#maintagging because this is . so much

[lunarrolls]

i want to know what parts of the reunion everyone’s most excited for. personally i want prism grimpoppy, 20 intelligence scribe wizard, to have to listen to fresh cut grass, 8 intelligence robot, explain their flat earth render distance theory

[2hoothoots]

(photographer voice) "okay, now let's do one where canon events play out slightly differently and everyone ends up in a significantly worse place because of it"

here's an au of an au because i have issues watched the genghis khan music video one too many times. lore dump + crops/bonus art below

Due to an unfortunate combination of chance factors, Razputin Aquato arrives at Whispering Rock one day late.

He finds the camp a ghost town. The campers are stumbling around, brainless; the counsellors, nowhere to be found. Ford doesn’t know what to make of this kid showing up out of nowhere – but he’s got promise, and with Sasha and Milla out of action, he’s their best hope. He gives Raz a crash course in what he needs to know, and sends him out across the lake.

Raz pulls through, against all odds. But he never gets the starstruck meeting with his heroes Sasha and Milla that he’d been hoping for; never gets to bond with Lili, or any of the other campers. It’s a harrowing and lonely experience for him, but one that ties a burning knot of resolve in his chest. If he works hard, he can be a Psychonaut just like he dreamed. He can save people.

When the alert comes through from Headquarters that Grand Head Zanotto has been captured, Sasha and Milla scramble the jet with Lili on board. They don’t bring Raz along – Ford’s account of his accomplishments is impressive, but without seeing him in action themselves, neither agent is convinced to bring him along on the mission. Sasha invites him to next year’s session of the camp – after all, he clearly has promise, and the Psychonauts are always interested in nurturing young minds.

Raz returns to camp next year with something to prove. He throws himself into his studies with a single-minded dedication, sparing little time to interact with any of the other campers. This time, he’ll show them. He’ll show them all.

Sasha, Milla and Lili are unable to locate Truman in the Rhombus of Ruin. It ultimately takes a week to locate the Grand Head, following an anonymous tip-off (later found to have been planted by Nick). It takes six months for the ruse to be uncovered. Ultimately, Nick is unsuccessful in finding any clues to Maligula’s whereabouts. Lucrecia will pass a few years later, surrounded by a family that has no idea who she really is. Ford never remembers the truth, and when Razputin is fourteen, he takes the secret to his grave.

Truman’s brain spends almost seven months in a box, under poor conditions with insufficient oxygen. When it’s finally returned to his body, he’s not the same man he used to be. He quietly steps down as Grand Head of the organisation, and spends years of his retirement in intensive therapy.

Lili is heartbroken. Her faith in the Psychonauts is shattered. She never returns to Whispering Rock again. Over the years, she becomes more and more withdrawn; isolated from her peers, estranged from her mother, and struggling with her relationship with a father who on bad days can’t even remember her name. The bitterness grows day by day, blooming within her chest.

She’s sixteen the first time she's forced to turn her powers against another person. Even in his current state, her father has enemies – old foes the Psychonauts can’t (or won’t) protect him from. There’s a raid on her house, late at night. It’s only by chance that she’s still awake. She breaks two of the assailants’ bodies, and when she twists her hand, the plants in her father's greenhouse writhe under her command and rip the third one to pieces. It’s the last time that house ever feels like a home to her. She cuts ties with the Psychonauts entirely, and never looks back; the next time they hear of her, it's under a completely different name.

Dogen Boole never returns to Whispering Rock either. He’s thoroughly traumatized by the events at camp, and his parents refuse to send him back the following year. With nobody to help him learn to control or harness his powers, his episodes steadily become worse as he gets older. Although reluctant, his family is eventually forced to reach out to the Psychonauts to help. Compton is still a nervous recluse, and nobody else in the organisation is quite sure how to handle Dogen’s powers. He spends his teenage years in and out of psychoisolation, and is subjected to more and more intense experimentation in the name of “treatment”. Nothing works. In the end, all he has to show for it are the scars.

His helmet is the only thing he can rely on to stop him mulching the cranium of anyone in a fifty-foot radius. There’s no place for him in “normal” society. Just like Lili, he’s driven to become a villain by a combination of circumstances, trauma, and a bitter feeling of hurt and betrayal towards the Psychonauts.

Raz enters the intern program at thirteen, and quickly graduates to the rank of Junior Agent. The Psychonauts he finds waiting for him is undergoing a marked transition from the organization it used to be. Upon Ford’s passing, the only member of the old guard still around is Otto. Hollis is a Grand Head forced to prioritize efficiency in order to keep the Psychonauts afloat after numerous losses and funding cuts.

Raz enters a passionate, determined boy, remarkably talented but who struggles to connect with his peers. When he gets his promotion at eighteen, he’s the most decorated junior agent the organization has ever seen. At twenty-six, he’s in the prime of his career, honed by years of training into an efficient, meticulous, ruthless Psychonaut.

He’s the perfect agent. As far as he’s concerned, that’s all he needs to be.

under-the-cut bonus, here's some tighter crops on the art, and also a couple extra bits and pieces:

dogen's helmet seals up like a pillbug most of the time, to stop his powers from leaking out when he gets stressed. i couldn't find a way to work it into the art while still making clear that Hey It's Ya Boy, but i think it's a neat visual. the extra pic of lili was gonna be a mugshot - at first i was planning to composit her art into, like, a dossier/file, but i couldn't make it work in the end

[rosswood]

how many cycles of trauma and suffering does it take to get to the center of a silly little anvil guy (the answer might surprise you)

[mephoj]

taco and mephone have fascinating parallels more people could explore if taco haters weren't biased cowards

[mukuberry]

This voting period really just feels like im watching a bunch of people force a gay man back in the closet

I know thats not people's intentions but literally how else is he going to take this guilty vote. "I just don't want him to think his lying was okay" he doesn't! And he's not going to think that! He's actively trying to stop lying! All guiltying him will do is tell him he should have kept lying and continuing his relationship!!

"I just want him to have some kind of consequence for what he's done" Was Hinako literally dying not enough??? Sure, he didn't love her, but he still LIKED her. They were friends, they lived together, he married her because he WANTED to love her! He is literally drowning in guilt because of her death, I think he's had enough consequences by now. He might not be wearing his ring anymore, but he still carries it with him, he is very clearly still grieving her death.

"Innocent votes have no effect on him" Yes they will!! It didn't do anything last time because we forgave him for the wrong reasons and because he absolutely hates himself. Assuming we're right about him being gay, which I'm pretty confident we are, having his 'true' self validated rather than his fake one will 100% have a bigger effect on him this time. Guiltying him will only make his self-hate worse and show him that only his false self is forgivable, so he should keep lying to be accepted.

I know most people's intentions are not to make him keep lying, but regardless of whatever intention you have, it doesn't matter how you want him to take it, you can not ignore how he will actually take it.

[monotone-artist]

[id in alt]

wanted to try doodling him in the normal canon way

[winter-parrot]

I just finished reading Sunlit Man and. I don’t know if anyone here is a cosmere person but holy shit. hooooooooly shiiiiiit. holy shit!!!!!! I am Losing My Mind!!!

[kmesons]

I'd like to do an analysis comparing The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals to a Community episode, but I can't decide whether I want to approach it from the perspective of Invasion of the Body Snatchers parodies (i.e., comparing and contrasting how TGWDLM and Regional Holiday Music - a Community episode that is essentially a whole-plot reference to the film - spoof certain aspects of IOTBS) or from the perspective of zombie apocalypse tropes (i.e., comparing TGWDLM and Epidemiology in terms of the "zombie apocalypse" genre), so. a poll it is

[kerizaret]

Hear me out because the tawny frogmouth and tsukasa tenma propaganda is something I need to share with the world. they're each other's spiritual animals.

Please tell me you see it. The vibes. The fluff. The >:DD. The absolute loudness you hear by just looking at the picture.

Bonus tenmas because they're inseparable. Two itty bitties

oh my god....

[dead-sp1der]

someone tell me to study instead of doodling Deer cScott

[shineyfish]

Every day I forget I can just post art. Anyway fuck you gives mind crutches

[sparky-is-spiders]

Jon whose monstrous feelings make more sense than their human ones. Jon who has always felt alone, two-steps removed from their peers and the people around them. Jon who struggles to voice their emotions, to even understand them, unless they are coming from this terrible thing growing inside them. Jon for whom emotions have always been a powerful, hostile, alien force. Jon who is constantly reaching for all the feelings that everyone else seems to have and understand naturally. Jon holding their own feelings up to the light and feeling frustrated and empty until they see something else staring back. Jon who has never felt whole or fully present in reality until the birth of the new world, when they are finally perfectly grounded and present.

[aquilamage]

I still haven't stopped thinking about Them

[revvethasmythh]

An idle thought, really, but I think it's interesting to see fandom latch on the metaphorical interpretation of things like Laudna's relationship with Delilah as a metaphor for addiction or Imogen's psychic powers as a metaphor for either chronic pain or queerness, but there's much less attachment to or discussion of the characters who explicitly, canonically dealt with exactly those things. By which I mean Scanlan's substance abuse, Veth's alcoholism, and even Ashton's chronic pain (which feels like it was discussed much more before it was confirmed canon, and seems to be brought up mostly just as ship fodder these days). I suppose one could argue the devotion to the metaphorical interpretations lies in the fact that it's an interpretation of canon as opposed to being explicitly so, meaning there's more wiggle room to project a personal interpretation onto it. Explicit canon is more concrete, less malleable to the individual viewer. Still, if we're going to talk about addiction now in a metaphorical sense via Laudna, it leads me to wonder if we will see further discussion of the characters who explicitly dealt with addiction (Veth and Scanlan), as opposed to Laudna's purported allegorical version of it

[ruthlesslistener]

Seeing a white person say unironically that PK and WL are colonizers is so fucking telling that they have zero idea of what racism actually is or the implications behind it, they're just parroting the most basic bullshit to look good. Like come the fuck on that take is racist as shit and its not because PK and WL are any less awful than colonizers. It's incorrect at best but genuinely an awful fucking take when parroted for clout bc you dont wanna be seen as problematic

(It's racist bc equating a genocidal god who you have to shred apart with extreme violence in order to have peace with the pain and anger of indigenous people is. Hm. Bad!!! Not to mention the fact that Radi has a very strong Christian angel motif going on and engages in a 'holy crusade' against everyone in Hallownest INCLUDING OTHER INDIGENOUS TRIBES NOT AFFILIATED WITH THE PALE KING like how the actual fuck can you look at her and go 'oh yeah she represents indigenous people because the moths have what look like dreamcatcher motifs with the essence motes' and unironically think you're not being racist. What the actual fuck)

((Double disclaimer: you can actually write a really interesting and nuanced altcanon narrative with this concept but the problem is that almost nobody ever does, they only ever flag it as 'problematic' because they want to look good, not bc they know the implications))

[the-wildmother]

why is it that twitter/x critters just hate ashton/callowmoore so much

calling ashton disgusting. saying their kiss wasn’t consensual when they both were ok with it (sorry he didn’t ask first like fjord did? they were flirting for so many episodes leading up to it? non-consent where??). the hate towards that character baffles me. and remember when that one artist put them in a drawing together for the cr coloring books and they got bombarded with hate for it??

literally i don’t get where the ashton hate comes from.

the hate also towards fearnechet is shocking and certainly rooted in ageism.

also like, fearne literally said she was poly yet people want to tie her to one character or ship. i think they forget she’s literally a flirty fey and always has been.

let women do things.