#double Grian posting?????

[therubberducklad]

Growing (Is a) pain

[supernova3526]

[liloinkoink]

hello hello ddvau fans if you do not know me i do edits for ddvau and i have Known about this chapter for weeks and have been sitting on my rage at HG the whole time. and now it is released i need the people to see he is a bitch ass mf

anyway. starting off here. the very first thing HG says to Grian when talking about what happened is a threat

"i'm here to help you. i'm the best option you got, no one else will"

when i was editing for Doody, this line was just "i'm here to help." but Doody wanted it to come across somewhere in this chapter that HG has all the power in this situation and that HG wants Grian to know that. it was decided that the best spot to include that was right here, right off the bat. HG is Grian's only option and that is as much a promise as it is a threat. no one else will help Grian, and that includes saving him from HG if he doesn't tell HG what he wants to know

and then there's this page. when Grian isnt super forthcoming w info, HG pulls out Jimmy. HG knows better than anyone that Jimmy is completely innocent and that he had nothing to do w the attack--he's a victim here, and HG knows that better than anyone. he also knows, from being Grian and Jimmy's friend as a civilian for years, that Grian cares a lot about Jimmy, and is using that against Grian

he also knows from being a civilian and Jimmy's friend that Jimmy's pro-mutant stance isnt popular, and Jimmy could be framed if HG said something bad about him. HG is trying blatantly to use anti-mutant sentiments against Grian and Jimmy so that Grian will talk, in a moment Grian is already convinced he's going to be arrested for hiding his status as a mutant

(which: note that HG says he heard "rumors" about Jimmy's stance about mutants and his protests against the university's policies--it isn't rumors, HG knows this from being Jimmy's friend and coworker as Scar)

and then here, HG is the only one who was conscious and who was fully present for and remembers what happened during the MS attack. yeah, Tango was also there, but Tango is a known mutant, adn we've already seen people do not trust Tango and think Tango is dangerous--he's certainly not as trustworthy as HG, Superhero, Emerald Soldier, face of the military. he's the one people will trust most. what he says happened is what happened

HG says that yes, Grian’s secret is safe, but only because HG is choosing to keep it. Grian is safe because HG is allowing him to be. HG told everyone that Grian gained wings from the attack, and so HG won't arrest Grian. in this narrative which HG made up, Grian did not lie to the government and he was not always a mutant. HG said it, so it's true, even if he's lying. all HG has to do is change his mind and say that Grian was always a mutant who lied and hid his status from the government, and then Grian will be arrested. HG could change his mind at any time if Grian doesn't cooperate with him. he's very blatantly blackmailing Grian

fun fact! the original version of this line didn't have the "for now," but it was added in editing when Doody said they wanted it to be explicitly clear HG is threatening Grian

what HG says here is the truth. he isn't just representing the law--HG is above the law, and he isn't shy about making sure Grian knows that. he's willing to use anything in his disposal to get the information he wants, and he's willing to use anything available to him to make sure Grian complies with him. disguising it in friendly attitude and cookies and a phone number does not hide the fact HG was incredibly ruthlessly manipulative here

anyway. incredibly fun chapter. one of my favorites. i need DDVAU HG exploded

[boxofoxberry]

desertduo are NOT beating the allegations rn

[elizaisdunn]

how I imagine Grian telling the gang it’s time for a new season

[risibledeer]

hugs, all of joel's soulmates, lizzie, grian and eefo lol

Psst reqs are open, ik I draw a lot of Joel but i like drawing most hermipires so feel free ti ask, if uf like to

[dredgesnails]

its trafficpost time~ (again!)

1 / 2 / 3 / 4

[jeena-says-hi]

Grian shut up, we all know you love them

Thanks to @desertduo-but-everywhere for the screenshot!

[colvencrusnr]

I cant find the meme i traced this over anymore . Lalala i am still stuck in double life

[love-death-and-desert]

[kyasunn]

Coming soon to a theatre near you

[whereispearlescentmoon]

Just a warning guys:

If you see any account with no profile pic reposting art or text posts and adding a link to them, those are scam bots. They have stolen someone else’s post.

Do Not Reblog Or Like Their Posts! You are only spreading a scam link and stolen art! I keep seeing in the life series tags the past few days. These are bots that take popular posts and copy the tags on them and then repost. They are not actual blogs.

The ways to identify them are:

You have seen the post elsewhere

They have no profile photo

They have added a link, usually to Facebook but I don’t recommend clicking on them anyways

[hermitcraftx]

Joel winning the Life Series where he centered his entire gimmick this season around Family under the guise of "Joel Toretto" makes me insane because he was alone for so long in the Life Series and it works out so perfectly that the guy who was allergic to allies for the start of the life series and had to be forced into it with soulmates wins the season he focuses on Family. Poetic cinema.

1. Third Life Joel. No friends. No allies. He joined up with Monopoly Mountain last minute and died out of sight of either of them, mostly alone. He had a house full of dogs, not full of friends (and where is that familiar?), and nobody really mourned him when he was gone, offhand comments and brief "Oh No!s" following his death. Being alone got him nothing.

2. Last Life Joel. No friends. He's alone again, for the most part. In Last Life there's a lot of unknowns, a lot of instability- people can get back in yellow or green, or they try, so Joel has temporary red alliances with the likes of Scar and Grian but they don't last. He's alone. Again. Joel laments it, in one of his videos, IIRC, that he's bad at making allies, and "look at where it got him". The closest person he had to an ally in Last Life was Grian when they were both red, Grian seeing first hand how insane and blood thirsty Joel becomes on red. They call themselves the Deadliest Duo, and they kill people, and they laugh when they die. But Joel dies, still, killed by Scott, shortly after Grian permadies.

3. Double Life. Now it's different. Now we're seeing some changes. Joel gets put with Etho, who off the bat immediately considers him a liability, a notion he rejects and fights against to get Etho to respect him. He builds Etho a ship to try and impress him. Etho purposefully takes fall damage to remind him of what's at stake. He's not just a lone wolf, anymore, Etho's life is in his hands and he's not happy about it. Joel hates it, being treated fragile and like a bomb to go off. Eventually, they find out they work together well, they get killed, they go red and Joel goes crazy. Red rage is a real, definable, re-occuring phenomenon for Joel, he IS angry and he DOES want to make people pay. Etho in the life series is usually more reserved, and he holds Joel back, yes, but Joel also helps Etho out of his shell and pushes him to do things he wouldn't normally do. The ship burns everything burns. And then they burned. And Joel's first real alliance goes up in flames, literally.

4. Now Joel has a taste of what it's like to not be alone the entire season. He teams up with Jimmy and Grian, his Bad Boys, and he's fiercely loyal to them, and then to him. (Even Grian by his standards is FIERCELY loyal to the Bad Boys- I mean, he doesn't even kill one of them! I think. Not permanently?) He changes his skin, matching leather jackets, these are his people. And he'd die for his people. Joel and Grian try their best to keep Jimmy alive, Joel going so far as to say he'd have sacrificed himself to keep Jim alive, but it wasn't enough, he wasn't quick enough, and he died right afterwards, leaving Grian alone. But he wasn't alone. And he didn't go out alone.

5. Secret Life is.... weird. He has allies, yes, but it's a bit of a strange situation, he allies with the Mounders and he lives a bit of a ways away from them, not quite in the group but not quite out of it. But he doesn't want to be alone again. He knows what happens when you're alone in this game, and he doesn't ever want that to happen to him again. Mumbo goes out almost immediately following Jimmy, the third to go out. Pearl IIRC betrays the Mounders and messes around with Gem, which is really funny given the events of Wild Life. It's only him and Bdubs at the end, both murdered by Scott.

6. Now. Wild Life. Again. Joel knows what happens if you're alone in this series, and he never wants it to happen to him again. So he bases his persona around a movie character, one that everyone knows and likes, he thinks. He makes himself someone that he thinks people will want to befriend, one where he won't have to be alone. He makes himself look strong, fake muscles clumsily attached to his arms, quoting about family and the importance of it, a vast difference from the lonely man in 3rd Life and Last Life who couldn't be assed to find allies. And it works. He has Gem- and everyone fears them, for once. Everyone already knows Joel is insane, but with Gem behind him, he's a significant threat. Gem keeps him grounded, and from doing stupid shit that gets him killed. They have Etho, and he comes and visits, which is nice. Everyone struggles a lot with the Wild Cards early game but them, neither of them losing lives for several sessions. Joel even comments that normally he's red by session 4, and he doesn't know what to do with himself without all that anger. He lives his best life, with Gem, with his car.

And then Grian's allies die, and isn't that familiar, and Joel lets him into the Family, because of course he would, allying with Grian is like second nature to him at this point. Maybe he feels guilty for leaving him in Limited Life, or maybe he just knows what it's like to be alone and doesn't want that for him. Who knows. He tries and fails at building traps. As soon as he's yellow he gets a double kill on Scott and Pearl, and Grian and Jimmy scream with him like old times. And it's okay, I mean it's stressful and it's like the end of the world but Joel's doing okay, he has his family, he's not alone.

And then the finale comes and it's so hectic and so many people are trying to kill him and Grian saves him, Grian tries so hard to save him, and isn't that something. Being worthy of being saved by Grian. And Gem goes out, not even to a player, to a vex, one of his family members is gone and it's so hectic Joel can't even stop to mourn or he, too, will die. And then he finds Grian and he stumbles to him screaming "Thank God you're alive!" because it had gotten so crazy, so wild that Joel didn't truly even know if Grian was alive, but he was, he still had Family, he wasn't alone again, not this time. And Grian says that he thinks Joel can win, Joel can win, that he'll give Joel his life, that it's about time he wins and Joel gets flashbacks to wanting to die for Jimmy, and Scar wanting to die for Grian and what that did to him, and he doesn't want that, but GOD he wants to win. So badly. And then Grian got knocked off the tower with Bdubs, ender pearling off, screaming how he refused to go like Mumbo, like Skizz, not on his tower and Joel's running, EVERYONE is targeting him, Grian takes out Pearl and Joel takes out Cleo and Ren.

And then it's just them, then it's just Joel and Grian, and Joel can't even find Grian, he just heard the arrows as Grian tries to shoot him, going back on his word as expected, which Joel-- Joel is glad for. Because he wanted to win this on his own terms, he wanted to win because he won, he would not be given anything. He's not alone this time. And he charges up the tree, and he kills Grian, kills his Family, his Bad Boy, his red friend, his ally in the sand, screaming that he's sorry, and Joel laughs.

Joel laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

[chipperchemical]

assigning a devastating quote to each Life Series member because i want to ruin your day (feel free to suggest alternatives!)

Bdubs - "I love you. It will end." (Anna Belle Kaufman, "Cold Solace")

BigB - "I never expected you to actually finish anything. You were always leaving. I always picture you with a suitcase in your hand." (Margarita Karapanou)

Etho - "What are you doing, you wretch, killing your own son, burning him, it's the same old story, it starts with a lamb and ends with the murder of the person you should love most." (José Saramago, "Cain")

Gem - "God never gave me a single useable passion, but did give me sharp teeth and a strong jaw." (Traci Brimhall, "The Fate of my Seven Husbands")

Scar - "It was then that Sisyphus realised the gods must be gone, that his wings were nothing more than a perception of their absence. He dared to raise his fist to the sky. Nothing, gloriously, happened. Then a different terror overtook him." (Stephen Dunn, "Sisyphus and The Sudden Lightness")

Grian - "You're addicted to loneliness and desperation. It's the strongest emotion you've ever known, so your subconscious tells you that it's your destiny. You will be alone always and then you will die." (Heather Havrilesky, entry for the "Ask Polly" column)

Impulse - "Grieving, grieving, constantly grieving. I mourn what could have been, what will not be, what I can't save." (tumblr user "ojibwa")

Martyn - "Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All that blood was never once beautiful. It was always just red." (Kait Rokowski)

Lizzie - "This was always going to happen. She's been dead since the beginning." (Aeschylus, "The Oresteia")

Mumbo - "I beg you, eat me up. Want me down to the marrow." (Hélène Cixous, "The Love of the Wolf")

Pearl - "You want to be loved if only to prove it possible: to tell the world that someone saw you as a conquest and came back alive." (Silas Denver Melvin, "Love as an Act of Merciful Conquer")

Ren - "My God, my God, whose performance am I watching? How many people am I? Who am I? What is this space between myself and myself?" (Fernando Pessoa, "The Book of Disquiet")

Skizz - "Better creatures could love you, I know. But now they'll have to get through me." (tumblr user "ihopewestay")

Scott - "She decides God is no good, but he must exist, he must exist so she can hold him accountable." (Ada Limón, "The Echo Sounder")

Joel - "I've always preferred Cain. His angry loneliness, his lack of mother's love, his Christian sarcasm: "Am I my brother's keeper?" asks his brother's murderer. Aren't we indeed the keepers of our dead?" (Valzhyna Mort, "Genesis")

Jimmy - "I won't last. Memory is sweet. Even when it's painful, memory is sweet." (Li-Young Lee, "Mnemonic")

Tango - "Isn't all that rage so ugly? And isn't it mine, still? Good God, isn't it mine?" (Ashe Vernon, "Buried")

Cleo - "God is fucking with my oblivion. If he wanted forgiveness, he shouldn't have given us memory." (Vi Khi Nao, "Fish In Exile")

[luminousdryad]

smth smth Joel's win has long been anticipated since his madness arc in Last Life where he was fighting to live mainly for himself with a fluctuating alliance with Scar, then in Double Life he finally had a teammate who would stay with him–albeit not out of their own choice–which meant at least he had something to fight for. "The ship burns, everything burns!" This time, he went mad because they destroyed the symbol of his relationship–something he built for Etho to prove he's a worthy partner, only for it to burn down just as if breaking him and Etho apart was that easy...and yet, they died together, burning together like their ship, and if you think about it, Joel must've thought the ship burning meant it was as fragile as their forced alliance...but even with his doubts, his hesitation, Etho stayed with him. His rage came from his insecurity, not merely out of loneliness.

Then in Limited Life he finally had real allies, people he'd willingly give up his life for (whereas in Double Life, he had to stay alive for his partner), even intending to sacrifice himself just to break Jimmy's curse. Jimmy's death broke him, drove him to insanity.

In Secret Life, he found himself allied with the people who were shunned when they turned red, and no one thought they'd make it–but they fought together til the end, him and Bdubs together, with Pearl fighting to secure them the win. His allies knew loneliness and desperation, the way it haunted them even with a newfound family. They tolerated each other's madness that way, a visceral understanding of how it feels to lose your mind as you fight and fight for an uncertain future while your former allies seem to turn against you.

Then came Wild Life. Joel has always been wild, driven by rage and an inclination for chaos. But this time, finally seeing how his previous antagonism caused him isolation, he decides that this season is about family. He'll antagonize no one, not even Scott. He never knew how to cope with his natural madness, but now, he made peace with it–with the help of Gem, someone equally unhinged but in control of herself, to ground him and pacify his anger when needed.

This time his violent tendencies didn't bring about his downfall, because this time, he was finally at peace with himself. He wasn't the desperate hunter chasing down victims. His tactic was to avoid and evade, let them chase him down this time, waiting for the time to strike. Gem's death, unlike Jimmy's, gave him the push he needed to focus. And with Scott out of the way, he is now secure in himself, fighting steadily even if he panics internally.

Before, he played the part of the hunter only to fall prey. Now, in becoming the prey, he became the hunter.

Make it wild, the final instruction said. But Joel has always been wild. To be wild is to be passionate, turbulent and volatile, and he has always been those things. But wild can also mean, "to deviate from the intended or expected course." People expected him to lose it and cause his own downfall again. People expected his aggression and explosiveness. They didn't expect him to be, for once, stable.

Joel has always been full of irony. He drives people away from him all while craving a sense of belongingness. He's one of the most violent, yet also one of the most loving. Now, he won Wild Life by being perfectly in sync with himself.

He didn't need to be the villain to be wild. His peace amidst the chaos was wild enough...and even Grian encouraged it. Grian, who has watched from a close distance, once even too close, how desperate Joel was. He saw the growth. And he decided, this time, "You know you could win this, Joel. It's your turn."

And win it he did.

[z0mbiew00d]

More text post memes cause they’re fun