I like that Arthur an John are so used to the nonsense by now that they're just.. speedrunning this season?

Within one (1) episode we've had:

Epic argument

Apology and (tentative) truce

Encounter with Dreadful Beast

Befriending wildlife

Inventory check

Oh No, The Horrors

Trapped in a hole :-(

All we need are the Chase Scene, the Homoerotic Sparring With The Villain, the Nightmare Sequence, the McGuffin-Driven Search, Poetry Recitation and Arthur's Sad Nostalgia Times. At this rate we'll be ready for another season by episode 3!

mom never acknowledged dad

this episode did deeply fucked up damage to my psyche

Your Cecil looks like he would ROCK a sundress. I mean, so would every Cecil, but yours especially

no you’re so right tho

MORE mustache Cecil and also just finished ep 100 THEY’RE HUSBANDS NOW UGHHHHG

sorry for making y’all look at this with your own two eyes but like… they plague my every waking moment

When she Cecil on my Gershwin til I Palmer

Kayne desiiiiiign

i love your silly little yellow napkins pleas don’t stop drawing them like that they’re so pathetic i want to chew on them

(malevolent)

A FELLOW NAPKINS ENJOYER I SEE. Allow me to demonstrate my eldritch napkin pipeline

I keep thinking about Arthur's regression at the end of Season 2 and then into Season 3. I keep thinking about how victims of trauma tend to get worse once they escape their traumatic situation. How their body and mind start to crack and shake under the weight of the horrors, now safe enough to escape the survivorship mindset but now forced to endure the fallout.

I keep thinking of how hard Faroe's death hit Arthur. How his guilt and grief were so intense that he wanted to kill himself, so low that he drank himself into a stupor for who knows how many years to just dull the pain. I keep imagining how hard it was to pull himself out of that, to work with Parker and find a new meaning in life, to walk away from his guilt of killing his daughter, and instead to help people.

(I keep thinking of how Arthur finds a vial of alcohol in the Dreamlands. How he sniffs it and recoils in disgust.)

I keep thinking of how long it took for Arthur to build himself back up from his lowest point, to tuck the guilt of Faroe in the deepest corner of his mind just so that he has enough room to breathe, to live, to be a better person. (And yet, Faroe is every facet of his life. It's his first memory in Season One, when he plays Faroe's Song, when he doesn't even remember his own name. It's the last name on his lips when he dies on that boat. It's his only memory when John is torn away from him.) I keep thinking about how Arthur is consciously repressing her every second of every day just so that he can keep going.

And then John pushes, and asks, and asks again. And finally, after almost dying twice with this entity, after surviving time and time again, he thinks he can trust him. He thinks he can share his deepest secret, to pull open the wound he keeps stitching over to protect himself. How he risks feeling the grief he's suppressed for years to trust someone. I keep thinking how John seizes it and, because he is ancient and young and inexperienced, childlike in his tantrums and his fears of responsibility and consequence, he uses it as a weapon the moment he's backed into a corner. I keep thinking of how not only the trust is torn away from Arthur, but how his wound is stretched and torn, and not only does his guilt and grief come back, but it's like a tidal wave that he cannot suppress this time. He's opened that wound and John has pried it wider, and now Arthur can't shut it. He survives in those pits, but she is all he thinks of. He escapes those pits, and ("Goodbye, Faroe.") she is all he thinks of. He slits his throat and she's all he thinks of.

He enters at icy cabin (a small gurgle, a bundle of blankets in his arm, a warm hum rumbling in his chest as he lulls his whole World to sleep) and he thinks of her to keep going.

And then Yellow enters, a blank slate, a John before he was John, and the pain is too fresh. This is the thing that tortured him. This is the thing that starved him. This is the thing who asked who his daughter was, and when he told him, the thing called him a killer. John and Yellow and the King are all the same in that moment, and Arthur's too fucked up and traumatized to separate them tangibly, as much as he insists that he can. His hatred grows and grows, all from himself, until it bleeds into Yellow, and he remakes this entity in his image, in his self-pitying hatred.

So when Yellow finally calls him a monster (and Arthur knows, he's called himself that the moment he saw the water spill from the bathtub onto the tile below), Arthur holds it close to his chest, and becomes it.

Ok, I completely missed the reveal of Yellow being the real king in yellow in the S4 finale and caught up with the fact only when it was confirmed in the last Harlan's interview AND GOTTA SAY this situation is peak comedy to me

I LOVE THEM THEY MEAN SO MUCH TO ME!!!!!! hfth has consumed me and im trapped forever never escaping (enjoying it so much)

liking the implication that ink5oul thinks they should be allowed to see the body because they’re famous online. influencer through and through

Bartimaeus Prompt Wek 2024, Day 6: The Lovers

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. - XVII (I do not love you...), Pablo Neruda

partnerships, duality, union - show us your favourite relationship?

"Favourite relationship," huh? More like "these two freaks who have been giving you severe brain damage since 2016."

Anyway, now for some Commentary(TM) because I actually put some thought into this one:

According to Ancient Egyptians, one's soul was made up of several parts, including - much to my delight - one's shadow. They considered it an inherent part of you, inseparable from the rest of your being. Romantic, eh?

In New Kingdom era love poetry, plantlife was often described as an ally of lovers, concealing them from prying eyes and offering them shade so that they could do their lovey-dovey things in peace.

Pomegranates, meanwhile, were associated with love and both exchanged between lovers and offered to the goddess of love and fertility (and partying) Hathor. I believe that it had something to do with an association with the human heart or something like that.

The thin, silver leash wound loosely around Khaba's right hand - not clutched, not pulling, but hanging loosely - naturally symbolises the control he has over Ammet, as well as Ammet being both his servant and his "right hand man."

I have some thoughts about the significance of the items they are holding, but I will leave them to your interpretation.

I headcanon Khaba to be left-handed, so the knife-leash placement actually worked out pretty well.

Edit: added a framed version, just for funsies.

Bartimaeus Prompt Wek 2024, Day 6: The Lovers

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. - XVII (I do not love you...), Pablo Neruda

partnerships, duality, union - show us your favourite relationship?

"Favourite relationship," huh? More like "these two freaks who have been giving you severe brain damage since 2016."

Anyway, now for some Commentary(TM) because I actually put some thought into this one:

According to Ancient Egyptians, one's soul was made up of several parts, including - much to my delight - one's shadow. They considered it an inherent part of you, inseparable from the rest of your being. Romantic, eh?

In New Kingdom era love poetry, plantlife was often described as an ally of lovers, concealing them from prying eyes and offering them shade so that they could do their lovey-dovey things in peace.

Pomegranates, meanwhile, were associated with love and both exchanged between lovers and offered to the goddess of love and fertility (and partying) Hathor. I believe that it had something to do with an association with the human heart or something like that.

The thin, silver leash wound loosely around Khaba's right hand - not clutched, not pulling, but hanging loosely - naturally symbolises the control he has over Ammet, as well as Ammet being both his servant and his "right hand man."

I have some thoughts about the significance of the items they are holding, but I will leave them to your interpretation.

I headcanon Khaba to be left-handed, so the knife-leash placement actually worked out pretty well.

Edit: added a framed version, just for funsies.

Bartimaeus Prompt Wek 2024, Day 6: The Lovers

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. - XVII (I do not love you...), Pablo Neruda

partnerships, duality, union - show us your favourite relationship?

"Favourite relationship," huh? More like "these two freaks who have been giving you severe brain damage since 2016."

Anyway, now for some Commentary(TM) because I actually put some thought into this one:

According to Ancient Egyptians, one's soul was made up of several parts, including - much to my delight - one's shadow. They considered it an inherent part of you, inseparable from the rest of your being. Romantic, eh?

In New Kingdom era love poetry, plantlife was often described as an ally of lovers, concealing them from prying eyes and offering them shade so that they could do their lovey-dovey things in peace.

Pomegranates, meanwhile, were associated with love and both exchanged between lovers and offered to the goddess of love and fertility (and partying) Hathor. I believe that it had something to do with an association with the human heart or something like that.

The thin, silver leash wound loosely around Khaba's right hand - not clutched, not pulling, but hanging loosely - naturally symbolises the control he has over Ammet, as well as Ammet being both his servant and his "right hand man."

I have some thoughts about the significance of the items they are holding, but I will leave them to your interpretation.

I headcanon Khaba to be left-handed, so the knife-leash placement actually worked out pretty well.

Edit: added a framed version, just for funsies.

Bartimaeus Prompt Wek 2024, Day 6: The Lovers

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. - XVII (I do not love you...), Pablo Neruda

partnerships, duality, union - show us your favourite relationship?

"Favourite relationship," huh? More like "these two freaks who have been giving you severe brain damage since 2016."

Anyway, now for some Commentary(TM) because I actually put some thought into this one:

According to Ancient Egyptians, one's soul was made up of several parts, including - much to my delight - one's shadow. They considered it an inherent part of you, inseparable from the rest of your being. Romantic, eh?

In New Kingdom era love poetry, plantlife was often described as an ally of lovers, concealing them from prying eyes and offering them shade so that they could do their lovey-dovey things in peace.

Pomegranates, meanwhile, were associated with love and both exchanged between lovers and offered to the goddess of love and fertility (and partying) Hathor. I believe that it had something to do with an association with the human heart or something like that.

The thin, silver leash wound loosely around Khaba's right hand - not clutched, not pulling, but hanging loosely - naturally symbolises the control he has over Ammet, as well as Ammet being both his servant and his "right hand man."

I have some thoughts about the significance of the items they are holding, but I will leave them to your interpretation.

I headcanon Khaba to be left-handed, so the knife-leash placement actually worked out pretty well.

Edit: added a framed version, just for funsies.