#major spoilers under the cut obviously

[strideofpride]

Yes I did watch only the first episode of the second half of season 4 before watching the last ten minutes of the finale just to make sure I was gonna win and

ZEKAELA ENDGAME LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOO

no benvi endgame but I saw that they were gonna make-out in at least one episode so I’m counting it as a partial win

love when my delusions pay off god bless 🙏🏻

#major spoilers under the cut obviously #manifest #manifest spoilers #zekaela #benvi #zeke x michaela #ben x saanvi

[gibbearish]

it is with a heavy heart that i must announce. the five nights at freddy's movie was really good

sorry for how much of a behemoth this post is im fnaf autism just bear with me also i can't keep my thoughts straight for the life of me so this will be a bumpy ride. as an additional note i got very lucky and had literally 0 spoilers whatsoever for this movie, i haven't even seen the trailer

so first of all: i thought all the changes they made to the plot to make it work for a movie were good decisions, altho some of them did take a minute to actually feel like good changes lmao. once i thought about em a bit more though they made sense.

one of the things i really liked was that they also did include a lot of the things i wanted them to, or more specifically things that you're like "you literally can't have a fnaf movie without these, it just wouldn't be right", like we got mike schmidt, we got fucking VANESSA??? altho she might be in the trailer so that might not be the same reveal for yall as it was for me but still. they heavily alluded to vanny? (altho that's a part i'm kinda sad abt is they didn't /actually/ include vanny, vanessa just makes an offhand comment about how she "wouldn't be much help" if she was around afton and then. comes to help anyways and doesnt have any issues? lame they shouldve had him hypnotise her and then she fought her way out to help mike and abby. or alternatively they couldve used the family restructuring to make vanny be a result of afton giving vanessa osdd-2, like thats kinda functionally what he does with the mask anyways but this would make it more obvious).

also swinging back to changes they made that i liked!! VANESSA AFTON?? like this is the one that took me a while to get used to bc it feels like such a cliche from an outside perspective but it also kind of Super Isn't considering what the original plot is? like all the family restructuring they did makes pretty good sense to me, i do think it loses a bit of the weight having michael be Just Some Guy Whose Brother Happened To Be Kidnapped By Afton Forever Ago and now coincidentally has this weird guy offering him a job as a night guard, but also the og lore. absolutely would not fit into a movie lmao. so i like that they kept the characters everyone wanted around while also rearranging it to keep the spirit of "learning about all of this for the first time through the eyes of a security guard" you get from playing the games. it's fun for people who don't know the lore because it's easy to follow and it's fun for people who /do/ know the lore because they can pull apart all the differences.

oh right back to things they included that i wanted them to. we gotttt chica's cupcake murdering people, we got FUCKING MATPAT? SAYING THE ITS JUST A THEORY LINE? SOUNDING THRILLED OFF HIS ASS TO BE THERE??? i dont like the man and his opinions vis a vis addressing nonbinary characters but. goddamn was that a funny cameo. why couldnt you include markiplier too you fucking cowards. who said that. anyways. oh we kind of tangentially have a canon name for crying child? aka garrett? like idk this one could go either way because like. yeah he's mike's younger brother that died tragically and scarred him for life, makes sense that theyd be the same character in function but also it is technically a different family so who knows.

umm what else. oh this doesnt rlly fall into either category i just really liked it, the intro sequence for all the animatronics? showing what they can /really/ do with the breaking and entering dudes?? that was such a cool sequence i really liked the whole thing honestly. chica being introduced in the kitchen and the dude finding the cupcake then looking back and it's gone? bonnie in the supply closet? foxysprint??? AND FREDDY!! THE BITE!!! in case anyones reading this before watching the movie so they know what to expect: youll know when this moment is coming and if youre watching it at home with friends i HIGHLY recommend having the "was that the bite of 87" clip ready to play right after, they WILL lose their shit. i had it queued up from the very beginning of the movie cause i was like. they can't not include it /somehow/, it's the fnaf movie there has to be A Bite. and sure enough. oh also it's not at the same time but the golden freddy reveal is really good too, they did a good job of setting it up so even if youre already aware of golden freddy conceptually you still go "oh freddy's here? i mean i guess that makes sense he's the leader and all. or wait what happened to his eye why's he only got one? oh. oh i see. ohohohohohohohoho" 100/10. also very funny that they just straight up. MURDER THE AUNT? AND SHE NEVER GETS MENTIONED AGAIN SHE JUST IS DEAD??? the kid isnt like. hey what happened to aunt jane?? i get none of them liked her and with good reason but youd think at least one of em would be like "damn she sucked but she didnt deserve that, rip jane"

oh and the springlocks of course the springlocks. like as soon as we saw aftons name in the cast list we all knew he was gonna get springlocked, it's such a cherished memory for so many of us and there's no way in hell The Fnaf Movie™ wouldnt include afton getting springlocked, they just legally can't leave that out. and they do it pretty well too like yeah if you know what's gonna happen you can see it coming way ahead of time and it's kind of a slow crawl to get there but like. idk i think it still works pretty well. i don't personally like how long the actual springlocking itself took, i think they couldve milked that a little bit less cause i was under the impression that if one springlock failed they All Would Instantaneously And Your Flesh Body Will Become Occupied By A Full Endoskeleton. but no we just get very slow rib beartrap. w/e though still cool and again the leadup to it was really good even knowing exactly how it would end, like just the really slow shuffling of the animatronics towards him? like yeah it's slow and kinda tedious but its also like. theres literally nothing you can do, youre surrounded and defenseless and theyre infinitely faster and stronger than you and now they remember that you killed them. and you just have to sit there and watch them slowly slowly get closer all while trying to talk your way out of it knowing youre fucked. 10/10 they did that part well

oh and that also falls under changes i liked, i liked that instead of "afton tries to escape intangible ghosts by getting into old decrepit suit which then fails and kills him" it was "afton was already in the suit to do murders in and has brainwashed the bots to follow him" wait omg point postponed i just realized that part is from security breach. i thought vanessa was the only thing they brought over from that i didnt even notice that they werent doing the theyre-attacking-all-adults-indiscriminately thing goddamn. omg wait and the fact that the restaurants already closed in this one, it really is just a blend of all the games huh. scott do you see how much more coherent your plot couldve been if there wasnt So much going on. anyways. back to what i was saying. instead of "afton tries to escape intangible ghosts by getting into old decrepit suit which then fails and kills him" it was "afton was already in the suit to do murders in and brainwashed the ghosts into thinking he was their friend so they would help him do murders while possessing the robots. then they get their memories back and the robots turn on him and.. i think deliberately? set off the springlocks, or were just aiming to regular kill him and the springlocks failing was a happy accident? then the robots drag him away as they keep slowly one by one collapsing into him", like the first one made a lot of sense for the game and the timeline and the second one just feels right for this too. it's still his hubris that kills him, still his springlocks, it's just in one version the hubris is "trusting his springlock design to still work after however many years" and in the other its "thinking he has conplete control over the ghosts he killed", plus the ghosts finally get a bit more direct participation in his death than in the other version lol.

one change i did not like. forced het romance. like i dunno i guess im happy for them, both of those characters have certainly earned happy endings by this point so its nice they can get something cutesy. but also. like cmon man it's vanessa and mike do we have to do this she just got stabbed stop holding her hand

oh also this change wasnt really good or bad i just thought it was funny, vanessas a full on cop now? like i get they prolly just dont wanna have two security guards or something but i mean. it wouldve been really easy to just say she was the day shift guard? thatd explain why she had more information on the bots and the place's history than him, why she's always Around, it wouldve even flowed into the vanessa afton reveal pretty well too because like. yeah obviously a guy doing murders would want his main security guard to be someone he trusts and who better than his theoretically brainwashed daughter yknow? as it was she just kinda Showed Up Knowing Stuff And Ignoring Questions and later afton's like "you were supposed to be keeping an eye on him" but like of course Mike was getting dodgy about the weirdo cop loitering nearby for no reason, thats sus as hell lmao. vs "experienced security guard here to show you the ropes" he would have a much easier time trusting that she actually did have his best interests at heart. idk it just seemed like a weird change to me lmao

ummm oh my roommate pointed out the fact that when they tried to springlock abby the suit they were aiming for looked suspiciously like circus baby and abby and baby are anagrams so thats fun. it's hard to tell though if shes intended to be a rework of elizabeth or if vanessa's filling that role now. cause like on the one hand, michael's younger sister whose name is v close to baby, on the other hand, vanessa is afton's daughter. so idk i feel like it could go either way. if abby's elizabeth i guess that negates the thing about garret maybe being crying child's name bc then theyd prolly just be keeping mike's name the same. w/e

oh my god i completely forgot when i was talking about changes to the afton springlock thing, they had him deliberately put his mask on after the other springlocks started releasing and say the "i always come back" line, i thought that was an excellent touch. like he's actively dying a horrific death and is like. no no. im not leaving this bot. this shit is going to suck ass no matter what so i might as well do all i can to ENSURE my soul gets locked in this fuckin thing, go on stab me in the brain lets do this. i will however also say that having him say "i always come back"... before he's even come back the first time? is a little bit weird, i know thats another one of the "we have to include this in the fnaf movie" things so im not mad but just in the moment it def flows a bit weird. like mf you don't even have one example of that yet much less several to be saying "always" about

OH AND THE BIGGEST ONE. THE ANIMATRONICS. theyre so good. like im so glad they went all in on that, i think they probably knew that if there was one single thing they had to get absolutely 100% right to avoid a fan uprising it was those and by god did they deliver, theyre so big and so unsettling and so fun. chica's wink at abby was the best part of the movie no questions asked. or alternatively bonnie falling over after they built the fort. like theyre all just so good. OH MY GOD OR IN CHICA'S INTRODUCTION SEQUENCE WHERE YOU CAN SEE HER JUST. SCOOTING BY THROUGH THE VENT?? THAT WAS THE FUNNIEST THING OF ALL TIME HELLO???

god. but yeah i was honestly expecting it to be a lot worse than it was. also this mike is a bad brother/dad figure. but i guess in the games he also kind of is the pinnacle of bad brother so i mean it couldve been a lot worse. theres definitely some rough parts, i mightve mentioned this already but i felt like a few of the dramatic pause things were a bit too drawn out, like i said the springlocks locking is one good example of that but another that i REALLY found slow was like. in the opening we watch a guy get turbomurdered by the swirly blade mask and it takes. way longer than i feel like was necessary. also unnecessary: a jumpcut a second from scared eyes to swirly blades to hands fumbling and repeating during that. oh another thing that was weird to me, why was mike so insistent on sleeping specifically at night? to the point of deliberately sleeping on the job? like i get he wanted to revisit the kidnapping dream but like. presumably he could dream just as well during the day, no? done his night shift then once it was up rolled out a sleeping bag for a quick powernap before heading home? idk that just felt. forced to me

more random things, i am sad we didnt get a whiff of henry emily (my fringe theory was that their twist to change it from the games was they were gonna make henry be evil, rip to that idea) or the puppet/charlie, and kinda sad they changed the kid possessing golden freddy to be a boy like. we love cassidy and her Undying Rage Towards Afton's Soul smh why would you get rid of her. also loved balloon boy, kinda wish mangle had gotten like a similar level appearance but thats w/e. oh also while i did appreciate the low gore level there were also a few times where it was a bit weird how minor the injuries the dead people had were. like this man just had his face put in a blender mask and he just has like. some forehead gashes or whatever? he should look like someone stirred up jello

anyways with that gross thought i think i am out of things to say about the movie for now. if anyone else watched it already and somehow read all of this blease tell me your thoughts

#the stuff under the cut contains major spoilers so reader beweader #this post is also gonna be rambley as hell so like. strap in #update after finishing it: it is indeed very rambley and also long as hell so see again: reader beweader #fnaf movie spoilers #five nights at freddy's movie spoilers #fnaf spoilers #five nights at freddy's spoilers #fnaf #fnaf movie #my roommate said they heard they were aiming to make 3 moves total and if i had to guess #i would say the other movies will probably hit fnaf 3 and then pizzaria simulator #obviously with some massive changes to the plot regarding timelines and just resolving general world changes #but i do feel like those encapsulate the main big points of afton's arc #aka 1) getting springlocked‚ 2) being springtrap (potentially in fazbear frights and i think that would be a really cool movie #but really the location doesnt really matter so much as the He's Been Woken Up And Is Hunting Someone #and then 3) getting his ass sent to ghost hell by henry. frankly i would be happy if they just ripped his final monologue #straight from the game and didnt even rerecord it it's just so iconic #like id want them to include security breach too somehow but. the timelines gonna get real condensed real fast then #it already would be if they include 3 isnt there like 30 years between aftons death and that one? so the part thats #originally set in 2050????? yeah thatd take some serious rearranging #hmm although i am now in my head thinking of something. abt the location not mattering as long as #springtrap wakes up and hunts someone. what if they did that /in the pizzaplex/ instead of in a horror attraction #or maybe for a horror installation there #idk im just rambling more now but i think thatd be a cool way to combine those parts #oh sorry technically that thing abt afton getting springlocked is technically a spoiler #but i mean come on we all knew that was gonna happen

[spidermanifested]

my 2 favorite things to draw......the devils nest and Face Shapes. this concept was made for me

under the cut is some rambling about the gang in an actual dungeon meshi au (ft Major Spoilers)

the chimeras would all still be beastmen obviously. every day i thank ryoko kui for my life for putting chimeras in her thing. roa and dolcetto i think would have been pit fighters as an equivalent to being soldiers, martels also ex military but i feel like "got blown up, woke up half snake" would translate well to getting fused with a monster in a dungeon. and then bido would have a more izutsumi type backstory

greed would have earned their loyalty somehow but im not fully settled on What his deal would be. like conceptually the original homunculus is very similar to a demon (weird mystery entity) (bound to serve) (eternally Craving) (trapped in a thing and wants out) but greed specifically is, like, a chill version that i dont think would want to eat peoples desires because he likes it when people have those. and i dont know if a Chill Demon is justifiable lore-wise. counterpoint though: he would really love having a fursona. tell me YOUR thoughts in the comments below i guess (or my askbox whatever)

#fullmetal alchemist #fma #dungeon meshi #the devil's nest #fma greed #greed the avaricious #dolcetto #roa #martel #bido #fullmetal alchemist (fullmetal alchemist) #autistic and artistic

[alena-draws]

Beware of major Trigun spoilers!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |  Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Read from right to left 

Wolfwood, the comic relief character...

I don’t know if it’s totally clear, but on page 5 you can see Vash’s plant lines in his face! With the plant blood now circling in his veins he has become half plant, thus becoming more like the old Vash..and also I can still give him that beautiful plant pattern. At this point in the story, Vash has obviously already remembered Wolfwood’s death scene. Wolfwood on the other hand, hasn’t still remembered anything...BUT I intended for him to do that, just a bit later. Maybe also in a different way, while Vash remembers during sleep, Wolfwood would suddenly get dizzy or faint, more being washed over with too many stimuli and emotions, hitting him more like a train. Sorry, guy.

2nd part of my vashwood reincarnation AU “Cutting the Strings of Fate”. Look under the cut for the whole story idea:

Many decades after the events of Trigun Maximum, Vash is reborn on the same planet. Even though still needed to sustain themselves, humans are less dependant of plants now, and the great project to cultivate the planet has been very successfull, with the first forests and occassional green that will grow out of the dry soil. Vash is a young but skillful plant engineer, who will also from time to time help out in different towns to have a look at their local plants. One day he starts having dreams about his past life, with them getting clearer and clearer and revealing more of his past. He meets Zazie, who is still the old Beast who knew Vash the Stampede. Because of that, Zazie notices that the very individual electric impulse of Vash, that every being gives off and can be detected by the worms, is indeed very close to the same signal of Vash the Stampede. Thus confirming that  Vash is indeed some kind of reincarnation.

Vash's brother Nai works as a bioengineer, looking after the preservation of important vegetation in another city, where their mother Rem lives, too. Vash meets Wolfwood, who starts to help out in the plant facility as a odd-job man, and they grow closer together. One day though, an accident happens, convincing Vash and Zazie that Vash's history is trying to repeat itself. They fear that just like in the past, Nai who is obviously another reincarnation could run berserk, and that Rem and Wolfwood are, just as well, in danger to become fate's victim once again.

With the help of Zazie that can feel how, after each past event repeating itself in some way, Vash's and the others' electric signals grow closer to their past selves', they try to defy fate and bring about a happy end for everyone. (Yay!)

#trigun #trigun spoilers #trigun stampede #trigun maximum spoilers #vashwood #trigun au #vash #wolfwood #zazie the beast #zazie #comic

[getvalentined]

Okay I know I keep saying I'm gonna do a big post about Vincent in Rebirth and I've kinda been waiting until both my besties have gotten to him so that I can explode at both of them about him first, but there is one point that I've talked about a bit on the twits and I'm gonna babble about over here in greater detail.

There won't be a lot (if any?) direct spoilers here, but I'll be using screenshots that are absolutely spoilers to drive the point home, so keep that in mind.

Babbling under the cut.

One thing that really strikes me about Vincent's design in Rebirth is how he looks so...young. There's no other way to describe it, he looks young. In Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus he had this sort of agelessness to him, particularly when compared to the rest of the cast; it was hard to get a read on how old he was aside from "younger than Hojo" because of this. He could have been anywhere from 25 to 35 at a glance, and up into a healthy 40+ during some scenes.

In Rebirth, that agelessness has been completely thrown out, and the only thing lending even an iota of uncertainty to his age is how covered up he is. The moment you see anything more than his eyes, it's excessively clear that this is a man in his mid-twenties, no older.

It's particularly obvious when he's confused or in pain, moments when he's not tooling his expression into something more neutral, when wouldn't be consciously presenting himself a specific way.

At a glance, Vincent is definitely older than Cloud, sure, but he's undeniably younger than Barret and Cid, he's younger than the majority of the extended cast—Reeve, Tseng, Rufus, the "emissary from Wutai," et cetera. He might even be younger than Sephiroth.

This makes the incongruity between his apparent age and his behavior hit particularly hard, in a way that it was never really able to in the Compilation thus far.

The way Vincent talks is off, noticeably off, and not just in a way to indicate education or accent—the way he structures his sentences follows grammatical standards from decades ago. Him commenting "if we're to stay the night" at Gold Saucer is one that really sticks out to me, because when other characters use similar sentence structure in the series (Genesis is the most egregious example of this) it's explicitly an indication that they're speaking in an old-fashioned way, they're being intentionally over-the-top. Vincent, though? He isn't doing that. The comment is so simple and offhand, there's no question that this is just how Vincent talks.

But he's a man in his twenties.

Vincent knows Dio as an antique collector, even though it's been over twenty years since he was in that business—Cid is the one that calls him out on this, because Cid clearly "knows" that he's older than Vincent, and Vincent brushes him off with a simple statement: "I've been around a while."

But he's...a man in his twenties?

When Cid warns him that the Tiny Bronco's radio is old enough to be considered an antique, Vincent is pleased—and in spite of having failed to properly operate the brick-phone-outdated security system in the mansion earlier, he has no problems operating the aforementioned antique radio.

But he's a man in his twenties! He's obviously a man in his twenties!

The juxtaposition between his appearance and his behavior is so stark as to be distressing; even if you don't know what happened to him, you can tell that there's something terribly wrong here.

Because Vincent Valentine is a man in his twenties, and he will be until the end of the world.

#ff7 rebirth spoilers #ff7 rebirth #ff7r #ff7rb #vincent valentine #fandom ramble

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

the shroud family curse and its implications for intimacy

I was thinking about what the Shroud parents must look like under their helmets and then I started wondering how they met and fell in love 🤔 While wondering about that, I came to the realization that Mr. and Mrs. Shroud's romance must have been a complicated one.

***Spoilers for books 6 and 7 of the main story below the cut!!***

Idia’s grandmother, Aidne, was the previous director of STYX. She was succeeded by her son (Idia’s father), which implies that the Shroud blood and the curse that comes with it are from the paternal side of the family. Idia’s mom, then, is the one who married into the family. (It’s not clear at this point if those that marry into the Shroud family are also magically afflicted with the same condition, but for the purposes of this post whether it is or not isn’t relevant as my point will still stand either way.)

The Shroud curse quickly burns away any blot the individual has in their body without the typical means of recovery (ie rest and self-care). If there is no blot to incinerate then the curse will turn to consuming the magical energy of the individual themselves, which could pose a threat to their wellbeing and even their life. Because of this condition, ancestors to the Shroud family threw themselves into research on blot in STYX. This would ensure that Shroud members were always around blot that could be burned in the place of their own energy, and provided a sense of false hope for them. They believed that if they worked hard enough, they may be able to find a cure for their curse--but over time, that belief waned, and instead it seems they are all now resigned to their fate and don't try to defy it. We see this is true of the latest generation of Shrouds, as Idia was groomed to become the next director of STYX from a young age even when he disliked the idea and how his responsibilities restricted his freedom. In fact, the Shrouds in general are described as being gloomy people, and this is possibly the result of the hopeless feelings they have about their curse.

A secondary consequence of the curse is that it socially isolates members of the Shroud family from society. Idia is somewhat of a special case since we also have to consider the mental and emotional anguish he experienced following his involvement in Ortho's death. However, even disregarding this horrific tragedy, it can be inferred that the Shrouds are forced into positions which make them more alone than others. For one, their jobs seem to be very demanding and literally physically keeps them away from others (besides colleagues) since the headquarters are located in bottom of the sea. In Idia's post-OB flashback, we get dialogue which implies that he is not allowed outside very often--something which we can attribute to his being the heir to STYX. This may imply that previous Shrouds experienced similar childhoods, and this is just a continuation of the cycle. (I do want to point out here that Idia says his family used to go out to various places together when Ortho was still alive, so it's not a strict requirement that the Shrouds have zero outside interaction. They obviously do go outside the lab, but we cannot say for sure how frequently.)

More importantly, there is also an emotional and psychological component to isolation. You do not need to actually be alone in a room to be considered "isolated" from others. You could, in fact, be in a room full of people and still feel "isolated" because you haven't made any meaningful connection with them. This is what I think it must feel like to be a Shroud out in the world. You may technically be considered a part of the population, but you still don't quite fit in. For example, Idia has previously expressed worries that people will stare at his hair and recognize him as a Shroud, then ridicule his appearance and attitude. Indeed, the gloomy presence that the Shrouds give off seems to be a major deterrent for others to interact with THEM. All that time spent in physical isolation must have also had an impact on the Shrouds' ability to socialize. Idia is a strong example of this; he is an avid gamer and feels comfortable with taunting people via a screen. His face-to-face manner of speaking, meanwhile, can be incendiary and often rubs his classmates the wrong way. His father is not the exact same as him, but Mr. Shroud seems to have his own issues communicating affection and tends to describe things in a serious manner or in terms of work. Thinking about the way the curse is constructed too, there is a built-in fear that the Shrouds can never truly form long-lasting relationships with others, nor completely reveal their true selves to friends. Idia exposits as much in book 6. When Ortho tries to get his big brother to be friends with the OB boys, Idia dismisses the idea and says it won't matter in the end because they will be "sent down the river" and have their memories of those fun times completely purged. This illustrates a defeatist mindset which may be pervasive in all or most of the Shroud family: if this is going to be the fate of my loved ones, why bother getting close to anyone at all? It will just be more painful for us in the end.

SO LIKE. What was Mr. Shroud probably going through when he was seeing his then-girlfriend????? ??? ??? ??? ? ? ??? ? ?? He was probably so frustrated that he couldn't tell her anything about who he really was, and probably even more frightened that if he did ever tell the truth, he might lose her forever (via River Lethe memory wipe). And even if she still accepts him for it, then what??? Then she has to join the Shroud family, and that's basically damning her to the same mopey life he has, researching blot in the middle of nowhere until they're nothing but bones. Imagine how intense that guilt must be, knowing that you (yes, YOU) are responsible for "dragging down" your beloved into the same miserable circumstances that you're in. Not only that, but surely then you'd also have to tell your S/O that any children you conceive together will have the exact same destiny in STYX. It's not just Mr. Shroud either, it must be generations of Shrouds going through this same thing.

But, but, but!! In spite of his fear, Mrs. Shroud must have said yes because she truly loves him with all her heart… Their relationship must be built on such a strong foundation of trust and loyalty 😭 (From here, this is all speculation/headcanon/me rotting about the Hades-and-Persephone-esque romance I picture Idia's parents having. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.) I don't think that Mr. Shroud would be the one to initiate or to be affectionate. At most, maybe he had a shy sort of crush on her. More likely it was Mrs. Shroud that first expressed a romantic interest and passionately pursued him. And then maybe over time his feelings blossomed but he was still too afraid to put this massive burden on her shoulders, knowing the responsibility he bears as the future director of STYX... BUT HE HAS ALSO BECOME TOO ATTACHED TO HER TO CUT HER OUT OF HIS LIFE COMEPLETELY... Her very presence is screwing with his usual sense of cool, calculated logic 💀

AND WHAT ABOUT "THE TALK" THEY'D HAVE TO HAVE TO FULLY DISCLOSE EVERYTHING???? HOW MUCH MR. SHROUD MUST'VE BEEN SWEATING WAITING FOR HER ANSWER????? ?? ?? ? ? ? Oh, Sevens. Now I've done it. Here comes the moment where he gets dumped and his mom sends in a whole squadron of men to kidnap his girlfriend and clean her brain up. But NO 😭 Instead Mrs. Shroud just clasps his hands and insists that they should get married so he'll never have to wallow in those miserable thoughts all alone... He's confused and keeps begging her to reconsider, because this decision will inevitably throw her entire life off course.

"Are you sure about this? If you say yes to me, your fate will be sealed. You can never turn back. Your life will be sworn to the Isle of Woe." "Yup, I've never been more sure of anything in my whole life! Let's burn in the Underworld together, darling <3"

She provides a response that’s so easy and devil-may-care that he doesn’t know what to say back, so he just quietly laughs… and slowly those quiet laughs morph into quiet sobs… (like how flashback!Idia transitioned from laughing to crying when he was bragging about how indestructible the “new” Ortho is 😈 LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON—)

Idia drops this line during his extended post-OB flashback: "So it's romantic when a hero rescues his ladylove from the Underworld, but when I do the same for my brother it's wrong?" WHAT IF THAT WAS TRUE, BUT WITH THE GENDER ROLES REVERSED, FOR HIS PARENTS???? ?? ? ?? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? Mrs. Shroud willing to literally throw herself into the Underworld to "save" Mr. Shroud... like how Persephone was willing to stay there with Hades... 🙃 I'LL EAT THAT SHIT UP, JUST DROP THE "HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER" UPDATE OF TWST, DEVS..... . . . .. ..... . . .. . .. . . . . . . .. .... . . .. . . .... . . .. . . . .

Okay, I'm done screaming and sobbing at the wall for now--.

#twst #twisted wonderland theories #twisted wonderland theory #twisted wonderland #Idia Shroud #Ortho Shroud #disney twisted wonderland #disney twst #Hades #Persephone #spoilers #notes from the writing raven #angst #twst theory #twst theories #yes I can and I WILL make everything sad/j

[arkhamjack]

CW for gore and suicidal ideation (TriMax Vol. 7) also Spoiler warning!

EDIT: I am a drama queen and just assume a lot of Trimax readers misinterpreted this scene bc I saw like only two people do it but I’m also using this as an excuse to yap about Vash and Knives’ personalities bc it was super interesting in this volume ok byyeee read on:

Is it just me or is the majority of the fandom under the impression that it was Knives who stabbed Rem?? Because it was actually Vash. Which I think says a lot about their actual personalities vs how the fandom perceives them.

Analysis under the cut!

In classic Nightow fashion, it's hard to figure out wtf is going on and you gotta read over it multiple times, but look:

After the discovery of Tesla, Knives faints and is placed in a little incubator thing or whatever and Vash laments the fact he remained awake to mull over the horrors. From this point on, Knives is not in the picture bc he's busy honk mimimi (which is actually something he employs as a coping mechanism throughout the story... his precious beauty sleep...)

Now, Vash is refusing to eat and lashes out at Rem, expressing his disdain for being stuck on a spaceship with all these nasty humans.

Rem once again tries to get Vash to eat, peeling him a fruit.

Vash lunges for the knife and attempts to stab himself, but Rem stops him.

Vash is locked in a reactive state - he's in shock and acting out. This is where I think ppl miss the mark in interpreting the twins and why Vol. 7 is so important.

Vash can actually be nasty as hell. He ain't all that babygirl. His silly goofy facade is a way of integrating himself into the human world sure - but it's also lying to himself. He's impulsive, stubborn, and dare I say arrogant with his Messianic martyr type shit. (EDIT: I’m being a bit harsh here… I mean yeah he’s the only person on Gunsmoke who’s got a chance against Knives but like getting up in townspeople’s business gets really annoying imo like I understand why he does it but man…that’s why we’ve got Wolfwood bc narrative foil and whatever… anyway)

Knives on the other hand, internalises everything. Though he may appear to be the one who lashes out, and yes of course he's also arrogant, but it's mostly projection. He is in a MAD state of denial. For all his talk of being a superior being, that humans are icky and should all perish, yada yada yada, he actually wishes for love and acceptance - he wants to be safe.

Obviously, his head is too far up his ass to admit it, and he's always too busy tweaking about how annoying Vash is and blaming Rem for everything to actually try and sit down and think of better ways to do things but ANYWAY

(You know who else's head is up their ass? Vash. The twins are actually so alike if you really study them!! Anywayyyy)

That was Knives' whole deal from THE VERY BEGINNING. Knives was the one to cry in relief when Conrad and the crew accepted them, not Vash. Vash was more like "ok cool! life might not be so bad! yipee!" and then Knives had to Big Fall about his internalised plantphobia or whatever etc etc.

I AM GETTING SIDETRACKED !! ok so

The stabbing occurs. Again, hard to tell it's actually occurring bc Nightow, but yeah Vash stabbed Rem. Not Knives! Bro has passed out for a couple days now lol.

More evidence it's Vash - Vash was the one to express feeling suicidal. Knives cannot express anything to save his life bc he's the king of internalisation and deflection and projection lmao. Also yeah he's still eeping.

Oh look! He rises! Completely unaware of the drama that has unfolded! Not that he'd care! He's set on a mission to hurl humanity to the dust bowl of Gunsmoke! Little scamp.

Ok take from all that what you will!

Thanks for reading <3

#trigun #trigun maximum #trimax #millions knives #trigun knives #vash #vash the stampede #trigun vash #trigun rem #rem saverem

[fourraccoonsinacoat]

How the Dark Urge playthrough adds depth to the Astarion romance.

Hello, Tumblr! Welcome to my midnight dissertation on how the Durge romance scene adds a whole beautiful layer to the Astarion romance, because I can't stop thinking nonsense about a fictional character in a video game. Join me.

Also, spoilers ahead for the Dark Urge playthrough...obviously.

So, the Durge romance scene starts with your necrofabulous demon butler, Fel, showing up and saying some shit about your romanced companion.

I should also mention the timeline here, cause that's important. In my Durge playthrough, this scene triggered in the Mountain Pass. So we'd saved the Grove, went wilding in the Underdark, almost got roasted and toasted in Grymforge, couldn't fucking figure out how to get out of the Underdark (thanks for nothing, Halsin), so we go back up top and take the Mountain Pass. We then proceeded to completely miss the creche, stumble into Last Light Inn via being jumped by the Harpers, and save Isobel. (At this point in my playthrough, I knew I'd messed up because we hadn't found the creche, so I backtracked to the Mountain Pass.)

We had barely scratched the surface of the Shadowlands.

So, Fel is there talking shit. And if you're romancing Astarion he says: He is so afraid. So, so afraid. Of everyone, besides you, who he ought to fear most.

This shows that Astarion is already starting to feel ~feelings~ for your Durge, to his great discontent. You're something different, dare he even think it...special. Ew.

Again, this is before the majority of Shadowlands, before all the Thorm drama, way before Moonrise (at least in my playthrough) and That Bitch Araj.

Durge tells Fel to fuck off, and Fel says some more shit and Durge gets a dialog option that says: We are indomitable together. You underestimate us.

And I love that line because it shows Durge thinks of Astarion as an equal. Not something to fix, despite how broken the both of them are. But equal, and stronger because of it (insert some nonsense about two broken things being stronger together as one. It'll break your heart.)

Then, Fel responds to that dialog option with: You are wrong to consider another your equal. So, here is this child of a literal god - Bhaal - considering Astarion an equal. Yes, Durge doesn't know that yet, but I love the headcannon of the litteral child of a murder god looking at Astarion and going, yep I like you, let's go be chaotic and tragic together and maybe help eachother heal in the process.

So, Fel fucks off.

Durge wakes Astarion up and recounts what just happened and Astarion is Astarion about it, but then the Urge takes over and your Durge looses control. You wake up and are tied up by Astarion (but not like that) and he is obviously taking the situation more seriously after presumably seeing you pass out and lose it. Your Durge can pass a saving throw to resist the Urge and express that you understand what he's saying "Whatever this is. It won't win."

His response if you make the save is: "Easy now, darling. You've got this. And I've got you."

And don't tell me this dude doesn't care about Durge at this point, way before he admits it out loud once you get to Moonrise/speak with That Bitch Araj.

So, you get through the night and Astarion cuts you free once you're back in control and admonishes the Durge a bit and says they need to talk.

Astarion tells the Durge that they're not alone in this struggle and that he's there for them. He says "that's not who we are" when referring to the things they both did while under the control of an abusive authority figure. He says "we make our own choices, and you made the right one last night."

I love this whole scene because it really establishes the dynamic between Astarion and the Durge as a supportive one. A lot of Astarion’s romance involves the MC being in the role of the person providing support and reassurance, and I love that about the romance. I love that this masculine character is shown being vulnerable and that a part of his arc involves coming to terms with needing support (as a trauma survivor, myself, who had and still has a lot of toxic independence issues to deal with, I feel you.) But in this scene, we see a completely flipped dynamic that I think really adds a depth to the romance that can go missed if you don't do the Dark Urge playthrough.

Durge is the one in need of support and reassurance here, and Astarion provides it confidently and sincerely. He tells your Durge that they'll get through this, and that he will be there to "make sure" they do.

It's so ride or die, and I love it.

I could go on about all my headcannons in regards to how the Astarion and Durge romance progresses, but this nonsense has really gone on long enough. Apologies for the mindrot, I just adore well written characters.

My point is, go do a Dark Urge playthrough and romance Astarion!

#astarion #astarion bg3 #astarion romance #baldur's gate 3 #astarion x dark urge #baldurs gate astarion #bg3 astarion #baldur's gate fanfiction #astarion headcanons #dark urge headcanons #the dark urge #bg3 durge #bg3 spoilers #astarion x durge #when i say these characters live rent free in my head

[janus-cadet]

Tarot Project - N°33

This is yet another tarot card- strangely, the first I drew for the MCU. Obviously, it was motivated by the ending of the last show I saw, which did not left me indifferent.

(it broke me and I'll never be the same again)

So here is Loki, burdened with glorious purposes, as The Magician.

(If you haven't see the season yet and are avoiding spoilers, don't look for the explanation under the cut!)

For starters, the Magician is said to be the conduit that converts energy into matter. He represents worldly experience and knowledge ; he has seen it all, experience it all, and acts at the gateway between spiritual and material realms- just like would be a God trapped in the roots of Yggdrasil, all seeing, all creating. He is the root of the whole tarot- having access to the symbols of each suits : Wands, Swords, Cups, Pentacles. The Magician has unlimited potential, is manifestation at its best : who else to embody that, than the God of Stories, the most powerful being in the universe? Timely was right- truly a magician.

But that's not all. Let's start with the meaning of the card, upright.

As the master manifestor, the Magician brings you -you, person living in any timelines ever- the ressources and energy you need to make your own choice. He's giving you a chance. Like him, you might be facing changes, new ideas that challenge who you were: it's now time to act on them. The skills (maybe time magic ?) and knowledges (perhaps your brand new sciency PhD) you have gathered along your life path have led you where you are now. You must have a clear vision of the goal you are trying to achieve. It is not enough to be motivated by ego, money, status or fame, by a throne. When you are clear about your "what", your "why"... your "who"... you will be able to take actions. You are powerful, you are a creative being: you can reach, now, your highest potential. Focus on the ONE thing that will truly motivate you. Be active. Be a tree.

Reversed, the card can indicate that are still uncertain. You know that you have to take action, but are uncertain of the course it must take. You are afraid of what you might loose, what path you need to choose; be patient, be attentive- the solution will manifest itself in time, when you'll be ready to accept it. If you are already acting on your goal, the Magician Reversed can be a sign that you are struggling to see progress and success (perhaps because of some annoying Avengers who refuse to accept your perfectly reasonnable demands ; perhaps you can't make yourself kill that one person to save the rest.) Maybe you are not clear on your desired outcome; maybe your effort are misdirected, unfocused. You may be lacking conviction. Perhaps the goal you're going after is not the one you actually need, or even want. Are you sure you want that throne ? Are you aware of the price coming with any glorious purpose ?

At its worst, the Magician Reversed signifies manipulation and trickery. You may be masterful at manifesting, but you are lost, and you may only do it for personal gain and at the expense of others. Does it feels off? Maybe. It might means you were made to work for the highest good, before you find yourself lost. Remember your "why", remember your "who". You have many skills, talents, capabilities, but your real potential is not being maximized. You have to ask yourself- what needs to change for you to reach your full potential? What do you crave the most? You can't lie to yourself: you have to be honest, as painful as it might be. You have to be ready to do what it takes to reach your most important goal.

If, in the end, it matters most to see your friends having a shot at life, at happiness, than it matters to not be alone- then, you know what you have to do.

With that, I conclude my explanation. Only one more card, and I'll be done with the Major Arcana!

(Just like Marvel is done with Loki a h)

I hope you liked it. You, yes, you who is still reading! Thank you for that.

#loki #loki fanart #marvel loki #loki season 2 #loki s2 ep6 #loki spoilers #loki series #loki laufeyson #loki odinson #god of stories #loki god of stories #loki ending #tom hiddleston #yggdrasil #tarot project #tarot card #the magician #loki season 2 spoilers

[lifeandtimesoftrying]

The overlords’ persuasion, the Morningstar’s power, and what this means for Charlie

Hazbin Hotel's been rotating in my head since the finale and I have capital-t Thoughts about the worldbuilding (and its implications). So!

Hazbin Hotel’s power system is fundamentally divided into two parts: the overlords, whose abilities are fully tied to and determined by their connections with other denizens, and the Morningstars/other Hell-born aristocracy, whose abilities are innate and unchanging. I think this is why Lucifer is incredibly powerful while not really having power, the overlords seem to be running the show, and Charlie’s character has a lot left to come.

(This got pretty long and there are spoilers, so I’m putting it under a cut!)

Lucifer doesn’t have much authority—the meeting to decide the fate of hell is attended by only the overlords, other demons repeatedly dismiss Charlie (often even using her relationship with her dad to do so), and when we do finally meet the King of Hell himself, it’s when he’s engaged in a hobby which he clearly has a lot of free time for. When Charlie needs large numbers of allies, it’s Alastor and Rosie who coordinate to get them for her, and Alastor is terrified of Zestiel but told Lucifer “fuck you” to his face. Lucifer doesn’t have any control over his subjects.

However, he is still incredibly powerful. He and Charlie, whose powers presumably came from him, defeated Adam, and in the finale sequence he conjured the foundation for a whole hotel without any strain.

The overlords function in the exact opposite way: their powers are gained through their various relationships with other people, and can be influenced as such. Most obviously, Carmilla Carmine explicitly tells Vaggie that the best way to fight is for love, but Rosie is powerful because of the ways she can provide for people and gain their loyalty. Alastor’s known to have bought souls to do his bidding, and the Vees are all themed around ways to influence people (pornography, TV, and social media), and at least one of them also has contracts for souls.

“Hell’s Greatest Dad” illustrates both the overlords’ and the aristocracy’s perspectives. Regardless of how authentic Alastor is being in his claims in the song, it can be assumed that he’s doing everything he can to convince Charlie to work with him, and Lucifer is doing the same. However, their approaches are polar opposites.

Lucifer’s persuasion relies on his innate abilities: he calls himself “the big boss of Hell himself,” and says that he can help “with the punch of a pentagram / I wap-bam-boom, alakazam / Usually I charge a sacrificial lamb / But you get the family rate.” This emphasizes both his familial (and unchangeable) tie to Charlie and his inborn abilities, which come up again when he says “there’s no substitute for pure angelic power.”

The reasons that Alastor cites for why he should be chosen are all based in the actions that he’s done for Charlie, and the resulting relationship that they have because of those actions. He emphasizes his consistency (“who’s been here since day one”) and reliability (who’s been faithful as a nun), both of which are good traits for an overlord to have.

I think this contrast is why Mimzy has to show up when she does: there is no way to resolve the argument about whether to choose that which has been built or that which you were born with. And that’s because of Charlie. Charlie’s dad was never mortal, but her mom was. None of the overlords have been called immortal, but many of them are confirmed to have been mortal. A large part of Charlie’s arc in season 1 is her learning how to connect with the people around her and get them to believe in her. She is, in many ways, beginning to function like an overlord would. With one major difference.

We know that Husk used to be an overlord, most likely one of gambling. Gambling is really three things: chance, skill, and being able to read other people without them being able to read you. And from what we know of overlords, getting that status requires all of those traits. Chance and skill exist in any field, but the ability to see past other’s facades without revealing your own hand is incredibly important here, to the point where it’s Alastor’s whole shtick—a smile is a way of staying in control.

But where overlords try to read those around them while keeping their own feelings hidden, Charlie always has her heart on her sleeve. When she goes to cannibal town, Alastor’s advice that she always smile quickly stops working, and only after she’s processed her feelings about Vaggie by talking with Rosie is she able to convince people to follow her.

But this is still only half of what she’s potentially capable of. We haven’t seen her try to battle anyone on her own and win—the closest we got was Valentino, but she quickly backed down from that. Since a second season is scheduled, my bet is that it’ll follow her learning the extent of her innate powers, and how to pair them with her connections to others—after all, she is the only character with both mortal an immortal lineages.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel analysis #hazbin hotel meta #is it meta? eh hopefully #charlie morningstar #lucifer morningstar #i have so many thoughts about them #i freakin' love having thoughts #alastor #hazbin hotel alastor #the radio demon #jeez he's hard to tag #behold! an original post!

[labrxnth]

Prison Break- Part 2 (Leon Kennedy x Reader series)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

CW: Death Island spoilers (obviously), suicidal thoughts/tendencies

WC: 1858

Summary: You and your field partner Leon continue your search for Doctor Antonio Taylor on Alcatraz

A/N: Sorry This was late, I had a busy schedule and major writer’s block

The first thing you noticed about the harbor is that it smelled like salt. Saltiness and almost a tackiness filled the air as you looked out of the rolled down window. Your hand traced circles on the car seat absentmindedly as you watched the boats and people the car was speeding past.

“What’re you thinking?” Leon asked, his hand drifting dangerously close to yours. When he got to an inch away, he stopped, his hand giving a deadly space between the two. If you were paying full attention, it would’ve made you upset, but for some reason this mission really wasn’t sitting right with you.

Call it survivor’s gut or intuition, but this mission was sitting funky in your stomach.

You took a deep breath and turned your head to face your partner. “I don’t like this… Maria being involved with Taylor means that someone like Arias wants a robotics engineer,” You answered and shifted a bit in your seat.

“I don’t like it either,” Leon replied. The two of you were always good at having each other’s back and making the other one feel validated. That was your whole friendship, being the person that each other needed.

You were the person Leon needed after, well, everything he had gone through. Raccoon City, Project Javier, Los Illuminados and Simmons were hard for him to shoulder alone. His life felt like a dark and foggy hallway, a trail of blood and cynicism following him. But in the midst of everything, you were a light. You were with him through everything for the past few years, carrying a candle filled with your aura that scared off the darkness and the fog in his hallway.

You were the one person who hadn’t run away or died, and he’d like to keep it that way.

He was the one person he hadn’t run away or died, and you would like to keep it that way.

Leon S. Kennedy was an enigma to you when you first started working for the D.S.O. under recommendation from Hunnigan. Through the past few years of working together, the two of you started out as drinking buddies then quickly became actual friends. It was over for you when you looked into his eyes and saw who he truly was for the first time. The mission in New York, the summit, the look on Leon’s face were all seared into your mind. His blue eyes tossing your heart just like a human thrown overboard into a vast ocean.

But you were convinced the look he gave you that night was just for your façade; the role the two of you played. If you never spoke life into your feelings, he never had to reject you.

“You’re doing it again,” Leon’s voice cut through your memories; bringing you back to the streets of San Francisco and dragging you away from the dinner party in New York.

“Huh?” You asked, blinking a few times, trying to adjust to the setting Sun in your eyes.

“Getting lost in that big head of yours,” He replied and chuckled lightly. “You do that more lately…. Ever since that mission in NYC.” His eyes looked at you, almost as if searching for an answer for an unasked question.

“I’ve just been thinking about things,” You said, trying to pass it off as nothing.

“Thinking about…..?” Leon asked, his eyebrows raised.

“Life stuff… like if fighting half dead people and gross science experiments is gonna be the rest of my life,” you said, making an excuse. You didn’t like to lie to Leon, but this one thing you made an exception for. And it was true, sometimes you did think about how your life has taken a turn after college.

Leon hummed in response, looking out his own window. The autumnal setting sun reflected in his eyes and hair, making his irises shine like diamonds and his hair shining a dirty blonde in the rays. When the sun hit him, it was a reminder of who he was, the dirty blonde hair and full blue eyes that he had that night in Raccoon City. He thought that Rookie Cop died that day, but maybe all he needed was a constant sun in his life; someone who brought his hope back.

“Don’t start thinking about that stuff, it’ll drag you down,” he warned. “Trust me.” His voice had an edge to it that you had only heard a few times before. The edge that reflected a tinge of sadness, but resilience.

The car stopped at the dock, you and Leon getting out of the Uber and taking in your surroundings. To the public, the only way to get to Alcatraz was a ferry tour, but luckily the two of you could call in a few favors and pull a few strings.

“Follow me, the boat should be at the Marina.” Leon said. He walked in front of you, making his way towards the docks. With no other option, you walked with him, trying not to look at how his blue shirt hugged his biceps a little too well.

The two of you quickly made your way towards a boat with a big branded D.S.O. logo on it.

“Couldn’t have been more covert?” You asked flatly.

“Gotta warn them before we blow their shit up,” Leon said, half joking. He got in the boat, slinging his duffle bag off his shoulder and putting it on a seat. You climbed on after him and looked around the small speed boat.

“You sure this thing has ballistics?” You asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s American, it can blow something up as long as you try hard enough,” He replied with his shit-eating grin. You chuckled in reply and got into the seat next to him, giving him the chance to drive for once. Leon noticed you not fighting for the wheel and he took the opportunity to start the boat and pull out of the Marina.

“So, (Y/n),” He said, putting the boat in drive and starting to steer to Alcatraz. “I’ve been thinking…” He added.

“That’s never a good thing,” You said snarkily and chuckled a bit.

“Very funny,” Leon said and rolled his eyes.

“But for real, what’s up?” You asked and looked at him. He was really focusing on what to say with how much his eyebrows were knitted and the lines next to his eyes were visible.

“It’s bad timing… we can talk about it later,” he said and looked at you, smiling.

You shrugged, thinking nothing of it. The sun setting over the bay was beautiful, it being the only thing that could peel your attention away from Leon. Your eyes tracked the sun, squinting slightly at how bright it was, but smiling at how the waves reflected the red and orange haze it was.

You went to say something to Leon and saw the same look in his face that you’d only seen once before. Amidst fancy clothes, cocktails, and fake friendships, was Leon’s face having the same look as he did now.

It was gone when he realized your eyes had met his. In a blink of an eye, he was back to his normal, scanning the area with a neutral facial expression.

Leon parked the boat at the back of the island and the two of you put on your combat gear: vests, harnesses, etc. once you two were ready to go, you were getting out of the boat and heading towards a tunnel opening.

“Munitions tunnel, should get us in,” You said and nodded towards it. Leon nodded in response and followed you into the tunnel. Eventually, the tunnel opened up to sewers, you two finally being able to fully stand up.

You turned to Leon to say something when you heard a loud BANG! The two of you locked eyes and your handguns were both drawn, aimed towards the other end of the sewers where the explosion came from.

After walking forwards a bit, the sewer split two ways, one to your left and one ahead. The sewers were set up on a block system, like a city.

“I’ll go forward, you go left,” Leon said and turned his ear com on. You nodded, copying his movements and doing the same.

The two of you gave each other a nod and separated hesitantly. Whenever the two of you separated, things never went well. Understandably, it was a necessity, but it still never went well.

You turned your flashlight on and walked to the left, then down the hallway. The light illuminated the tunnel and the sinking feeling you had gotten earlier hadn’t gone away. With Leon gone, it got more prominent.

Your boots hit the cobblestone, echoing with each footstep. Looking around, you were finding absolutely nothing. Out of the corner of your eye, the flash light reflected off of something metallic. You turned towards where the shimmer had come from and found an indented doorknob.

Silently, your hand opened the door and you slipped through it, closing it just as quietly as you opened it. Overhead lights turned on and revealed you to be in a hallway. Holding your gun up, supported by your flash light, you kept on forward.

The door at the other end of the hallway was open, revealing a more open hallway. As you walked, a small electronic buzz hit your ears as you saw one of the security cameras move.

“(Y/n), (L/n) how interesting,” A voice over the PA system said. You swiveled around, your gun up, staying silent.

A sharp pain hit the back of your neck and your hand shot to where the pain was coming from, feeling nothing unusual. Your eyelids fluttered shut as the world went dark and your knees buckled, sending your body falling towards the floor.

“At least you’ll bring me Leon Kennedy.” The voice added.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* : ｡ﾟ☆. ───

Leon marched on forward, trying to keep his head in the mission. Usually, he was good at compartmentalizing and having a one track mind for the mission. That was, until you became his partner; even now, he was worried about how you were faring.

He knew you could handle yourself, but still he worried about you. He didn’t want you getting hurt, or worse, like everyone else in his life.

Leon heard the sound of boots hitting the cobblestone path in front of him and held his gun up, ready to shoot. He rounded the corner and the barrel of his gun got grabbed, sending him into a sprawl. Him and the other person he was fighting with were both trying not to wind up in the sewer water, dangerously close to their feet.

After a few seconds of exchanges, Leon recognized the familiar brown color of hair he was fighting. His eyes finally adjusted to the darkness and he took in the bigger picture, seeing an all too familiar face. The two of them backed off of each other and took the other in.

“Well, if it isn’t Jill Valentine.”

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* : ｡ﾟ☆. ───

Catch it early on my A03!

#resident evil fanfic #leon kennedy x reader #leon s kennedy x reader #resident evil fanfiction

[anonymouspuzzler]

awright who let puzz play psychonauts again and start Thinking

It Never Ends! I am once again thinking about Psychonauts and specifically thinking about Loboto. Even More Specifically, I replayed the first game Yet Again recently and on hitting the scene where Loboto removes Dogen’s brain, had a moment of “huh, he’s like, way more measured and composed than I remembered,” and God Help Me that sent me on a horrible unending spiral of Revisiting and Thinking About and Theorizing On Things. And Now You Must All Read My Discoveries As Well. (placed under readmore because 1) this is gonna get long and 2) my god there will be major spoilers for Every Psychonauts Game.)

Welcome To The Thunderdome. Let’s Begin. In particular I am going to present to and discuss with you Three Distinct Things I Am Thinking About Loboto Based On In-Game Evidence That I Will Extrapolate, Present, and Argue To You All:

Cal’s childhood lobotomy did not, in fact, remove his psychic powers, only cut off his ability to consciously access and utilize them. He is still unconsciously using psychic abilities at the point that we see him in the games.

One of the most prominent impacts of the lobotomy on Cal appears to be his inability to recognize when he is doing harm, and to a certain related degree, how to interpret other peoples’ responses to him. When Raz helps recover his “moral compass”, Loboto actually becomes significantly more unstable as he struggles to process this, having likely gone most of his life without these capabilities.

Both of the above are causing some variant of Mental Projection to occur in Loboto’s mind, creating multiple conflicting archetypes/personas similar to what’s happening in Cassie’s mind.

So let’s go through each of these one by one! In excruciating detail!!

1) Cal’s childhood lobotomy did not, in fact, remove his psychic powers, only cut off his ability to consciously access and utilize them. He is still unconsciously using psychic abilities at the point that we see him in the games.

So for this one, we’re going to go through my evidence from “most textual” to “a little more speculative” in roughly that order. Obviously, none of this is explicit, but I’m doing my damndest to use things that can be fairly reasonably cited from Actual In Game rather than too deep in fanon/speculation.

The most textual example of Loboto having lingering psychic abilities despite his lobotomy is, in fact, his mental world in Psychonauts 2! This is something that’s a little more obvious on a rewatch/replay.

When you’re going through the game/level the first time, Sasha especially spends a lot of time discussing how Loboto’s mind must have been booby-trapped and messed with by his employer, because otherwise Loboto wouldn’t be able to resist the construct and otherwise give the agents the degree of run-around he’s putting them through. On a first playthrough, that makes perfect sense, especially when this plus additional evidence leads the agents to conclude Loboto’s employer was a mole within the Psychonauts itself. Obviously, a psychic from the agency messed with Loboto’s head and left all these psychic booby-traps for their coworkers!

But once you reach the end of the game and go back and look at this again, you realize, hey, wait. Loboto’s boss wasn’t a psychic at all! Quite explicitly!

Now I’m going to take a moment to argue against my own argument here, because there is evidence that Gristol would have been able to psychically fuck with Loboto despite not having psychic abilities himself.

[Image ID: A screenshot from a cutscene in Psychonauts 2, showing the receptionist at the Motherlobe levitating a ThinkerPrint Reader (a small brain-shaped disc with a blue glowing eye symbol in the middle). End ID.]

We see in-game that these little brain-disc-things - which Gristol would have had access to via Truman, since Truman has one on his person - are able to provide some limited degree of psychic power even to people who don’t otherwise have those abilities. Namely, the front desk receptionist is able to telekinetically lift one and scan Raz with it when he arrives, despite dialogue later on suggesting she isn’t a psychic herself. It’s entirely possible Gristol used that to fuck with Loboto’s head and place all those psychic booby traps.

But ho ho!! Now I’m going to counter-argue this counter-argument, to get you all back on board with my original argument!! Because despite this possibility, it’s also pretty textual that Gristol is a fuck-up who’s not very good at planning. The entirety of Psychonauts 2 is a display of him not really having any back-up plans for any possible hiccups in his original plan (as soon as Lili reveals a boyfriend he didn’t know about, his response is Fake A Coma), and of said plan being undone mostly by his own sloppy work (shipping his own body back to the base in a poorly-taped box with a key to his former residence in his pockets). The thought of this same man having the capability and foresight to set up numerous highly effetive psychic booby-traps in the brain of his hired help, just in case that hired help got captured and psychically interrogated… it doesn’t feel likely.

(Now that I write it all out, in a lot of ways it feels like Gristol just… forgot about-slash-disregarded Loboto after he did the dirty work of kidnapping Truman and swapping the brains. Like, he only appears once in Gristol’s Big Special Mind-Ride of his Brilliant Plan, at the very end, in a barely-held-together-backroom type of area, and Gristol never so much as brings him up by name. Heck, in retrospect, I wouldn’t be surprised if Gristol deciding to Play Coma was equally as prompted by Guy Who Knows Everything, Who He Completely Disregarded and Left For Dead, falling out of a luggage rack unexpectedly right in front of him and Five Guys He's Trying To Fool Into Thinking He's Normal All The Time Truman. This is all totally off the topic at hand, though.)

Anyway! So Gristol being able to do anything significant and sophisticated vis-a-vis “psychic traps in Loboto’s mindscape” is wildly unlikely. While there’s still other possible explanations - Gristol maybe having other psychics in his employ in the Delugianaries or secret police, for example - that’s purely speculative and not supported by the text in any kind of reasonably-explicit way, which is what I’m trying to focus on for the purposes of this argument. Hey, you know what is explicit in the text, though? Loboto once having psychic powers, to a degree that he was using telekinesis Very Capably as a Literal Infant. That, combined with all the above evidence (plus other circumstantial stuff we’ll get into in a second), means the most likely answer to “how is Loboto resisting the agents and the mental construct?” is “his psychic powers are still There, and acting subconsciously to protect Loboto in this situation, even though he’s no longer able to access and use those powers by conscious effort”.

Now let’s get to evidence of a “still textual, but not as compelling” flavor. For this, we’re going to go back to the original Psychonauts, and also touch on Rhombus of Ruin a bit.

As some of y’all probably remember from messing around in the original game, because there’s still some of that point-and-click inventory flavor, you can try to use the psycho-portal on characters that don’t have mental worlds, and you’ll get some flavor text explaining in some form or another why you can’t do that. This includes Crispin (you get a note from Loboto saying he’s protected “his patient” from psychic procedures, Haha Hey Man Uhhh How Did Y), Sheegor, and most pressingly for this line of argument, Loboto himself, who claims his shower cap is protecting his mind from being entered.

This Is All Well and Good until Literally The Next Day In-Universe when his mind is able to be entered. Twice, in fact. Please recall that the start of Psychonauts 2 is, at a stretch, maybe a few hours after Rhombus of Ruin. (“Haha well Puzz clearly they just retconned it so they could do a Loboto mental world–” no. That’s not Fun and it’s not Text. This overthinking-ass essay is about Engaging With The Text As It Stands.)

So what’s different about the first time Raz (et all) attempts to enter Loboto’s mind (in the original game) and the second-slash-third time (during and after Rhombus of Ruin)? Nothing that would particularly have an impact, except for one big thing: in the latter cases, Loboto is either “immediately in the presence of” or “has just barely left the immediate presence of” Like A Lot Of Psilirium. You Know. The Rock That Dampens Psychic Powers. Which leads me to believe Loboto’s psychic powers are still active, just in an unconscious way (protecting him from psychic invasion without him even realizing it) instead of in a way he has to consciously act on.

Now, why am I categorizing this as less compelling evidence than Loboto resisting the mental construct later on? Because unlike that case, there actually is a reasonable, textual alternative to the answer of “yeah Loboto’s still unconsciously psychic”. The answer is named Coach Morceau Oleander.

Unlike Gristol, Oleander has a lot going for him on the level of “could fuck with Loboto’s mind a bit to put up some psychic defenses”. For one, Oleander is a psychic, and despite everything, a highly trained and very powerful one. (Like, much as he’s kind of a goofy fuck-up, Oleander’s also implied to have been an agent for at least as long as Sasha and Milla, and he’s able to hold his own in a fight against both of them at once - it literally takes Ford flying in and de-braining him to win that confrontation.) Two, we already have textual evidence of Oleander messing with people’s brains to his own ends, in the form of both Linda (though in some ways that could loop back around to supporting Loboto Is Still Psychic, since he seems to have had some degree of a hand in that) and more prominently, poor ol’ Boyd. If he was able to do that much involuntarily with Boyd, it doesn’t seem out of the question for him to hop in and put up some psychic defenses for more voluntary subjects like Crispin and Loboto. It would also make sense for those defenses to either wear down or wear off once Loboto was in the presence of Psilirium, thus continuing to explain why Loboto’s protected in the first game but not in any of the games following.

So - taken on its own, not particularly decisive evidence. In combination with the much-stronger “resisting the mental construct” example, though, I’d say it presents a pretty strong case.

Now comes my most tenuous and speculative example. This is about as much as a stretch I’m going to let myself go with any of these - a case of “well you can extrapolate this from the text provided, I guess, even if it never says it explicitly to any kind of degree”.

Ladies, gentlemen, and those rightfully opting out. It is time to talk about Loboto’s Fucking Prosthetic.

[Image ID: A full rotation of Loboto’s “Monstroboto” character model, which shows him shirtless with the full prosthetic right arm visible. It is attached to his torso with several straps and has a single visible hinge at the elbow.]

Look at this thing. This is a fucking mannequin arm with a pepper grinder on it. How Is This Thing Able To Operate With Any Kind of Sophistication Without Telekinesis. Like, the man is gesticulating and grabbing objects and tapping his little knife fingers, how in the Hell.

There’s a lot of reasons this is tenuous evidence at best. For one, we only get this super clear view of the entire prosthetic construction inside Loboto’s mind, which means it’s extremely possible it’s abstracted, metaphorical, or an abstracted metaphor in one form or another. (I don’t interpret Loboto’s exposed brain as textual in the “real world” for this reason - we only ever see it exposed in his mental worlds, and in both cases in a scenario where him having an exposed brain under the cap serves some kind of symbolic/metaphorical purpose - but for several reasons, the prosthetic feels more grounded in reality despite this. Anyway, that’s all a tangent regardless.) There could also be hidden mechanics that allow it to move the way it does, or it could just be an abstraction of the art style (though again, I’m trying not to let out-of-story things like that be answers to these questions). But it’s really hard to imagine the Hinged Peppermill With Claws having the range of movement it does without Loboto unconsciously moving it with telekinesis.

For that matter, I feel similarly about his eye lenses - we see them moving around independently, zooming in and out without him touching them, and so on, and like… how? How?? Maybe it’s just that I’m not biomechanically minded-slash-informed, but “yeah he’s just moving them psychically without realizing” does feel like a more viable answer than any alternatives, if not one with a ton of super obvious and textual evidence behind it. Once again, though, in combination with other evidence, it does have more weight behind it.

In summary: Loboto’s able to resist psychic interference, actively fight back against trained Psychonauts in his own mind, and move his various prosthetics and augments in highly refined ways. All these things, especially taken all together, make the most sense if you assume his psychic powers are still acting subconsciously, and he’s just not able to consciously access and use them in the ways he did pre-lobotomy.

2) One of the most prominent impacts of the lobotomy on Cal appears to be his inability to recognize when he is doing harm, and to a certain related degree, how to interpret other peoples’ responses to him. When Raz helps recover his “moral compass”, Loboto actually becomes significantly more unstable as he struggles to process this, having likely gone most of his life without these capabilities.

This is going to be a little less “I cite direct evidence in support of my argument” and more “I point out specific scenes and instances of behavior, how I’m interpreting them, and why I’m interpreting that way”. Hopefully you will stick with me here.

So, as I stated waaaay back at the start of this, what set me off on this whole journey was going back through some of the original Psychonauts cutscenes, seeing Loboto in action, and going, “Woah, hey, he’s like way more measured than I remembered him being”. So let’s go into more detail on that and unpack it a bit!!

There’s a consistent and distinct pattern of behavior Loboto exhibits in his scenes in the first game: screeching, in-your-face Mad Scientist rambling, and then suddenly, these dips into like… oddly quiet, composed, weirdly Professional (if decidedly eccentric) behavior. The cutscenes with Dogen are a really good example - he has his big INSANITY OF A MANATEE THIS WILL ONLY HURT TILL YOUR BRAIN COMES FLYING OUT speech, but in-between and especially after that, he kind of quiets down and starts acting like an Actual Slightly Eccentric Dentist. (In fact, here’s the full transcript of the scene that sent me down this whole rabbit-hole, for context:

Dr. Loboto: Oh, good boy! There's that pesky brain. Here's a tissue. Now don't you feel better, my dear lad? Dogen: [Now brainless] TV..? Dr. Loboto: Of course! Right here. [Loboto picks up Dogen's brain off the floor.] And THIS bad tooth, we'll just drop it in the ol' garbage chute. Now don't chew solid foods for the next six hours!

It really knocked me off balance seeing it, so I made a point of going and watching the full Lili’s bracelet clairvoyance cutscene in full, to see if he behaved similarly there. And he didn’t! He’s full Mad Scientist Haha Crazy there, the entire time!! I had to think on it for a while, and I realized there was one major difference - Lili continues to be defiant and difficult in conversation the entire time, while Dogen responds pretty calmly and doesn’t start freaking out until it’s clear His Brain Will Be Removed, which is also when Loboto starts going more Mad Scientist again. (Again, below’s the full transcript of the Lili scene for context.)

Dr. Loboto: Well, I've reviewed your chart, little girl. The bad news is, we're going to have to remove your brain... strap it into an armored battle tank, and have it shoot down innocent civilians with its concentrated psychic death beam! Lili: I'm gonna kill you so much. Dr. Loboto: The good news is that your insurance is going to cover the whole thing. So! ... Hey, is it getting warm in here? Lili: No, I'm trying to set you on fire through this stupid hat! Dr. Loboto: What a delightfully mean little brain you have! Just what we want! Here, do me a favor. Tell me if this smells like... YOUR DOOM! Heh heh! Lili: I-I can't smell anything. Dr. Loboto: Curses! [Lili laughs at him] You're a stubborn little ball of phlegm, ain't ya? Well, that head cold won't protect you forever, little girl, and when it's gone you'll be sneezing a different tune. A tune in the key of... brains! HAAA HA HA!

His last big cutscene with Sheegor really hammers everything home. He’s full Mad Scientist again, he’s screaming and experimenting and Actively Threatening and Tormenting Her the entire time. Then Sheegor leaves and just, measured and nonchalant as anything: “When you're a dentist, you have to learn to have a sense of humor, you know. It helps to calm the patient down.” (It’s also worth noting a lot of the torment, at least to me, comes off as kinda “dipshit older sibling who commits to the bit of teasing Way Way Past where it’s all in good fun for the younger sibling”. Like he just keeps Going and Playfully Backing Off and then Actually Still Going. It’s so awful it loops around to being funny again. I'm so so sorry Sheegor I love you and you don't deserve this but I am laughing)

I think Loboto really, unironically, genuinely thinks this is what he’s doing in all these situations. He’s a dentist, he’s got all these difficult patients around, so he’s going to joke with them! A bit of friendly teasing and playing up his eccentric behavior to get them to calm down for the procedure! At the point where all this is happening, I think he’s genuinely incapable of comprehending-slash-accepting that he’s actually doing harm and that they’re actually, rightfully scared of him. Not in a like “oh uwu he didn’t know he did anything bad he’s just a nice guyyyy” way, but in a “his brain is literally, textually, physically damaged in such a way that he cannot comprehend this” way. As far as he can tell, he’s doing some freelance dentistry (plus or minus a few things, you know how it is when you’re doing work-for-hire type stuff, you never know what the client’s gonna ask you for) and sometimes he’s gotta joke around when he gets a patient that’s nervous or difficult. All in good fun!

Then, of course, we get Rhombus of Ruin and the mental compass. If you’ve played or watched that game, you know all this already. Raz recovers the mental compass from the vault and Loboto’s demeanor completely shifts again. He recognizes aloud, for the first time since we’ve been introduced to him, that he has done Horrible Things. (We will see him continuing to do this in his level in Psychonauts 2, but we’ll get to that.) He seems, very genuinely, saddened and horrified with himself as he says all this. Raz has very literally reintroduced Physical-Slash-Psychic Capacity To Recognize Harm to Loboto’s brain. Given what we learn about Loboto’s past here, it is very much possible that this is the first time he has had this capability since he was a very young child.

Another thing that happens is, in rapid succession, Loboto chooses to Immediately Make Reconciliatory Actions (releasing the Psychonauts, telling the fish henchmen to leave), and then also Blow The Building Up Right Now. For No Clear Reason. For Zero Benefit, In Fact, The Opposite Of Benefit, He Also Has to Frantically Escape This Now. It’s completely illogical, erratic behavior that’s in conflict with itself. And that pattern… kind of stays consistent from that point out, actually! Almost his entire appearance in 2 is him very literally arguing with himself, acting in erratic and conflicting ways - pretty much going to the Psychonauts for protection and redemption yet also actively giving them the run-around and preventing them from finding his boss; alternately trying to connect with or get pity from the agents, then being aggressive or insulting towards them, then being kind of playfully, teasingly antagonistic at worst. While Raz reintroducing his moral compass is probably objectively a good thing for Loboto in the long run, in the short-term having that level of major, major change in his damaged brain seems to have significantly destabilized his behavior and sense of identity (we’ll get into that in just a moment) in ways that make him much less predictable and more erratic compared to how he was pre-RoR.

In summary: Loboto at the time of the original Psychonauts is eccentric and dangerous, but he’s also consistent and stable in his behavior and identity, acting consistently as a freelance dentist who plays up his eccentricity, teasing or otherwise joking around in an effort to “calm down” his “patients”. It’s likely he’s physically unable to comprehend that he’s doing harm and scaring people, due to the brain damage from his childhood lobotomy. Raz reintroducing his moral compass in Rhombus of Ruin fixes this, but makes Loboto much more unstable and unpredictable as he grapples both with the harm he’s done over the years, and with trying to suddenly live with a brain function he hasn’t had for most of his life.

3) Both of the above are causing some variant of Mental Projection to occur in Loboto’s mind, creating multiple conflicting archetypes/personas similar to what’s happening in Cassie’s mind.

In connection with the above, It’s Time To Talk About the Multiple Lobotos.

[Image ID: A screenshot from Psychonauts 2, showing two Lobotos in his mental world - one in bright light sitting in a dentist chair on the right side, the other standing in the shadows on the left. End ID.]

Every time we see Loboto’s mental world, there are multiple distinct, individual, and simultaneous versions of Loboto Himself in operation. Not different and distinctly individual personalities, like Fred and Napoleon. Not separated alter-egos representing a part of oneself, like Edgar and El Odio, or Bob and Turnip-Bob. Not even fragmented personalities that appear one at a time, like the different versions of Ford. There are multiple versions of Loboto that are Just A Loboto - literally the most different they get is “one time one of them pretended to be a whaler” - operating at the same time as each other, in the same scenes as each other, interacting with each other, sometimes in direct opposition to each other. There is only one other place in the entire series where we see this happening.

[Image ID: A screenshot from Psychonauts 2, showing the “librarian” Archetype of Cassie O’Pia tearing up a book with Raz on the left side and her three other Archetypes on the right. End ID.]

THAT’S RIGHT BABY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS I FINALLY RETROACTIVELY FOUND AN EXPLANATION FOR THE CALLY O’PIA AU anyway where was I. Yeah.

The way the different versions of Cal operate in his mind and interact with each other is more similar to Cassie’s Archetypes than anything else we see in anyone else’s minds. The only major differences are “Loboto’s Archetypes aren’t flat paper illustrations” (and I think it’s remarkably easy, even reasonable, to assume that’s a Cassie-specific stylization that Raz only retains because Cassie directly teaches him and he’s thus using her Archetypes as a reference point - Cassie’s a writer; what reason would everyone else in the world have to render their Archetypes as if they were illustrations in a book?) and “Loboto doesn’t refer to or treat the other versions of himself as Archetypes” (of course he doesn’t, I don’t see any reason or scenario where he could have reasonably learned about Archetypes, in either a psychological or psychic sense - he literally does not have the knowledge or the language to do this). Honestly, interpreting the different Lobotos as different Archetypes explains a lot about how they act, what they’re doing in Loboto’s mind and why they’re in the parts of the story they are. I am going to talk about each individual version of Loboto and what I think they’re doing Archetype-wise based on the text now, because none of you can stop me.

Psychonauts 2 Loboto #1, AKA Patient Loboto: This guy, and Psychonauts 2 Loboto #2, tie in the most to the above discussion on Loboto becoming more outwardly unstable after recovering his mental compass, and so I’m going to refer back to and expand on that with the both of them. This Loboto is explicitly the one we see in the patient chair during those cutscenes in his level, the one we see speaking to Raz directly in the poster hall section, and I would argue he’s likely the version we see at the very start of the level in the office construct (or at the very least, he's the one "running" Loboto at that point, in the same way the Librarian is "running" Cassie when we first meet her). He’s the version of Loboto we see most blatantly grappling with the return of his mental compass - he regrets the things he’s done in the past, he’s seems to be vying to connect with the agents on some level, he’s genuinely upset about being tricked and about being unable to tell Raz what’s up with his boss. This puts him in direct conflict with…

Psychonauts 2 Loboto #2, AKA Doctor Loboto: This guy is also the result of Loboto’s Newfound Ability To Recognize Morals, but in the opposite direction. He’s the one who’s fully embracing the identity he’s built as an amoral mad-scientist-for-hire, figuring he’s better off just continuing the path he’s already on and disregarding the new knowledge that It’s Wrong, rather than go through all the trouble and misery and Active Risk To Self of trying to Be Redeemed. Basically, he’s the one looking at OG Psychonauts version of Loboto and going What If We Just Went Back To That Actually. Fuck Character Development. He is, obviously, the one we see as the dentist in the cutscenes in Loboto’s level, as well as pretty textually the one who grabs Raz from behind the painting in Lili’s section.

Monstroboto: Back to RoR now! This one’s pretty textual as well - this the uncontrolled, untethered, don’t-know-or-care-if-it-hurts-someone version of Loboto. (As I type this, I realize it’s worth noting, this version of Loboto is very obviously “playing” as he attacks, in the same way I observed Psychonauts 1 Loboto having a playful tone to his antagonism, as if he’s not recognizing that he’s actively hurting and terrifying people while doing so. All his attacks are either that, or actively retaliatory. I'm Simply Saying I Can Read Some Subtext.) Between that and the exposed brain, it’s pretty obvious this is representing the post-lobotomy Loboto (how he sees himself? How he thinks others see him? All that’s speculation, mine friends…) - wreaking havoc on Loboto’s ability to engage with other parts of himself and develop a fully fledged mindscape.

First Mate Loboto: This one’s a little more speculative and could mean a lot of things, but bear with me. As above, this could well be the part of Loboto that wants to distance himself from what he became after the lobotomy - whether that means ignoring it entirely and trying to go back to how things were “before”, or more likely, based on his dialogue, trying to move on and grow past it; “sail for new waters”, in his own words. It’s also possible he’s something of Loboto’s idealized self - he’s just as eccentric and dramatic as the real deal, but at least more theoretically heroic and adventurous - and/or, tying into a lot of the themes of the RoR version of Loboto’s mind, kind of a childish “what I want to be when I grow up” version of himself. (We see lots of nautical themes in Loboto’s childhood, after all, with the sea life toys and the little sailor boy outfit and all; while it’s certainly speculative, it’s not a huge leap to think little Loboto might have wanted to grow up to be like, a sailor or something of that ilk.)

Young Loboto: This one’s pretty obvious; he’s very literally the Inner Child. (You Know. Like Psychology.) Just like Li’l Oly in Oleander’s mind, this is the part of Cal who was Very Hurt when he was Very Young and has never had the means or opportunity to process it - he’s just stuck in that mental vault, buried away, playing out what he’s experienced over and over and over again as a helpless, outside observer. (I think it’s Very telling that Raz releasing the vault and, in essence, establishing a connection between Inner Child Loboto and the other parts of himself is what restores Loboto’s ability to use his moral compass.)

So, in total, we’ve got five distinct Lobotos in play through what we see: Inner Child, First Mate, Monstroboto, Patient and Doctor. And, in a case very similar to what we see of Cassie’s Archetypes, each of these versions of him are a result of a Very Specific Point in his life and a subsequent need to fulfill a Very Specific Purpose for his continued functioning and survival. The Inner Child is, well, Loboto As A Child (and less literally, the version of him that’s kind of holding on to his trauma so the rest of the versions of him don’t necessarily have to reckon with it); Monstroboto is what’s taken over post-lobotomy; First Mate is what he either Wanted or Wants to be and isn’t because of said lobotomy; and Patient and Doctor are the two options he has post-recovering his moral compass, either continuing on the path he’s already on, or abandoning it for the hard road of Trying To Be Better.

And again, much like Cassie, none of those Archetypes on their own are getting the job done on their own. Doctor and Monstroboto are extremely destructive and don’t seem much able to form meaningful relationships because of it, Patient is an erratic coward who’s constantly miserable and collapsing under the weight of What He’s Done, Inner Child is a Child, and First Mate is a cartoon character. It’s very likely that a theoretical healthier, more functional version of Loboto would have to reconcile these different Archetypes the same way we eventually see Cassie do, or at the very least get them on terms where they’re not Actively Opposing Each Other At All Times.

In summary: Loboto has multiple Archetypes active in his mind the same way Cassie does, and much like Cassie, the Archetypes being in conflict with each other plays a major role in his instability, especially post-RoR. Again like Cassie, it’s likely Loboto would have to reconcile his different archetypes - especially the ones in direct conflict, as we see in his mind in Psychonauts 2 - in some form or another to become more mentally stable.

SO IN CONCLUSION, I hope this Rambling Essay and Cited Evidence has convinced you all that:

Loboto is still psychic, but his powers only manifest unconsciously, and he isn’t able to use them by conscious choice as when he was a child. (Whether or not it’s possible for him to eventually re-access those powers consciously is very much a “your guess is as good as mine” situation - Loboto's the only lobotomized psychic we see in the series, and no other in-game sources on the history or results of the practice.)

Regaining his moral compass for the first time since childhood makes Loboto behave significantly more erratically and unpredictably, in no small part because–

Loboto has several mental Archetypes in direct conflict with each other, especially after regaining his moral compass.

What does all this mean? I’m gonna be honest. I don’t know. I just wanted to get all this out of my head. Now it lives in yours instead. Have fun!!

#anonymous puzzler writes #long post #like really long. like REALLY long. i'm so sorry I hope tumblr cuts it properly for all your sakes. #psychonauts #caligosto loboto #psychonauts spoilers #psychonauts 2 spoilers #rhombus of ruin spoilers #tw medical abuse #ask if you need anything else tagged y'all ty! #god help me i just needed this all Out Of My Head. This Is How I Live Out Here

[alena-draws]

Beware of major Trigun spoilers!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Read from right to left

(they are not necessarily chronological to the events in the au, I’ll just be drawing what scenes come to mind)

First part of my Vashwood Reincarnation AU that I’m gonna call “Cutting the Strings of Fate”, which planted itself in my mind some days ago! The concept takes part in the future after the Trigun Maximum events.

While I was drawing I was wondering if Vash is a bit too ooc here maybe? Tristamp Vash is a pretty diffcícult character to grasp for me, but I think considering that he hasn’t really lived through all that that he did in the anime, and just starts to remember the events in the manga, it’s ok if he’s a bit more carefree at first, and not so completely the depressed and sad puppy from the anime...Anyway, mixing the Tristamp characters with the Trimax universe was a fun idea to me! I love both iterations of the characters and their respective universes a lot, sooo why not mash them together?

Look under the cut for the whole story idea:

Many decades after the events of Trigun Maximum, Vash is reborn on the same planet. Even though still needed to sustain themselves, humans are less dependant of plants now, and the great project to cultivate the planet has been very successfull, with the first forests and occassional green that will grow out of the dry soil. Vash is a young but skillful plant engineer, who will also from time to time help out in different towns to have a look at their local plants. One day he starts having dreams about his past life, with them getting clearer and clearer and revealing more of his past. He meets Zazie, who is still the old Beast who knew Vash the Stampede. Because of that, Zazie notices that the very individual electric impulse of Vash, that every being gives off and can be detected by the worms, is indeed very close to the same signal of Vash the Stampede. Thus confirming that  Vash is indeed some kind of reincarnation.

Vash's brother Nai works as a bioengineer, looking after the preservation of important vegetation in another city, where their mother Rem lives, too. Vash meets Wolfwood, who starts to help out in the plant facility as a odd-job man, and they grow closer together. One day though, an accident happens, convincing Vash and Zazie that Vash's history is trying to repeat itself. They fear that just like in the past, Nai who is obviously another reincarnation could run berserk, and that Rem and Wolfwood are, just as well, in danger to become fate's victim once again.

With the help of Zazie that can feel how, after each past event repeating itself in some way, Vash's and the others' electric signals grow closer to their past selves', they try to defy fate and bring about a happy end for everyone. (Yay!)

#trigun #trigun stampede #comic #trigun au #vashwood #vash #wolfwood #trigun spoilers #trigun maximum spoilers #zazie #zazie the beast

[y-rhywbeth2]

So glancing between the original games and the third - again - and thinking about the difference between the feral and Chosen bad endings and how I'm going to interpret them in my own canon. BG3 lore is irrelevant to me from now on I'm entering the phase where I'm assimilating my playthrough into my own Realms canon.

Also, Durge appears to be soulless. I am aware of the way the game treats Durge as though they have a soul, but BG3 makes strange choices where lore doesn't match up all the damn time. Astarion is clinically dead but the rest mechanics still need food. BG3 talks like Wyll is a devil, and they definitely don't have mortal souls. Dark Urge identity crises and complicated relationship with personhood, how I love thee.

Major BG2 spoilers, so I'll put that under a cut just in case anybody would like to play those games blind.

I noticed this a while back, but Durge's situation is reminiscent of a soulless Bhaalspawn. When their soul - the portion of them that is "them" and not entirely Bhaal - is removed they start displaying the same symptoms and slipping into what is basically the feral ending, judging by Imoen's behaviour:

"Who-who... who is that? Keep back... Keep back! [...] Who is Imoen? I don't know that name. I don't know that name! She's not here! [...] Get away from me! I'll... I'll kill you! I'll rip your eyes from your filthy faces! Do not tempt my wrath! Do not... I... she's not here. I do not know that... name. [...] I see... yes... I see... She's not here... Someone else will come..."

We have dizzy spells and risks of blackouts (otherwise known as Bhaal threatening to take over):

"Your step falters, your vision spins, and you feel something is very wrong. For an instant you are conscious of nothing but the rushing of your blood."

Bhaal literally just assuming direct control rather than flooding you with the urge to murder. Also pain caused by said attempt at taking control:

"A shock of pain passes through your body, and you feel you mind slipping away, forced aside by the darkness within." - "Your blood cools, and mind and body are reunited under your control. Your will had faltered, and the essence of Bhaal was there to take advantage. The void where your soul once was overflowed with murderous fury, the mark of a deity that no longer exists. The taint of Bhaal has affected you differently than Imoen, reacting with your strength of will. You will eventually lose yourself unless your stolen soul is restored. A fate, as they say, worse than death." - "The madness fades, and the essence retreats, but if this continues you will lose not only yourself , but also everything you hold dear. The uncertainty of your condition has obviously worried those you travel with. The quest is treacherous enough without having to worry about what you might do."

Most Bhaalspawn have mortal lineage and were left to develop their own identities until they hit adulthood and Bhaal decided it was time to start pushing them into killing each other as part of the resurrection plan. Their souls are explicitly divine in nature, but they had time and freedom to develop those souls. Each demigod is a potential fledgling god.

The soul and the conscious mind aren't the same thing, so personality and decision making can continue but the emotions and personhood are... not quite there, only the echoes of it. It's been compared to wearing a mask and acting out a part in a play, rather than actually living as that person.

Durge it seems was engineered from the very beginning so that they would never have that chance. Created directly from Bhaal, with no other parent (let alone a mortal one) to dilute him; Bhaal started forcing their hand to kill from a far younger age (before puberty) rather than waiting for them to reach adulthood. and Sceleritas was following them closely ensuring that people would be around to have "accidents", like Alfira.

But it's also notable that Bhaal doesn't just want a puppet, he needs a Bhaalspawn with the drive and power to be his avatar. He somehow needs Durge blindly loyal and lacking in independence but also in possession of "strength of will" to be worthy of/able to house and use his power.

It seems that Durge does not have a soul the way their siblings do, all they have to resist Bhaal with is their mind and sheer willpower. If they disappoint Bhaal then he will simply assume control - something he can do any time he likes. Over the course of BG3 they start developing something like their own soul - judging by the way Bhaal and Sceleritas are still in touch and seemingly testing them, I can only assume this is actually according to plan; Durge is supposed to cultivate a spark of their own divine soul over the journey (and also get tadpoled and help Bhaal take over the Netherbrain and thralls through them, as Sceleritas kind of mentions).

If they fail then Bhaal goes for the feral ending; they go into the "Imoen" category where they're not worthy of his attention and he just uses Durge as a puppet.

Mystra can't force mortals to become her Chosen, they must consent, so possibly that rule applies to Bhaal too? I don't know, but it explains why Bhaal needs them to accept. If they resist then they're clearly strong enough to be worthy but wilful enough that Bhaal decides the risk of that spark of a soul is too great a risk to him and his plans and tries to destroy it but fails because it's too late, and Jergal cuts this fledgling divine soul free.

If they accept becoming Chosen then they are agreeing to be imbued with a fragment of Bhaal's divine essence. Bhaal gets what he wants and merges it with another fragment of his divine essence, presumably setting the stage for him to become a full deity walking the face Toril through Durge's/his body. The fledgling spark of individual is lost in Bhaal when the two fuse; the threat of the resist ending isn't present, because that spark is gone, so if you defy him again he just takes over and we get the punishment ending.

#/durge #headcanoning. #babbling #bg2 spoilers

[meanbossart]

I love Izzy so much, I feel for him tremendously.

Can you tell us something about his future relationship, whatever it might be, with Grodderick? Or is it under wraps for spoilers? 👀

Sure! The details of their relationship are never relevant to the plot, it's more of a background thing that changes some very minor character interactions in ways I doubt one can predict by simply learning about it - I'll still leave it under a cut for anyone who wants to avoid it. I'll also skip certain story beats which allow their relationship to happen in the first place that are most definitely spoilers, and only talk about the actual dynamic between them and post-ANE events, so if details feel amiss, that's because they are.

So it's probably obvious that they're meant to develop a romantic relationship lol this happens after Grodderick gets somewhat "stuck" with Izzy around through certain circumstances. Izzantar, in his predicament, happens to be far more comfortable around him than anyone else because of his predisposition to feel safe around "slave" races. Now, that's obviously not a great start to any relationship, romantic or otherwise lol but it is what it is.

They grow a little closer through Grodderick's endless patience and sincere curiosity about a culture he isn't familiar with. Izzantar, despite his experiences, considers the underdark his home, he can only properly conceptualize of surface customs by comparing them to his own culture, and Grodderick is the only one willing to hear it without judgement - with the eventual wisecrack or pushback. But the way he does it is one Izzantar comfortable with.

Likewise Izzantar would probably defy Grod's own generalized negativity around the orc-ish side of his culture (and frankly be positively shocked it has any merit at all). It's a funny little game of "no, YOU have internalized hate" they keep playing between themselves by accident.

Another major point here is that Grodderick is a) the only person who sees Izzantar as an adult and b) someone who immediately recognizes him as someone with an anxiety disorder. With time he would help Izzy to calm the fuck down and not always assume the worse out of people. His company also allows Izzantar to feel more at ease in public settings in the surface as a drow, and Izzy's brazen company and completely unfiltered perspective is a breath of fresh air to Grodderick. He thinks he's funny, he recognizes and participates in his dry humor, he doesn't offend easy, and he's the furthest thing from a drow. This makes him an apt friend choice and later a romantic interest. Being hot and having cool tats helps LOL

Also they both like to partake in a little devil🌿 which is likely how their first meaningful interaction ever happens (Izzantar sees him smoking and is like "oh boy I could really fucking use some of that right now")

They probably starting fucking kind of casually. It's entirely on Izzantar to pursue him since Grodderick isn't interested in feeding a drow's ego, which is a funny interaction of its own where Izzantar just blows up frustrated that he won't make the first move, since he's used to being a very passive partner. Something along the lines of "WHY DON'T YOU WANT TO FUCK ME" probably comes out his mouth verbatim LOL they get over this non-misunderstanding quickly and Izzantar is just happy to have sex in a way that's completely the opposite of what's expected of him in the Underdark as a popular breeder. Obviously he also finds Grodderick profoundly attractive both for his confidence, smarts, appearance, and frankly his imposing presence because he's not immune to a little bad-boy charm.

I think they catch feelings around the same time as one another, and proceed to get on a long-term relationship.

Izzantar (this is post ANE and never mentioned) eventually sets shop somewhere as a jeweler. He gets a lot of business based on the fact that he's a drow and knowingly plays up the part of someone who's mystically more knowledgeable and skilled about precious stones and minerals than most because of his race (on top of his genuine talent). His bad attitude is also hysterically seen as charming drow bedside-manner and indicative of the quality of his work to wealthy clients.

He lets his hair grow out and for semi-plot-related-reasons starts passing as a female drow (also, he just likes it) Grodderick doesn't care either way. At that point they're living together and get a cat that Izzantar names Angkacha. To his despair, Grodderick nickanames it Chacha and it sticks. Izzy wants the cat to be a vicious killing machine but whenever he casts animal speak on it the cat's just like OOOO MAMA ME LOVE MAMA and he hates it (but not really, he would kill for this cat)

aaaand here's some old doodles of him from that point of his life! The last two have been uh cropped for uh reasons

#ask #izzantar godseck

[mezzy303]

The new one piece chapter has me spiraling sdjkfshf so here's a theory that crossed my mind and is becoming more plausible the more I think about it

Spoilers (obviously) under the cut

The tl;dr is: What if the world of One Piece has always had rising sea levels/sinking land? What if these natural events happen in an 800 year cycle? What if there was way more land (like the real world) before the formation of the World Govt?

I'm not gonna get into the details of why that is bc that is a different mind boggling discussion and it isn't really important here. But if there's always been that threat, it would explain so much about the Void Century and the True History.

As many people have already pointed out, the threat of the world sinking into the ocean explains why Noah was needed. It's a giant ship half the size of Fishmen Island that was meant to be raised to the surface, likely for the inevitable future where there's virtually no land above water. It could be that threat never happened at the end of the Void Century so Noah wasn't needed, but what if it did happen? This would suggest a huge event happened that caused sea levels to rise 800 years ago.

This ties into my next point, that the Great Kingdom was part of land that is now underwater. We've already seen that there's underwater ruins from Jinbe's cover story where Wadatsumi was throwing ruins onto an island, one such ruin being a poneglyph, meaning that kingdom (maybe the land that island was once part of) was either part of the Great Kingdom itself or allied with it. So it wouldn't be a stretch to consider that the Great Kingdom is also currently below the ocean. It would also have made it easier for the World Govt to completely erase the Kingdom from existence, since it was already underwater and inaccessible to most people other than Fishmen. I can't recall if any ruins that are Void Century old have been canonically shown, which would mean either they've been completely destroyed with nothing left, or the areas have been continuously lived in and renovated, or they're in the ocean and the majority of structures currently on land is younger than the Void Century AKA people moved to higher lands when sea levels rose. It could be all the above too! If the Great Kingdom was at risk of sinking, then Noah might have been meant to carry their displaced citizens.

If those during the Void Century knew sea levels would soon rise, it might have been the reason for all the turmoil that started the Great War. Conflicts over limited resources, about who will live and who will die, general fear and anxiety, things like that. The 20 kingdoms that eventually formed the World Govt might have been suspicious about how the Great Kingdom was using their resources and went to war with them. Maybe they were threatened by how much power the Great Kingdom had as they prepared for the natural disaster (ie. the ancient weapons and Noah; from what we know from Egghead, technology was incredibly advanced at the time). Maybe it was just all boiled down to wanting control over a terrifying situation.

If the land sinking into the ocean is a natural phenomenon, then Joy Boy's apology to the Fishmen and mentioning of his return would mean that the event would happen again. Maybe it happens in an 800 year cycle, which explains why Joy Boy (and those sea kings in the Fishmen Arc) knew that Noah was still needed and how he knew exactly when he'd return. It also explains why Rayleigh warned that if he told Robin about the Void Century when the Strawhats first arrived at Sabaody, she "wouldn't be able to do anything about it as she was then." I think I've always assumed this had to do with the formation of the World Govt and how to dismantle it, but it might actually be about how the world is sinking and through following the poneglyphs, one would find the way to save those in danger of being displaced. The Ohara scholars had discovered this, and now Vegapunk is continuing their legacy by making this info public.

And as I'm writing this, I'm realizing that if sea levels rise/land sinks in an 800 year cycle, this might be the "true history" of the world, or at least part of it considering Joy Boy's story made the Roger's Pirates laugh. But it certainly is important and relevant as the wikia site describes! But why would the World Govt try to hide this? I'm not entirely sure. Maybe for the sake of having control over information and thus having power over the world, but there could be so many other reasons. There's hints throughout the story that suggest they're still preparing for a world with almost no land though, such as the Tequila Wolf bridge that's supposed to connect islands together, and the fact that the founding monarchs moved their families to Mary Geoise on the Red Line. Law also stated in Punk Hazard that the Govt has been researching growth hormones to turn humans into giant soldiers, and they've been doing this for centuries. It's possible that the research was really for the capability to walk through parts of the ocean when there's no longer any land above water.

Anyway my brain is fried thinking about all these things lol. There's so many other factors to consider but I'll save that for a later time when I get more sleep sjdkfhsdk

#i hope this all makes sense in the morning LOL #i feel like that always sunny meme #one piece #one piece spoilers #one piece 1113 #joy boy