#it is frustrating though

[eavenne]

I think dain does care very deeply for lumine, and i also think that he probably genuinely thought lumine wanted space when she was sad. He cared deeply but didn’t express it in a way that made her feel cared for / comforted.

People often default to comforting others the way they want to be comforted themselves. Someone as stoic / emotionally constipated (take your pick) as dain, who spends the chasm quest not reacting to / brushing off everyone’s concern for him probably wants to be left alone when upset. When Paimon vaguely reaches out to comfort him after it’s revealed that his men have been guarding the hilichurls as per his last orders for 500 years (she asks why he’s so quiet), he tells her that if she’s trying to comfort him, she doesn’t have to.

“I'm just thinking, nothing more. If you're trying to console me, I can assure you there is no need.”

When paimon later suggests he take a vacation because he’s obviously in pain and exhausted, he tells her that that the word “vacation” shouldn’t exist in his vocabulary. In addition, when Dain explains how the gods cursed the khaenrians, he looks sad for a brief moment before his expression changes to anger. All this may imply that he just doesn’t like to show sadness in front of others, or that it’s an emotion he tries to brush aside.

Dainsleif being an overworking waifu aside (which actually may be part of why he keeps prompting lumine to keep going, which may have further hurt her) it’s true that lumine might have fared better with paimon as a companion. Still, dain seems to have genuinely cared very deeply for her and still retains quite a bit of fondness for her. It’s just unfortunate that he wasn’t what she emotionally needed at the time, and / or that he didn’t realise she might need something else, like a shoulder to cry on, instead of endless space. He is extremely attentive to her in the teaser in his own way - he is often looking at her and turns to her when she stops, which was mentioned by others before me. Unfortunately, lumine may not have felt comforted by this, or it may not have been enough.

Ultimately, their ideological differences were likely what separated them. No matter how close they were, their turning into enemies might have been inevitable. But the worst dain has to say about lumine in the present day is that she’s a stubborn fool; on the other hand, she tells aether that dain failed to protect his nation while dain just says her name sadly. It does seem like there was a lot of affection on dain’s part. He remembers their travels wistfully, he remembers the tales of boreas that she told him 500 years ago (not only does dain hate the archons’ servants, he also has terrible memory problems), he’s clearly deeply lonely and misses her. He just didn’t show his affection for her in a way that she felt, at least when she was sad.

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[paradox-n-bedrock]

me in big fandoms: oh cool, it's so active and there's so many people to vibe with, this is amaz-

*finds my niche angle that appeals to approximately six people*

me: okay, folks, it's you and me now

[potassiumprincess]

i think marinette is worse at resting when she's sick but adrien is worse at sitting things out if he's injured. i have no explanation, these are just the vibes

[galedekarios]

Mystra: I've been watching your journey here. Your triumphs. Your temptations. Your doubts.

[uncanny-tranny]

The interesting thing about medically transitioning is how you might just be treated with the wrong framework.

When I get my hormone levels checked, for instance, they check it against the wrong type of person, so everything is flagged. Did you know that testosterone encourages hemoglobin production? Well, my hemoglobin is perfectly in line with male levels, but my levels are checked for the wrong endocrine system. Before I realized this, I was really confused as to why my hemoglobin was two grams over the range given, and was confused as to why that happened, and worried about if I should be worried about that. But it was a normal consequence of my testosterone levels, which are also flagged though they are well-within the range that is typical for my age and health categories.

The way we treat and measure for trans people and trans patients will affect the treatment and education they receive. There are ways in which hormones especially can influence how one's body operates, and with that in mind, you also have to change the way you interact with a trans person. With my testosterone levels, if you were to measure them against the incorrect endocrine system, you would fail to treat me in reality - that being the way my body has changed and maintained homeostasis since being on T.

[oumoumimi]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JUNGKOOK 💛✨️

[09/01/1997]

(cr. namuspromised)

[tanadrin]

Sounds like the DNC fully alienated the pro-Palestinian voting contingent. Combined with RFK jr. endorsing Trump and getting the right-wing crazies all on the same page, I imagine that's the election in the bag for him.

anon are you high

[centaurianthropology]

One thing that I think a lot of Disco Elysium meta misses (likely because a lot of it is very clearly written by young Americans writing from an intensely American-centric cultural perspective without even really realizing it) is that one of the singular and central themes of the game is massive-scale generational trauma in a home that is economically collapsing as its resources and people are being drained by an occupation.  People have noted that no one tries to help Harry, despite the fact his mental illness is incredibly obvious to everyone around him.  He tells Kim that he completely lost his memory, and Kim politely asks him to focus on the work.  He tells Gottlieb that he had a heart attack, and Gottlieb tells him that if he’s still alive it couldn’t have been that bad.  That he’ll drop dead sooner or later, but then so does everyone.

And that’s the most important thing: so does everyone.  Look at Martinaise.  Look at the world in which Harry lives.  It is not our own, but it is adjacent to ours.  More specifically, it is clearly adjacent to the states of the Eastern Bloc: overtaken and occupied by a faraway government that clearly doesn’t care about Revachol or its people.  And that is obvious in every tired face, every defeated citizen, everyone trying to eke out a little happiness or meaning in spite of the overwhelming trauma and damage around them.  The buildings are still half-destroyed.  The bullet holes are still in the walls.  The revolution was decades before, but it still feels to the people there like a fresh wound.  The number of men of Harry’s generation who are not alcoholic or otherwise deeply fucked up are very few.  Some, like Kim, hide it better, but the deeper you dig into his history, the more you realize how damaged Kim is.  He’s more than a little trigger happy, and hates that about himself, but he is a product of his environment: Kim’s entire life is seeing people he cared about shot and killed, so his instinct now is to shoot first himself, to protect those few people left who still matter to him.

Harry is not unique in his trauma.  He is a distillation of an entire culture of people who tried to rise up and make something beautiful, and were instead routed and occupied.  He is trapped between the occupation and the people on the ground, along with all the rest of the RCM.  Their authority comes from the occupying government, but it is implied that they were formed out of the remnants of the citizens militia which sprung up from Revachol itself as a way to try to mitigate some of the horrors being committed on its streets.  The Moralintern sure as hell wasn’t going to get their hands dirty, so they happily conscripted (and therefore could better control) this group, who are only recognized in certain places, and whose authority mostly amounts to giving out fines.  The RCM is corrupt, but it is corrupt in the same way its culture is.  Bribes are considered standard with them, not a moral failing, but a necessity, so long as those bribes are correctly logged as ‘donations’.  It’s how the RCM stays afloat, and the rest of Revachol completely understands that.  Everyone would take a bribe if it meant they kept eating.  Everyone would take a little under-the-table money if it meant keeping a roof over their heads.  The officersof the RCM certainly don’t make enough to see a doctor.  They have an in-house lazarus, and if he can’t fix them they just die.  Mental health care?  What mental health care?  Harry doesn’t get it for the same reason no one else does: it doesn’t really seem to exist.  There are no counselors, no psychologists, no psychiatrists.  How would they even start?  If the world is what is broken, if everyone is suffering a similar catastrophic amount, it makes sense that Harry’s trauma would simply get rolled up with all the rest.  Kim asks him to get on with the job because Harry’s suffering is not remarkable in Revachol.  He is one of an entire generation who have an astronomical number of orphans from the revolution, and so many younger people are left more or less orphans as their parents drink themselves into oblivion like Cuno’s father.  So Harry’s truly unique attribute is embodying all that trauma, having it all inside of him, filling him to bursting.

To really engage with the themes of the game, engaging first and foremost with the reality of Revachol is imperative.  Imposing our own reality onto Revachol, particularly if coming from an American perspective (which tend to have the habit of both viewing the world through an American lens and not realizing they’re doing it because they’ve never experienced a different lens), will always feel shallow to me because of this.

All that is to say, I would love to hear some more explicitly European meta about this game, and especially Eastern European meta.  If anyone can point me to some good, juicy essays from that perspective, I would be grateful!

[a-study-in-dante]

March 22nd, 2024 | I'm exhausteeeed. But lately I've been 1. Accepted to a summer school in Italy, 2. Taking part in lovely exciting events and meeting ups with friends & 3. Kind of reaching a personal deadline, resulting in a big chunk of work sent to my advisor. Worth it?

[zondearts]

Au Haruka but with a new design

[ganondoodle]

so, after not having access to my PC or time to draw for several days i had a cool idea i wanted to try but of course it didnt work out

so im posting the one screenshot i made and how far i got (its not very far and i got desperate at the end just spinnign around the colors in hopes it would solve whatever issue is blocking me from drawing properly..)

idea was to show just how scary it would be to encounter demise randomly in the land, hes really big in my story and its rarely clear bc in what i have drawn so far hes mostly only next to hylia and with her being taller than him they look rather reasonably sized

anyway, heres the unfinished thing

[bottledkriegmen]

never forget what they took from us.

[emmaswanned]

neighbor of the beast

[tea-cat-arts]

I simply think this fandom doesn't give Wei Wuxian enough credit for the various ways in which he saved Lan Wangji

[royalarchivist]

A 100% accurate representation* of what would've happened if Cellbit had recruited the rest of the Favela 5 to help him infiltrate the Federation to save Felps.

(Inspired by this post)