#will move again in 2 weeks

[golyadkin]

So so much is happening rn that I genuinely don't know when I'll be able to draw again let alone post, so just know that even though I'm not posting for a while I am alive and everything is okay I'm just buried in Life Stuff atm thanks love you bye

[intotheelliwoods]

Today I remembered shells exist

[c0rinarii]

Doodle dump

[welcometogrouchland]

(ID in alt) I literally said I was gonna post this month's ago and then never had the wherewithal to describe it and so I didn't Lmao (said with pain). But since I'm thinking of opening my commissions I figured I should remind ppl that I. Yknow. Can draw.

Lots of Steph here (I had major art block making all of these and my brain worms for her kept me going) + some sprinkles of stephcass for Cass nation to enjoy!

[konohamaru-sensei]

ah. it hurts

[tblsomedoodles]

The Preferable Alternative - Part 16

Start - Previous - Next

: ) : ) : )

[starry-bi-sky]

realizing i have. a lot of untapped trauma potential for clone^2 danny because i just Fully Processed Four Months Late the fact that his parents were capturing and torturing ghosts in the basement before he became Phantom. and the fact that he was on house rest for 2 weeks. during that time period. and he wasn't really leaving the house. he could hear their screaming through the floorboards

*points at clone danny* i can give you suuuuuuch a bad time babe ahaha. i've got two untouched years before you meet damian what fucks you up before then

[kirby-the-gorb]

[2hoothoots]

i was having a chuckle to myself last night about Gristol, and how his plans are basically:

Restore Ford Cruller's memory

Find Maligula

???

Profit

but then... of course they are, right? this is Gristol we're talking about. Fatherland Follies drives home again and again that he's still operating on a child's logic, a warped and reductive version of the world that he never bothered to grow out of. both of his memory vaults center on the images of his childhood, this idealized version of the past that he clings to no matter what. and that's still how he remembers Maligula, too - as this saviour figure, who rushes in to help him when he's in trouble.

[ID: Two slides from Gristol's memory vault, Glory to Grulovia! Left: Gristol clings to Maligula's back as she summons waves to sweep away his assailants. Right: Gristol and Maligula waving from a balcony as the people cheer. Gzar Theodore brandishes a dagger in the background.]

like so much else, Maligula represents a return to this idyllic childhood - to the peace and simplicity of his youth, when he was free from worries and responsibilities. in his mind, he doesn't need to make any further plans - once Maligula's back, everything will go back to normal. Maligula will make everything better.

...is what i thought, but then i remembered this line:

[Screenshot source. ID: Gristol, in Truman's body, bows on his hands and knees in front of the newly-awaked Maligula. The caption reads: "Yes, High Priestess! I am here to correct the mistakes made by my father!"]

and that's kind of interesting, right?

to be clear: this happens directly after Maligula sees Helmut-in-Gristol's-body, and recognises him. her line before this is:

"Little Gzesaravich! Have you come to pay for your father's sins?"

my first thought was that Gristol hadn't expected to still be in Truman's body by the time he managed to find Maligula, and this was him trying to placate her and buy some time until he could explain the situation. but watching the cutscene back, that's clearly not what's happening here. Gristol is answering as himself, and his response of throwing himself to his knees before her is, as far as i can tell, genuine.

so what is going on here?

in Fatherland Follies, there's this line in the ride narration that stuck out to me:

"Why didn't the Gzar help Maligula in her time of need? No one knows, but historians agree - it is Gzar Theodore's biggest failure."

other lines mention Gzar Theodore's "mistake", and it's wording Gristol himself echoes in the screencap above. evidently, he believes that his father abandoned Maligula, leaving her to her fate at the hands of the Psychonauts, and it was that mistake that lead to them being driven out of the country - that mistake which he seeks to correct. maybe he even feels like he has a debt to repay to her for his family turning their backs on her all those years ago.

the 'High Priestess' thing, though - that's kinda weird, and threw me for a loop the first time i played the game. it took me until my second playthrough to connect the dots, and remember how the room in the Lady Luctopus - Gristol's room - was full of Delugionist scribblings and symbols.

[Screenshot source. ID: left, the walls of the hidden backroom in Gristol's hotel suite, covered in scrawlings of eyeballs and Maligula's name. Right, the pinboard from the hidden backroom. On its surface are photographs and newspaper clippings connected by pieces of string.]

i mean, look at this stuff! he had a whole conspiracy board and everything!

we learn very little about the Delugionists and their beliefs as a whole during the game, but i think drawing the connection here suggests two important things. one: that Gristol was in deep with this stuff. i don't know how he linked up with them - maybe via old family connections, or just good old-fashioned digging (we know he's skilled at worming his way into peoples' good graces, after all) - but it seems likely that he's begun to internalise their ideas, maybe even warping his own memories of events. and two: the Delugionists themselves are, if you'll pardon the pun, pretty far off the deep end.

like... i understand why PN2 didn't go heavy on the "mass-murderer cult worship" aspect of things, in the end, but man this is such a tantalising glimpse into the wider mythos around Maligula. Gristol is proud and haughty and thinks himself above everyone else; the fact that his first reaction seeing Maligula is to throw himself to the ground at her feet says so much about the way he's come to see her. he's not just trying to bring back Maligula, his childhood bodyguard. he's trying to bring back Maligula, the High Priestess of the deluge, the semi-mythical figure whose supporters believe even death couldn't stop. he doesn't even flinch at the way she confronts him, and maybe it's because he's bought in so completely to this deified figurehead, this idea of Maligula; more a living force of nature than a person. and it all comes back to the same place: an abdication of responsibility, not just to the person who protected him when he was little but to this avatar of floods and destruction. Maligula will make everything better.

i'd write more about my thoughts on the Delugionists but that'd be taking a hard turn into speculation, and this is already kind of long and rambling so i'd better end it here. but what an unexpected and evocative line, right? it's some of the only stuff we have to go off of regarding the Delugionists as a whole, but i think it does such a good job of hinting at the wider story - at teasing another layer to the mythos surrounding Maligula, one whose ripples we see throughout the game but which never quite breaches the surface.

[ohitslen]

Part two of the thing and uuh also final one

Of this interaction. Because this is far from all I can give, my brain almost imploded from all the ideas

[hegodamask]

I think he is fascinated with her because of the power that she wields and the control that she wields. At the moment, he sees her and his life does change. His life up until that point was like, “Oh my God, I’ve been sequestered into anonymity in this massive factory plant for human workers, and I’m going to be living at my mom’s for forever.”

And then it progresses into — I would never condone this at all, but as he starts to stalk her, it turns into an obsession because what she represents, the power that she has, he desires. And in a way, he desires to be her, or at least be noticed by her or to be with her. And that gets confusing. Syril, I believe, has never been in love before. He’s never had a girlfriend or a boyfriend before, he’s just so repressed. I feel he’s had experiences like that, but he’s always kept himself very removed from that because he’s spent his energy on trying to become the best possible guard dog for the Empire. He sees everything else is a distraction. 

- Kyle Soller

[skunkes]

mentioned before I havent felt any tangible significant benefit from meds yet which is fine bc it takes a while to kick in but one small good thing i have noticed so far is even when I get little sleep I feel less tired when I wake up

I don't feel completely incapacitated and in need of being in bed all day, fighting off the urge to nap, to recharge.

I also 1. actually get "Sleepy" now... instead of just feeling very hollowly "Tired" and like i Should be going to bed to try to sleep even though I don't feel like it, because it's about time to be doing that I guess, leading to tossing and turning for 3 hrs before finally succumbing to sleep.

and 2. I actually doze off. Instead of forcing self to try and initiate sleep...this has only ever happened during my rare Naps where im so tired that sleep puts me down by force. Never in actual night time sleep setting... im like dropping my phone and struggling to stay awake sometimes now. At night!!!

None of this is in any of the results I've seen for the medication so i dont even care if its some weird placebo somehow 😭 im jst glad its happening

[doubledyke]

it doesn't really make sense in the logic (lol) of the show but part of me loves the idea that edd is being raised by his grandparents.... kids who are raised by grandparents tend to be overly mature and a little uhhhhh off-beat. i feel like it could explain a lot.

[marymekpop]

⟢ highlight of the hour: flex x cop [12/16] ⟣

well-deserved

[vampireghoul]

Explaining my hare brained schemes as to why I work so much and what I’m doing every day makes me sound like an actual psycho

[starmocha]

This is what we are getting as a whole for this top up karma, but explain to me why this down here excites me more than the whole image? 😭😭😭