintype

Constantly shifting being (figuring out my shapeshifting powers) - kintype

Catnip plant (briefly, introducing myself to a pack of smilodons) - kithtype

Smilodon - paratype

Sea otter - paratype

Harbor seal - paratype

Cat-sìth (large black cat with a white spot on the chest) - paratype

Snow leopard - paratype

Eurasian magpie - paratype

Cheetah cub with something similar to wobbly cat syndrome (which also caused some more erratic shapeshifting) - kithtype

Human (stuck without shapeshifting) - current form

Lives I'm questioning:

Canada lynx

Whale

Some sort of plant that I lived a full life as

Hognose snake

In between these lives, I would travel back to the fae realm to be my true self for a bit. I would also use this time to store the thoughts, memories, and instincts that weren't needed in the mycelium of my community. I've used the analogy of backing myself up to the cloud.

Gender and Sexuality: I don't have an exact word for my gender since it is outside of human comprehension. Whatever mushrooms have going on is what I'm supposed to be. I've (mostly) happily settled in a human form though, and so in my more human life I call myself a queer man.

DXs: Autism and OCD, physically disabled

Fandoms: TTRPGs, musicals, furry fandom, Nimona (comic and movie), Psychonauts, Steven Universe, Slay the Princess, Hades, many others but those are my biggest interests atm.

*Definition of paratype: "an identity facet that only exists in relation to a preestablished identity"

[ponett]

Do you have a specific game developer(s) that you take inspiration from?

I mean, pretty much everything I play kinda gets absorbed into my brain as something that may or may not influence my own work. I think that's just normal as a game developer. You're always taking note of what other people have done with the medium you work in, whether it's something you like or something you would do differently

For more specific names, I guess Shigesato Itoi would have to be a big one given how foundational Mother is for me. I could say similar things about Pixel just because Cave Story is half the reason I became an indie dev. I would also definitely point to Tim Schafer. Honestly it's not even like all of his games are my favoritest games ever (though I will single out Psychonauts 2 as a favorite), but I just really vibe with how he approaches video games as an art form, and his focus on characters and comedy and story. And also he's just a designer who has tons and tons and tons of thoughts on record because 2 Player Productions has lived in the Double Fine offices for like a decade at this point, filming multiple in-depth documentaries about the studio's creative process. I didn't love Broken Age in the end, but that documentary series definitely had an impact on me.

[illustrationismyhaven]

Psychonauts asks -

How do Lili's archetypes interact with each other?

Luckily for you I have a chart for this. But before I get into the Archetypes I wanna talk about how Lili herself sees them first.

Sophisticate: Lili doesn't really like Sophisticate because to her, she embodies the "perfect" girl she thinks everyone would want her to be. The perfect daughter, the perfect Agent, etc. She is the perfect archetype for trying to make a good impression to other agents and interns. But most of the time, Lili chooses to leave her out of stuff.

Loose Canon: Lili's first ever archetype and the one she see's her self in the most. (... To some extent of course.) She's not just useful in combat and distracting enemies but she quick to act in high stake situations.

Hopeless Romantic: To put it simply: Lili is very embarrassed of HR. She's very useful in the field and even the garden (she's able to restore health quickly when your low/if you die, kind of like Mipha's Grace in Botw. She can use this on plants too.) But Lili can't stand the way she acts around people she cares about. She's still trying to grow out of the romanticized versions of love she grew up with from books and television since she was a kid, but HR represents that small part in her mind that still believes all of it, and even wants to have some day. Similar to Sophisticate, Lili doesn't like to bring her out often, if at all.

LC and S: LC thinks S is lame and similarly to Lili doesn't like her cause she views S as the "perfect" wannabe. S isn't very fond of LC because she thinks she leaves a bad impression.

LC and HR: HR doesn't mind LC that much except when she starts acting rude to people HR loves (Raz, for example.) LC on the other hand can't stand HR, and the smoke of her cigar kills HRs flowers if she get tooclose, because she wants to keep her away that badly.

S and HR: S is alright with HR. She gets embarrassed and frustrated in some of their interactions because HR is easily distracted, but she definitely prefers her over LC, and understands that HR is a somewhat healthy archetype to have when it comes to relationships. HR likes her because she's polite and well spoken, and doesn't kill her flowers when she gets near her.

S and Lili: Sophisticate wants what's best for Lili, right? Really, she's just what Lili thinks everyone wants for her. She wants to protect Lili, not from threats, but from ruining her image. And Lili hates it.

HR and Lili: HR loves Lili! She thinks she's beautiful and wants to protect her emotionally, because she IS the embodiment of all the love and care in Lili's heart (even though she tries to hide it) Yes, Lili doesn't summon her often, and yeah, she usually sticks to Raz or his archetypes most of the time when she is summoned, but she'll always be there when Lili needs her.

LC and Lili: LC doesn't mind Lili. She's always ready to go when Lili needs her for a fight, but that's about it. She's quick to work and is always willing to help out with taking out threats with a smile. Albeit a toothy one.

[aestheticallynotdeerlightful]

THIS JUST IN: WORLDS SNAZZIEST 10 YEAR OLD

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Please do not use or repost my works anywhere without explicit permission from me first, thank you <3)

[numberonetacostan]

I HAVEN'T BEEN HERE IN A BIT AND I'M SORRY FOR THAT LOOMY!!! a lot of things are going on in my mind and I'm trying to sort of heal the best way I can but your honorary microphone fictionkin has finally come back to your inbox!

psychonauts has me on a chokehold and in this game you can pretty much get inside people's minds! and I am a hurt/comfort lover in the sense I like when characters see their loved ones hurting so much in the most ugly and messy way, every single crack in their armor and mind that they try to keep together until they are unable to anymore and it all explodes and crashes down. I am a hurt/comfort lover in the more psychological 'horror' type of way you know? its just amazing.

So I love to think about how the others seeing taco being unwell would be, or even somehow getting a LITERAL glimpse into her mind, her mind is a garden just like that maze, filled with roses left and center, I'd like to think she keeps the memories with pickle buried somewhere not too deep but not too open either, just enough to keep it out of her mind and for it to not bother her anymore and each time the memories and feelings bubble up it becomes harder for her to repress her feelings and keep them from affecting how she interacts with the world around her. When mic leaves however the garden is completely and utterly destroyed, the roses are even more wilted and damaged than they were the first times, memories are floating around so openly and quickly that it becomes overwhelming- she has lost control of her mind completely and she loathes it. The memories are all scattered and she is unable to push them back again, she is alone and she is unable to hold the raw agony that it brings her. On episode 15 even though she is trying to keep herself together by once more completely repressing her feelings and trying to put them in a place where they cannot bother her (for a while at least) I'd like to think her memories with mic are so important to her that even though they are painful she finds herself completely unable to truly bury them somewhere, she holds them as if it were precious glass and she finds herself hesitating when trying to bury those memories like the others. Mic just had such impact on her, her mind is freaking out and its so messy and scattered that she is just not able to take it anymore and well- we already know what happened on episode 15.

Speaking more of episode 15, I love taco having ptsd and trauma for her living in the woods and dying in general. I imagine she is SO on guard after it, paranoidly checking every corner to be absolutely and completely sure that she is completely safe and- oh mepad its you, what do you mean I am COMPLETELY okay totally not frightened, mhm, definitely.

Taco has a bad habit of trying to repress her feelings completely and I think mepad would just sort of sit gently right beside her and tell her something about how its okay to be scared and frightened and vulnerable, because we already know taco being taco avoids vulnerability like the absolute plague. She is hurt and grieving and lost and those feelings only grow worse when she loses mepad like she lost everything else. She goes nonverbal doesn't talk for like a period of time and I imagine only really leans into mic without talking, mic is warm and safe and it all hurts and she just wants to rest. I love thinking about taco having concerning reactions about very specific things and the contestants picking up on this immediately, is like my AU thing where she scratches with her claws the kitchen counter on instinct when OJ joked around about how ''well behaved'' around mic she was.

This is more things that I thought after psychonauts I think taco has an inner child in her mindscape in the sense of like, no she didn't had a childhood, but she wishes she could have, she yearns what she could have never had in her position, she yearns for the innocent child-like wonder and joy you would get, to have a family to call your own, to have people that loved you unconditionally, to have a home and grow up in a happy and healthy place where perhaps the only real offense was tracking mud on the carpet. Her inner child is more just this rage mixed up with so many sadness over what she is unable to ever have, she tries to bottle it all up but like mepad always told her- it doesn't really help. It just makes the problem much more bigger until you aren't able to take it anymore and explode, I imagine hyperventilating or having breakdowns and knife immediately going to her and calming her down, I think it would be sweet if he just stood right beside her everytime he picked up over when she is frightened because of something (things like the snow for example, you said she had Chionophobia or something right? I am so excited to hear the story about how the contestants figured that one up but continuing) again just a silent solidarity, taco treats his hands when they are all fucked up for punching the walls in frustration, and knife keeps her calm when she is about to freak out. Sort of stays beside her, when there is fear in her eyes yk?

I hope you enjoy all of this loomy! its more a lot of thoughts put together but again I hope you like it regardless :3c

Hi Kiara!!^^ Welcome back, and thank you for sending in an ask!!! :] Please don't worry about time between asks!!! I'm happy to see you all whenever you feel like coming in, no need to push yourselves!!!! <3

I love both hurt/comfort and psychological horror, so I'm game!!

Your description of Taco's mind sounds quite beautiful!! I agree that Taco simply can't repress her memories and feelings surrounding Mic- her heart's been touched and it's too late to go back!!!!

TACO TRAUMA NEURON ACTIVATION!!! She is SO on guard all the time. Always listening out for predators, always keeping her steps soft, eating food as fast as possible, etc. As much as Mepad would be a comfort to her, it would take a short bit for her to get used to something so big that's not trying to eat her.

AUGH Mepad speaking for hours about how vulnerability is okay and how he will accept her no matter what and her feelings are not only valid but incredibly important as she silently sits with him <3. He's a tablet, his throat isn't going to get dry or anything, so he can give her all the reassurance she needs <3.

I so so so agree I headcanon Taco going nonverbal for a period after Mepad dies/bursts into flame because of forbidden battery juice. There are a lot of silent pleas for affection from Mic, and I'd say Mic reciprocates and gives affection quite easily. She strikes me as the physical type, and she can see how much Taco needs it.

Her clawing the counter when OJ says she's well-behaved is low-key funny though. But yeah, the others would start to pick up on her general paranoia after being in the forest/trauma responses/survival mode-ness, and probably try to avoid triggering/upsetting her. Especially after she lashes out for the first time, and especially if it's especially bad. Cherries tries to prank her and she nearly shoots him and then goes straight into hyperventilating. He does not try to prank her again.

Yeah!! Her inner child would be, in a way, the Taco that was left outside for years, yeah? Everyone else had all the food they needed, a nice warm place to sleep, but she was left outside. For years. Even if she'd done a bad thing that resulted in her being left out, she's allowed to be upset about having spent so long living with nothing.

Knife and Taco both having serious issues solidarity!! I think they could bond a bit more now that Taco is trying to change and Knife is fucking dead, though considering he's close with Pickle I don't think he and Taco will exactly become friends. But, there'd be an understanding there that they can't really get from anyone else, yeah?

CHIONOPHOBIA MENTION!!!! I am working on it!!!! o7!!!! Between school and the fact that I'm putting more detail into chionophobia because it's my baby and I love it, it will take a tad bit longer to come out than usual, but it will come out once I finish!!!!! I'm excited to share it!!!!

[jasper-pagan-witch]

Hello, please pardon my ignorance but may I ask what is chaos magic? What is pop magic? And what are their differences?

Hey, don't apologize for asking questions! This is how we learn!

Chaos magic is a lot of things, but two of the primary definitions are either A: "switching between different magical paradigms a lot in order to explore many practices" (which unfortunately can often lead to appropriation if you're not careful), or B: "putting together what works for you in magic through trial and practice". I, personally, practice the latter of the two definitions, though there are many more out there. (A good example of the difference between A and B is Peter Carroll's "Liber Null and Psychonaut" versus Phil Hine's "Condensed Chaos".)

Pop culture magic is a subtype of chaos magic that draws on pop culture. Historically, the most common one was Lovecraftian/Cthulhu Mythos, but it's spread out a lot since then. Typically, you want to use a pop culture source that you deeply love and appreciate, one that you feel connected to in a way that makes it easy to adapt and use in our world's magic. It's incredibly personal, so it's hard to make overarching statements about it.

There's a lot more to both of those than that, but this is a decent intro. I keep meaning to remake it, but I have a post of pop culture magic and paganism resources here. I'm not happy with the format and layout, but it gives you links to click to read how other people approach the subject.

I hope this helps, anon!

~Jasper

[oil-rigging]

Here we go again. Oiler with the Psychonauts. Today we’re talking about ✨Vision✨ as I am on the Ford Cruller kick.

My cell shaded idiot, oh how I adore your color scheme.

I was struck the other day with like, an epiphany in which I somehow tied Vision and Ford together with branching comparisons that made me feel like I was losing it for a while, so I’m going to try to make those connections coherently via text.

I know I promised more writing stuff that Was Not analysis but LET ME HAVE THIS PLEASE!!!

I know that primarily, Vision is a visionary. Like that’s his whole thing. He’s the idea machine, perception into invention, the observation to Otto’s hands-on approach (idk if I’ll speak on the rest of the feast although I love them, but that’s definitely a part of my Dr. Touch analysis) that later amounts to discovery. He is at the helm of the think tank that was the dawn of the Psychonauts.

Also, as I last mentioned, he’s green. This represents balance. He’s the glue that holds things together, pretty much.

But also, to make him an eye is to saddle him with impossible burden. I reference my last Ford analysis regarding the mirror. Subconsciously, Helmut probably knows that something’s wrong with Ford right now, or at least there was at one point. To gaze upon oneself requires an eye, and while Ford was doing that in the scientific-exploration-of-the-mind sense beforehand, it’s taken on a whole new meaning as of the events of the second game.

Calling back to the ‘there was something wrong with Ford at one point’, the concept of ‘see no evil’, or rather the fact that Ford had to look deeply at someone he loved very much and was forced to reckon with the fact that Lucy was very much not the same person she’d been when they’d met after being in denial about it for such a long time.

Maybe it was a subconscious hope from Helmut, that Ford saw that Lucy had a part in ‘killing’ him (even though they all did and all blamed themselves), and some little dramatic and ever so slightly salty part of him wanted Ford to recognize that.

Otherwise, this could reference Ford himself and the mirror theory. That he looked upon himself and he didn’t quite like what he saw, thus leading to the use of the Astralathe.

Again, it wasn’t as though Helmut ‘died’ before he saw the beginning of Ford’s downward spiral. He was around to see all of the emotions Ford went through before the battle of Grulovia.

Also, the matter of Helmut’s brain. We heard Helmut say something along the lines of ‘I sent you my brain!’ Maybe he briefly thought that Ford didn’t see it. Or ignored it.

My point is, while it may be subconscious, I think Helmut both sympathizes and is rather cross with Ford for a multitude of reasons, all of it eventually dulling down to a call for him to ‘open your eyes’. To see what has become of his lover (and, during Helmut’s monologue, to see that Lucy was still inside Maligula), to see that Helmut had very literally put his life in Ford’s hands, and to see that Ford had to take a long look at himself in order for anything good to come of any of the shit he started.

Once again crunched for time, I have to go shape the minds of a younger generation. Why they let a very anxious engineering major teach a metal safety course is beyond me.

[ottoslab]

(Shakes you) otto you've GOTTA tell me more about the freelance mystery solvers I GOTTA KNOW ABOUT EM WHAT ARE THEY DOIN !!! I love your designs sm btw your SO REAL FOR THIS AHH

HEEHEE ohhh ok cracks my knuckles. Im gonna be writing this right before passing Out for the night so apologies in advance if this isn’t very comprehensible but i will GLADLY explain the funny freelance mystery solvers o7

EDIT HI This got so long im putting it under a readmore KGJFNGKJSGK.

Also! I didn’t draw anything to go with this ask because i told myself id give my hand a break, but I do actually have some recent doodles of Vern and Kitty i was doing in between the lineup so I’ll put them here for a little display ^_^ theyre not in context of anything im about to mention, just some dynamic exploration stuff that are their own whole other rambles

Ok! Readmore time! Paragraphs of nonsense! For your viewing pleasure!

So!! Vernon and Kitty are both employed by True Psychic Tales independently of each other when theyre older. Vernon is an illustrator/interviewer for the graphic novel division and Kitty works in special effects makeup for the more-recent live action film division! They don’t end up crossing paths for a while until being assigned to work together to research stuff for an up-and-coming TPT film project or smth. They become work buddies after reconnecting (though they choose to mostly ignore the fact that they knew each other as kids due to How They Were back then. They’re both very embarrassed about it for numerous reasons)

It becomes commonplace for them to help each other out with projects, and eventually through their research (fact-checking and digging through old psychonauts mission archives) they start to come across old psychonauts files of unfinished or ‘suspicious’ looking missions, ones that normally didnt get the green light to be told in graphic novel form due to the fact that they were inconclusive and, as a result, don’t make for good stories.

Kitty and Vernon end up sort of… picking up on these old missions in their spare time. It’s not psychonauts work but its also not not psychonauts work, you know? They team up to try and work out what lead to dead ends in missions and cross-referencing possibly related stories with other stories, and go out into the field to try and get answers. I picture it a lot in my brain as an episodic mystery series vis a vis scooby doo. They pick their archived mission log of the week to check out, go out, get some answers, and get a conclusion to bring back to TPT and a new graphic novel is made of the story they were able to uncover! With some more overarching plots where they get a little in over their heads here and there.

Franke’s got a bit less of a fleshed out role in all of this atm, mostly because i havent thought of him as much as the other two? My current vague-idea i have is that she and kitty had a falling out during their teen years, and Franke calls Kitty and Vernon falsely claiming to have a lead on a mystery theyve been working on, in order to try and reconnect with Kitty after she stopped talking to him. He has to come clean when whatever she leads them to actually ends up being a real psychic issue, and she has to explain that she doesn’t know what’s going on because she hadn’t actually called in about anything legit.

Franke does end up being a good help despite technically being the reason they got into deep shit in the first place, and Vernon’s probably the one who asks her to stick around (Kitty isn’t against it, but definitely isn’t really all too welcoming about it either.) They definitely have a whole thing where they all get closer and Kitty and Franke get to mend fences (a character arc along the lines of franke realizing he was kind of a hardass who wanted to make up without actually accepting any faults, and some other super impressive character arcs along the way im sure.) And all three of them continue to go on mystery deep-dives and uncover unfinished psychonauts missions!! Wahoo yahoo!!

Mystery incorporated asses! They’re fun, i enjoy them a lot! Hopefully this is some good tidbits of detail for u thank u for asking about them :]

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

Re: your post about JohnandPaul. If you do wish to share them, I'd love to know your headcanons about John and Paul's feelings for each other. ( I do get your discomfort about sharing though and yeah, I also miss the long discussions and metas from back when Get Back came out. It feels like, except you and some others, most of my favorite blogs have moved on from the fandom)

I've been sitting on this ask for several days now.

First of all I hear you, re:blogs moving on. It's understandable, but it's also sad when my brain does not want to give this stuff up any time soon lol.

In my post I talked about having specific headcanons about their feelings for each other, but the truth is, it's more like I imagine hundreds of very specific somewhat plausible scenarios, while not actually fully buying into any of them.

I always struggle with how sure people are of some definite timeline of McLennon because I just don't see how it's in any way clear: the most compelling evidence that at least John had Those Feelings™ for Paul is stuff he said after the fact (compiled with the stronger case for John being attracted to men in general) – so, if I choose to interpret his words in that way, I'm still not very close to knowing when he developed this attraction. Let alone concluding anything substantial about Paul's feelings.

(And no, I really don't find the two of them saying the other looked good when they met particularly compelling. Appearance plays a huge role in first impressions, regardless of attraction.)

So I guess, it's more that I have open questions I return to again and again, for which I try to construct hypothetical answers that make sense to me. Aside from that bigger timeline question, here's a few more specific ones:

From what I've gathered researching the topic, listening to psychonauts speak about their trips, the acid mindset very much romanticizes all forms of human connection (among other things). I think that's probably what was going on during those "I know."–"I know." sessions John and Paul had on LSD. With that in mind, how might that have mixed in with John trying to understand how he felt about Paul? Could it have confused him? Opened him up to the idea? "Appeased" him for a while? (and again, the answer here would depend on the timeline of feelings in the end)

I still lean towards "Paul is not meaningfully attracted to men" (or at least "Paul valued other aspects of his relationship with John much more than physical attraction") – with that in mind I do kind of ask myself what Paul thought his relationship with John was exactly. Like, I don't pretend it was a standard, run-of-the-mill friendship, so I wonder a lot what his end-goal was, how he saw both of them continuing into later stages of life. The way he talks about the breakup, equating John choosing Yoko with John leaving Paul, speaks to something somewhat true about most couples that marry – but why did he not anticipate that before? What was different? Also, for $20 don't copout with "hurr hurr cause Cyn didn't matter"

Paul's various takes on The John Question continue to puzzle me. On the one hand, it sort of seems to me like Paul would have had enough context clues at the time to get that John was attracted to men, because some of our evidence for it is evidence he would have had access to – he also indicated at least once that John was in fact kind of openly bicurious??? (note: that rant keeps me up at night. Could write a whole thesis on it and also it's so fucking funny) On the other, Paul is pretty insistent that the rumours are Not True and he's not actually the only person to shoot them down like that. (May Pang, Julia Baird, Tony Bramwell, Hunter Davies off the top of my head) It shouldn't be a stretch of the imagination that a man born in the 1940s might have trouble rearranging the image he's made of his dead best friend so drastically (or in a way that might feel drastic to him). So what is it? Is Paul obfuscating the question to protect John's reputation/because he thinks the curiosity is in poor taste or does he genuinely not buy into it? I'm not actually sure whether he's weighed in on this since Yoko's "John Was BI!!!!" reveal. Has this stance developed over the years? And if I assume Paul does know about John's sexuality: does he in fact think John had feelings for him? I do think this is a thing he would never talk about if he did so it feels like there would be no way of knowing either way. But it also makes me wonder about the barriers he might have set up in his head to avoid that very question – because the truth is that if John had Those Feelings™ for Paul and Paul never knew, that's sort of the second-worst case scenario from Paul's perspective, right after John having never liked him in the first place.

AND THEN THERE'S JOHN. Because just because Paul may not have picked up on it, doesn't mean John wasn't putting anything down. But he could also very much have been sending mixed signals from his own end, right? And again, acid mindset + mid 60s Free Love shit: in that culture, how much could John making advances be perhaps taken as Flowery Friendship? Did he justify it to himself that way? Or was John actually violently shoving all of that down? Was he truly capable of that?

It really never ends – I'm not certain of ANYTHING, but give me a proposal (ie. "In My Life is about Paul") and I'll talk myself into circles exploring the ins and outs of that hypothetical.