#raid spoilers

[sylaurin]

Training Day

[spotofmummery]

Of course 'twas a Tomestone. What else could it be?

((I'd be fibbing if I didn't admit I ran this raid with Amon partially just to get these screenshots.))

[deststranding]

[lxghtbound]

“I’m gonna need a million year nap after punching Nezarec in the dick so much.”

[seaseren]

Oh Ves falls for Honey B Lovely's shtick completely. Worse parsing black mage in the world for that fight. Utterly useless. Her brother has to use the Cover tether as a leash.

[paladin-tauren]

Hey, everyone, back from my first night in Aberrus, and I Will Personally Kick Neltharion’s Ass Both In This Raid And Several Times In The Past All By Myself.

He’s dead, but he’s still incredibly manipulative and flippantly cruel, I hate him so goddamn much. If I have to hurt one of his sons because of how he treats them here, I’m going to hate every moment of it.

[wiredelta]

Recorded 3/10/23

[cliopadra]

*laughs nervously* Izzy? Dead and gone for good? Naaaah, of course not, he’s just in the gravy basket…or on his way to get sea witch necromancied back by seagull Buttons. He’s ok, he’ll be back…he’ll totally be back 🥲.

[lilyofthevalleycaughtintherain]

Live footage of me playing Eden's Promise raid questline

[fumifooms]

People have speculated a lot about Chilchuck’s nightmare, my own reading’s changed a lot about it over time too. Anyone is afraid losing the people they love, but what does this say about this character’s specific fears, experiences and priorities? What’s implied to have went down exactly, here?

My own take about Chil’s nightmare is that at the center of it, what it represents is the fear that Chilchuck couldn’t protect them.

A big part of Chil’s character is his worrying for others, mainly for their safety, and taking responsibility for keeping them safe. He puts the weight on himself to make sure things go right and if they don’t he’ll worry about if he could have done anything differently. It’s also part of why he has this defense mechanism of giving up on interpersonal matters easily, because while it’s his duty to make sure his coworkers and daughters are safe for example, he thinks that when it comes to relationships and others that things are out of his hands and no matter what he says people won’t care. So he has to lie and trick his party members to go back to the surface, because surely they wouldn’t listen to his opinion or request to go back. So he’ll play chaperone to make sure no one says something incriminating. So all day he has to keep himself on his toes to hear and see the traps hidden away, has to keep himself starved to make sure he won’t trigger said traps, has the party’s lives on his shoulders and one moment of distraction could be the end.

This safety he worries about is both physical, fights and traps, and legal & socio-economical, laws, reputation and financial & job stability.

Here Chilchuck has blood on him, he seems to be looking at his hands. The corpses of his daughters are huddled laying around him but he’s not touching them. This has a sense of purposeful framing, they’re laying at his feet pointing up to him bloody and he has bloody hands, which is why people including myself have speculated that his nightmare could be about him murdering his family. Whatever happened, he blames himself, it’s his fault, is what the composition seems to evoke. But the intent of that sentiment shifts as effortlessly and easily as going from "he’s horrified at what he did" to "he’s horrified at what he didn’t do".

The axe in the wall, which some argue would be too heavy for a half-foot, then hints at something more like home invasion. Home invasion is a valid fear a lot of ethnic minorities and lower class people have had to face, wether it be because of overpolicing and law enforcement forces being dangerous and fickle, being the target of hate crimes or the general unfortunate environment and circumstances making their place of residence an unsafe spot. We don’t know why Chilchuck moved from his hometown to Kahka Brud, one of the bigger cities with half-foot populations reputed for its booming economy and job opportunities, but moving from a small town to a big city has its own pros and cons on that end as well. Chilchuck of course is very aware of the discrimination half-foots face, not only being dismissed and infantilized but also seen as expandable, as bait, little lives of little importance, and he’s deep into activism for half-foots especially with the union he leads. He strivess to protect his peers as well. He’s been scared for his life before, hiding and fleeing from humans, his party at the time. He’s had to hide and fear and flee humans before. The theory that he’s scared of specifically home invasion as a hate crime is very founded, on top of Chil being very worried about getting into trouble with the law in general and also again being implied to be/have lived in empoverished areas, just the whole bingo card of potential trauma to go off of.

He has blood splattered on his hands and cheek. Was he there when the rampage happened? Was he effortlessly pushed aside as his family was slaughtered, or did he stand aside frozen, unable to do anything in either scenario? If there’s another way to have gotten those blood splatters, it can also play on him being absent from his home. Maybe not unlike his wife, the fear of returning home to see things have been taken from you without even knowing or being able to do a thing. The fear of coming home and the place having been ransacked and everyone in it killed. Home, your haven, destroyed, your family, killed. It cannot be fixed, which in itself can be a nod to his tendency to be pessimistic and to think hoping for better is useless, like with being able to reach out and reconcile with his wife.

"The nightmares that the clam monsters give people tend to be specific, and based on deeply rooted emotional wounds, so I think it’s possible that Chilchuck isn’t just afraid of his home being attacked randomly, he is afraid of his daughters being targeted for their race and their gender specifically, perhaps because that is something that happens commonly to half-foots in the Dungeon Meshi world, and something Chilchuck feels powerless to protect them from." — @Room-Surprise , essay (source, go read it) It’s definitely in line with the lore. This whole thing reinforces how for example trusting his party with his daughter’s life, telling them to hire Meijack if he were to die, was a huge deal and testament of trust for Chilchuck.

So yes in my interpretation home invasion is especially relevant, but I still think the protection aspect is at the core of the scenario’s horror otherwise too, not having protected his family from himself if he was the one to kill them (which could be stretched to include the notion that his family’s closeness crumbled because of his attitude, or a manifestation of his low view of himself, maybe worried about his own alcoholism and anger issues) or having prevented whatever tragedy happened. The aftermath is what Kui chose to show after all, whatever happened the end result is the same and that’s what was deemed important. In the end it’s up to interpretation, whatever the intent was, but yes there’s much to be dug at here. It’s a bit like a chimera of all his biggest worries, fears and insecurities, all wrapped into one vision. If you want more discussion about it, there’s tons in the engagement of this post.

[koyehn]

The Witness Concept Art by Tobias Kwan

[justplaggin]

*wakes up in a cold sweat* ARCHAEOLOGY

[caiabresebun]

one of my fave paldea pokies 🎀💕

[zadayaz]

this joke is so dumb but its been haunting me since archadion dropped

[dailyloopdeloop]

DAY 89: spam tong

[finishing-touch]

Forsake godhood, and return to monke

Credit to @the-sycophant for playing the part of monke