long distance mutuals <- used to be in the same fandom together and have both moved on to other fandoms but stay mutuals and wave at each other when passing by (scrolling on dash) and catch up when we can (liking each others posts)
a great part of speedrunning documentaries/docuseries on youtube on super niche/old games is the fact that, in most cases, the only people with enough in-depth knowledge to make the video in the first place are the top runners themselves. which results in really funny moments where the narrator is like "but in 2016, a new runner would blow the category wide open with a 3-minute time save... meeee :3 teehee"
au where everything is the same but bachelor is taller then haruspex
The longer I stare at this the more my Bloodborne Frenzy meter starts to build up, so I’m adding this for my own sanity
suddenly feeling very ill after interpreting tianlang-jun and su xiyan's relationship and qijiu's as foils to bingqiu's. all three relationships suffered greatly because of a horrific big misunderstanding, aggravated further by a lack of communication thereafter.
su xiyan, yue qingyuan, and shen yuan are all similar in their decision not to communicate the truth out of guilt, believing that they have failed and have (though unwillingly) abandoned their loved one thus deserve no forgiveness, just suffering.
meanwhile, the common denominator between tianlang-jun, shen jiu, and binghe is the self-loathing born out of the fact that despite the perceived betrayal of their loved one, forgiveness still won out (even before they knew of the truth and received the apology they were due) and the love they feel have persevered.
unfortunately for tianlang-jun and su xiyan, tianlang-jun didn't even get to find out the truth in the original plot, and it had simply been too late in the svsss universe.
same goes for qijiu, shen jiu doesn't get to find out the truth in pidw. meanwhile, yue qingyuan musters the courage to confess his truth too late in svsss; the shen qingqiu that awoken from that one qi deviation all those years ago is no longer the same one he'd loved—which interestingly can be, in some way, paralleled with how shen yuan initially believed that the luo binghe who emerged from the abyss is no longer his beloved white lotus binghe and thus his own lack of attempt to ask forgiveness and explain his actions to binghe upon his return.
thank u faggots i love u faggots.
thank u dykes i love u dykes.
thank u trannies i love you trannies.
☀️ the sun?..
my favorite part of my drawing process is comparing the first color sketch and final art
Also. Another animal parallel that Harry has:
Fuzzy like lamby! Very cute but not necessarily a poignant narrative parallel, unless-
Seen better days. Falling apart. A re-luz-ion...ry.
He's falling apart but she loves him anyway. He's soft. All that potential to help people.
this might be a long shot but is anyone in the socal/orange county area looking for a kitten my cousin found a whole box just abandoned in the park + she's trying to find them homes without taking them to a shelter
Argh. So. It's so incredibly clear in DE that Harry has a difficult relationship with his sexuality and his gender and that it's tied up together with his warped/fictionalised idea of masculinity too, with a lot of this anxiety surrounding his performing masculinity to an adequate standard for the "male-centric workplace" that is consuming his life. Like. It's a central theme of the game imo. The constant needling and teasing; "where's your homo, homie?" and the seemingly long-running joke of "heterosexual life partners," and the homophobia of the world around him too, eg. "fucking... homo-cop" from the Racist Lorry Driver, Measurehead's reference to everything he doesn't like as "homo-sexuality" and the constant stream of learned slurs from Cuno.
He's canonically bisexual and was at least somewhat aware of that before the memory loss (gestures to the entire Smoker on the Balcony scene and Kim's reaction, and. You know. The entire thought project dedicated to figuring out his sexuality- "twenty hours or more!" of thinking it over- combined with the hints that he's familiar with bottoming- "Not many people know that. But you do. Go figure." The hug with the working class woman where he notes that he would prefer a man. His "preoccupation" with and anxiety over his sexuality takes precedence in his mind over the case. Kim even calls it his "idée fixe," a reoccuring preoccupation that to an extent dominates his thought processes) and there are some hints towards him questioning his gender identity too, but he's repressed all of it to the point that it's a reoccuring joke at the Second Tribunal that he "[doesn't] seem to *know* what homo-sexuality is..."
He shares his brain-space with multiple Skills desperately trying to keep those parts of him as far in the closet as they can manage; Half-Light's panic at the leotard is a good example ("Drop it now! This thing will *eat* you," "this is *irreversible peril*") as is Coach Physical Instrument's constant fingers-in-ears wilful ignorance ("I've seen them homos with my own eyes"). Sexuality in general is fear to Harry- it's unimaginable to him to consider having sex without alcohol as "the master of ceremonies to guide them," and there's hints that he's lived through some pre-amnesia sexual trauma that his brain, Half-Light in particular, wants to protect him from. And intertwined with that is also the kind of dread that comes from repressed queerness, the avoidance that grows and warps the longer it is not acknowleged. The fear is even built into the censorship of the dialogue; although this is obviously built into the game by design so that the player doesn't have to see slurs written out as they play, it can also be extrapolated that the blurred out words are also what Harry actually experiences. Harry's own brain censors out "f****t" because clearly it causes him a significant amount of distress, and in one game-over being called a slur by Cuno can actually cause his death.
His fear of androgyny, of being laughed at- for example in conversation with the dicemaker about the hairdressers in the doomed commercial area. "You wouldn't like it either. The others would laugh at you." It's a paralysing fear, a yearning and a complex longing to lean in to the experimentation (Conceptualisation chimes in right away to point out that "a bit of experimenting every now and then isn't bad"), but also an inherent fear of what he will find if he indulges his desires. Once the door is opened, once the feelings are acknowleged, he can't take them back. "Just know that once the leotard goes on, it never comes off. *You* will change irrevocably." There's a pervasive fear that the softness, the self-acceptance that comes from untangling this repression is something that he doesn't deserve, something "decadent," luxurious, not for people like him- all these deeply ingrained stereotypes holding him back. "Working class men don't like genderless haircuts. They're scared of that word." Harry's working class status impacts his feelings on what he's allowed to feel, the level of masculinity he feels he has to perform. In response to Harry calling himself a "proper man," Lilienne says "Believe *me*, everyone here is a 'proper man'. Must be something about poverty that makes all the men *real*." The language associated with the homo-sexual underground throughout the game is such a contrast- that of "decadence," of "gold" and "honey," of "a vertiginous, ever-changing society where all there is a razzle dazzle of gold." Something beautiful, something "devastatingly cool" and desirable but still out of reach. Something that is always "leaving [him] behind."
There is a parallel too between the Lamby scene where Little Lily tries to pursuade Harry to press his cheek against the "soft" cuddly toy lamb, and he responds that "I don't deserve it. I'm scum." The "silky" comforting softness of the leotard, "like a warm summer lake," and the comfort of self-acceptance are a luxury that he resists because he does not believe he deserves it. Making the choice to accept the softness in the lamby dialogue heals morale, and accepting the leotard gives the affirmation that "Yes, *this* is the type of animal I want to be," one of the many moments of hope dotted throughout the game. The potential for Harry to heal and accept himself, maybe.
tags from @deadbodyrave excellent addition ty <3
Welcome to autism subway can i get you the same thing you've ordered here since you were 8
what was i made for?
“ophelia” by john everett millais but it’s barbie and for the sake of this concept let’s pretend that there is in fact water in barbieland
