the phrase ‘this is my first time being alive’ has done wonders for me recently. Yeah, I don’t know how to navigate this situation! It’s brand new to me and I’m learning on the fly, aren’t humans such wonderfully adaptive creatures?

💛 Artist Spotlight 💛

Our next artist spotlight is for @physical-manifestation-of-spite 💛 PinchOfPeppers will be a card artist for the zine!

Arthur: WHAT A FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!

John: I don't know...

💛 Moderator Spotlight 💛

Our next announcement is for @shadow0haven 💛 Amai is our graphics moderator as well as doing a card and merch design!

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.

This was originally just an InvictusCon Sketch comm but I needed a flat color ref for Charlie and I can’t stop thinking about them. Wasn’t going to post this originally but my dash has been very Charlie focused this morning? So have my donation. Talking about the king.

More thoughts, more ideas

Sketching out some ideas (guess what I started listening to)

ok im about to think about the Character!! im so Excited 😊😊

Absolutely hilarious to hear Arthur keep calling back to when s1 John told him he had “the cold, calculated demeanor of someone not to fuck with” and both Yellow and s4 John saying “no you just look like shit actually”

My favorite moments in Malevolent consist of John being Arthur’s biggest yes man. Literally Go White Boy Go.

Listen to that

im actually an anatomy students defender until i DIE they didnt do anything wrong!!! they just wanted to learn about the body they even WAITED FOR THE TEACHER TO LOOK AWAY before they adjusted anything!!! they didnt want to scare him!! they showed up every class and waited for him and paid FULL attention you KNOW if that man just stopped fucking judging them for not being able to get their hearts right the first time they would be the best class he ever had. they even left him an apple!! they didnt know apples dont have teeth its not their fault!! anatomy student haters dni actually

His prey animal rage has bewitched me have a sketch

💛Writer Spotlight💛

Our next contributor to announce is @asthecrowtries 💛 Misraa will be writing for the zine!

John and Arthur spending some quality kitten time as requested by @runnwaig! Quite some time ago...

I'm slow but I get there

Eventually

Careful there, Artie. Getting awfully close.