#course this is my interpretation but yeah

[complex-analytic-dysfunction]

Yeah but going around identifying others based on your interpretation of signs isn't it either. Repression is a defensive mechanism to protect yourself from uncomfortable feelings. It can come subconsciously from dysphoria or distress from such a big realization about yourself without any connection to trans oppression.

The only one that can decide when and what to identify as is the person themselves. We should only try and help make that journey as easy and painless as possible. Give them the courage to examine these feelings themselves.

I disagree with your concept of incorrect self-identification. Your identity and by extension your queer identity is something that changes as you learn more about yourself. I wasn't wrong to identify as cis in the past, as it matched my understanding of myself at the time. Of course I understand better now but it doesn't invalidate my previous identity or journey of self discovery. I'm not trying to say I wasn't trans before, but I didn't identify as such.

The problem with naive self-identification as the go-to for telling who's trans and who isn't is that eggs exist.

People who have repressed their trans identity so hard that they will insist that they're cis even in the face of overwhelming signs to the contrary ("I'm not really trans just because I cry myself to sleep wishing I'd been born different") are a real group that is actively subject to marginalization for being trans.

Trans liberation politics can't be formulated in a way that leaves these people out just to respect their incorrect self-identification.

[fluffypotatey]

also. azure lion

to be specific, the phishing emails would pertain to swk and they would be about how to woo and crush your ex-friend/monkey whom you used as a weapon

[kate-bot]

a few more little pizza animations!!! they're a little rough around the edges but they were a lot of fun to make!!

[valtsv]

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

the body language. the fucking body language ?????

[never-ending-pizza-time]

I think some people forget that peppino can be kind of a jerk. He's not your perfect awkward nervous guy who can do no wrong, he is not perfect, but that doesn't make him a bad guy. He has flaws, because thats a normal human thing to have.

Sometimes he gets angry and a bit mean, sometimes he takes joy in beating the shit out of the tower residents, sometimes he gets selfish or says something mean to someone. His anxiety is not his only flaw, please don't forget that. He is not a perfect sunshine boy who can do no wrong. He is not nice and friendly 100% of the time. He is a human person, he is a complex being who cannot be easily defined as completely good or completely bad.

Sometimes good people do shitty things. Sometimes a person will not act in the kindest way possible. Sometimes someone will do something not realising (or caring) how it makes others feel. Sometimes people have bad days. Sometimes people make mistakes. Sometimes people are wrong.

Peppino is a human, he is not immune to being a jerk sometimes. Again, this doesn't make him a bad person, it just makes him human, and I don't want people to forget that and misinterpret him as being someone whos only flaw is his anxiety. Yes it is a key part of his character, but theres more to this guy than that, thats not his only flaw or imperfection or whatever you want to call it. He's not 'kind perfect guy who also has anxiety', theres more detail to who he is than that.

Peppino can be a bit mean, Peppino can be hotheaded, and you know what? Thats okay because thats what a person is like sometimes, and that is a sign of a complex and realisticly written character (even if he is a cartoon guy, his personality still feels realistic). He's not the same guy all of the time, he doesnt respond to every situation in the same way, he's not a one note character. Sometimes he sucks as a person, but its okay because despite all that, he's a loveable and endearing character, and he isn't a horrible terrible person, he just is human, and thats okay.

[stardestroyer81]

It's true— she told me herself! 💞

(Blank template under the cut!)

[yzafre]

Roxas: Had the Halloween town kids throw bombs in his face for multiple missions in a row before finally breaking down and smacking them around a bit.

Ventus: The dwarves were rude and refused to talk to him, immediately resorted to chasing them down and whacking them.

Characterization I see frequently: Ah, yes, Roxas is the one always willing to throw hands and Ventus is a smol sunshine boy.

[fumifooms]

You’re the resident chilchuck expert, so I was wondering about it there’s any canon evidence that he did smoke or drink alcohol when the kids were younger. I always thought it was something he picked up due to the strain of long jobs, when the kids were already older, but you seem to think differently and I was wondering if there was anything in canon that made you think that way!

Now that you mention it I guess it’s true there’s no evidence he did. Smoking we literally only know he does at all because of one post-canon panel where he has a pipe, so no, maybe this stick-looking thing in the panel below too though, I’m not familiar with medieval blunts eh. We’ve only gotten one panel of him and his daughters interacting when he was younger so that’s not too insightful on that end, and every time we see him young and freckled it’s in a job context so again not really where we’d expect him to be drinking. The earliest proof (/heavy implication since we don’t see inside his cup I guess) is 3 years before canon when Laios hired him, where he’s at a bar, classily placed in front of all the bottles ✨

Yes alcohol is almost certainly a way through which he copes especially with stress, so if we go with the theory he started around when work got stressful, well… Chilchuck started working as a dungeon diver ~10 years ago so when he was ~19, making Mei, Fler and Puck ~6 and ~4 respectively, so from that draw the ‘stressful enough to start drinking’ line wherever. We don’t know what he did before that with any certainty, and it could be he did odd jobs, lived off mostly mutual aid and community work, or just focused on only raising the girls. Half-foots tend to be poor and I see a lot of that in Chilchuck specifically so I don’t think he could have afforded to not have some paying work though.

Alright, so then why do I think he did drink when the girls were younger?

I give a more complete rundown of the info we do have on his alcoholism & his family with panels and references + all the speculation I make from it here. But the most targeted and objective answer I can give is:

Of course there’s just very very little we know of Chilchuck’s life with his family, and I think that’s by design too. I think the details being up in the air is to allow more nuance of the topic, like, will trying to reconcile go well, is their relationship salvageable? We don’t know, because we don’t know. So the message of giving hope a chance even if it’s a long shot, that things could truly go either way, is more relevant, impactful and meta in that way. How long was he usually away for work travels into dungeons here and there? How did he act with them? All we can really do is "it’s likely that", it’s a game of which way we think it’s more implied. There’s no right and wrong answer, it’s all Marcille-like larping the events out.

My main reason for thinking he did is that his father died from overdrinking and Chilchuck is very aware of that. He mentions his death casually in the extra about their stance in alcohol and in his Adventurer’s Bible profile, etc. He acts towards the alcohol presumably the same way his father did: with abandon, uncaring for the health effects, probably happily too considering Chil says "dying doing something you love is a good way to go". Very nonchalant. So you see what I’m saying here right, wether he started early or late, his view of alcoholism is very influenced by what he saw of his father growing up, it’s something he’s always been aware of and saw in a mostly positive light, something that was inherited you could say. It’s something that was normalized to him from a young age. Regardless or where it goes from there I do think this part is pretty inarguable. If he views it positively and we know that in the present alcohol is his favorite food that he loveees, why would he have held out on it? Personally that all makes me think he started drinking very young, especially since I don’t think they limited alcohol to age as much as modern standards (and I mean, teen drinking is obviously still a thing). And here you could argue, maybe his father only started being more alcoholic later when Chilchuck moved out, or something! And to that there’s nothing I can say except I think that’s a strained theory, and that Chil might even have largely cut contact with his family after moving out (since he and siblings are listed as almost strangers and he doesn’t seem to have much emotional attachment to his parents, but also we know he rents out his place to "a relative"), but it’s true we have no evidence. "I’ve picked up the same unhealthy substance abuse as my father haha! No big deal right haha" repeated several times to me just reeks of intergenerational trauma, & the alcoholism gene as they call it. Like effortless sliding into drinking as if it’s second nature, it’s natural after all, it’s normal after all, it just makes sense, it makes you feel good and that’s what matters.

BUT from my interpretation then we have a whole other layer: Alcohol is of course not all bad always. I think he’s always liked alcohol and drank it on occasion and it brought him joy etc etc, but I think here the implication in the question is, how much effect did his drinking have on the family relations and how early? And that isn’t so much about when him drinking started but when the alcoholism started. Addiction is defined by a habitual need, that has negative effects from filling that need (physical, psychological, social, etc) and negative effects from withdrawal. If Chilchuck drinks to cope and he can’t not cope without it, that’s addiction, if it affects his relationships, if it’s a need he has, it’s addiction. Addiction can be very insidious or look very casual, and how much people around the person are affected by it is case by case. Cheerful drunks can be sooo annoying and uncomfortable though let me tell you. Drunks are drunks. And this sounds harsh, but even if people around them don’t mind drunks it’ll still have some effects here and there, living with one can be such a challenge, ily drunks good luck with everything much like Chilchuck you deserve good things 🫡　

Ok so with the dad thing and the "ok well maybe he’s always drunk casually but it grew worse with time around when he started working as a dungeon diver" precision made, the other bit of info we have that can inform this is that Chilchuck is on a harsh diet and that alcohol is a hunger suppressant. We know Chilchuck "used to be fine not eating for two days", that literally on screen to quench his hunger so it doesn’t keep him awake he goes to drink water, drinking is his instinct to hunger. Again alcohol is a hunger suppressant and if you want info on that the internet has a lot of research and anecdotes about it. He diets to be light enough to not trigger traps, so it’s something he’d have started after dungeon diving most likely. Between the stress and the diet, yes it’s extremely likely he started going harder on alcohol after he started working in dungeons. There’s arguments on wether two days without eating is less bad for half-foots than humans, but apart from smaller portions there’s nothing that indicates half-foots should get less than 3 meals a day. They need less food but that’s because their bodies are smaller: the need is proportional to the body, not smaller than others’ races, the % of need is similar even if the kg amount of food isn’t. There’s also a popular headcanon with support basis that half-foots run hot and have a faster heartrate and whatnot, and that points towards a faster metabolism rather than a slower one: a bigger need for eating rather than a smaller one. He has the same bmi, 18, as Mickbell, but perhaps because Chil is much taller he’s less intensely visibly underweight with ribs showing than Mick during the bath extra, it’s most apparent when he becomes tallman.

Alcohol is something so important and omnipresent in his character that I have trouble believing it’s something that was part of only a small fraction of his life. It’s his immediate go-to, his no-brainer solution to a good time, I’ve sort of always assumed especially after looking at his family that it’s something he discovered decently young. Like he just acts like someone who’s always had alcohol to fall back on and started young idk. Alcohol is one of his 5 keywords. Alcoholism is very ingrained into his world view and life, his "it doesn’t matter" stance his ‘work hard play hard’ mentality his idea that the world is harsh so you get relief where you can, so it just makes sense to me that it’s always been in his life, if not actively then at least looming.

So yes, in summary, my take: Alcohol was always something he wholly enjoyed to an unwise level, but it could have been considered casual until he started working into dungeons and his need for it on a regular basis intensified. Alcohol has always had positive association to him as far as we see, so when it started being a problem he didn’t see it as such. To quote him, "I drink anytime I get the opportunity to". Why always? Approval of father’s alcoholism. Why alcoholism at all? Diet + stress & coping mechanism & emotional stunting + relationship issues, and she decided she had enough after they went out for drinks.

Conclusion

Chilchuck having drunk from a young age makes sense to me and it’s the strongest narrative angle I see on the table, but that’s objectively a me opinion, yes! There’s no evidence, moreso there’s canon basis and supporting info, but it’s all very left up to interpretation. I’ve made my own interpretations of things from the scraps we see, like everyone else making Chilwife and daughters content. Wether you have a stance on the topic or prefer to leave it vague in your takes, it’ll be a matter of what you think makes most sense, or what you’d rather believe I suppose (which is literally fine)

There’s a lot of subjectivity in even just setting up causal links like you probably noticed during this and I was careful with my word choices, because we’re just extrapolating from what we see and unless Kui states it explicitly from a reliable mouth all we can do is have informed opinions on most things. This particular interpretation is influenced by other details I’ve come to form about my interpretation of Chilchuck too, the more psychological and emotional sides of him and the timeline and how his marriage even happened, unplanned pregnancy imo. Like I hope you see what I mean, this wasn’t supposed to be a speculation post just a quick simple answer but there’s sort of just no other and concise but complete way with the subjectivity nuance to put "maybe it could be yes because of this but maybe it could be no because of this" haha

Edit: Wait the phrasing on this… Interesting. "In recent years"— This does imply that if not just his alcohol consumption increasing then the diversity and quality of it did, so either he indeed did start drinking more (not necessarily meaning he didn’t drink before) assumedly because of his wife leaving, or he started drinking other/more different kinds of alcohol maybe due to the union he formed + his experience gave him greater salary than he had previously (and no wife and family to provide money for), a mix of both perhaps.

[fallenbhaalspawn]

one of the things about Orin that fascinates me is how she definitely is a dedicated bhaalist, but not nearly as dedicated to bhaal and how that's shown in a bunch of little (many unintentional) ways! her outfit being red instead of the traditional bhaalist black (or that weird bronze/gold some bhaalist armor gets), her title of the Red given to her not by bhaal nor fellow bhaalists, but by her cognate doppelgangers, the jewelry she shares with her mother but is worn by no other bhaalists, etc.

even before she says "I did all this for [Sarevok]!" and finding her Helena's corpse in Orin's room even after her mother attempted to kill her, a fact which she is clearly and justifiably caught up in, you can still see the breadcrumbs leading to the fact she is primarily driven by her more direct familial connections instead of her god

[vulturevanity]

I feel like SV girlies haven't seriously considered "codependent mutually obsessive JuliNemo" yet and that's a shame, really. I've seen a lot of wholesome ChampionRank (really cute but a rehash of every wholesome yuri I've ever seen, not much original content here and that's okay) and one-sided obsessive yandere!Nemona ChampionRank (REALLY do not like the villainization of Nemona's neurodivergence but eh, you can do whatever you want forever) but not as much "these two get on like a house on fire. and boy, it's dry season" ChampionRank.

Where is "battle-hungry socially starved trainwrecks who have no one but each other" JuliNemo. Where is "oh god these two exacerbate each others issues into the stratosphere and this can only end in disaster but I can't look away" JuliNemo. Where is "bringing out the worst in each other and scaring the hoes" JuliNemo. Where is "you two are perfect for each other. Never change, just never involve anyone else in any of this" JuliNemo. There's so much potential here. Toxic codependent yuri save me

[smimon]

Käärijätober day 11: Alienated

So many people in the crowd and on every photo he appears alone

[2hoothoots]

i've seen a couple of posts recently talking about Thorney Towers and its bizarre geometry - how it's the only real-world location we see with gravity-defying environments and Escheresque architecture. here's what's always been my interpretation: the inside of the asylum doesn't literally look like that, but it's a representation of how Raz, with his extrasensory awareness, perceives it.

there are a couple of thing in the games that imo make it explicit we're seeing everything filtered through Raz's point of view. there's gameplay stuff, like how things he's focusing on will get a green glow around them; and then there's stuff like the bit at the end of Rhombus of Ruin, implying that the Hand of Galochio is, at least sometimes, something only he can see. we can also see ripples in the air where two people are talking telepathically or where there are stray thoughts, auras around certain characters, and so on - things that (presumably) aren't visible to the regular, non-psychic person.

i've always figured that this extends to the way he perceives the rest of the world, too. the upper levels of Thorney Tower are twisted, mind-bending, impossible spaces that could never plausibly exist in real life. to me, this level is more of a visual metaphor than anything else. it's twisted and warped the same way our own perception can be warped by strong feelings, like how a sense of claustrophobia can make it feel like the walls are squeezing down on you, or vertigo can make heights seem to stretch and spin.

(screenshots taken from a Let's Play by Materwelons)

there's a long-standing trope of psychics/empaths/mediums being able to read the 'vibes' of places they're in, especially places where horrible things have happened. real-world asylums and sanitariums have been the sites of untold horrors against their 'patients'; confinement and restraints, electroshock therapy, lobotomies... it's easy to imagine Thorney Towers as a place suffused with suffering, the anguish of its old inhabitants seeping into it like a stain, lingering like ghosts even after the building itself has been all but abandoned.

what does that feel like, if you're someone who's sensitive to it? how does it warp your perception of the space around you? the twisted interiors of Thorney Towers harken back to the impossible geometry of some of the mental worlds, and i think that's deliberate. to me, we're seeing a blending of both the physical surroundings, an old building in disrepair; and the metaphysical, the echoes of old feelings that still haunt the place, the way it must have looked to some of its inhabitants - warped in a way that's upsetting and almost incomprehensible.

i don't have an explanation for the pit of radioactive goo at the bottom, though. if anyone has any ideas about the goo let me know i guess

[bylrndgm]

in my eras era.

concept: my favorite byler-coded songs by taylor swift from my playlist.

[template here]

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

donna "it was never that far from the surface mate" noble not having a worry in the world leaving 14 and yaz alone in the living room at night to finish their movie while she goes to bed entirely unaware of the tragic lesbian romance of the century that those two concluded about an hour before donna re-met the doctor

[cutter-kirby]

well fellas i thought about chara dreemurr for one second and now i need to replay undertale