I’m ABSOLUTELY FUCKING FERAL for the idea that it’s ARTHUR closing John out on this.
Because he thinks he’s killing John. “Is John lying about Kayne? Hmmm but what if he’s hiding that he’s dying instead?” ARTHUR.
THIS IS WHY CODA DRIVES ME CRAZY. Arthur fucked himself up at levels he hasn’t even been able to contemplate up to now.
“Arthur, what’s happened to you? You’re run ragged!” Because of Faust. Sure. Sure, it’s Faust. Arthur screams, “Please, I can’t lose anyone else” in the most rawly tortured voice we’ve ever heard from him. But it’s Faust.
And like. Yes. The callback to Faroe fucked him up real good. But he was fucking *begging* Kayne. And what he got wasn’t help. It was Yellow. From that moment, he was convinced he had been complicit in killing John.
Arthur needed Yellow to be the King. Needed him to be someone who wasn’t for saving. That way it wasn’t Arthur’s fault when he lost him. When he failed John’s second chance. While he thinks he’s *still* failing John’s second chance.
Ever since John drove home that Yellow was HIM, was just the person who could’ve become John if Arthur had made the right choices…Arthur’s had Yellow on his conscience too. He failed John twice over, and he’s just…told himself over and over that it wasn’t true, that Yellow had to just be a monster.
Note he doesn’t credit himself with bringing John back. No, Faroe saved John–her memory. Arthur knows that whatever is different or wrong or wounded or vulnerable about John now…it’s his fault. John told him straight-out that it wasn’t Lily who changed him, but in that conversation I’m not even completely sure Arthur heard what he was saying over the volume of “You fucked Yellow up.” He thinks he’s done for both of them.
This is why I keep shaking Kayne like WHY DID YOU DO THIS. WHAT WAS THE POINT. Was it for nothing more than to get a laugh from Arthur’s suffering? Is John the one you care about and this was just a fun little way to distract the floppy human? Was this magnitude of cruelty just a passing joke?
He did hear John’s care. That’s why Arthur cooled off there for a bit. I’m convinced that through season 3, Arthur is desperate for someone to be on his side. To feel like somebody’s got his back. That he’s not alone in this and that there’s something there in him to be loved besides the monster that’s all he can still see in himself. But the more John pushes back, the more Arthur feels like he’s judging him, the harder and nastier Arthur gets.
The moments in s3 when Arthur calms the fuck down, they’re the moments when John shows him kindness. And the moments he flares hottest are the moments when he feels the most like John is passing judgment on him. It hurts the fuck out of him that much more because he’s convinced John IS better than him now, and if John is judging him then probably it’s because he deserves it, but the little spark of him that refuses to give up and die pushes back and gets angry–because in Arthur’s head, he conflates “what you’re doing is wrong” with his own judgment upon himself, which is “You’re a monster who deserves to die.” He wants to be loved. He wants to be WORTHY of love. He thinks he isn’t, but he so, so desperately wants someone to prove him wrong.
John meanwhile…god I don’t know if he sees this. I don’t know if he understands just how completely Arthur is emotionally reliant on him at this point. Because he’s knotted up in this problem of his–which DOES connect with trying not to get Arthur killed, I’m sure, but when he’s busy trying not to wreck both their shit I’m not sure he’s completely aware of how seriously Arthur was taking it when he told John that John was his moral compass now.
There was that moment of dead air in 26, right after Arthur told John he’d wanted to kill Faust, when I’m convinced that John could’ve killed him with a single word.
All he would’ve had to do just then was agree with Arthur.
And John isn’t stupid. He gets how bad off Arthur was just there. But I don’t know if he realizes how close to the edge he still is.
Everything between Coda and 26–and even where we are now–is, on Arthur’s side, just a horrible blooming flower of “Please I can’t lose anybody else!” Those six words are Arthur’s core and all the rest is just kinda unpacking them.
It is FOUR FUCKING DAYS at the outside since Arthur lay broken and bleeding to death in that cabin.
Five days maximum since they crawled out of that goddamn pit.
Jesus he was so alone in Coda. Like. My god the enormity of his aloneness.
And that hole. I think a lot about what that must’ve been like. The degree of dehumanization.
There’s a thick strain of dehumanization>de-evolution in the Mythos. Regression back into monsters, crawling things.
And it plays on that. It must’ve felt like being buried alive.
Just a naked, squirming creature with not even the barest trappings recognizable as humanity.
Three months of that is crazy. And he spent most of it livid at the guy helping him stay sane.
And you know what gets me about all this? What REALLY gets me about Arthur’s suffering.
Is how tiny it is.
This man’s whole life has been pain and loss and guilt, but weigh it against the suffering of an immortal. The things John has been through. And in comparison Arthur’s is so small and limited as to be practically meaningless.
No wonder cosmic entities like the King don’t even account for humans.
But like. My god look at John. What he really is. Even without remembering being the King clearly, he recalls eternities in the Dark World. He’s suffered so much and lost so much.
And he’s found the ability to have compassion for creatures so tiny by comparison to him.
To be able to sympathize and take seriously the suffering of a creature whose life and experiences are so small next to his. To value those little lives and cherish them.
This is one of the vanishingly few cases of mortal/immortal relationships that really completely sells me on why the immortal would be like “You. You are unique and special and different out of everyone ever in the universe.”
That may or may not be true, but that John FEELS it is? Totally sold on it.
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