#i have sooo so many thoughts about it

[yrlocalghost]

“you tell a joke about a kid who slept in the soil” is genuinely probably one of my favourite lines in anything ever. i do not know why it stuck with me so much but i have written essays at least twice about how good it is

[woolying]

am i too late do people still like maid david

[adolin]

Is it better if John erased their memories, or if they came back that way and he just decided not to fix them?

It's immensely better if he intentionally mindwiped them. TO ME.

I'm a John fan. I think he's a tremendous tragic antagonist, and that everything he does in the HtN backstory is relatable if not painful familiar. He was under immense pressure, trying to mitigate the literal end of the world, having his mind and his whole self changed in ways he had no frame of reference to understand. He went from being desperate and trying to do his best to being carried away by circumstances to going absolutely fucking insane. There are many ways to rationalise John's actions all the way to the end, which is what makes it such an effective corruption arc. If you want to engage in some blorbo apologism, there are plenty of excuses to be found.

There's absolutely no fucking way to excuse mind-wiping his friends. THAT is why it's so important to me that he did it deliberately, in cold blood, justifying it to himself as a way to take their burdens upon himself so they wouldn't have to feel guilty. He removed their agency. He didn't want any peers in the world he'd created. He could have acknowledged what had happened, for better or worse, and tried to make amends - but instead, he chose to remove their knowledge that something had even happened in the first place. It's the turning point! I need him to go into that with his eyes fully open. He's doing it on purpose! He weighed the pros and cons and prioritised his comfort over his friends' identities.

EYE believe that his story arc is infinitely more powerful if there's a point we can look at and say "here is when John's story went from things happening TO HIM to John doing terrible things". Especially in a backstory that's ultimately about divine corruption and losing touch with your humanity, I think that turning point needs to be something that has a personal value to him, something that can't be chalked up to "he was high on death" or "humanity was doomed" or even "he touched the soul of the earth and went insane."

I think it's important, thematically, that one of his first actions after acquiring godlike powers was to make sure that no one would be able to remember his human self and challenge him on equal footing, even if he's still internally lamenting his own loneliness and wishing things were different.

Obviously, this is all coming from a known John Girlie™ and Eldritch Alecto Enjoyer — I interpret John's ascension to quasi-divinity as something that was mostly imposed ON him and he couldn't control, which is why I need him to cross the moral event horizon outright with the mind violation of his inner circle. Someone who views John as more directly culpable in the end of the earth might feel less strongly about the importance of the mindwipe in his story arc than I do, but TO ME it's the culmination of the tragedy. You've become the inhuman horror, baby.

/post that inspired the question

[taohs]

the QUEEN

[crumbpigeon]

big dump of my elden ring art for trailer day 🎉

[robinfollies]

Been really pondering Fantoccio and the cursed citizens lately… like, if you’re stuck in a city for 15 years with some of your only company being these cursed globby versions of the people that used to surround you normally, you’d start to Notice Things that remind you of who they used to be, right?

[vaguely-concerned]

in his and davrin's banters, lucanis exhibits a certain little shit energy I don't think we see him have with anyone else other than illario and honestly I am living for this

[brookiidookiii]

post runaway model after jo is upset chester ruined her makeup, zoey and anne maria comfort her and redo the look so chester can't mess it up this time. plssss see my vision of a maggot girl friendship.

[zrllosyn-art]

His hair DOES kinda, flop into his face after combat. So i guess he does??

Anyways more stuff that is not in the comic but i made on the side.

[percyposting]

I think a lot about the Ministry and how it works as such a psychological horror. To me at least. When I think about it through Percy’s eyes during the war, it’s definitely horror. With murderers running the departments, people going missing everyday, thousands of arrests being made in such a short amount of time. The fear of it hanging over his head, that one misstep might land him in Azkaban. Maybe people he worked closely with would go missing and he’d just have to move on.

I also think about what it’s like for him to be so close to the Ministers, specifically Scrimgeour and Thicknesse. I find those two very interesting as characters. Scrimgeour is a hypocrite, and he’s not even a very good Minister, but he does die for the good of the people, for Harry and for Dumbledore’s cause. I like to imagine what it was like for Percy to work for him. To know him, then one day he “disappears” and then the next day there’s a new man at the head, Pius, who Percy is just suddenly working for as well. I’ve always found it interesting that each Minister kept Percy on. I know both Fudge and Scrimgeour did it to spy on the Weasleys and possibly Dumbledore and Harry by connection, which was always so futile and silly and showed how desperate they both were because Percy wouldn’t even speak a word of for to his family. But they kept him for that purpose. But then he’s kept with Thicknesse as well. Is this to keep spying? Or is it not to raise suspicion about their silent coup? I don’t think it’s either of these because I firstly, the Death Eaters had different means of spying on the Weasleys. They would track their every move. They didn’t need him. So this is an obvious no to me. And in regard to keeping suspicions low, I feel there’s nothing suspicious about changing staff for a new head of government. It’s normal, even for wizards, I’m sure.

So then why was he kept on? I honestly don’t know. Maybe I’m bad at analyzing this, but some reasons I can think of would be a way to trap him without imprisoning him. They keep him stuck under an imperiused Minister and keep an eye on him. Maybe they’re waiting for him to slip up.

I don’t believe for a second the idea they keep him on because they see any actual value in him. Even if Percy denounced his family on every level, they would still see him as a blood traitor and a Weasley. I don’t think that he’d be the exception when it comes to their suspicion about the Weasleys. One of the biggest flaws the Death Eaters/blood purists have is that they assign a label to those they deem lesser then never view them as anything other than that label. Percy is a Weasley, and to be a Weasley is to be a blood traitor. No amount of personal denouncing will change that, in my opinion! So I don’t think they keep him on because they feel he’s chill, or something. I think it’s more of a, we keep you here, we keep an eye on you, kind of thing. They put him in the perfect position to be tracked and studied and they wait for him to slip up so they can imprison him as a traitor.

That leads me back to the whole psychological horror element. All of this feels like horror to me. Percy talks about trying to avoid imprisonment at the end of Deathly Hallows but I feel the truth is he was imprisoned. In the Ministry. I can’t imagine what it was like to serve under a Minister you must know is being controlled — I always liked and subscribed to the idea that Percy knew Thicknesse wasn’t himself. Does this make sense in terms of how he acts towards him at the end of Deathly Hallows? No! But I believe it anyway.

After all this thinking, it makes sense for one to come to the conclusion that Percy would never return to the Ministry again. There will always be something haunted about it to him. After Scrimgeour, especially. All it would be is a graveyard.

[marcmorrigan]

@fenglianweek day 6: memories/growing up

the best thing thats ever been mine

[introspectivememories]

coked-out bernard dowd, send tweet

[backtothedisaster]

Hi borderlands fandom. im here to spread propaganda (bonus doodles + single images under the cut)

[rapidhighway]

hmmm thinking about how both Knuckles and Licho have been stuck in a single place for as long as they remember, Knuckles completely isolated and Licho unseen by anyone for a very very long time hmm

[whoblewboobear]

Porter LOVES how vocal Jace is when they fuck. Every little whimper or moan just makes him try new things that he thinks will earn him new sounds out of Jace and he absolutely never disappoints.

He likes to get him overstimulated bc that’s when he makes the prettiest sounds. Porter goes insane over this like- After they hook up for the first time he can barely look Jace in the eye during work because if he does he’ll have a hard time not dragging him off somewhere private just to coax more sounds out of him.

[im-smart-i-swear]

dolly