originally posted on tumblr, May 10th 2024
okay but. The fact that Yellow, despite it all, was still curious. he still wanted to Understand. "why you, John?", he sounded so confused and baffled (jealous??) by the situation, he still couldn't understand their friendship, their bond and what made it special, what made it worth turning themselves "weak" just to be with each other.
and on relisten of the s3 Yellow episodes, you can still see the questions he made that weren't for manipulation but, genuine curiosity and confusion. his interest in philosophy and poetry and art, what they meant, their purpose for humans. his potential had been there all along, but Arthur was too burdened with his own trauma and preconceptions to see it for what they were.
but more than that, the fact that even with John at the start, he didn't see it. and once John was back, he realised that he held so many preconceptions about him as well. that at that point, he understood John as much as he did Yellow.
originally posted on tumblr, Mar 12th 2024
thinking back on ep31 cus. it's Arthur. it's All Arthur, and not entirely but it is. yes we get Larson referencing what his nightmare self said, and that speaks of Arthur being such a good read of character more than any supernatural chicanery.
when Larson says "John is gold. he's a gift.", that's Arthur's thoughts of him. John is deeply precious to him, a trusted friend and a miracle. a fracture of an unknowable deity from another dimension, that just so happened to meet the one person who could survive being bound to him, and show him the marvels and tribulations of human existence to him to boot. Arthur marvels at the situation, even if subconsciously, is even humbled by it.
but also, "nothing gold can stay." Arthur is, so so afraid of being alone. of losing another person, someone who he learned to care about and treasure. nobody he's ever cared about stays, or to put it in Arthur's mentality, survives knowing him. being loved by Arthur is a curse on both parties, and he's so deeply insecure and unsure of being Enough for John's sake. he's already failed Yellow and he knows it too, who's to say he won't fail John too, or worse, has ALREADY failed him and the shoe has yet to drop?
and when John begin to fade and falter, we can see Arthur retreat from him. mourning what he hasn't yet lost, trying to leave first before he's left and desperately reaching out to others to cope with that. seeing himself and his own mistakes in others like Oscar and Noel, trying to find redemption with Daniel, and seeking the life he had before John. desperate for a lost normalcy in case John is gone and he's left stranded like in the cabin in S3. he's on damage control mode before anything hits the fan, and it's soooooooo painful to see.
originally posted on tumblr, Mar 13th 2024
thinking about mirrors, cus yes Arthur and Wallace are mirrors, but more poignant to me is Arthur and Oscar. cus we know they are both "weak" in the same ways, Arthur says so himself, and it's a major point in which they bond over. but, it goes deeper.
Oscar is a priest, a follower and devotee of God. how much choice he had on this path is up for debate, but he clearly does it to Help. help others, maybe even as penance for not helping his best friend when he needed it most. and what is God, if not help, hope, comfort?
and there's Arthur, who's an atheist yet has a literal god entwined into his very soul. a Great Old One, unknowable and impossibly powerful, who nags at him to take care of himself, who helps him navigate the world, and who whinges about going to watch some damn movies.
now I'm not exactly religious, but isn't that what God is to most christians? a companion and moral compass, and a reassuring presence in their lives for good and bad times? a shepherd, to be specific. and damn, that's what John is to Arthur, someone guiding him in a literal and metaphorical sense, as much as Arthur does for him.
Arthur humanizes John, not just in helping him understand and embrace humanity, but in reassuring him of his personhood and individuality. and I can't help but be reminded of some folks saying that Jesus was the son of God yes, but also just a man. Son of man, wasn't it?
both Arthur and Oscar have a faith in them, but it comes from different places and it's used for different reasons, but ultimately leads them to walk a similar road regardless. their bond runs much deeper cus I'm positive Arthur doesn't see this shared trait, but Oscar does. I'm sure that's why he says that Arthur is his purpose, and that God made their paths cross.
what I'm trying to say is that Arthur has one more point on the hypocrisy board by being a christian-coded atheist /j
originally posted on tumblr, Mar 16th 2024
been thinking about these two (shocking i know), but consider:
- John tugging at Arthur's clothes to nudge him at certain directions or to stop during high-stakes situations;
- John pretending to fidget, ie scratching Arthur's cheek or rubbing his chin, in order to turn his head in the proper direction to keep up appearances;
- John helping Arthur fix his clothes and hair since he can't see those;
- John reaching out for things first so that Arthur can follow the general location of his left hand for the item;
- John pinching Arthur's side to get his attention;
- Arthur pinching John's hand, uno reverse style;
- John learning to use a fountain pen for writing, cus proper pressure and flow are an important aspect of it;
- also Arthur and John puzzling shorthands together, so that John can make sense of it;
- Arthur occasionally trying to puzzle architectural styles from John's descriptions, so that they can get on the same page of what terms they are both familiar with;
- same with plants and animals, trying to nail what species John is seeing from descriptions alone;
originally posted on tumblr, Mar 18th 2024
thinking about, proprioception and the function of the vestibular system. in non-science terms, one's sense of balance and body position.
we know that John can hear and so can Arthur, which can roughly imply that they share Arthur's ears and very likely, the cochlea which is a vital part of the vestibular system's way of parsing out balance. if it gets wonky, we get labyrinthitis and other such issues.
so besides John knowing what's generally going on by simply uh, seeing shit, he probably senses all the tumbles and falls Arthur has as if his own body is too.
and proprioception, the sense of body position and self-movement, tied to muscles and tendons. it's how the body can tell where it is in the physical space, and it's often clunky without sight. It's why we overreach for things in the dark, and we generally sense our fingers as longer than they are.
Arthur has to mostly make do with muscle memory for things like walking, climbing, sitting up and down, etc. But I wonder how his proprioception might get messed up by John's hand and foot. In a way, he can't feel it as in touch or control, but does he sense it stretching and moving? Can he subconsciously use John's control as a guide? He has no issue walking despite not feeling a foot, or how it's position and adjustment to the ground might affect the rest of his biomechanics (don't even get me started about the interconnectedness of the human walk cycle in our entire body), so does he have some sense of proprioception on those limbs? Does John have it for the rest of his body too?
Arthur feels no pain, it's not like his tendons and nerves were physically ruptured, on the contrary cus John's getting his fair use of those limbs, but how would his body even register this? Do the both of them ever feel the need to move in tandem? Or maybe even do it without even noticing or thinking about it? Is the biological aspect of their connection slowly but surely making them synchronize in movement and gestures?
Is this how they manage to play the piano together?
originally posted on tumblr, Mar 18th 2024
so i think we can agree to some degree that, the carrot is a lie. right?
(Intermezzo spoilers ahead!)
we know Kayne is perfectly capable of keeping his deals, but we also know that he's far more capable (and willing) to Not keeping them. and even of proposing deals that he has no intention of going through with.
Arthur getting Faroe back isn't a real deal. just because he stopped one Faroe among countless from death, doesn't mean that deal won't have consequences. he did say "even try continue being friends", which implies A Lot.
first of, what happened to that universe's Arthur? surely nothing good or stable. who's to say Kayne won't put John inside that Arthur as "a body" for him? and also, Kayne has made it very clear he's got access to all the strings here, he can very easily keep toying with them Just Because, making their lives actual hell.
John and Arthur don't have their divorces over nothing, Shit Happens and it causes them to react poorly due to any number of issues they have in their own noggins, but we've seen that a good number of them have been thanks to Kayne's meddling in some way or another. One could even say that all of S3 happened because of him.
"no matter what I throw at you, you just seem to come out better for it", wasn't it?
but also, we can just as fairly say that the stick is also a lie. sure, Kayne's anger is nothing to scoff at, he's a god given greater power than any god in this universe had any right to after all. BUT, he still needs Arthur. he has very little to gain from impossibly torturing someone who he knows has something Special (plot armor) that keeps him from going under entirely, might even become greater than he can handle because of said torturing.
Arthur is at the end of the day, just a human, but he's also an anomaly that he can't grasp, and Kayne isn't an idiot.
it's all smoke and mirrors, lures and trickery. his hard power is very real, Kayne is an entity of his own caliber, but his soft power, it's all on keeping people on their toes around him and go along with his schemes to keep him appeased. that's what the whole bit with keeping Arthur playing because "he didn't say stop" is, flexing that he can keep Arthur cowed enough to keep doing what he says. and that was also why he proposed that deal for John too, to keep him on thin ice and scrambling over pacifying Arthur rather than let them both scheme over how to one-up him when he isn't looking.
carrot or stick, you dont actually need either. sometimes, the illusions of a gift or a punishment are enough motivators, even if they are lies. Kayne never ends a deal freely, there's always Something More, a twist of the knife that he sprinkles in at the end. he has no intention giving Arthur and John a happily-ever-after, and i also think he has no intention of dooming them to turbo Hell or whatever.
if you ask me, the fact that we don't know what exactly he does plan however, is far more disconcerting and scary.
originally posted on tumblr, Apr 9th 2024
I love how many layers of depth Intermezzo has given us for any relistens of the podcast, but most notably, the recontext of Kayne's response back in The King
he asks Arthur, why are you so special? and Arthur answers as best as he can, and Kayne just, says no. of course we gifured, oh its cus he's The Main Character, that's why. or maybe smth else. and like yes but also, no.
after Intermezzo, we get a taste of the sheer scope of the multiverse at play, and that Arthur's reply is basically applicable to every other Arthur in existence, including himself. in that angle, he's not special to Kayne, vus while Arthur is right about all that, its Not why he's Special. why him from all other Arthurs, gets to get back up and carry on better than all the others.
Arthur is Humanity but, so is all of Arthurs. So why Him? we dont know, Arthur doesn't know and, of course, Kayne doesn't either.
but Kayne has shown some vague to full awareness of the Audience as a concept for a while now. which makes me wonder if, when he asked Arthur, he wanted Us to figure it out. he says, "and if I dont know it, then that leaves one other person", but did he mean Arthur or, Us?
