#stress does things to me man idk

[random-lil-illing]

okay, so, i might be looking too much into this, but hear me out.

in s1ep1 of carmen sandiego (2019), when carmen's recounting her backstory to gray, she talks about letting her friends tag along to greet cookie booker by throwing water balloons at her. there are 5 of them in their little criminal friend group (or as i like to call them, the crimesters™), and they throw red water balloons. they throw five red water balloons at cookie booker. and ms booker is obviously a pretty important person in vile, as she is the bookkeeper and she delivers the hard drive.

and there are five official team red members. and they go against vile. using the hard drive. the water balloons represent the future team red. oh my god

maybe im just tired and making things up, but if this is the case then that would be some amazing foreshadowing

[artkaninchenbau]

People keep on asking for more Baby Robin and Papadile so here is more Baby Robin and Papadile. Now never ask anything from me ever again

[navarice]

horror and psychological thriller in tgcf was done so incredibly well that if the beautiful and touching love story wasn’t incorporated into the book, I would be fully convinced mxtx decided to switch to another genre.

no one really talks about her fascination with the descent to madness and the morals surrounding humanity. at least one main character of each book goes through it. for lbh, it stemmed from the fear of abandonment and the emptiness that follows when the people you care most about decide you aren’t worth being chosen. for wwx, it was the outside in. society deemed him a monster so he had no other option available to him. no way to prove them wrong, and no way to convince himself he’s not either. anything he would do, despite his most well meaning, sincere, and self sacrificing motives, will always be twisted by the world who likes to paint others the devil. for xl…it was such a defeating combination of the two that it was near impossible for him find a way out. no family nor friend to turn to, no place to hide or run away, continuously forced to confront dilemmas beyond anyone’s capacity that sawed away at his already frayed sanity. worse was him having to confront godhood doesn’t mean omnipotent, nor does ascension mean free of suffering.

the way i choose to see it as this is her commentary on human nature, in both freedom and fallibility. ascend to heaven as a human, yet those in heaven are still human. wants, desires, fears, traumas, love, hate, selfishness, self-lessness, kindness, compassion, sacrifice, loss, hubris, duty, family, friends, hierarchy, power, and, above all, free will are all things that make humans what they are. are we wwx and xl? sacrificing ourselves time and time again only to have it all thrown back at our face? never once chosen or understood unless when it’s something short of a miracle? or are we the masses? afraid of the sinister, the disease, the wars? afraid for our young and old, for the talented and lame? for our lives and legacy? what are we, if not forever doomed to be helplessly flawed and hopelessly human?

the way she sees it, we have always been, and always be, both sides. because to her, they aren’t mutually exclusive, but rather each reflections of the other. both never wrong, but never quite right either. convoluted and confusing, mundane yet a tale as old as time.

mxtx writes her beautiful loves stories seamlessly. but she displays her talent best of all by weaving tales of hope and humanity into the threads.

[moeblob]

Demyx (my beloved)

[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.

[boxwinebaddie]

UNCLE NINA WRITES WEIRD JK STAN LETTERS!

hello benevolent angel people!

( because you're wonderful but bc you're doing gods work by supporting my dead fanfic from hell. c:’ )

so this is a lil...experimental? but bc i've been dabbling on that one ask large lore ask that set before kyle knows raven of crimson dawn is his stan, i've gotten very attached to writing the silly jersey letters to dead stan in his journal again. ( again, nina lore is that it's what a friend had me do when my first cat passed away.

i still write to her. <3 )

but this is just something i wrote to get back into the habit of writing again. i put it on docs and i used a font which...okay? tbh, i think looks exactly like i want jk's handwriting to look. like its very swirly, he is my calligraphy king. i didn't proof it bc i just wrote...all of it tonight like a weird crazy person.

also i realize jk sounds...a lot like me

— but he Is me, tbh?

like in some facets i did give him lil pieces of myself so he could grow into an uber tall thicc as hell academic hot jersey talk shit get hit boy.

( i also do think he's a lot goofier with stan in his little letters esp since he doesn't think that anyone is going to read them they are just his lil vent space. let it out king! )

as for the timeline...i think it's pre!rm bonus content? like i dropped a little context about stuff that happened before the fic, but i think it's probably written anywhere in the last 1-2 years of rm before kyle went to that crimson dawn concert. i'm not sure what compelled me to write it i just...really like vulnerable jersey just being a jersey dirtbag but like kneeling by the stan shrine and asking for light.

speaking of...as far as triggers go. mostly the spelling is just bad, help, but jersey does talk a lot about stan dying and is very...distressed about it. he's also...really depressed and is not at the moment coping super well, but is reaching out for help. <3 always reach out for help when you need it. i didn't mention anything specific, but he does just mention thinking he's not a good person, feeling ugly, unworthy, lost, etc...TW FOR HIM BEING SO VULNERABLE AND CUTE ALSO.

he is...my secret loverboy prince.

he is my lo-...

my L-

anyways...ROLL CLIP!

[skhardwarevers1]

Is there some strange reason I’m having so many dreams recently or did I anger a higher power

[fantastic-mr-corvid]

last years pride i had a sexuality crisis and this year a few days later im having a gender one. fuck.

[v-arbellanaris]

UR NOT INSANE EVEN THE UI LOOKS LIKE GOD OF WAR AJDJKSHDKSNDKDGH ik they listed it as one of their man inspirations but guys guys this feels a little too similar 👁️ idk if you’ve seen the warrior gameplay but there was a move that looked sooo much like using the blades of chaos i felt insane !! not but i can’t get over the ui 😭 like the first few pictures we got of it look just like gow’s menu in a purple gold font and i was like is anyone else seeing this. all the general slashing in gameplay and whatnot…very similar for sure

oh so they fr say it??? there were a few other features i felt were gow-ish as well, like the camera angles don't feel Typical of a rpg, the way you can only control your party members to let them make 1 or 2 actions (like atreus and freya as support charas), those little things suddenly diving in the sand, and the blight stuff that targets you & blows up during combat definitely felt familiar... and im like... ok gow was an amazing game, right, but what i personally really enjoyed about it was that the gameplay elements was not divorced from the narrative. is vg gonna go out of its way to justify these gameplay elements or are we just handwaving the entirely new mechanics by going 'ohhhh idk ghilain'nain i guess' lmfao.

[yuridovewing]

honestly leave it to wc to use a plotline that usually has me cheering and clapping just have me go “…. alright then”

[notjanine]

people have assumed i’m queer my entire life, but nowadays i’m getting they/themmed on the regular and it’s fine, but it’s also interesting bc gender has always been the one fundamental aspect of my identity that isn’t constantly misperceived, so now it’s kinda. oh i am just not being Seen at all huh.

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

When you don’t like a book that much, but not enough to abandon, or skim through it, because it’s still mildly interesting; so you binge-read chapter after chapter so you can finish it as quickly as possible without sacrificing your comprehension. But as you’re doing this, the plot thickens, and you actually start enjoying yourself.

[arcadequeerz]

Oh mind electric we're really in it now.

[chibishortdeath]

Aaaaaaaaa every year I wanna do the Draculatober but every year I am too stressed out, burnt out, or otherwise to do it (;w; ).

[perenlop]

Playing through Explorers of the Spirit and catching up to where I was... and I'm sorry I mean no disrespect, but it really comes across like the modder never got over their beef with chatot from 10 years ago and is using the opportunity in the game to vent about how much he sucks and why the guild is bad actually

[theinfinitedivides]

yup he unraveled folks