#wow..... this was a Lot i'm so sorry

[sskk-manifesto]

Bungou Stray Dogs: Dead Apple and how “ability users” (opposite to “normal people”) learning to accept themselves through the acceptance of their own abilities is a queer metaphor of acceptance of own's sexual orientation and gender: an essay by me

[avephelis]

every time someone mischaracterises jay ferin as the therapist friend a fairy loses its wings btw. put some respect on her emotionally-constipated ass.

[taruruchi]

Keeping promises? (Part 2 of this post)

Notes under the cut!

YES I FINALLY FINISHED IT RAHHHHHHH 19 DAYS AFTER MY BIRTHDAYSJNDJDKD Anyway. The whole necklace thing is a reference to Azul's chat from the lessons!

Shading gave me an aneurysm but at least it's done. My favorite part is the chibis tho so I hope everyone enjoys that <3 Even made Azul go :3 as a treat

Edit: @jewelulu I forgot u wanted me to tag u when I post art, so sorry 😔😔 But yeah new art :D

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[prolibytherium]

I never touched it but I feel like i only ever hear positive things said about song of achilles.. in (rough strokes at least) what makes it dogshit to you?

Okay it's been a while since I actually read it so some of this might not be spot on accurate. Sorry if at any point I say 'the book never does xyz' and it actually does once or twice but I think my underlying criticisms are accurate

-Patroclus is made into like this soft gentle tender quivering little yaoi boy. In the source text, he's shown as compassionate and moved by the suffering of his own men (and apparently having some medical skill, tending to the wounded in the camp), but very much invested n combat and very, very good at it (pages worth of descriptions of the guys he's killing left and right). In this, the arguably more complex character from this 8th century BC text is flattened into Being A Healer, he doesn't want to go to war he just wants to help people, he only goes because Achilles has to but he doesn't want to fight he's a HEALER he's a gentle lover NOT A FIGHTER who just wants to help he just wants to help everyone around him he HEALS while Achilles is a doomed warrior who is so good at fighting and KILLING its a DICHOTOMY GUYS!!!LIKE THE BEAUTIFUL SUN AND MOON DOOMED LOVERS SO SAD patocluse HEALER . (I Think he's specifically characterized as being BAD at fighting but might be misremembering)

-I don't remember much about Achilles' characterization I think it just makes him less of a jackass while not adding anything of interest and levels out into being mad boring.

-Not getting into the literal millenias old debate whether the mythological characters Achilles and Patroclus were being characterized as some type of lover by the original oral sources of the Iliad or its Homeric writers. We will never know. We don't even know what (if any) culturally accepted conventions of male homosexuality existed in bronze age Greece (we know much more about their descendants). But there are some interesting elements of their characterization in this direction, with how unconventional their relationship is WITHIN the text itself- Patroclus is described as cooking for Achilles and his guests (very specifically a woman/wife's job), Achilles chides Patroclus like a father, but there's also scene where Achilles' mourning of him directly echoes a passage of Hector's wife mourning her husband, Patroclus is explicitly stated to Achilles' elder, and is overall treated as his equal or near-equal, closest confidant and most beloved friend (to the point that pederastic classical Greeks would debate over who was erastes (older authority figure lover) and who was eromenos (adolescent 'beloved')- many took it as a given that this text depicted their present-day cultural norms of homosexual behavior but it existed so Outside of these norms that it had to be debated who was who). Their relationship is non-standard both within the text and to the descendants of the civilization that wrote them.

Basically what I'm saying is this book had opportunities to like, explore the unconventionality of the relationship (being presented here as explicitly lovers), explore the dynamics of why Patroclus wants to do 'women's work' (besides being a tenderhearted softboy), the weird dynamics where they take on paternal roles to each other but also roles of wives, how they feel about being this way, and just kind of Doesn't. Which I guess isn't an intrinsic fault (because it omits much of what I just talked about to begin with). it's just like.... Lame. This book takes jsut abandons everything interesting about the source text in favor of flattening it into bland Doomed Yaoi.

-The conflict that sets off the core story of the Iliad is Achilles and Agamemnon fighting over Briseis, an enslaved Trojan woman taken by Achilles as a war-trophy, Achilles spends most of the story moping because he was dishonored by his 'trophy' being taken. Achilles and Patroclus and everyone else are raping their captives, all the women in the story are either captured Trojans (or in the case of the free women within the walls of Troy, soon to be enslaved, and are slave owners themselves). Slavery as an institution and extreme patriarchal conventions are innate to the text and reflective of the context in which it was developed. You cannot avoid it.

But obviously you can't have your soft yaoi boys doing this, so the author has them capturing women to Protect Them from the other men. Their slaves are UNDER THEIR PROTECTION and VERY SAFE (and they might even Like And Befriend Them but I might be misremembering that. Briseis does though). Our heroes have apparently absorbed none of the ideals of the culture they exist in and the author seems to think "they're gay and aren't sexually attracted to their captives" would translate to them being outright benevolent (also as if wartime sexual violence is just about attraction and not part of a wider spectrum of violent acts to dehumanize and brutalize an accepted 'enemy')

In the source text, Briseis mourns Patroclus as being the kindest to her of her captors, who tried to get her a slightly better outcome by getting her married to Achilles (which probably would be the Least Bad of all possible outcomes for a woman in that situation, becoming a legal wife instead of a slave), and wonders what will happen to her now that he's gone. This is a really really sad, horrible, and compelling dynamic which could be fleshed out in very interesting ways but is instead is tossed entirely aside in favor of them being Besties. Like brother and sister.

All of the above pisses me off so much. If you don't want to engage in the icky parts of ancient/bronze age Greece then don't write a retelling of a story taking place in bronze age Greece. I'm not gonna get mad at children's adaptations of Greek myths or silly fun stories loosely based on them for omitting the rape and slavery but it is SO fundamental to the Iliad. If you're not willing to handle it, either fully omit it or better yet set your Iliad inspired yaoi in an invented swords-and-sandals setting where you can have all your heartbreaking tragic doomed lovers plot beats and not have to clumsily write around the women they're brutalizing.

-The author didn't seem to know what to do with Thetis and she made her just like, Achilles bitch mother who spends most of the story trying to separate our Yaoi Boys (iirc her disguising Achilles as a girl and hiding him on Scyros is made to be more about getting him away from Patroclus than trying to save her son from his prophesied doom in the Trojan War) until she sees how much they loooove each other and I think helps Patroclus' spirit get to the afterlife or something in the end?

-This is more of a personal taste gripe but it has that writing style I loathe where the prose feels less like a story and more like an attempt to string together Deep Beautiful Hard Hitting Poetic Lines that will look great as excerpts on booktok (might predate booktok but same vibe). It's all very Pretty and Haunting and Deep but feels devoid of real substance.

I really like The Iliad and The Odyssey in of themselves. They're fascinating historical texts that give a window into how 8th century BC Greeks told their stories, saw their world, interpreted their ancestors, etc. And genuinely I think these texts have 'good' characters, there's a lot of complexity and humanity to it.

WRT the Iliad- all of the main Achaeans are pretty fascinating, the one singular part where Briseis Gets To Talk and laments her situation is great, Achilles fantasizing that all of the Trojans AND the Achaeans die so he and Patroclus alone can have the glory of conquering Troy (wild), Achilles asking to embrace Patroclus' shade and reaching out for him but it's immaterial (and the shade being sucked back underground with a 'squeak' (the squeak kinda gets me it's disturbing and sad)), Hecuba talking about wanting to tear out Achilles' liver and eat it in a (taboo, exceptioally pointed) expression of rage and grief for his mutilation of her son's corpse, just one tiny line where the enslaved women performing ritual wailing for their dead captors are described as using it as an outlet to 'grieve for their own troubles' is heartrending, etc. A lot of grappling with anger and grief and the inevitability of death, a lot of groundwork laid for characters that could be very interesting when expanded upon in the framework of a conventional novel.

And Song Of Achilles really doesn't do much with all that. I know a lot of my gripes here are kind of just "It's different from the Iliad", I would have thought of it as mostly mediocre and forgettable rather than infuriating if it wasn't a retelling (and I DEFINITELY have strong biases here). But I think the ways in which it is different are less just a product of a retelling (of course there's going to be omissions and differences) and more a complete and utter disinterest in vast majority of its own subject matter, to the book's detriment. I think a retelling has a point when it EXPANDS on the source, or provides a NEW ANGLE to the source. This book doesn't Really do either, it just shaves off the complexity of its source material, renders the characters into a really boring archetype of a gay relationship, and gives very little else. Its content boils down to a middling tragic romance that has been inserted into the hollowed out defleshed skeleton of the Iliad.

Bottom line: I definitely would not be as mad about it if I wasn't familiar with the source material but I think it's fair to expect a retelling to Engage with/expand on its source, and I also think it's weak purely on its own merits. This book was set up to disappoint Me specifically.

[cluescorner]

I cannot imagine being a Damian stan right now. You've got both Zdarsky's bullshit (where he clearly doesn't give a shit about your boy) and The Boy Wonder (where Juni Ba clearly gives so many shits about your boy) coming out on the same day. The whiplash must be insane. I hope y'all get some nice warm soup for your efforts jfc

[sciderman]

I swear I have read your big post regarding Peter Parker's neurodivergence and why it is best to avoid labelling him, but he definitely has a weird brain

Can't find it and feel kinda sad about it cuz I deeply related to it

i know exactly which post you're talking about and i can't find it either! i've raked through my archive, and it's just - nowhere to be seen. i think tumblr eated it (it happens.)

really, tumblr's search functionality is so so useless, i don't know what to tell you. there are plenty of keywords i can search to find it that post, but the search functionality actually just does not work!

undiagnosed audhd-addled peter parker, my darling, my light, my life, my everything.

i think peter parker's such an interesting creature to write, because a lot of people will point to a certain behaviour about him and say "this is an autistic thing, right?" but a lot of those behaviours are actually, in my head, tied to certain traumas in peter's life too.

people say "oh, the food thing, peter's a picky eater because he's autistic" and yes, absolutely. but also it's tied to his trauma with his parents.

peter gets overstimulated, and yes, it's an autism thing, but also he was bitten by a radioactive spider and his senses are dialled to 11.

it's a similar case i've found for myself, too – where a lot of friends i have kind of diagnose me because i have autistic traits, but actually - i'm hesitant to claim the label or pursue diagnosis because, actually, i know where these certain behaviours come from, and they come from certain traumas. there are events i can pinpoint in my life and say "yep. that's where this behaviour comes from."

so - i think there's a lot of overlap between trauma and autistic traits. the brain is very complex! i think the reason for that overlap is maybe as simple as the fact that people with autism and people with trauma are both doing the same thing - developing behaviours to protect themselves or soothe themselves. so - i think it's nice to be able to see a character like peter parker, who may or may not be autistic, but recognise behaviours in him and see yourself in him.

people who go undiagnosed for whatever reason - people who are really good at masking - so good, in fact, that they have no idea they might be on the spectrum - everyone and anyone at all can look at peter parker and recognise themselves. because i think we discredit the thought that every single brain does the same thing! develops certain behaviours in order to survive. every brain has that same software - we've just all been faced with different hardships that we need to overcome, and that's were all the differences come in.

autism is a spectrum, i guess - everyone falls into it to some degree. and i think events in your life probably push you along on it. but i don't know, i didn't study brain science. probably what i'm saying is very stupid and uninformed. of course there's brain chemistry involved. but i know people in my life living with autism and certain events in their life have exacerbated certain behaviours or made coping with it a lot more difficult. so maybe trauma is a catalyst.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Just popping in to say i LOVE UR ART SO MUCH WAUGH!!!! Its soooooooo exoressive and u get across emotion and movement SO WELL!! I love ...littlr apple ...so much.....u imbue this donkey with Such Chaos

I love this little chaos creature, we should all forfeit our mortal possessions to her.

[reikunrei]

"we'll fix it together. okay?" and then the only time we see el fixing the diorama, she's doing it by herself while will sits at the kitchen table nudging at his breakfast

[silverior968]

Okay so since a few people were curious, here's what I have lined up for my new version of Anton's headcanon backstory (Long post, CW: mental health issues, elusions to suicidal ideation, death, particularly death of children.

His mother is an Irish Signum Linguist named Siobán, who met her husband, Lian, on a trip to Nanjing, while working as an interpreter between different magical communities. He was an Arborkineticist, and they fell in love through their shared love of botany. They move back to Ireland together and get married, and eventually have 4 kids, the two oldest, twins Iris (Sensitive) and Anton (birthname Aspen), along with two younger daughters Arnica (Vitakinetic) and Ivy (Elemental). This was before the war had properly begun, but fights were already breaking out between the two future factions, and Lian dies in one such altercation. This leaves Siobán alone with her children, at the time aged 7, 7, 4 and 2.

Depressive tendencies run in the family, and Siobán takes the loss very hard. Still, she tries her best to be there for her children, neglecting her own health in the process, which leaves her vulnerable to various diseases, one of which ends up being her slow undoing. She falls ill four years after her husband's death, and dies just under three years later. The children, 14, 14, 11 and 9 are on their own.

Before she died, Iris was well known in their town for being a talented Sensitive, and people would pay her to predict what they should do in regards to their crops and cattle. This unfortunately gets the attention of a certain powerful Mevolent-aligned family of Sorcerers. The year is 1592, but the signs of war are already clear in the air, and both of Iris's parents were Sanctuary-aligned. So they decide to have her taken care of while she's still young and can't do much in the way of fighting. A few of the family's soldiers are sent to take care of it-

A week passes, then another. No sign of the soldiers. A few more men are sent in undercover to find out where they went, and the locals tell them that they did find a few hunters dead in the woods from a wolf attack. Two local children had seen it happen. The townsfolk seem cagey about answering their questions, so the men surmise that it wasn't a wolf attack, but rather a werewolf attack.

Obviously, there's no wolf. The soldiers show up to kill Iris, Anton is with her and ends up summoning the gist out of a mix of fear and anger, promptly passing out afterwards. Gists in canon only seem to be as well known as they are due to Anton being such a high-profile person, so it is my opinion that in the 1590s some random folks in a little town would have had no clue what it was. Werewolves, on the other hand are said to have been more common in the olden days, so it would make sense for the soldiers to assume that one of Iris's siblings was a werewolf. Note that they don't know which one yet.

Iris makes Anton swear he's never gonna do that again (Imagine that comic that's like "Wake up Tails, you fucked up big time!" That's her) and he does pretty well for several years, learning Sigils from a local woman. After Siobán's death the kids fare reasonably on their own, with the three older children doing work with their disciplines. The realization that it's just the four of them now hits all of them hard, though. The community takes turns helping out with them when need be.

Everything goes steady until two years later, when they notice strangers hanging around their property. They try to run through the woods to the nearest neighbour, but get ambushed on the way. An arrow comes at Anton, but Iris pushes him out of the way, taking the hit instead. She dies almost instantly, and as soon as her life has gone from her Anton is forced to go back on his promise to her, releasing the gist and slaughtering the soldiers. It takes Arnica and Iris a few weeks to not cower away from him, as they had never seen the gist before. This leaves three of them: 15, 12, 10.

At this point Anton gives up on Sigils: as much as he hates the gist, he sees what it is capable of, and he knows that it's his one shot at keeping his younger sisters safe. The children grow distrustful of everyone who they don't know. A year later Anton starts working as a stablehand for a local not noble, but slightly more affluent family. This is where the new version of the story diverges from the old one. While working there he meets another boy his age, Rook. He's distrustful of him at first, but they slowly become friends and Anton learns to trust him. Rook tells him that his parents were affluent as well, but he left home to make a life for himself because of different worldviews. Anton tells him of what happened to his parents and sister.

In a previous Anton hc post I also said that Larrikin was the first person that Anton had any romantic feelings towards. I still maintain that he's demiromantic, but I'm going to say that he did have a crush on Rook, but never said anything about it. He's lost so many people he cared about, so he prefers to keep everyone at an arm's length, and he frankly doesn't even know how to go about it. So he just doesn't. One february day, soon after his surge and a little while after his 18th birthday he goes to work and finds that Rook isn't at work, and doesn't show up for work on the entire day for that matter. No-one has seen him. Well, maybe he was just sick. Anton leaves to go home that night only to find the house empty.

He alerts his neighbours, and soon enough a small crowd has gathered to search for his sisters, their footprints leading away from the house and into the woods, accompanied by a third set of larger prints. They end on the ice of the river, where the current is the strongest. Three human tracks lead to where the ice has shattered, one set of fox tracks continue off the other side. Anton jumps in and almost drowns, and it takes two men to keep him from trying to fish them out again after he's dragged out. A local elemental manages to get two bodies out, and they've clearly been dead for a few hours. Anton can't fathom how it could have happened, when Arnica and Ivy didn't trust anyone except a few people in town and him.

That's when he realizes that the shoeprints in the snow match his own exactly. And that there was no third body. And the fox tracks on the other side. And the fact that Rook never told him his discipline. After that it's a very cut and dry case: townsfolk saw Anton working the whole day, so most agree that he couldn't have done it. And Rook is suspiciously still missing.

See, the noble family of Sorcerers responsible for Iris's death finally came up with a strategy other than just throwing soldiers at Anton for him to kill. They send their youngest son out to earn Anton's trust and learn his mannerisms so that he can kill him and then his sisters. Over time he does come to care for Anton, however, and doesn't end up killing him. He explains this to his parents as resource efficiency: without his family Anton wouldn't have anything to fight for, and would thus be unlikely to fight in the war that was so close to breaking out. His parents are none too happy about this. At this point it's less about eliminating the threat of this werewolf and more about getting revenge on these dastardly kids that have cost them several troops worth of soldiers by now. Note that I don't intend Rook to be a sympathetic character who was just manipulated by his parents or anything: he still did something terrible that he could have chosen not to do, and while he did neglect to kill Anton, it was simply because he personally liked him. He still viewed himself as someone who could make decisions on who lives and who dies.

Anton runs away a few days later, never to return. He has no-one left to live for, and in his grief he's become convinced that the reason that he's still alive is so that he can neutralize the people who have brought his family such heartbreak. He spends several decades like this, wandering around. At first he targets the troops that get sent after him. Then when they slowly realize that he's not actually a werewolf but something else entirely due to the fact that he leaves behind the same exact carnage whether it's a full moon or not, they stop doing that. Then he moves on to doing vigilantee justice, wandering around fighting highwaymen and other people who he sees threatening those weak or innocent.

Finally someone who's actually familiar with gists sees him, and word spreads of what he is. The noble family responsible for his family's death suddenly realize that what they've done is accidentally craft a superweapon. Several of their own sons who joined their troops are dead because of him. When the war breaks out he moves on to being a menace to Mevolent's forces without being allied with the Sanctuary yet. He holds them slightly responsible for how little support his mother got after his father's death.

Finally, in the 1620s, his paths cross with Rook's again in a town far away from where he came from. Anton goes in for the kill, but Rook pleads for him to listen. He's a changed man now, he cut off all connections to his family and isn't involved in the war. He has a wife and child now. He apologizes for everything that he did. Anton holds the sword to his throat, standing still for a long time. Finally he lowers it. Rook thanks him, but Anton simply tells him to go.

In the morning they find him dead in the lake. "Go" was not a relieving from responsibility, but rather a head start. No matter how conflicted Anton was, he was unable to let him live after such a long time of only living for retribution. He never imagined that it would be relieving or triumphant, killing Rook. He wasn't sure what he would feel, but he certainly didn't expect grief. Even if he was a terrible person, he was someone he loved once, and after he's dead the weight of his own family being dead finally hits him at full force. He's lost his one reason to live, and he finds himself thinking of Rook's child and how there's now one more child in the world that's going to grow up with such a terrible tragedy on their shoulders.

It's in this state of mind that he finds Saracen, who's 11 years old and has just accidentally killed his older siblings. Neither of them have anything or anyone in this world, and so Anton takes him under his wing, finding a new reason to keep living.

[quetzalpapalotl]

So this is how Disco Elysium has been going, I am no longer quitting my job every time something bad happens, but I only have 2 points in both health and morale and brother says that's too low but I think it's fine since I can just chug medicine. Which is very cheap. Unlike speed. I would unstoppable if I had the funds to be on speed 24/7.

Anyway, I love Kim and nothing matters to me as much as gaining his love, or at leats his approval. Unfortunately, I keep doing stuff just because I can, so I end up doing things like exhorting money off a guy which Kim didn't like. I'm so sorry, Kim. I also keep getting morale damage because every time inland empire tells warns me against doing something that will remind me of my ex-wife, I do it anyway. So maybe I should restrain myself.

I barely understand the game's mechanics and keep messing up, but that's all well and good because it makes me connect with Harry. I like to introject characters when playing games.

Encyclopedia is my best friend, to no one's surprise.

[sskk-manifesto]

Finally got around to watching ep 11 (´；ω；｀)

[silusvesuius]

traditional pencil art is the only form of art that won't have you ripping your hair out trying to make colors interesting in any way. how pure is that

[averlym]

whshdfhfjf.,,,

[noperopesaredope]

You know, I'm autistic, so I get very passionate about certain stuff. But I swear to god, sometimes I'll be in a fandom and there will be people that make me go:

Like, ya'll, it's not that serious. Please, I'm begging you. Touch some grass. Go to the grocery store. Calm down.

[seiwas]

a good cry always does wonders