#if you ask me dbd has a problem(s) called 'negative orientalism' and grandiose white occultism but hey

[anarkissm]

i've always had this headcanon that claudette would make an impeccable lab assistant in the fog. specifically for the characters who lean into science and chemistry (wesker, talbot grimes, vigo, etc.). people tend to overlook the fact that she is a scientist. a naturalist. and she never minded the mess that was expected as a field researcher. she could gather or collect samples, since she has canonically been known to venture away from the campfire and into the fog to gather ingredients for her handmade tinctures and balms. she also knows (or else believes wholeheartedly) that escaping the fog or the entity's realms is not the burden of a single individual. she needs help. a collective effort. usually the other survivors (like jake park and his alleged familiarity with the fog), especially the ones who have experience in exploring the fog or realms. we know that there are canon "tools" to gather "memory shards" and "rift fragments" within the memory-realms. there is a concerted effort to find memories they have lost, and restore them. and the entity and the fog are canonically distinct from each other, the fog acting as an extension of the entity. according to benedict baker, a researcher of the entity, the fog seemed alive, and it harbored memories from people across all walks of life, from the smallest village to the farthest planet. my theory is that the fog is memory. all memory, every memory that was ever made across all of space and time and multiverses. past, present, and future: existing simultaneously in a state of superposition. the embodiment of space-time. it seems to be connected to the cosmic web of consciousness, so it imitates consciousness. anthropomorphized as "alive" from the accounts of human observers. the entity uses this fog as a tool to project its illusions, extracting the emotionally charged memories of trauma and pain from killers (and their survivors). but memory is not perfect. memory is the encapsulation of the individual self, and therefore memory is not the truth. as a tool, it has its limits. the entity can only use it as a point of reference to create the illusions of the realms, and the trials. killers and survivors, in lucid states, can recognize the flaws and inconsistencies. the lifelessness and emptiness that marked these worlds as unnatural, untrue. an illusion designed by... people. in this symbolic sense, it is a cult-like ideology that entraps them.