#awful hospital spoilers

[organical-mechanical]

@bogleech

It is so, so incredibly rare for me to just devour a piece of fiction.

Even with the fiction that I enjoy, I never really find myself getting truly invested.

Awful Hospital is one of those rare instances where my eyes were glued to every single word— almost every other page acknowledged something that I either thought a lot about as a kid (and heard no one else talk about) or something think about now

Anyway, the idea of the same guy coming back to life over and over again in a different (but formulaic) manner, fully aware that he’s been revived but unaware that things have been slightly rearranged is something that had been on my mind for YEARS but never really articulated, so… here are some Jays (and the accompanying slobs; not to scale)

ANKLE FRACTURE + TASER

I had a really hard time figuring out what sort of weapon you could reasonably use alongside crutches. It was either gonna be a steel-toed boot or a taser, and since he already had something chunky on his other foot, I decided that a taser would be more clear design-wise.

JAW FRACTURE + BRASS KNUCKLES

Let’s face it. Jaw wiring looks freaky as hell.

In my mind, this one is sick of having to punch food to a pulp to be able to squeeze it past his teeth.

SKULL FRACTURE + SLEDGEHAMMER

The combination just felt right.

[asardinegrowsfromthesoil]

your dear sweet mother

[vellichorom]

i was SO excited at the idea of a third curdle nurse ( because believe it or not given my reputation as a jay enjoyer, i REALLY like the curdle bag sisters ), that- whilst we wait for their debut, i made MY OWN IDEA of what they would be like !!!!!

& my idea is surely! entirely off the mark & strange by all means but this is awful hospital so HERE GOES;

miss miley curdle - if she's not been horribly changed by the current decaying state of the hospital, is the third, " younger " sister to the curdle nurse siblings & currently the only one in a relatively okay state of operation; known as a nurse who... really doesn't want to BE a nurse - but took the job anyway because that's what her sisters were doing - & would much RATHER be living it up between zones, " partying " & having a good time, she administers less-than-reputable treatment to her patients ( usually those injured or sickened by living the life she'd rather have, lo the irony ) & does her job with all the reluctance of a spoiled brat teenager doing the bare minimum of what's asked of her. her sisters have TRIED to coach & better her, but it's been an oil to water type of process & she just refuses to listen & does whatever she wants, usually. however, with the hospital going under & with her sisters nowhere to be found ( as they're currently busy being fused together & spitting out horrible trash babies ), the terrified miley has taken to cleaning her act up & actually taking her job seriously, in the hopes that her feeble attempts at tending to the still-stable patients may somehow save the day & fix whatever's going on... or at least aid in keep things running smoothly. fruitlessly, as though she tries her HARDEST, she's forsaken the majority of what she's been taught, & while she's not necessarily making things horribly Worse....... you know. putting a piece of duct tape on a crumbling ceiling can't fix a whole lot,

so do you guys like my cool soon to be awful hospital oc /silly

[spirit-of-a-kiger]

I'm going through Awful Hospital page 496, and when Crash called Fern "appealing" and said he's "kinda liking getting yelled at", I was like "Oh, no, you're turning him on!...wait."

[hogdeploymentzone]

heehee huesday

[cr-arnival]

[gemstone-gynoid]

caught up to awful hospital again. i guess it literally was transcendental cha cha cha reminding me of AH themes that i decided to catch up.

why didnt anyone tell me the bunny is a waifu now?!? a bunnygirl thing in a cute dress. i havent seen any posts.

[the-crazy-studio]

So how we feeling about having a little "snackie" fellow awful hospital fans? Did it taste delicious?

(Joke doodle featuring my pizza dolphin oc)

I've updated the current battle page in Awful Hospital several days in a row now, and will update at least once more tonight. This is drawing the current story arc to an imminent close, before we return to the usual setting and characters. As always, it will make no sense at all if you don't know anything about the series or how it works, but you're more than welcome to try and make heads or tails of it before you read from the beginning.

Dolphins!

[the-crazy-studio]

Am I the only one who thought about this?

[Awful Hospital vibes were crazy this episode]

Side note, silly tophat man gets put into therapy AGAIN?

[bandagegirl]

Trying to figure out what happens in the Book of Bill just from random tumblr posts is fun. Like ooooh, Bill grew up as a 2dimensional being, able to perceive the 3rd dimension just like how in Awful Hospital, Grey Zoners (thats you🫵) occasionally become able to perceive other zones. But while Grey Zoners can learn how to navigate to interact and enter all those different zones with time, Bill was medicated as a kid in an attempt to practically blind him. Which makes sense, his parents did what they could with the cards they were given, even if it ment buying silly straws just so Bill would drink Something, PLEASE, baby Billy. But Bill kept seeing what no one else could, so he decided to open everyone's eyes by allowing the 3rd dimension into the 2nd dimension. But that allowed outsiders to come inside, that caused Bill's home dimension to fall into itself into a singular point, leaving him as the only survivor. He most definitely was a child or teen when that happened.

Also, The Boiled One appears in the asylum Bill gets sent to? The Boiled One manages to attone for his wrong doings somehow and gets reincarnated as butterflies, with fits it's lore somehow? I think? Very terrifying considering who the Boiled One is?

[ineffably-human]

I'm gonna need Izzy's force ghost to just straight up haunt their inn, though. Just hang around snarking and giving unsolicited advice and benignly frightening their guests.

"Figures you don't know how to seal a window, Bonnet, the damp's going to rot through the fucking walls."

"I didn't get shot by the English so you twats could kill yourselves eating whatever you foraged off a bush, is that what you're going to serve to people?"

"I couldn't help but notice you were going to leave Jeff's Inn and Bar and Grill and Fishery without paying. I'll give you a minute to rethink it before I haunt every moment of your miserable - there we are. Hope you've enjoyed your stay."

[mbat]

istg if josh marries nora im gonna be so pissed lol im so sick of her, whyd they kill off the person that actually seemed better for him

[succulent-pott]

thinking abt scrubs beacause of my chain of characters I hate

[thewisecheerio]

Messmer's actually terrible at his job. (affectionate)

Messmer is a fascinating villain, because he is strangely compassionate. I would go so far as to argue that this same compassion that is so at odds with his villainy is the very thing that drove him to become that villain in the first place. Hang with me; this is a long post.

Spoilers for Elden Ring DLC. Obviously.

Messmer tells us himself that his purpose is to purge all those stripped of the grace of gold. "Yet...my purpose standeth unchanged. Those stripped of grace of gold shall all meet death...in the embrace of Messmer's flame." We can piece together who gave him this genocidal purpose from his armor set's description, which tells us directly that he's working on his mother's behalf *and also* taking all the blame for it.

So he's playing war criminal on Marika's behalf. And I do mean playing. I'm not downplaying the fact that he is a war criminal; he has murdered on entire people. But here's the thing: he's *terrible* at playing the sole part of the spiteful, hateful overlord. He's *awful* at reveling in war and its victories.

Why? Empathy.

Messmer is strangely empathic for what could have otherwise been a cut-and-dry villain:

1. His relationship with Gaius, an Albinauric: We learn from Gaius's Remembrance that he was Messmer's bestie. We also know that Gaius was an Albinauric both from his armor as well as the location "Albinauric's Hut" in the direction he comes from at the beginning of his fight. Albinaurics are despised by the Golden Order, but Messmer didn't seem to care. In fact, he cared so little that he gave Gaius command of either a huge chunk or perhaps his entire army, second only to him. And what is given as the basis of this friendship? The fact that they were "both cursed from birth", i.e. a mutual understanding of what it is to be despised. They're trauma bonded because they have empathy for each other's predicament.

2. His relationship with the Jar people: Even though the Jar people were used as weapons of war against his own people, he doesn't seem to resent them. How do we know? There is a hospital where the Jars and their innards are being cared for in the Storehouse, a stone's throw away from where Messmer spends all his time. There are even a few baby Jars running around in it. Strange thing to do to what is essentially an enemy of your people, unless you consider them to also be victims of the same conflict.

3. His relationship with his soldiers: Messmer shares his own flame with his army. Yeah, that absolutely could be interpreted as a utilitarian move for the sake of war. Power up the troops, boost your chance at victory. But it's a strange choice when he could have just armed them in the traditional way of handing them sharp, pointy objects and pointing in the desired direction of stabbing. Instead, arming your soldiers with your own power could also be interpreted as something you do when you care about their survival and are potentially working directly with them to ensure it.

4. The mourning of people who betray him: Speaking of his soldiers, Messmer gets betrayed by at least a few of them. We learn this from the ashes of Andreas and Huw. Huw's ashes further tell us that Messmer *mourned their loss* as brothers-in-arms. Weird thing to do to someone who has betrayed you, unless you care very deeply about them to begin with.

5. The implications of the Storehouse: Even though he is actively genociding Hornsent on Marika's orders, he somehow has preserved an entire library of their history. At first, I thought this was maybe just British Museum vibes: steal all the artifacts and refuse to give them back. (And that could still be a correct interpretation.) But in context of the rest of these points, if you're truly hellbent on erasing a culture, why would you bother to preserve any of it? Would you not burn the libraries along with the people? It's a fairly common thing to do in our world's wars--destroy the art and history to ensure full erasure. And yet, it seems he can't even bring himself to avoid some small amount of sympathy for the people he was explicitly tasked with killing. If you really *think* about the basis for his sympathy for Marika, this does make a lot of sense. Messmer is following Marika's orders because he knows about what the Hornsent did to the Shaman. Wouldn't it then also be the case that once Marika's reign became nothing but genocide, i.e. an exact reversal of what was done to her people, he would have the same kind of sympathy for them? Perhaps this is a form of harm reduction in the only way he could square with what he thinks is his purpose.

6. His own self-hatred: Messmer despises his own flames, which we learn from the Messmer's Orb description. If you were happy to be Doing a Genocide, would you not celebrate your weapons of war? Wouldn't you take pride in them as tools of power? Unless, of course, you're not actually as happy as we think and maybe having regrets and come to be filled with severe self-hatred. Woops.

So then, if Messmer is this guy running around with a lot of Big Feelings (and probably a deep need for a Prozac prescription), why does he even agree to this genocide in the first place? Isn't that an *odd* choice for someone who seems to care pretty deeply about people, even people despised by his family's governing order? Why does he carry out these orders even to the point of developing a deep self-hatred?

This is where Messmer's sympathy, one of his best aspects, also becomes his fatal flaw.

I mentioned above in 5 that Messmer has access to information about both sides of this conflict. As much as he might have sympathy for everyone around him--including weapons used against the Shaman like the Jars--that means he *also* has sympathy for the Shaman. So if you have sympathy for the other side and sympathy for your side, and you are raised by your own side, then what is the natural outcome? Your side wins. If you must choose a side, then you fight on behalf of Child Soldier Fostering Mother Marika. She raised you, after all. It's inevitable.

In the end, that same sympathy he seems to extend to others also is what causes him to do war crimes. Out of an abundance of sympathy for what happened to the Shamans, he agrees to take up arms.

At the end of the day, he's still a villain that needs to be stopped so that he'll stop oppressing an entire people on behalf of his mother's misguided attempts at revenge. But making his reasoning to agree to become that villain in the first place *empathy* of all things? Fascinating.

[hogdeploymentzone]

[mosswiind]

neve gallus isn't actually a mean lady

Heavy spoilers ahead, tread carefully if you do not want to see spoilers for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, specifically related to Neve Gallus and Lucanis Dellamorte.

Neve Gallus isn’t actually a mean lady. 

Since the release of the game, it has become clear that most people have chosen to save Treviso, under the logic that there is no army or meaningful defense against a dragon. This is a fair decision. What is unfair is choosing Treviso because “Minrathous should be able to defend itself against a dragon.” 

The dragon attack was never the main event with Minrathous.

It was always a Venatori takeover. This isn’t even metagaming, this is literally text presented when Neve and Lucanis are making their cases for their respective cities. 

If you save Minrathous, Treviso is blighted. The Crows lose a number of key people. The market is a field hospital full of civilians with the blight. The fallout is awful. There are many, many casualties on your conscience. 

If you save Treviso, Minrathous does not fall. The city is not top-down blighted. Infrastructure still functions in some places.

However, the Shadow Dragons are demolished, the sitting Archon is killed, and the well-established large Venatori presence results in hundreds of literally visible civilian corpses. There are cartloads of bodies on every corner. There are gallows erected in every neighbourhood. The number of slaver cages grows exponentially. The Viper, one of the primary symbols of hope in Dock Town, is blighted.

There is blood everywhere. Blood that is on your hands for making the choice to save Treviso. 

The point of this decision is that there is no good or obvious option. Both options are devastating, especially for the companions impacted, who are both hometown heroes. Both are understandably very upset that the team they are a part of prioritized the other. 

Most people choose to save Treviso. Most people have only seen Neve upset. 

Neve is, understandably, a very guarded person. She has been a solo private investigator for most of her career. She lives alone in her little Dock Town apartment. She has contacts, sure, and some friends, but due to her line of work, connections are a liability that cannot go deeper than professionalism without putting people in harm’s way.

She has always, and will always, put Dock Town first, a priority that does not change based on Rook’s relationship to her. She does this because the Templar order, the Magisterium, and infrastructure of Minrathous have made it abundantly clear that they do not care about her impoverished hometown, or any of the people in it. 

She is upset with you because you followed the same logical flow chart as all of the other people who should have helped.

I would be fucked up about it, too.

And after all of that, Neve is still open to repairing the relationship and tentatively exploring a romance with Rook. 

Lucanis, on the other hand, is gregarious, charming, funny, and while he is a wildly different character to Zevran, for many people he seems to scratch a similar itch - a hot Antivan man who wants to hang out with you. He has strong feelings about making sure everyone is fed and cared for. He is a supportive friend. He looks out for the other members of the team. He is an objectively good man, and makes it obvious, especially if you already dig his vibe.

But, and this is a huge but, in the wake of a Minrathous prioritization, Lucanis disappears for the same amount of time.

His return is triggered by the same quest.

His comments about not being chosen are the same amount of venomous and sad.

He believes he is unable to count on Rook and the team until a similar point in the story. The second he arrives back in the Lighthouse, it becomes clear that he is no longer open to even considering a romance with Rook.

Neve feels like she is the only person looking out for the Minrathous underclasses, because based on the text, that is almost true. There are the Shadows (her affiliates), and the Threads (her contacts), and one Templar who isn’t in the Shadows (shoutout to Templar Rana). It is made clear by the text. 

If you choose to support the poor and enslaved population of Dock Town, Neve still has to do damage control, just like Lucanis does. She checks in with unhoused civilians and provides instructions for those who are unsafe to connect with the Shadows. 

A Neve who is not hardened by Rook’s calls is kind, sweet. She goes on a mission to track down the unpublished sequel to Bellara’s favourite serial. She then successfully tracks it down, and delivers it, complete with the author’s artistic renderings of several characters. She helps Taash with their gender identity, supporting them and providing them with other safe people to talk to about it. She and Davrin make plans to set up shop together, to solve more problems. She is brusque but professional about Emmrich’s necromancy, but also gives Manfred a nickname. She regularly gets chastised by Davrin for giving Assan too many treats.

She’s self-proclaimedly not a lover of animals besides cats, but if you pet a cat while on her personal quests, she approves. She also explains that she probably would love animals more, but if they’re “larger than a cat, they’re probably demonic.” 

If romanced, Neve expresses genuine fear that Rook will get hurt. She is concerned for her heart, but not because she doesn’t love Rook. She is not afraid that Rook will leave her. She is afraid that proximity to her will get Rook killed. 

Neve is, contrary to apparently popular belief, a nice fucking lady. 

All of this is to say that there is an obvious, glaring difference between Neve and Lucanis, and I don’t know if you can play spot-the-difference between them, but Neve is a brown woman, and Lucanis is a white/white-adjacent man. It probably isn’t conscious on most peoples’ parts, but the Dragon Age fandom has a long history of deprioritizing women, especially women of colour, in their cast lineups. Off the top of my head, see Vivienne, Isabela, and Josephine.

I have seen Neve called a bitch, a whiner, a baby, an asshole, for being justifiably upset that her city is in the exact state she told y’all it would be, in favour of “the obvious choice,” Treviso.

The response from the community has been “but obviously Minrathous could defend against a dragon.” 

Yes! You’re right! It can! As I said earlier! But not quickly or effectively enough to prevent any public emergency level confusion that can be taken advantage of! Which was literally always the point!

You can pick Treviso for whatever reason you like. Being a Crow, loving Teia and Viago, loving the Venice vacation vibe, wanting the cuntiest casual clothing, preferring Lucanis. I don’t actually care what you do. 

But please, please, please, shut the entire fuck up about Neve being the only complainer in the party. 

She’s just doing what she’s always done. She’s the hero Dock Town has, will always have, and the hero Dock Town deserves.