#thanks for indulging in my rambling

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Okay maybe this is a known thing and I’m just spouting nonsense or both Idek it’s half one in the morning and I was meant to be getting an early night but YOU GUYS I was just listening to my Soc audiobook and in chapter 18 when Kaz is remembering the coffee shop and the Hertzoon scam we learn that the first trade major trade Jordie and Kaz were privy to and I’m pretty sure Jordie put a little money into was A CHANGE IN THE SUGAR MARKET.

And of all the things Kaz might have been able to manipulate the market for to try and profit off Van Eck’s destruction at the start of crooked kingdom HE CHOSE SUGAR.

The failure of the Sweet Reef job doesn’t only represent, to Kaz, the foolishness at being hoodwinked by Rollins again that he describes as causing such anger within himself whilst at the Van Eck house but also LITERALLY REFLECTS AND PROBABLY SERVES AS A CLEAR CUT REMINDER OF THE HERTZOON SCAM. We know Kaz is a pretty big on poetic justice (see Fillip and the wind up dogs torture/murder, stealing from the bank that was involved in the scam, the use of Alby against Rollins, etc) and I can’t help but wonder if that’s what this was intended to be in his mind, but there’s also the possibility that this wasn’t an active decision he made and only occurred to him afterwards when he saw Rollins and had that strange “sense of doubling” and saw both situations and both failures so clearly reflected and

okay I may have lost my point here I’m very tired idk how to end this um ta-dah and goodnight

[someawkwardnerd]

hi I went down a musical filled path recently

[yea-baiyi]

i keep thinking about the odyssey i am THINKING about wei wuxian as odysseus. you were dead. its been years since you’ve seen your family. the child you left behind is almost a man. you wear a face they don’t recognise, you sneak in through the back door. the dog gives your identity away. the world knows it’s you when you draw your weapon. the person you love recognises you by the original symbol of your love—a secret that no one else in the world knows about, still, because they kept it safe for all these years. you get the chance to go back and despite everything, you found home waiting for you; he kept your place and raised your son and he was still there waiting for you when you got back. tell me o muse, about a complicated man i am extremely not okay

[lady-harrowhark]

hello, can you explain to me in more clarity your “waxen” theory regarding Ianthe? I’m not picking up on what this implies but it’s making my brain itch.

Sort of! Totally fair question, I just don't have a lot of clarity myself in that I don't have a fully formed theory lol. There's definitely some links and parallels in verbiage that are pinging on my radar, so I do think something's funky, but I wouldn't say I'm fully on board with this yet. I'm just playing in the sandbox Tamsyn has provided us, tossing out ideas and thinking out loud. But I can go into some more detail, and add some more thoughts that have occurred to me since I posted that last night.

(Here's a link to the post in question, for context)

Anyway! So let's first lay out all the times we get someone described as some type of wax. At various points in HtN, we get the descriptions "a shoddy wax cast of some more beautiful sculpture," a "wax figure in a pink dolly dress," a "wax figure in pale purple chiffon," and "waxen face" for Ianthe. We also see that descriptor used a few other times for other people throughout the series. In GtN, Harrow's parents' bodies are called "waxy" and the first introduction of Protesilaus (as the beguiling corpse) says he was "waxen looking in the sunlight." In NtN, Kiriona's skin is said to have a "weird, waxy quality," then Naberius's skin is called "waxen" when they first meet up with Ianthe, and again a few pages later it again references the "waxen, handsome face". What I'm getting at here is that every time this sort of description is deployed, it's in reference to a dead body that's been preserved, manipulated, and is essentially masquerading as a living person... except for Ianthe.

We also know there are a multitude of times that she's described as looking like a poor copy of Coronabeth. There's that "shoddy wax cast of some more beautiful sculpture" line, her first introduction calls her a "starved shadow" of her sister ("or the first an illuminated reflection [of Ianthe]," and actually, off the top of my head I don't know that we ever see their descriptions framed that way again... I'd have to investigate this more later, but this might be the only time that Corona is described as a "better" version of Ianthe, rather than Ianthe being a "worse" version of Corona, which is interesting), there's a point where it says "The second twin was as though the first had been taken to pieces and put back together without any genius. She wore a robe of the same cloth and colour, but on her it was a beautiful shroud on a mummy," etc etc etc. I know there's more, but I'm too lazy to go pull the rest of the quotes and you get the picture by this point I'm sure. So nearly all of these situate her, at least visually, as a copy or approximation of Coronabeth, and one that doesn't quite live up to original at that.

So now let's pick apart this snippet of conversation we overhear between Silas and Ianthe at Magnus and Abigail's dinner party a bit. Ianthe says she was born via "surgical means," which I'm assuming is referring to a C-section delivery (or whatever the necromantic equivalent is) and notes that Corona is a few minutes older. Silas seems surprised (or perhaps concerned?) that they "risked intervention" and Ianthe says Corona had "removed [her] source of oxygen". At this point Silas says, "A wasted opportunity, I'd think." I had always taken this for him just being a dick and implying he wished she'd died in the womb, but coming back to it with this new angle... well. She says "Corona's birth put my survivability somewhere around definite nil." And I'm wondering if that doesn't tie to Harrow's comment about infant deaths generating "enough thanergy to take out the entire planet." Basically, could Silas have been implying that the Tridentarii's parents wasted an opportunity to use the thanergy from baby Ianthe's death to power up Corona?

Harrow says that twins are an ill omen, but the text hasn't come back to that as of yet. Given the difficulty necromancers experience with pregnancy, I'd imagine twins would could be especially dangerous and that in and of itself could be considered an ill omen. Ianthe's comments certainly suggest that their mother carried the pregnancy, although I don't think we know for certain whether she was a necromancer. I am so intensely curious about the Tridentarii's childhood and their parents; we get so many gestures towards some really twisted family dynamics, but very little in the way of concrete explanations. Particularly relevant here, I'd love to know more about their father wanting a "matched set" and how that came about. Did they intentionally plan for twins from the start? Was it only once they knew they were having twins that that became a factor? What's the significance there?

Outside of those "waxy" descriptors, Ianthe tends to be described as much more sickly looking than even other necromancers. We know that necromancers on the whole tend towards a phenotype of physical weakness, but even still, there's an emphasis on this with Ianthe beyond that. This might be due in part to narrator bias (coughGideoncough) or the direct juxtaposition between her and Coronabeth's vivaciousness, but what really jumps out at me as contributing to this effect is how frequently she's described as being colorless, pale, washed out, bloodless, pallid, anemic, etc etc etc. It very much makes me think of the way the color drains away from Colum (and even the rest of the room and the others in it) when Silas is siphoning. Silas himself is also often described as colorless ("mayonnaise uncle," "milk man") but not so much in a way that implies frailty as much as I read it as implying a stark coldness, in line with the very black-and-white moral authority he presumes to wield, a purported "purity", much different than Ianthe's colorlessness. With Ianthe, you get a sense that her palette ought to have been or perhaps was closer to Corona's, but the color's been drained away; where Corona's hair is described as golden, Ianthe's is "canned butter", for example. Almost like the life's been siphoned out, one might say.

So to kind of circle back around, do I actually think Ianthe is dead or a corpse like the other "wax" figures we've seen? Nah. Between Harrow and Palamedes, and especially Palamedes's medical necromancy, I think we would have heard about it by now if that were the case. But I do think it's entirely plausible that she's had a bit of a brush with death and that perhaps she's never quite fully come back from, and I do think she's being intentionally positioned as somewhat adjacent to death. If their parents were wanting twins from the outset, perhaps they used necromantic means to encourage the conception. Or if the pregnancy was as high-risk as I suspect it was, perhaps she'd died or nearly died at birth and been resuscitated. Their parents may have gone to extremes to keep her alive, to maintain their matched set. Given the themes of this series, I do feel it's necessary to draw a distinction between "resuscitation" and "resurrection" although they are curiously adjacent to one another. For all the text has grappled with dying and staying dead, dying and coming back, dying and choosing whether or not to return... we haven't touched on what something like a "near death experience" would look like. I'd imagine having that sort of experience, even at an incredibly young age, might lead one to be fascinated with, to use Ianthe's own words, "the place between death and life... the place between release and disappearance."

[maidstew]

Persephone eating with Mizzen when she visited him in that zoo. Mizzen probably looking up to the camera in the arena to plead for help to Pippa. They're so mother and son coded. I'm actually going to die. If he had won, Persephone will spend half of her life looking for forgiveness from him.....

i’m going to be sick…the two of them…

mizzen bonded with pippa. he trusted pippa. he placed his life in pippa’s hands.

at his lowest moments in the arena- he was comforted by the thought they she was out there doing everything she can to help him.

but coral dies and he realizes just how alone he is. he realizes just how little pippa can help him. he starts to question how much she even actually cares.

does she care about him? or does she care about the attention? he wants to believe she cares about him.

and he wins…but for what? he’s miserable and he feels terrible and he’s hurt and he doesn’t know how to cope with this.

he wants to talk to pippa. he wants her to help him.

but he only gets a short time with her and she looks way too happy for his comfort. does she really not realize how horrible winning the hunger games is? does she really not understand how mizzen is feeling?

and then…she doesn’t visit. he wants her to visit district 4. he expects her to visit district 4.

mizzen is left to deal with everything alone while he catches glimpses of persephone being praised on the capitol television.

and he questions everything again. and this time, he leans towards her caring about the attention. not him.

and when he’s dragged back to the capitol- she’s still not there. not the first time, anyway.

he wishes he never won.

and as time goes on and he hears the whispers of the price family secret from his clients…

he wishes he never met persephone in the first place.

[jils-things]

by the lighthouse.

dividers

[degendog]

barking in ur inbox pls send specific posts :000

ALRIGHT SO there’s a few more than what i have on hand but these subreddits/users are good places to look

here’s a few tguys using various “amab” cages

general consensus seems to be that plastic holds tguy anatomy better. most common model i’ve seen used is an off-brand nano inverted, although one of these guys here is using a flat. small note that unfortunately i’ve only seen relatively thin guys try this out, and haven’t seen any plus-sized people yet. i could have just missed them though! i am not all-knowing lol

what i think could also work, but that no one seems to have designed yet, is a device that wraps around both the tdick and the inner labia, rather than the outer. it would have to be a significantly smaller ring size than a standard cage and likely held on by a strap, but it wouldn’t be a full belt and would likely have better restriction than what these dudes have fashioned here. if i ever get a 3d printer i’ll try my hand at making/modifying something lol.

also there’s this person who uses a nipple suction toy for simultaneous pumping and chastity. so fucking based

[wackpedion]

man im so so sorry to all my normal friends who have to hear me talk about msi and jimmy urine, and esp sorry to those friends who dont care or dont like him. i will continue doing it

[nopanamaman]

Heyo. Sorry if I'm doing this wrong but i downloaded Tumblr because of you and your PAFL series. I've never been a fan of vocaloid songs but i listen to yours at least once a week. I was wondering if you took inspiration from anything when your songs lyrics?. I'm aware the setting is somewhat based on stalker but some of your Lyrics are honestly amazing. Ones like

"I've got no ammo but an ambition to fight"

Are so perfect. And they way your songs flow to seamlessly is great

Aaaa thank you so much! I'm really flattered you enjoy my lyrics:')

It's difficult to pinpoint specific inspirations, since I tend to simply write things that sound cool and roll off the tongue easily hahah

I know I spent a lot of time picking apart Pink Floyd lyrics in middle school, there's just so much unique and memorable imagery in them. They're smart, but never feel overly complicated or obtuse for the sake of being obtuse. I respect that a lot! There are lots of other bands that influenced me of course, but this is one of the first ones that come to mind.

There's also literature. I don't read as much as I used to, but whenever I do, I try to make mental notes on the cool turns of phrase I come across, unusual comparisons, meldic wordings. Same goes for movies, documentaries, Wikipedia articles - man, anything.

It's really banal, but I think just reading and listening to a lot of different stuff is the number one way to get a sense for metaphors and other types of expressive means. Literally anything can become lyrics material if you bend it into shape.

Personally, a lot of my lyric writing is working backwards from having a cool turn of phrase or reference in mind and figuring out how to work that into the lyrics in a way that makes sense. There's still a lot of Rhymezoning and Thesaurusing involved, but those won't help much if you don't have a certain library of ideas and expressions to pull from.

And sometimes even if you have plenty of reference material, nothing will come out sounding right. This was the case with the PAFL song I'm currently working on - I had a clear idea of WHAT it should convey, but everything I wrote sounded so trite. It's like my library ran dry or just didn't have the resources for this particular subject.

So I took a break from the song, consumed a shit ton of different media, took more mental notes - and whadya know, actually found the words I was looking for! And after I got the first couple of phrases down, everything else gradually fell into place as well.

It's a slow approach and is neither necessary nor applicable to every songwriter, but this is what I've recently figured works for myself.

[xbraveheartx]

I was reading the post under your screenshots of Romeo. I'm curious. What is your theory on Romeo's death? Before he became a puppet?

Hmmm... I gave this some thought, so bear with me on this! Hear me out:

If we look at his skin here, prior to the explosion that burnt him... you'll see he still has kinda... dark spots on him? And his dialogue during the fight is very flame oriented.

Not to mention his Ergo, the very reflection of his heart, is titled "Burnt-White King's Ergo" and while it feels sorta like a copout, I feel like just maybe Romeo was victim to a fire. Krat was kinda burnt to the ground in a lot of places, after all. Subject 826 says so himself! And I really don't think he just means the newly burnt Opera House.

There's also the fire in the main section of Rosa Isabelle Street. So what I'm saying is... maybe... Romeo, after Carlo's death, graduated and became a Stalker himself. Remember, Carlo gave Romeo his own graduation pendant, meaning... Romeo hadn't graduated yet! Is Romeo maybe a grade behind? Younger? Less experienced, and therefore, made to stay longer? Who knows... But in the end, maybe, perhaps, as his duty to the people, he was helping people in, specifically, Rosa Isabelle Street? And got overwhelmed by the puppets there and died in a fire/burning building? (Leaning towards burning building, because his face prior to explosion doesn't look charred... just kinda dusty. So maybe a building collapse?)

Also, I'm comfortable saying he died at Rosa Isabelle Street because it's there that we find the "Notes from an Experiment" document!

His body had to have been close enough to drag into the Opera House in secret to experiment on, y'know? So I'm thinking maybe it's definitely his resting place (twice over, oof). It'd also be really sad if he really didn't even realize he had died? Like the death had been instantaneous.

"When the boy opened his eyes..." As in, one moment he was okay, and the next?? He was... not where he thought he would suddenly wake up at. Kinda my take on that...

This was extremely long, I apologize for that!! But thank you for the question!!!! ♡ It's loving Romeo hours up in here, he died trying to do what's right, I'm standing by that!!! How he took it upon himself to use his new found power to fight against the disease and alchemists just says enough of his character to say he definitely died being a hero!!

[hanakou-often]

hanakou often tysm for feeding me

im a starved man

ASSHFGFYUAGYUH You're so SO welcome!!! The whole reason I started this blog was because I, too, related HEAVILY to feeling like a starving man in the midst of a famine when I’d search for Hanakou content so it's really amazing to hear I can support other Hanakouers in these trying times!! It took me a while to start this blog since I thought Hanakou wasn't going to be well received but now I see that the people CRAVE the sillies together just as much as I do!!! Feeding Hanakou nation is a wonderful duty and I am more than happy to fulfill it!!! CCC:

[mdverse]

hi!! i feel like you may have talked about this before but out of curiosity, could you explain/talk about your kurt’s tattoos? :3

hi yes ofc i would love to!! i did in fact talk about it ages ago but i am always happy to say more and u picked a great time to ask bc i've been reworking all of the vb au tats so this isn't just a repeat of my previous post about it (except i never finished my official redesign of kurt's sleeve yet so i can't actually show u my reference)

for his sleeve i went the floral route with flowers that represent the most important relationships in his life, so it's intertwined ivy leaves and forget-me-nots wrapping around his arm (whether or not they actually look like the flowers they're supposed to be is a whole other thing lmao i think i get sloppier the more i draw them)

ivy symbolises fidelity, marriage and friendship - obviously u have to ignore the marriage part here bc this one is for finn and santana (furtana best friends and siblings fr <3)

forget-me-nots symbolise true love and respect, as well as the promise that u will always keep someone in ur thoughts - i always see this one as being primarily for his mom, but i think it probably does eventually extend to the entire hudmelpez clan

i also originally gave him a lil sun on his forearm for burt as a lil nod to you are the sunshine of my life gcv, which is kinda visible in some of the older drawings that have his tattoo but. i recently realised that i chose a really stupid placement for it so im gonna move the sun to his shoulder once i actually update my reference sheets. that being said i am realising right now that i still included the sun on his forearm in yesterday's post and that's devastating to me personally so pls pretend it's not there

and then the newest addition to kurt's tattoos is a very "u have to know where to look for it otherwise i think it's easy to miss it" but i did slip it into yesterday's post so! furtana matching tattoos my beloved let's talk about that one too <33

i think that things are extremely tense between furtana during the earlier stages of burt and carole's relationship (especially between kurt and the other 2) (not gonna really get into this rn bc it's not super relevant lol) so to me they do end up connecting over music and it remains a really important common interest for them over time despite their different tastes (in the sense that like. idk i think as duos they have more interests in common but as a trio they probably don't so music is a big thing for them) (i wish i could articulate this better but hopefully u get it) etc etc so. had to sit down and imagine what each of them drawing an eigth note would look like based on their handwriting (as one does i guess?) and then i figured it would be neat if they each had all 3 notes instead of just the one they drew so. matching tats for the siblings :)

(here's part of my unfinished reference sheet for that lol i think i still need to adjust stuff for the size/placement of finn's and santana's but kurt's is already figured out) (for artistic purposes i did actually change it from my original placement, which was closer to his ear) (i just wanted it to be a bit more visible in drawings lol)

[superherotiger]

YO bestie gonna require you to ramble more about those kids and parents from the outsider pov fic thanks

AHHHH BESTIE YOU BETTER LOCK IN BECAUSE I'M ABOUT TO GO FERAL-

If there's one element of the Outsider POV that owns my soul, it's the X-23 kids and everything surrounding them. Like look at this list- LOOK AT IT!

I've thought about them so much it's unhealthy 🤣

I tried to keep it as accurate to Logan (2017) as possible, using all the kids names I could find on the wiki and then added a couple extras to make it to the lucky number 23. The extras are shown with a green square and have some fun little references included! Alex is named after Riptide's actor Álex González, Theresa is Banshee's daughter in the comics, January is named after Emma Frost's actress January Jones, and I chose Ace for Gambit's kiddo because PUNS okay? I needed at least one hahah!

My memory is a little rusty but I believe the bolded names meant the parent was still alive, but that could change if I saw an opportunity to include more of the parents that never got to be.

Anyway, I'm about to ramble hard about the kids so I'll chuck it below the read more to spare some of you 🤣

Okay so straight off the bat, I wanted to explain why Laura is X-2 not X-23 she normally is. I knew from the start that I wanted Luna to be younger than Laura so that meant if Laura was X-23 and Luna was a later number, it wouldn't exactly be the X-23 program anymore. To get around this I thought the in-universe reason for it being called the X-23 program would be because they successfully cloned only 23 subjects using the limited amounts of DNA they had in store. Some DNA they had more of (hence Nature Girl having multiple clones) while others they only had small amounts to work with, which is a reason why the doctors were hesitant to get rid of Luna considering she was all that was left of Pietro (and as a result Magneto's) DNA. And that's how Luna became X-22 and Laura became X-2 (in a sort of half reference lol).

I love the idea of the older kids looking out for the younger ones. We see in the movie that they clearly had tight bonds despite their horrible treatment and I really wanted to play into that for the fic, showing how they really relied on each other to get through and were still normal kids at the heart of it all. The more I write about them though the more I wish some of them had survived because they're all so sweet and deserved so much better (yes I know I'm the one that wrote them dying, it was for the plot hush 🤣)

I’m not sure if I’ve explicitly mentioned it before but the Avalanche in this AU is based on an older version of Lance Alvers from X-Men: Evolution. As heartbreaking as it was, I loved writing Lance’s reaction to finding out that Rictor had died. I think he would’ve been so proud of his son for being such a strong leader for the other kids, and he’s very similar to Peter in that he doesn’t hesitate to consider Rictor his own child. It’s interesting because Peter and Lance are kind of parallels, with the main difference being that one of their kids survived and the other didn’t. We’ll get to see a bit more of Lance in the next chapter which I’m super hyped for!!

I touched a bit on Sabretooth’s feelings towards having a clone kid in my last ramble, but Gambit is also a really interesting one too. We’ll see it briefly in the next chapter, but I imagine there’s this deep sadness in Gambit that he prefers not to think about. While Sabretooth acts abrasive and dismissive, Gambit puts on a sort of “I wouldn’t have made a good father anyway” vibe so he doesn’t have to tackle just how much the situation hurts.

I’m really excited to show Storm and Jean’s reactions to learning about their kids and how they grieve in different ways. While Jean is desperate to know as much as possible about Joey even if it’s painful, Storm can’t bear the thought of all that Delilah went through and gets angry that they were so close to saving the kids but not fast enough.

This isn’t one we’ll touch on for a long time, but holy shit FABIEN FUCKING CORTEZ having a clone is one of my favourite details. Like bro, I haven’t even written the Fabian POV yet, but I think about it all the time. I don’t want to spoil too much, but the Fabian POV takes place years before anything else that’s been posted for the series and includes an event that changes Peter and Erik’s dynamic in a detrimental way. Like ongoing trauma kind of way. Changed the course of their lives kind of way. And I just imagine Erik seeing Fabian’s name as the DNA source for Jonah and being like “What the FUCK” whereas Peter is having war flashbacks like “cool cool that’s going in the vault 😀”. If I ever did touch on this plotline, I’d want it to be an older Luna trying to learn more about the other parents of the kids and realising oh fuck there’s actually beef between their family and the Cortez’ and how she reconciles that with the memory of her beloved friend.

I would talk more about Laura and Luna, but I don’t want to spoil all the fun things I have in store for their characters!!! So thank you for letting me ramble again, it’s been a blast and my brain has been going BRRR in the best way possible!! Love you dearest!

-Superherotiger

Send me an ask about the backstory of any of my fics and I’ll ramble!! ✨

[desultory-novice]

who would be more traumatized?

Marx who literally was to the verge of death <like this close 🤏>

or

Magolor who got possesed with an acient artifact? <he wasnt as close as Marx to dying tbh>

In strictly canon terms, Magolor went on to build a theme park and literally invite the Master Crown (riding Landia) to come play and Marx seems really gleeful to be Marx so I'd argue neither of them!

^_^

.............

:psst psst: ...But if we're talking Dess's very particular brand of Kirby-verse, and I assume you wouldn't be writing me if you didn't want to hear my very specific Kirby worldview...

...Okay, so, the first time I rolled this answer over in my head, my heart immediately spat out: "Marx."

Because Magolor does have his theme park! He has his ambitions. The crown manipulated him in a lot of horrible ways, but he has something outside of that, which he is slowly regaining. He also has friends - though the degree of friendship was in doubt for about 10 years. Yes, I'm certain that having your warped and twisted body, practically bursting with power too great for you to possibly wield and puppeted by a malevolent artifact while you're not even free to scream about it is an experience beyond horrible...!

But...let's look at Marx here.

Marx has no friends.

We GIVE him friends. We say he's friends with the Wave 1 group and we see no strong reasons he shouldn't be. (Even if we don't know what they have in common...) But a few of us have tried to advance the cause of Marx + Animal Friends + Gooey = good pals! We also say he's friends/found family with Gryll, a character he's never been on screen with! We say he's friends (and some of us say he's more than) with Magolor - who he also hasn't TRULY been on screen with!

The closest thing he has to a friend is Kirby. And some of that stems from the fact that a very "...distinctive..." looking gag manga made up The Most Believable Backstory for Marx in his 25 years of existence! This isn't the first time people have assumed Marx and Kirby had a complex friendship, however. (And I'm incredibly fond of reading a lot into their having something, with or without any canon backing.)

But...

...While Magolor remembered HIS wish, Marx never did - if he even had one. We won't know until further evidence is provided if Marx was manipulated into wanting control of Popstar but if he did, then he was just as much a victim as Magolor...

And if he wasn't manipulated... well, he's just empty, isn't he? And isn't that more sad, in a way? The silly clown just wanted one star. One star, all for his own. And it's a wish he'll never, ever get...

Marx is considered by some to kind of an empty character. I would say to be so "empty" is actually really tragic...

(You don't even have to get into HC territory, about Marx's lack of hands or Marx's resemblance to a Noddy or Marx sharing a few design elements with Nightmare but if you do, it gets WORSE.)

Back to canon, we have no idea how long Marx was floating through space, in a state of near/undeath, unable to move. We only ASSUME Magolor picked him up in the Starcutter. But if so... when...?

And you know how 'everything is a MF Jojo's reference?'

I made a slight note in a random post last year about Marx's heart theming reminding me of Dio, but I gotta say, the JJBA villain that Marx reminds me of the most is Kars. His "death" just gives very "Eventually he stopped thinking" vibes. (I suppose there's a chance that actually factored into my "Clockwork Marx = Marx Can't Die" theory, now that I put it all together like that.)

And even though Marx is back again, one has to question what the overall effect of his experiences was on him? We don't see if Magolor has crown scars under his silly tophat. But we know Marx bleeds Fecto Green and can do other scary tricks. Does he love them?

He seems to. But just as a lot of people DO headcanon Magolor to have those scars, just as many people have HC'd that Marx can...lose control of his body horror tricks. And the results aren't pleasant.

Of course, ju~st as soon as I had settled on Marx's personal and unspoken tragedy being kinda more sad than Magolor's, well...

...I remembered The True Arena...! DAMN YOU, TRUE ARENA MAGOLOR...!! :sobbing endlessly:

Because we can't just stop at "had his body puppetted against his will while he was forced to watch" now can we?! Noooo! Because Kumazaki won't give us anything nice! (Just kidding & thank you for all the good angst food every time, Director, sir! Love it!)

Because Magolor is literally crying for help. Have you listened to "Supreme Overlord's Coronation" recently?! God... the sounds he makes... He can barely get out Kirby's name amidst his gasps. The Master Crown has rendered him blind, having Stolen His Eyes along with everything else, so that Magolor can't even visualize whether there is any hope; whether "he" has killed Kirby or Kirby is still fighting for his sake (and can he HEAR at this point or is that gone too?) but he never.stops.calling.for.him. Let me say that again:

He never stops crying out for Kirby to save him. Can you imagine being in THAT much pain?! That's hurt and fear and death all in one. But he doesn't even have the mercy of dying...?! He's carried away from us, out of reach, still a victim of the crown, his haunting cries echoing in our ears. Where has he gone? Will he ever be free or will Magolor's fate linger in our nightmares for another decade?

Of course, True Arena Magolor may just be out of the running for this whole argument because, again, as we don't know if he shall ever be free, it's hard to talk about how traumatized he is if the trauma is actually unending/still present. But if he is ever rescued alive from that fate worse than death (else he may just suffer until the Crown has finished absorbing the last bits of his soul and he ceases to be "Magolor") I would think the mental scarring from that experience is probably going to be as near to permanent damage as you can get.

So, from least traumatized to most: Game Marx < Game Magolor <<<<< Dess's Magolor < Dess's Marx <<<<<<<<<< True Arena Magolor

[artystaroc]

Me, looking at fanart for Welcome Home: why does everyone draw the caterpillar buff?? Why???

Me, trying to draw the caterpillar: I Suddenly Have Clarity...

[forest-hashira]

*taps mic* satoru, suguru, yuji, & maki are all chubby chasers