#this was meant to be a short post lol

[olivegardenhunter]

also not that anyone asked (or cares) but I want to make clear that while I do ship tsunade and jiraiya, I also wholeheartedly ship tsunade and dan. idk why a lot of people treat these two ships as one or the another and hate the other side rather than like both being something that can occur together. my main reasoning for this is I simply don't subscribe to the whole "one and only love forever and ever and can never move on" notion that Kishi himself loves so much. I like to think tsunade, while still holding a place for dan in her heart till she dies, would've ultimately been able to move on romantically from him. but not necessarily want to go out of her way to find someone else. and then comes jiraiya who after many years apart they begin to repair their relationship. and he's the only person left around that knows her deeply. and I don't see why she couldn't have started to develop feelings for him, just ones she wouldn't admit to. and I think many people like to think it's cause of the love she holds for dan she doesn't want to explore those feelings. and that's true to an extent imo. but more importantly it's cause she genuinely believes her love is cursed. and also that loving someone again would risk her losing someone close to her again. but anyway I like to think she did start falling for him in the end, whether she admits it to herself or not, but this does NOT mean she suddenly is completely over dan and don't love him anymore. I think grief and mourning is complicated and it's simply not true her loving someone new would mean she no longer loved him. they didn't break up after all, he died, it's so different. idk, to me I just don't think it's unrealistic for her to love someone new, while still knowing dan was who her heart really truly belonged to. so tldr I like jiratsu but I also love dantsuna and I'm sick of people pretending both ships can't coexist I guess.

[liquidstar]

crazy take: aside from actual lesbian romance stories, obviously, nothing passes the bechdel test better than moe "cute girls doing cute things" anime. its always just a group of girls, few to no named male characters, boys and dating are hardly ever brought up beyond the abstract, if at all. like we're focusing on the girls hanging out rn, we dont need to worry abt that shit. mugi just ate mio's strawberry.

[concert-bflat]

my goofy ass brain really waited 5 years to give me a death note phase i'm floored

[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.

[hazieash]

What has he done

[nightingaletes]

“Happy Valentine’s day!” Allora cheered, passing Taliesin a mini bag.

“Ah, um… thank you.” He took the bag in hand, raising an eyebrow. “A celebration from home? I don’t believe I’ve heard of ‘Valentine’s Day’ before.”

“Yeup! It’s mostly known as a day for romantic partners to enjoy the day together, but over time it started becoming equally for all people to share affection with their friends, rather than just partners.”

“I see. And where do I fall in this line?” Taliesin wondered, opening the bag— surprised at the sight of so many chocolates inside.

“Oh… I’ll let you figure that one out.” Allora shrugged casually, walking past her companion.

Taliesin jolted as her hand slid across his hip in passing, watching her wide eyed as she glanced back with a smirk, before carrying onwards to her bedroom.

“…”

His feet were moving faster than his mind could comprehend, like a dog on a leash.

[prinnamon]

[Start ID. Tags that read: #one of them is confirmed dead btw #shephard saw colettes body in xen #who knows what gina is doing #i think abt them sometimes #raging lesbians. End ID.]

Hi, Hello, and Welcome To My Twisted Mind! i don't mean to correct you @freeshephoun but i noticed your tags on my other silly half-wife post and i wanted to let you know hahahaheehoo it's worse than that :) i hope you don't mind me using you as an excuse to talk at length about cross and green and their ambiguous fate

(low-poly blood/corpse screenshots from the game and lots of text under the read more!)

[Start ID. A screenshot of what appears to be Gina Cross in a red HEV suit dead in one of the Displacement Cannon locations in Xen. End ID.]

in Opposing Force, a corpse bearing a striking resemblance to Gina Cross but wearing a red HEV suit can be found in one of the Displacement Cannon locations.

[ID in alt text.]

according to a tweet by Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford in 2018, it is indeed Gina Cross. Colette Green's fate is unspecified, but he suggests maybe G-Man found her useful enough/had enough compassion for her to put her in stasis like Shephard.

Opposing Force did come out before Decay, so considering that changes were still being made to Decay's story during development, far enough along that there are some voice lines and animations for the scrapped missions, it's likely they had no thoughts about anything that would happen in Decay's story when they decided to include Dr. Cross's dead body as an easter egg in OpFor. so, despite the confirmation by one of the people most likely to be considered An Authority on what happened in the expansions, the canon-icity of this is... slightly debatable? especially considering that (iirc) "Gina Cross's" body can actually be spotted in multiple Displacement Cannon locations in OpFor. so unless there was a wild teleporter accident that created multiple instances of her who all died in different spots... okay, wait, i said that as a hypothetical and a joke but now i like that a lot as a narrative device, fuck.

but you get what i'm saying. whether or not this is "canon" is dubious because you'd have to reconcile a lot of contradictory story elements in order to explain how one can accept this as true.

...

CHAPTER 7: RECONCILING A LOT OF CONTRADICTORY STORY ELEMENTS IN ORDER TO EXPLAIN HOW ONE CAN ACCEPT THIS AS TRUE

[PT: Chapter 7: Reconciling a Lot of Contradictory Story Elements In Order to Explain How One Can Accept This as True /end PT]

if you choose to take Pitchford's tweet as canon, what's especially strange (and tragic, i'll explain) is that Gina has never been shown wearing a red HEV suit anywhere else as far as i'm aware. she wears an orange suit when you see her hologram in the training program in Half-Life and Opposing Force, and she wears a tan/ivory suit in Decay.

[Start ID. A scan of a posed render of Colette Green (left, standing) and Gina Cross (right, crouched) from the Half-Life PS2 manual. Colette Green wears a red HEV suit and Gina Cross wears a tan one. End ID.]

red is Colette's color, which i imagine is probably the source of the initial confusion. which could lead you to conclude that, although this is gina, she's wearing colette's HEV suit. it would explain why she's alone. her suit may have been damaged beyond repair, and it wasn't enough to protect her, so she had to take Colette's as she went off on her own for one last desperate mission that required Gina to enter the Xen even after they and Dr. Keller thought they had successfully sealed the dimensional rift.

so, yeah, picture that. they only had one working suit left. so only one of them could go. and it had to be Cross because of her experience. and even despite their best efforts, despite Green giving up her hazard suit to give Cross the best odds, she still failed.

we know based on the ending of OpFor that the detonation of the nuclear bomb in the car park would have killed anyone still stuck at Black Mesa after a certain point, as Green and Keller almost definitely were if things went back to shit after the end of Decay, which they would have had to if Cross managed to end up dead in Xen. it doesn't make sense to say that they'd then just go "acceptable losses!" and book it, since they took so much responsibility upon themselves throughout Decay's story, so i feel they probably stayed and continued to dedicate themselves to damage control up until the very end. and, like, how would they have known about the bomb? communications were out. probably nobody except Shephard, the black ops team, and that one security guard would have been aware, realistically. so, even if Green and Keller would have wanted to escape and save themselves, there's virtually no way they'd have had enough advance notice to get out of there.

but since Colette's effort was admirable enough for her to deserve a reward in the G-Man's eyes (or maybe just to be kept in reserve in case she's needed later, depending on how you read G's motivations), she, like Shephard, was placed in stasis. and if she ever wakes up again, she'll presumably be without Keller since Pitchford makes no mention of him, and she'll definitely be without Gina.

OR if you don't want to engage with the tragedy of any of this, you can just say that the dead Ginas found in OpFor are uh. y;know. copies of her that were created somehow when she and Colette got caught up in the harmonic reflux after sealing the dimensional rift! which is sad for the clones—and oooky spooky because (mario voice) who REALLY died that day? and who came back??—but otherwise, all three of them got out of Black Mesa together.

I think about them. i think about them a lot. whyyyyy why why why WHY can't dr keller and the half-wifes be from an expansion people have easy access to like blue shit and opposing fart. screams and cries and throws up!!! no actual hate towards Blue Shift or OpFor; i love them, i just wish Decay was also two dollar and on PC

Gina Cross's page on Combine OverWiki was the main source for all my information. i also sourced the screenshot of Cross dead and the scan of Cross and Green's posed render from there. hopefully this post makes people realize that there is interesting shit going on with these characters that is worth exploring.

my final message: dear entire world, include colette green in your drawings of the freezer crew chilling in stasis (nonthreatening suggestion)

[domokunrainbowkinz]

Tried a new art style and I guess will is gonna be my guinea pig from now on 🥹

[cherubytes]

does the guy complaining about the amount of gay ultrakill fanart they see know they're on the gay fanart website???? "i cant scroll through the tag without seeing 30 fanarts of gabriel in a skirt" my brother in christ that man isnt wearing pants

[0th3rw0rldl1n3ss]

(OC)

[vanweezer]

yall dont laugh too hard ok. ok

paper machet paul mask

[a-small-writer-in-a-big-world]

I wrote a little over 1k just now :)

[s-ccaam-era-crepe]

okay i caved and made a writing sideblog follow @scamera-writes if yall would like to read my writing or smth <3

[arolesbianism]

I’ve been wanting to experiment with noses more for a while, so I finally sat down and forced myself to doodle some concepts.

[aerticent]

I have once again written a ridiculously long post, this time about an au I have in which religion is extremely present in Norta and how it effects Cal and Maven, two princes raised on the idea that by being Calore's they are inherently closest to the Gods. I'm worried I sound particularly crazy in this one lol. I just think Maven and Cal would go through opposite arcs with a religion in mind. Cal realizes how insane his views were. How it's insane to justify feeling inherently superior and in turn justifying horrific crimes and oppression of people with a religion. Maven would instead slowly give into the religion. He slowly commits more and more heinous crimes and he justifies it all with his religion. Maven feels as if he's ascending into Godhood and it drives him mad, Cal realizes that's where he was headed and rejects it. Cal feels intense shame leaving his brother to suffer in it, but he feels unable, partially due to their circumstances as they are in a war against one another, to dissuade Maven from his delusions of Godhood. Not only that, but he feels that by "pulling" (for a lack of better words) Maven out of his delusions he will only hurt him as his crimes, no matter the reason they were committed, can and will lead to his death. He might as well die feeling fulfilled in his own way then feeling abandoned and rejected once again.

[jewvian]

Wait. Hold on. So when Ellie said she had killed before, was she.... was she referring to Riley? Like fuck, she had that look on her face when Joel tried asking more about it, like she gave him the look/attitude he usually gives her whenever Tess is brought up, yknow?

Also we never really saw what went down at the mall after both Ellie and Riley decided to "lose their minds together", like we obviously know the outcome: Ellie survived because she's somehow immune and Riley... Riley most likely turned. But now, like after Ellie said the random dude wasn't her first kill, my mind goes straight to the mall and the aftermath of that one fateful night.

We know we're gonna get that flashback, it was briefly shown in the trailers. Maybe it'll even weave itself with the narrative of the game (Ellie taking care of injured Joel at the abandoned, snowy mall), but fuck me the fuck up, if we get the missing scene between what happened to Riley and how Ellie ended up being tied to a pipe at the fireflies place..... I'll lose my shit.

Because that was the catalyst for Ellie, like it's her own Tess moment. Joel went on that journey for Tess because she believed Ellie is the answer to how to stop the fungus, she's the cure they've been dreaming of in secret for 20 years. That's what Tess died for and she made sure Joel will take that responsibility for her sake.

And that's exactly what Riley is for Ellie, her death had a bigger meaning, a revelation of sorts. Every person that died around her became a part of that surviour's guilt, a reason why she needs to get to the fireflies' hospital and sacrifice herself for a cure. Riley was the first name on that list, arguably the most important name there, because it was her that made it possible. She took Ellie to the mall, she got the power on, she played around with her, put on the loud music that attracted the infected and... it was her that suggested they'll be poetic and wait it out. Her presence made it all possible! Like I'm not blaming Riley for what happened at the mall, but she was the one who initiated the plot in the game. But again, it's bigger than that. She could have killed Ellie, they both could have ended their lives right there and then. Maybe Riley dragged Ellie's ass to the mall and it's her fault they both got bitten, but y'all she also saved Ellie's life! She's the reason Ellie got to live and realize she's different, that she's immune.

Now imagine all of that guilt that was already presented to us in the game and add the possibility Ellie had to grab Riley's gun and shoot her herself after she turned.

"Back in Boston, back when I was bitten, I wasn't alone. My best friend was there and she got bit too. We didn't know what to do, so she says, 'let's just wait it out. Y'know, we can be all poetic and just lose our minds together.' I'm still waiting for my turn."

That is the catalyst that started the journey way before Joel even knew what was heading in his way, and if that's the direction the show is going, like letting us actually see Ellie's guilt is as big as Joel's... I'm already strapped in and waiting to launch myself to the sun.