Jamie would 100% make Roy a dating app profile sometime after the Keeley rejecting both of them thing to try to help him move on and meet people when clearly he’s refusing to get back out there organically and he’d think he’s being so helpful and generous and the best wingman ever. He’d handpick what he considers the sexiest pictures he can find and put a bunch of shit Roy would never say thinking he’s being accurate and helpful and not even taking the clear opportunity to make a joke account to embarrass him or anything when he easily could have just made fun of him and chosen the worst pictures possible instead
And then he would be SO offended when it doesn’t go well when Roy finds out about it and is not properly appreciative at all
Roy thinks it’s Jamie’s account when he starts showing Roy girls like what do you think of her and asking him way too many questions when Roy has no interest in participating and has no idea why the fuck Jamie seems incapable of swiping without trying to get Roy’s opinions first. Meanwhile, Roy’s giving one word answers at first and then increasingly trying to brush him off when he doesn’t stop and then he’s just flat out like “Choose your own dates and leave me the fuck out of it” and Jamie’s like “Nah, this is your account. You should have a say” and instead of being grateful and appreciative and thanking Jamie for being oh so generous with his time and energy, Roy just scowls at him and growls out “You did not make a fucking Tinder profile for me” and Jamie just smirks and decides now is not the right moment yet to mention that he actually made him accounts on like three different apps because he wasn’t sure which Roy would like best
Roy barks at him to delete it and Jamie’s all whiny like “Come on, I spent a lot of time on these and you haven’t even considered it. Plus, even if you’re not ready to date someone yet, you’d still be less miserable to be around if you at least found someone to shag in the meantime”
And Roy’s like “Delete it. I don’t want a fucking Tinder profile.” And Jamie looks at him confused for a moment and then seems to have an epiphany as he goes “Oh, do you want a Grindr one instead? Hold on a second” and he flips to a different app and Roy’s too busy being baffled by the fact that Grindr is already on Jamie’s phone and that he’s having to sign out of his own account to try to make one for Roy to even stop him before he’s already trying to sign up for a new account and Roy goes “That’s not what I meant. I don’t want any dating app”
And Jamie pauses his typing and turns and looks at him so skeptically and so judgily and suddenly somehow Roy is trying to fight for his life trying to defend why he’s not looking for some random stranger to date or fuck around with
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i was having a chuckle to myself last night about Gristol, and how his plans are basically:
Restore Ford Cruller's memory
Find Maligula
???
Profit
but then... of course they are, right? this is Gristol we're talking about. Fatherland Follies drives home again and again that he's still operating on a child's logic, a warped and reductive version of the world that he never bothered to grow out of. both of his memory vaults center on the images of his childhood, this idealized version of the past that he clings to no matter what. and that's still how he remembers Maligula, too - as this saviour figure, who rushes in to help him when he's in trouble.
[ID: Two slides from Gristol's memory vault, Glory to Grulovia! Left: Gristol clings to Maligula's back as she summons waves to sweep away his assailants. Right: Gristol and Maligula waving from a balcony as the people cheer. Gzar Theodore brandishes a dagger in the background.]
like so much else, Maligula represents a return to this idyllic childhood - to the peace and simplicity of his youth, when he was free from worries and responsibilities. in his mind, he doesn't need to make any further plans - once Maligula's back, everything will go back to normal. Maligula will make everything better.
...is what i thought, but then i remembered this line:
[Screenshot source. ID: Gristol, in Truman's body, bows on his hands and knees in front of the newly-awaked Maligula. The caption reads: "Yes, High Priestess! I am here to correct the mistakes made by my father!"]
and that's kind of interesting, right?
to be clear: this happens directly after Maligula sees Helmut-in-Gristol's-body, and recognises him. her line before this is:
"Little Gzesaravich! Have you come to pay for your father's sins?"
my first thought was that Gristol hadn't expected to still be in Truman's body by the time he managed to find Maligula, and this was him trying to placate her and buy some time until he could explain the situation. but watching the cutscene back, that's clearly not what's happening here. Gristol is answering as himself, and his response of throwing himself to his knees before her is, as far as i can tell, genuine.
so what is going on here?
in Fatherland Follies, there's this line in the ride narration that stuck out to me:
"Why didn't the Gzar help Maligula in her time of need? No one knows, but historians agree - it is Gzar Theodore's biggest failure."
other lines mention Gzar Theodore's "mistake", and it's wording Gristol himself echoes in the screencap above. evidently, he believes that his father abandoned Maligula, leaving her to her fate at the hands of the Psychonauts, and it was that mistake that lead to them being driven out of the country - that mistake which he seeks to correct. maybe he even feels like he has a debt to repay to her for his family turning their backs on her all those years ago.
the 'High Priestess' thing, though - that's kinda weird, and threw me for a loop the first time i played the game. it took me until my second playthrough to connect the dots, and remember how the room in the Lady Luctopus - Gristol's room - was full of Delugionist scribblings and symbols.
[Screenshot source. ID: left, the walls of the hidden backroom in Gristol's hotel suite, covered in scrawlings of eyeballs and Maligula's name. Right, the pinboard from the hidden backroom. On its surface are photographs and newspaper clippings connected by pieces of string.]
i mean, look at this stuff! he had a whole conspiracy board and everything!
we learn very little about the Delugionists and their beliefs as a whole during the game, but i think drawing the connection here suggests two important things. one: that Gristol was in deep with this stuff. i don't know how he linked up with them - maybe via old family connections, or just good old-fashioned digging (we know he's skilled at worming his way into peoples' good graces, after all) - but it seems likely that he's begun to internalise their ideas, maybe even warping his own memories of events. and two: the Delugionists themselves are, if you'll pardon the pun, pretty far off the deep end.
like... i understand why PN2 didn't go heavy on the "mass-murderer cult worship" aspect of things, in the end, but man this is such a tantalising glimpse into the wider mythos around Maligula. Gristol is proud and haughty and thinks himself above everyone else; the fact that his first reaction seeing Maligula is to throw himself to the ground at her feet says so much about the way he's come to see her. he's not just trying to bring back Maligula, his childhood bodyguard. he's trying to bring back Maligula, the High Priestess of the deluge, the semi-mythical figure whose supporters believe even death couldn't stop. he doesn't even flinch at the way she confronts him, and maybe it's because he's bought in so completely to this deified figurehead, this idea of Maligula; more a living force of nature than a person. and it all comes back to the same place: an abdication of responsibility, not just to the person who protected him when he was little but to this avatar of floods and destruction. Maligula will make everything better.
i'd write more about my thoughts on the Delugionists but that'd be taking a hard turn into speculation, and this is already kind of long and rambling so i'd better end it here. but what an unexpected and evocative line, right? it's some of the only stuff we have to go off of regarding the Delugionists as a whole, but i think it does such a good job of hinting at the wider story - at teasing another layer to the mythos surrounding Maligula, one whose ripples we see throughout the game but which never quite breaches the surface.
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adam who knows the door is wide open, knows he could leave at any point, knows that lawrence wouldn’t stop him, couldn’t stop him and yet. and yet .. adam who looks at the fresh crimson stain on lawrence’s shirt collar, the red beneath his nails he hasn’t quite managed to scrub away yet and wonders if there’s any universe in which he’d run to the cops, to anyone. adam who knows there isn’t. lawrence wouldn’t stop him but adam wouldn’t run. adam who despises everything jigsaw stands for, tells lawrence as much, tells lawrence that he’s gonna be the first to dance on that bastards grave when he finally kicks it but who still stays with lawrence. despite it all. because he’s lawrence, because he’s adam’s. because they’re so inextricably intertwined that not having lawrence around now would kill him as surely as reaching inside and pulling out his own beating heart. he’s everywhere and he’s everything, living in the spaces between adam’s ribs and wrapped around his brain like a live wire. running would be suicide and besides, adam’s not gonna let him go, can’t. not now. adam who would absolve lawrence of just about anything as long as he’s by his side, as long as he keeps coming back, as long as he switches the light on when he gets home and cups adam’s face oh so gently in bloodstained hands
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AGoT was absolutely making some big statementsᵀᴹ re deconstructing unrealistic fantasies and how they make tragedies out of children, with Jon, Bran, and Sansa being the main vehicles for this commentary. They are basically three different versions of GRRM’s critique on the genre. All three had built life expectations based on the songs fed to them as children, but had to have those dreams and aspirations (very) violently shattered as they were thrust into a world that didn’t care how it made corpses out of them. They have all been made victims of fantasy’s violence in a tragic process that is believed to be the natural order.
Sansa realizes in time that the songs didn’t paint the full picture. The singers neglected to warn her that not all handsome princes are kind, and not all knights actually understand the contradictions in the vows they swore; some don’t really care to in the first place. She learns that the handsome prince she loves can brutalize her through the very knights who should protect her (an innocent maiden). Though he doesn’t know it yet, it was Bran’s very ideal that almost killed him. He wanted to be Barristan the Bold, a valiant knight of the kingsguard. But it was a member of this “noble” order that tried to murder him (and thus made his hopes and dreams impossible) because he witnessed him betraying the man and institution he swore allegiance to. And Jon, like Bran, wanted to be the valiant hero. He banked on the songs which propagandized the Night’s Watch and their noble exploits. Then he actually joined the watch and came to learn that this “noble” order is an oppressive xenophobic force; and the contradictions presented when the oppressed (a bastard boy with little social status) unwittingly becomes an oppressor (him initially buying into the propaganda that the wildlings shouldn’t be a protected class).
Once all is said and done, all three children are forced to take on roles that couldn’t be farther from what they envisioned. Sansa is a princess hopping from one tower to the other, forced to cater to the whims of abusive men. Bran is a crippled boy who unlocks a magical power that he doesn’t really care for; he wanted to be a knight not a magician for crying out loud! And Jon does become Lord Commander as he wished, but he is utterly depressed and lonely when he’s made to foreswear family ties and drive his friends away once he gains power over them.
But the cool thing is, in the very same way that fantasy is deconstructed through them, it is also reconstructed and given new meaning as they find a place for themselves in the world in spite of their tragedies. Sansa is still a pretty princess in a tower, but she is learning to be her own rescuer and she has managed to retain empathy and kindness in an environment that tried to tell her how futile it would all be. Bran may be crippled and incapable of becoming Brandon the Bold, but he has reinvented what it means to go on the hero’s adventure and he is beginning to build a role as the Prince of the North. And Jon may be a bastard, yet he has somehow become the living embodiment of what it is to be the valiant prince that little children love to dream about.
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