#when it comes to ask games:

[malinaa]

if i think about the hunger games in peeta's perspective i WILL start sobbing

[bloobydabloob]

Holy shit I love your Dirk interpretations, it's so true and I could talk about this shit forever. I feel like another part of his character that people seem to forget (along with Roxy for some reason) is that he's from the future in solitude in an apocalyptic wasteland. I just see that part of his character always removed which is disappointing because I feel like that's a pretty big part, especially regarding his themes around technology, his brother's theme of Time, his own isolation, and how he plays in the vastness of the universe and spacetime.

Art I drew related to the subject because I like to respond to asks with art.

But absolutely. I certainly understand where the lack of discussion over his isolation + upbringing comes from, considering a majority of the fanbase that I have seen builds their ideas based on their own version of postcanon. I’m not entirely sure how that would be fixed, but certainly even in the somewhat recent past I would see a lot more content regarding his upbringing both literally and symbolically. I don’t have much to add regarding the things you’ve mentioned, because they just are what they are. Dirk being confined to a singular room left to him by a father figure he never met, in a future where the only other person left on the planet is someone he cannot pursue a relationship of because of himself, with purely 3 robots to keep him companion, one being an exact replica of his own brain who is *also* trapped inside a pair of glasses, is about as literal as it gets to me.

The contrast to me involving the flooded, organic world in comparison to the little speckle of Dirk’s apartment packed with the dude and his technics is not only a representation of his isolation and entrapment within himself, but also of his lack of control. I think his obsession with & themes of control are a direct product in the case of Dirk specifically *of* this kind of upbringing. His themes of technology are also related to his themes around control. So much of his character is actually revolved around this to me like so much. Dirk is so deeply disconnected from humanity in every way and so much of his character + symbolism is based around that.

It doesn’t even have to be about the symbolism or anything though. It’s just pretty *interesting* in the literal sense that he lives in the middle of the ocean in the future. There’s not only a lot to theorise on to do with his young life there, but on how it might affect him in the way he acts for the rest of his life. The latter part is probably what I see mentioned the most by people talking about Dirk regarding this, I’m surprised I don’t see more discussion on the former too though. I really ought to actually talk more about Homestuck stuff on here. I will do it myself.

Roxy & Dirk’s relationship is largely ignored though because there is a narrative a certain demographic spreads that Dirk resented and blamed Roxy for her interest in him, and thus too many people believe that their relationship was or would continue to be an abusive one. Realistically, I believe it’s important to acknowledge that the way Roxy treated Dirk regarding his homosexuality wasn’t right while still acknowledging the obvious amount of respect and admiration Dirk had for Roxy. I mean we have a huge piece of dialogue from their post trickster mode conversations on the quest beds from Dirk purely stating how he feels about Roxy that people completely ignore somehow. I think this usually happens to characters that are women though. I know everyone says it, but it is true. Jane gets the exact same treatment of boiling her down to solely her negative aspects. The things I see completely mischaracterising both of them are horrific.

I mean how much more explicit can it get that their relationship is obviously very important to Dirk? But I digress. I think the best or I should say “most interesting” interpretations of their relationship usually come from DirkRoxy shippers actually.

I would be interested to hear about Dirk’s relation to his brother’s theme of time though. I don’t have any thoughts on this and I don’t recall ever hearing anyone talk about it before. If you or anyone else would be willing to enlighten me I’d be thrilled.

[psqqa]

yes, yes i know edgeworth’s big wet eyes and loser boy personality have captivated us all, but listen. listen.

phoenix wright

phoenix “genuinely unable to reconcile the girl on the stand with the girl he dated for eight months, a cognitive dissonance so profound it’s ultimately explained by them being literally two different people, but which he first sits with for five years and does not talk about at any point to anyone” wright

phoenix “don’t mention that name to me. i don’t want to talk about it. i don’t want to think about it. i am just going to keep myself in this state of perpetual crisis mode focus on other people’s problems until eventually i die and get to hang out with mia on the astral plane and never have to deal with any of these emotions ever again” wright

phoenix “overnight loses his career and reputation and sense of identity while gaining an adopted, probably pretty traumatized eight-year-old daughter, and rather than leaning on his friends for help, or getting therapy, or taking any time to process any of this, he *checks notes* spends seven years dedicating all his free time and energy to investigating the weird fucking circumstances around it and maintains a friendship with the guy he suspects was behind it all” wright

phoenix "runs across a burning bridge and falls through it, half a day after the game establishes that he is terrified of heights, because his friend is on the other side of that bridge" wright

phoenix “i sure felt surprised. maybe i had my poker face on” wright

phoenix “looking back on it that was actually a pretty dark period in my life” wright

phoenix “don’t ask me how i got started. i don’t remember” wright

phoenix “only you stood still, your eyes calmly watching” wright

phoenix “sometimes, life just sucks” wright

just

phoenix wright

crunchiest man in the world

and all i wanna do is chew and chew and chew on him

[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!

[spacedlexi]

"sounds nice... having a partner"

[internetskiff]

Brother rly went "so yeah about that beer :)" immediately followed by implying he had (and still has) to beat at least a couple of people to maintain his position in Civil Protection. Really creates way more questions than it answers. What did u do Barney Calhoun. Is beating people up all it takes? Is there innocent blood on his hands? Is there weight on his conscience? Despite everything, did he still partake in the perks the position offered, the better housing, the extra food? How trusted is he in the resistance, really? It's probably well known that he still has to participate in the Combine's oppressive system, right? They can't all possibly view it as a completely necessary evil. I mean, some rebels hate Odessa Cubbage and his only crime seems to be "being an idiot".

Okay completely unrelated train of thought now but I wonder if he smuggles the melons Kleiner feeds to Lamarr. You can see some watermelons in a Civil Protection outpost/apartment so I assume that's one of the "better" foods the Combine provide to those that serve them. Goddd there's so much to this guy but it's all implication.. Wish he had more screentiiiiiiime I wanna see more of him. I wanna see what he's had to do to maintain cover, and what he's actually done to earn the Resistance's trust. How do the rebels feel, knowing that while they have to take shelter in the canal system, he's able to sleep in an actual apartment with an intact door?

[wistfulwatcher]

emily prentiss + leaving and coming back for her family

[choccy-milky]

omg clora’s boy disguise is so cute and pretty and just *chef’s kiss* i absolutely adore your artstyle! and your fic is so entertaining to read and is so well written! keep up the great work girl you’re amazing!

AW TY GIRLIE IM GLAD U LIKE MY STUFF!!🥹💖and ty for the nice message!!💖💖heres more pretty boy clora just for u BAHAHA💖 but yall thirsting after boy clora just got me thinking how seb has to watch out for even more competition LMAO i can just imagine clora laying on her boy-self's charm so thick (and basing her boy self's version on fairytales or romances she's read/trying to act like prince charming or some shit LOOL) and i defs put my own tastes into her boy design. i love the tom riddle-esque snooty pretty boys LOOL. its the same reason i was an ominis girlie when i first played HL before falling for seb SORRY SEB I WASNT ALWAYS LOYAL🤪

I DEFS WANNA DO MORE PREGGO CLORA its just tough since i do plan to write a bit of an epilogue when her and seb are older and they DO get pregnant, but also that wont be for a while...so maybe i will just draw it sooner instead🤔 and u are 100% right LMAOO if clora thinks seb is overprotective now, SHE AINT SEEN NOTHIN YET. HONEY ITS 4PM TIME TO GET INTO YOUR BUBBLE WRAP COCOON

seems like the perfect time to bring back this reaction image

[oifaaa]

Cass should be batman, but so should everyone else. The rogues upon realising batman is dead should start calling themselves Batman until Batman is just synonymous with being a costumed nuisance. The bats try to rein it in but it’s way too late for anything, not when croc is wearing a child’s mask that only covers his nose. Battle for the cowl revamp where it is every person who cannot mind their own business in Gotham.

The problem with this is you can't convince me bruce hasn't copy righted the batman name he tells the public batman can use it but anyone else has to get permission which like sure the rogues are criminals what's one more crime but bruce has those Disney lawyers which somehow keep showing up in killer crocs sewer for a cease and desist

[turtleblogatlast]

Someone’s probably pointed this out before but it always makes me happy to remember that it’s Leo and Mikey (Blue and Orange) in particular that can make portals, because:

[emry-stars-art]

Doodles from Sunday

Find the royal au masterpost here 💕

[project-sekai-facts]

Admin are you ready for the lore drops that's gonna be happening once the VS World link drops all the chapters? Cause I saw a leak and have not recovered in the least cause of the answered question. Won't mention it here, but, yeah. This might be the most lore heavy Virtual Singer storyline in the entire game so far. Which makes sense. It'll probably answer a number of questions about probably the individual SEKAI or something

oh yeah i already read the entire story and will be summarising some of it tomorrow when the event is out officially. it was very good

[deerspherestudios]

Hi! I just want to say that I like the new update for mushroom oasis! Can't describe it with my words but I really like your concepts for it!

I have a question to ask it's not a interesting one i think, why Mycehal call the mc firefly? It's pretty cute nickname but does he use it only mc when he found them?

Like i say it's not interesting one but i was curious, hope you have a good day and stay hydrated

Are you asking if he uses it only for MC, or for anyone he comes across? Personally, I think he only uses it for MC but it can also be accepted it's a given pet name to anyone he comes across (like how some people just comfortably refer to strangers as 'honey', 'sweetie', etc) and mean nothing by it. Both works ::-)!

Funnily enough there is a brief mention of why he uses it in the Day 3 script, so I don't think it makes the question uninteresting at all haha! Although that does mean it counts as spoilers (sorta) but he does explain why he calls you 'firefly' eventually ::-)

Then again I'm re-writing the Day 3 script so who knows, we'll see how it goes!

[ryllen]

[somegrumpynerd]

This little interaction made me so happy! Killer really fought through Dream to give Cross his necklace back

Asjlkhdkgkd I'm so glad you liked it!! I had fun putting a little story into that one ^^

And, because I am normal and don't think about these guys for hours every day, here's some backstory:

When Cross first joined, Killer actually took to him pretty quickly (Dust and Horror did not get warm welcomes). Which is to say he immediately started flocking to Cross to annoy him and compete with him on missions. Cross didn't have the benefit of knowing Killer already to see these were affectionate annoyances, so to him Killer was just some guy who had a problem and wouldn't leave him alone.

During that mission, Nightmare was calling a retreat when he put a hand to his chest and realised the heart locket was gone. Killer saw him looking all around frantically and had a good idea what was lost, since it was the one thing Cross would absolutely not part with since he joined. So, Killer ran back out towards the stars to look for it, because why learn self preservation now. It was the first thing to convince Cross that Killer actually was being (relatively) friendly, despite all the annoyances.

And also, a doodle of the afterwards of that picture

because it's probably the only time he's managed to get Killer to shut up lol

[fatuismooches]

If Zandik really loved his spouse he would have set a rotating roster of Segments to ensure that they are never alone for too long. All those Segments and no schedule? How dare!

Ciao, anyways so. Several Dadtorre fluffs.

First idea: Dottore having a crisis and thinking that he is a horrible father, Shinji pose and everything on the chair, contemplating the perceived mistakes he did. Meanwhile, his Segments are staring and him judgy *including* his spouse with a dry stare because their child is literally his biggest fan.

Dottore had taken their child up a summit to point out stars, even told the child how they could tell the skies are false. The stars on that direction are suspiciously repeating like the ones behind them - there was a strange thin clearing between the twinkling stars like there were seams going across the sky.

Once you see them, you will never remember what the false sky had looked like before. The child had been fixated on it since, excitedly chattering that they will be the first one to explore those strange seams in the sky after father had showed it to them. They will discover many things like him, just you wait!

Second idea: Dottore insisting that he is NOT spoiling their child—

Omega drags in the 50th custom toy Dottore has made behind him as he says this.

Never in all his centuries of life did Dottore ever see himself becoming a father - it was something so ludicrous that it never once crossed his mind for very obvious reasons, he knew the kind of man he was. It was you who had to gently convince and reassure him that he could be a good father if he truly tried, and you'd be there every step of the way with him. He had doubts, but he decided to listen to your soothing words - you always seemed to be right in these situations anyway. It really is a great thing that he has you... because sometimes he needs some sense put into that stupidly smart yet foolish brain of his.

Sure, Dottore can be awkward and surprisingly clumsy at times when dealing with his child, but his love for his kid is abundantly clear. He's even surprised you quite a few times by taking the initiative, although in the beginning, he was admittedly a bit closed off (perhaps unsure of if he deserved this, or even if his kid deserved a father like him, if he would unwittingly end up rewriting his own childhood of loneliness.) Despite this, your heart swells at how he continues to get closer and closer to his kid, protecting them from the world.

...Which is why it simultaneously upsets and saddens you when Dottore doubts himself. Like... he's one of the smartest people in Teyvat! How is it so hard to see something that's right in front of him?! His child adores him, constantly looking up at him with pleading eyes when he's supposed to be working (he has to pass them to you otherwise he'll give in.) The kid always clings to him and repeats "I love you" like it's as easy as breathing! What does he not get! The segments giving him looks too are especially amusing... he's literally judging himself.

Dottore doesn't go many places in general, and that extends to his kid, but he does like taking them out, otherwise they'd find some way to get out anyway. He'd rather not have them try to trudge through the snow. (Sometimes, he'd wonder if they'd prefer the warmth of Sumeru like he did.) Unsurprisingly he has a tendency to jump at the opportunity to teach his child anything, loving their expression when he passes on knowledge.

The wide eyes, the round 'o' of their mouth in shock, tiny hands grabbing his sleeve for him to go on. It's no surprise his kid's stupefaction is more intense when he drops that the sky they gaze upon every day is fake. No one in their right mind would ever believe that, but his kid trusts him enough to entertain the thought. They have the same thirst for the unknown just like him. He'll make sure they have the space to flourish, even though he does want them to struggle and stumble to discover the answer. Needless to say, he's extremely proud of his kid.

You and the segments don't listen much to Dottore's vehement defenses anymore. It just goes in and out of the ears. Yeah, sure old man, you're not spoiling your kid but every time they have a request or desired upgrade for a toy, you suddenly disappear into your lab and don't come out until it's finished. He swears he doesn't spoil them but sometimes he sneaks them candy from his stash... (Pantalone lets the misuse of funds slide, only because he thinks it's entertaining to see the Doctor soften up a bit, and he gets to be the cool uncle.)

(Also! You're so right about the schedule of segments! He's such an inefficient man! The segments spending time with you = you're happy = a nice rest and recharge for them = more motivation for everyone = more productivity for them all! A fool, truly, he must see that before it's too late! The schedule is posted every month in the lab, the segments are itching for their turn! Do they make bets for each other to steal time slots? ... Maybe.)