#and that is his own pain

[thedragonagelesbian]

Guilt, hate, secret, and skin :)

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

oc asks: not so nice edition

guilt: What is your OC guilty about? How do they handle their guilt? Do they try to avoid guilt, or do they accept it?

Any time someone else gets hurt on his watch, he's going to feel responsible for it and feel guilty about it. For DA2 Cyrus, big moments include Carver and Leandra's deaths, Bethany being taken to the Circle, and the entirety of The Last Straw and its fallout.

BG3 Cyrus doesn't shoulder as much of that just because he hasn't had any close interpersonal relationships since leaving Baldur's Gate (or, in the case of Ranger Cyrus, since killing [redacted] and leaving Iriaebor). He still feels a little bad about leaving Baldur's Gate in the first place instead of staying after the orphanage burned down, but it's been decades at this point, and he's been able to mostly put that to rest.

The real moment of guilt for pallybarb Cyrus comes with breaking his oath-- he feels so awful for letting everyone down, for falling short of his expectations for himself, and for taking time for himself to process and deal with that instead of swallowing it down to focus on stopping the Absolute. He doesn't want to face that guilt because he doesn't want to face any of it.

Similarly, Shadow Sorc Cyrus feels guilty any time his Came Back Wrong weirdness takes up any time or space that could've been better spent trying to get the tadpoles out of their skulls.

Ranger Cyrus is the only one of them who has any legitimate reason to feel guilty, specifically for the harm he perpetuated as [redacted]'s right hand. And he does, but he already came to terms with that culpability, accepted that that guilt wouldn't do any good for anyone without action, and for a time worked to redress it.

hate: What does your OC hate? Why? How do they act towards the object of their hatred?

Any version of Cyrus is going to hate people who use power to hurt others and the institutions that they represent-- whether that's the templars and the Chantry in DA2 or Gortash and the Steel Watchers in BG3. Injustice, exploitation, cruelty, and, of course, hurting people he cares about are easy ways to light the fire of his righteous and violent fury.

He also hates feeling powerless, specifically powerless to take care of others. This relates obviously to the sense of guilt that this inspires. His Whole Thing is protection, and he doesn't understand himself as having much value or identity beyond that, so when that protection fails or is insufficient, he can get quite angry about it.

Adjacently, depending on the timeline, he really hates being lied to with the intention of manipulating him and taking advantage of his giving and trusting nature. This is the case for DA2 Cyrus from Act 3 onward and for Ranger Cyrus.

secret: What's one secret your OC never wants anyone to know about them?

That he hurts. That he's tired. That he has doubts.

skin: How comfortable is your OC in their skin? Do they grapple with anything that lives inside them—a beast, a curse, a failure, a monster? How do they face the smallest, weakest, most horrible version of themself? Are they able to acknowledge it at all?

He Isn't. The intensity of his alienation of his body varies from version to version, stemming from understanding himself first and foremost as a tool for saving others, from being unable to separate himself from his armor and his titles.

I don't know if you count oathbreaking as a curse, but if you do, all versions of him are cursed! Pallybarb Cyrus is filled with divine absence and silence, Ranger Cyrus lost at least a century of his lifespan in a life transference spell that aged and weathered him, Shadow Sorc Cyrus Came Back Wrong, and DA2 Cyrus is so cursed in such weird noncanonical ways that I just call it the Problems for ease of reference.

As you might imagine, Cyrus struggles a lot to acknowledge his weakest self, as he struggles to acknowledge any self. Any version of him will come to rely on friends, loved ones, and partners to help him with that process-- to be able to hold onto him when he can't hold onto himself and help ground him in the world through physical intimacy.

[ingravinoveritas]

"We've all got to be fighting that fight every day."

Happy Pride, everyone...

[noodles-and-tea]

Just some more thoughts on that jayvik dbh au

[hinamie]

I don't want to regret the way I lived

[mobius-m-mobius]

#obsessed with their priorities

[seventeendeer]

ppl are too quick to point to laios' disability as the reason his friends think he's a freak sometimes. so many instances of laios getting yelled at are, in my eyes, a case of "this guy had to emotionally mature very early in order to be there for his little sister" combined with "much older friends who never had to learn to manage their own emotions to the same degree"

a lot of the time he's right about needing to be more direct/deal with things in a way that may seem scary/needing to put your gut reaction aside. he tries not to make his friends uncomfortable and he puts up with a lot because he's trying to keep the peace, but he also pushes the others out of their comfort zones purposefully to try to get them to think more constructively. everyone else in the party is prone to acting on their gut instincts and avoiding uncomfortable situations even when facing them head-on is very much necessary. part of what makes laios such a great leader is the fact that he knows from experience how to put his own feelings aside to help someone else grow.

yes, he does make a lot of social blunders by accident and he does struggle to connect with others, but not all of his positive influence on others is accidental or "despite" making people uncomfortable. a lot of the time, I think it's clear he knows exactly what he's doing and he's trying to help the people around him process emotions in a healthy way as they all go through some truly harrowing shit. all the main characters support each other as well as they can with their unique emotional skillsets. laios' skillset just happens to be "gently talk child into eating her vegetables"

[canisalbus]

Ok I drew them with silly 'hats' to cover their ears too (Vasco is wearing ear socks)

Machete looks like a jester

.

[blasphemousclaw]

he doesn’t like to talk about it

[blue-bird1967]

The night before the Swan Song

[cedric-k-rossignol]

[consultingfujoshi]

some thoughts wrt the two established "romances" in severance so far (burt/irving and helly/mark) inspired by @figmentof who pointed out how irving had to find out mark and helly kissed from the corporate video in s2 e1 and how he must have felt seeing his co-workers' love affair like portrayed like that, and how it ties into the queer narrative at play here which uses workplace dynamics and policies as very clear analogues for real-life prejudice against queer couples. I mean, just look at this:

it's not just documented, but celebrated. used as propaganda for how the conditions on the severance floor have improved. proof that the severed workers are happy. and how even though he is unaware of the sociopolitical meaning of all this, lumon is very not-subtly telling him that what he had with burt is inherently lower and less valuable than this.

irving doesn't even know homophobia exists and yet he is still affected by it, it still seeps into every corner of the way his and burt's romance progresses. burt is positioned as an unacceptable love interest from the jump. irv is actively discouraged at every turn from pursuing it. their friendship is viewed with disgust and apprehension from their coworkers. burt working in a different department that's hated by MDR. dylan himself not being homophobic in the sense he opposes their relationship because they're both men but his attempts to keep them apart still has a parallel sort of prejudice behind it and still ultimately has the same effect as if it WERE driven by homophobia. irving is made to feel perverse for wanting contact with burt. he's told this is for his own good.

and then, just as they manage to overcome that immediate resistance from their peers and escape to a place where they can explore this blossoming romance on their own terms, burt retires. for all it matters to irv, he's dead. and then irving is given the option to live the rest of his life with grief that will never heal, or kill himself too, because there is no reality where they get to be together. that's just the way things are. of course they wouldn't get to be together. he was unreasonable and childish for ever hoping that could happen. this is just the way it goes for innies. he's told to get ahold of himself and not make a scene.

but the thing is, the standards are not the same for all. a heterosexual romance gets upheld as the shining example of success and fulfilment for the severed employees, whilst a homosexual romance is ridiculed and invalidated, and written off as something that was simply never meant to be. and even more importantly to irving, a heterosexual romance is APPROVED OF by lumon, and by extension, by kier. irv held back from allowing himself to even call his and burt's relationship a romance, because his god had told him it was wrong, he followed the handbook, thinking this was what kier wanted, and then finding out after suffering the worst heartbreak imaginable because of it, that this WASN'T EVEN TRUE. it's simply just that someone like HIM doesn't get to have something like this. his love is not the kind of love god wants. he does not approve of irv's love. cynical and manipulative though that approval may be (even within the context of the corporate video, the helly/mark romance is only being celebrated to further the narrative that lumon care for their workers, but the point still remains that it was THEIR romance specifically used to suit this end), when your entire life has been in pursuit of that approval, it must be devastating to learn it was never on the cards for you.

he and burt even used the fact kier met and fell in love with his wife in the same circumstances as them to justify this to each other - and they were RIGHT, god does approve of falling in love with your coworkers - this simply just doesn't apply to them specifically. and if irving needed any more proof that he no longer has a place at lumon, that he's better off not existing at all than existing with this pain that cannot be remedied, pain that won't even be acknowledged for what it is, a symptom of a sickness which plagues the entire severance system, pain that he is simply expected to choke down and get over - this is that proof.

and that's the POINT. they're TELLING us that this is unjust, and there's a double standard. they're using the ways the innies experience romance and the difference in lumon's reaction (lumon being the collective of all the management we've seen, lumon as a singular entity) to burt/irving vs helly/mark to comment on how queer people are not afforded the same level of respect or validation IN REAL LIFE, for their attachments, their love, their pain, their suffering. it is NOT just incidental that irving's romance is with a man. it would not WORK if his love interest was a woman. the POINT is that they are both men and how that puts them at a disadvantage, even if they aren't aware of the prejudices of the outside world, even if they don't TECHNICALLY apply on the severance floor, there are very clear analogues which still end up oppressing them in equivalent ways that they would be suffering if this were a normal workplace in the outside world.

it genuinely sickens me to my stomach that even in a world so divorced from reality and the sensibilities of regular society, a queer couple is still made to suffer and feel inferior in a way that perfectly mirrors their real-life counterparts. how they will never, EVER be allowed to exist in a world where their love could thrive freely and uninhibited - they never get to taste the joy our world has to offer people like them, but they are still somehow subjected to all the pain it has to offer them regardless. it's such horrifically devastating writing. it makes my skin crawl. I can't stop thinking about it

[cheesenchalk]

i never know how to phrase it but something about the way beatles biographers and people in general view paul's reflexive placating persona and determination to smooth things over as manipulative or duplicitous and john's reflexive barbed persona and habit of lashing out as brave and subversive despite both being equally defensive mechanisms to shield themselves from the world that resulted in them saying things that weren't true says more about how we culturally view kindness or friendliness as inherently untrustworthy or flimsy and anger and carelessness as more believable as someone's true nature than it says about either of them in actuality

[justaz]

lol arthur realizes with the other knights after watching merlin flirt and being hit with a wave of deja vu: holy shit you asked me out

merlin and the rest of the knights around a campfire after leaving a village bc lancelot and leon somehow started a brawl in the tavern: ???

arthur points at merlin: after valiant! you asked me to buy you a drink! you were asking me out!

merlin is busy cooking dinner and confused out of his fucking mind: what???…..valiant….oh the knight with the snakes.

gwaine who was slightly tipsy now stone cold sober and sitting up straight against a tree: wait. explain. what do you mean merlin asked you out??

arthur snaps his fingers as he recalls the memory: i apologized for sacking you and you said that if i bought you a drink we’d be even.

merlin now remembering how he had stumbled into camelot, picked a fight with a pigheaded bully which quickly turned homoerotic and flirtatious, and continued their teasing-flirting for days before merlin shot his shot and asked the prince out only to be rejected: oh yeah, i forgot i did that…..wait, you mean you didnt realize what i was asking?

arthur: no?? we argued everyday, how was i supposed to realize you were asking me out??

merlin now abandoning the dinner and staring across the camp at arthur while the rest of the knights watch their back and forth like a game of tennis: to you we were arguing, to me that was very much flirting. i thought you were flirting back so i decided to ask you. then you rejected me

arthur, mentally beating his past self up for fucking up their chance: i didn’t reject you!!! i just didn’t realize what you were asking me. how was i meant to? we fought every chance we got

leon, nudging elyan, glee and excitement riling through him: its happening!!! its finally happening!!! seven long, grueling years is finally paying off!!!

merlin, realizing the misunderstanding and acknowledging the fact that he wasn’t rejected, his flirtations just weren’t noticed - realizing he still has a chance: oh…oh i see. arthur, my dear, our fights were extremely flirtatious. need i remind you of what you said? “do you know how to walk on your knees? would you like me to teach you?” or “i could take you apart with one blow”

arthur, mental capabilities at an all time low: m…my dear….?????????

merlin grinning devilishly as he realizes that his flirtatious persona he had hidden away after falling head over heels for arthur can make a come back: that is what i called you. should i call you something else? say…mine?

percival gags in elyan’s ear: cheesy

elyan hides a laugh: at least they’re finally getting somewhere. better than the hopeless pining

arthur, flushed from head to toe: ah uh no um im uh

merlin thoroughly enjoying himself: oh come now, your majesty. use your words.

[greenlaut]

bitter tea & oranges

sequel -> tea & dates

[hinamie]

so just know, I'm healing / even though it don't feel like it

insp

[s0dabeach]

was possessed by the need to draw something related to @jellynut's bill still au it's such a cool au and I'm not normal whenever he posts art of it

also did kind of a comic: