the mushroom jester

they share their main melody, but that’s not something we see in the other memory bosses. my headcanon is that the dancers taught or trained karmelita to some extent. no evidence for this, they have completely different fighting and dancing styles. it’s just what i wanna believe

the only correlation i can even think of is the similarity between cloverstags in verdania and the hardbones in far fields, but that’s a stretch especially considering that they’re found in other areas too. and i don’t feel like they’d have any reason to lose their leafyness and turn into bone creatures, since karmelita was the source of the greenness in far fields

side note: i ALMOST feel like the main string melody of lost verdania sounds similar to that one section in greymoor, but i think i’m onto nothing there. the two areas are connected though, so i thought i’d mention it. we don’t know what greymoor was like when verdania existed

GOD

they love each other SO MUCH

their relationship is so genuinely beautiful and i could not be happier with how their final moments together were. they had so much to say with so little time (yorick’s a real one for letting them do their thing while still keeping pressure on) but they summarized it so well

john’s come so far as a person, as a human being, and yes. arthur was the catalyst for john’s change, but he still did all the changing himself. he started out as a hateful, superior elder god. and while that’ll always be a part of him, while he’ll always have to recognize that whether he likes it or not, he’s become so much more than that. he’s struggled, and lied, and felt angry, and happy, and jealous, and stupid, and loving, and has cried tears of sadness and mourning and joy and he has become a person. he might attribute all of that to arthur, and i won’t say arthur didn’t help (because he DEFINITELY did), but he’s still the one who changed.

and arthur changed too!! a man who could do almost nothing but beat himself up for everything that’s ever gone wrong in his life. a man who clung to every mistake like it was his daughter. a man who dragged himself through every single day thinking he didn’t deserve to keep going. through the horrors, the perils, the friends, the losses, the pain. he stupidly, stubbornly, held onto life, sometimes without even understanding why. but he learned to love himself. he learned to accept what was gone, what he’d given away, even the parts of himself he thought he’d hate forever.

they grew individually, and they grew together. they made up after every argument. they mended every broken promise. they said stupid things and did stupid things and HATED each other sometimes (i mean just look at the bone church). but that hatred, in the end, only led to more understanding. they were stuck together, and just in time for them to completely accept that, they were presented with the opportunity that both of them would have killed for at the start of this podcast. what they once would have seen as freedom was turned into an inevitability.

but then that inevitability only came for one of them. the other? there was less than nothing waiting for him. and while john fought that at first, he had grown enough to understand that there was only one way.

so they just talked about how much they care for each other.

and that conversation was just so beautiful in every way. arthur telling john how much he’s changed him and influenced him. reassuring him he can do it alone. even john getting mad and throwing around accusations he knew weren’t true, and arthur shooting them down. he didn’t want to die. it wasn’t a transfer of the burden, it wasn’t a copout, it wasn’t him him giving up. it was one of the few moments in arthur’s whole existence where he didn’t want to die.

but he had to. and they both knew that. so he spent his last moments doing everything he could to remind his best fucking friend that life is worth living because you’re alive. it’s everything they’ve experienced together. it’s joy, and suffering, and everything in between and all the little things you can’t even put into words, and it’s all worth it because you’re alive.

i genuinely can’t even explain how much this episode meant to me

jesus fuck

good job harlan