woah

sideblog that i yap about objects on.

[egstrom]

Hey what's up

Call me Remedy. I'm an adult. I am Just Some Guy. This place is mostly for me to yap into the void about my thoughts regarding objects.

Feel free to block #♧ if you don't want to see any nonobject posts/posts i don't deem important enough to tag. Or just block me if you don't want to see me at all. Feel free to reach out to me for a link to our Objectified Discord server! (18+ only)

I Really like a Lot of object shows but I'm Especially really into Objectified. Posts are tagged with source material for my own reference. I might reblog stuff here but I'm mostly here to be annoying. SFW but, like, watch out when it comes to gore/etc. I'm not here to do "hot takes" or "discourse" I just like analyzing and theorizing and coming up with dumb ideas.

I don't really have a solid "DNI" I feel like that never really stops anyone from interacting, I will always block if I have any sort of problem.

But in general: I don't fuck with people who center their personality around being "problematic". I don't ship minors/adults or relatives. I don't want minors/animals or minor/animal characters to be involved in nsfw situations. I also don't fuck with AI usage as an attempt to replace human creators. And I'd prefer that people who think otherwise about these things stay about 8 million feet away from me. I do not Debate.

[egstrom]

what the hell hey thanks

if theres anything you people want to see i never have enough excuses to talk about objects

[egstrom]

ugly baby pork loin. would you build a mansion for this

[mintyobjectified]

remember: if you're transphobic about wagyu you will be immediately killed

[egstrom]

[OBJECTIFIED/I SAW THE TV GLOW]

[egstrom]

i do want to point out the fact that wagyu is shown eating before finally wanting for something other than what he was told to want for, presumably, the first time in his life. my tiny note for this update

[egstrom]

icon change

[objectified-character-tournament]

OBJECTIFIED CHARACTER TOURNAMENT - ROUND ONE, POLL SIX: RAZOR VS. PAINKILLER

Which character do you like more?

Razor

Painkiller

Voting ended onMay 27

This poll is based purely on how much you personally enjoy the character, NOT how well-written you think they are or which one you consider to be objectively better; with that in mind, vote however you'd like!

[egstrom]

this is the one time i beg my people to please vote painkiller i'll do anything they can't die this fast

[egstrom]

little detail regarding minty's sleeping habits...

ep 28- laundry basket. mild comfort in his cushioning, but still not anything for a grown man to be sleeping in. (yes, he's a cat, but he's also still a living person, and a *40-year-old person* at that.) he doesn't believe he deserves the comfort of the couch?

ep 32- immediately after being punished for trying to recoup with brandy, he's on the couch, not allowing himself any comfort. likely didn't intend to sleep here, too focused on his hand and stunned by the event.

ep 68- laundry basket (wrapped up, trying to find some sort of security where he can), might've spent the night in the bathtub after the altercation (doesn't feel like he deserves *any* sort of comfort as he spends the night ruminating in his guilt?)

ep 88- immediately after the glimmer of hope and genuine happiness that sugarcube gives him, minty finally sleeps in comfort. he finally believes he *deserves* that much, at least for the night.

considering his eyebags and general haggard appearance throughout the rest of his appearances, it's safe to assume he's been losing sleep more and more over the course of things, but i like these little details when he Does sleep

[egstrom]

bfdia huh. end of an era. (spoilers)

i'm genuinely really glad that book ended up winning even though my personal vote was for needle. final two so good you don't care who wins. i'm also glad my personal thoughts about evil leafy ended up being correct! bfdi means a lot to me (despite not posting about it often LOL) and it always makes me tear up a little to see the seasons wrap up. i love how even with assets you can always tell when its cary animating ajkdfjgkdf everyone gets so wiggly

this all fully cemented bfdia as my favorite season so far but if they cook really hard with idfb it might steal my heart...

[egstrom]

"soulmates tend to copy each other" but the soulmates in question are both ugly as hell

[egstrom]

other things of note:

i wanted to go on a whole diatribe about zombie media and how objectified kind of subverts the expectations that zombie media often has when it comes to the behavior of the survivors, but it felt too disconnected (and i'll need to watch/rewatch a bunch of zombie media to take notes). i'll maybe make another post about this specific detail in the future.

the title is named after taste of blood by mazzy star. i associate objectified a lot with guitar-heavy music so there's a lot of country in there for me...

despite dragonscale not having much of a presence in the full post, i did review her character a Lot in my rereads. maybe i'll make a post about her specifically someday...

pk and fossil don't have a segment but i did originally want to make a side tangent about carrot/high society and mention them in it briefly. i didn't really feel comfortable doing that since we don't have too much info about carrot/high society other than from wagyu's perspective and a tiny bit from fossil's, but trust me i very much see how carrot insists upon eating like a carnivore and it FASCINATES me

there are things that i'm sure will come up and occur in the future that i would love to add to the post, but i couldn't hold off just finishing it and letting it loose anymore. i might make stray posts with additional notes (or maybe a full part 2 someday?) as future episodes come out.

that post was my Big Personal Project for a while now. there are other Big Thoughts i have about objectified that would require big posts but it might be a while until i make another one to that size. in the meantime, uh... i might make the wagyu/pk fanfic? maybe. i don't consider myself an incredibly strong writer but i love playing toys.

thank you all for your comments and tags etc on the post. it really makes me smile. i'm glad i'm not completely insane in noticing these patterns LOL

[egstrom]

Taste of Blood: The Act of Eating in Objectified

"What is grief, if not a constant craving?"

The act of eating and the struggles surrounding it are persistent throughout Objectified. Nearly half the cast have something that causes eating to be a struggle, whether that's Minty and Dynamite being carnivores or Citrus and Mushroom's particular diets, or even further beyond. This is something I've been thinking about for a while and just want to prattle off a sort-of overview regarding it, going over each character who has a unique relationship to consumption. Don't expect it to be anything super professional, just stuff I've observed!

Content Warnings: Major Objectified spoilers, cannibalism, gore and body horror, child abuse, animal death, bug imagery, and eating disorders. This is also just a Lot of text. All good? Let's go!

1- A5 WAGYU and eating as control

Wagyu is a character surrounded by the act of consumption. He had grown up in a home that was actively abusing and using him for his flesh, in an area of the Rings that would rather jump through endless logical hoops to justify eating the corpses of Wagyu and his siblings than consider his well-being. Wagyu, naive as he is with this upbringing being his only experience with life, struggles to see the problem. In fact, he prides himself on this persistent lack of control that he doesn't realize he's missing, and that mindset never leaves him. He's been successfully groomed into believing he is meant to be eaten, and little else is allowed of him. One could argue that Wagyu has thrown himself into the same logical leaps as his abusers. Still, this gives him a false sense of control, and he is able to indulge himself in the luxuries that this life affords him, notably food-- One of the things he laments about missing often.

When the apocalypse hits and Wagyu is forced away from his family, he eats. He eats so much that his teammates hate him because he is starving them. He associates food with control so much that it is all he can think to do in a world that is ripping it away from him so quickly. However, as the assimilation begins to seep into him, Wagyu loses his hunger more and more. His control is ripped away from him once more, piece by piece, both metaphorically and literally as he begins to do the bidding of what is presumably the Symbiote and parasite hivemind at large, and with it his hunger fades. This loss of control seems to be something that he almost takes pride in. It's comfortable, when he doesn't think about it too much. Most that are traumatized will often find a loss of control comforting, as part of a self-harm driven desire to return back to their restrictive shell.

One could also argue that this in itself is also consumption, as more and more people are 'fed' into the parasite hivemind as a result of his actions, though it's not to Wagyu's knowledge and is more in relation to the parasites themselves. On this note, are the parasites not also actively consuming Wagyu over and over, just as others did in his normal life? It's just a bit more.. Visceral, this time.

2- RAZOR, DYNAMITE, and identity

Razor takes pride in being a carnivore. She is, in fact, an omnivore, but she seems to want to hide this fact in an effort to be more intimidating (and enact violence, likely as an early sign of delirium).

It's easy to imagine this is related to her pride regarding her pack and Fuzzball. Razor packs aren't necessarily any more vicious than any other Outer Ring bestial, but nearly every member of the pack hasn't been afraid to bare their teeth and throw a threat or two to whoever gets in their way. It's part of the identity of being a razor, to our Razor, as it's what she's grown up with. Razor also successfully killed an object and got away with it at a young age, which may be a point of pride for her ego.

I also believe this is tied to Razor's relationship with her father, Warhammer. All of Packmother's children seem to take pride in also being Warhammer's kids, and this is no different for Razor.

This is, unquestionably, a part of her identity. Warhammer is a man of great prestige in Outer Ring, and other bestials in the ring seem to heavily covet his very presence and yearn to follow in his footsteps.

I was instead quickly distracted by the finer details of the dead tree. Embedded within Warhammers claw marks were smaller claw marks of other monsters. I am still unsure what to make of it.

He is also someone who seems to be revered as strong and intimidating, despite his seemingly practical approach to things. Warhammer casts a heavy shadow on the pack, and especially Razor, who feels even closer to him as she wears Fuzzball's corpse much like Warhammer wears Faux's. Razor's desires to be someone of power and respect likely have seed here, and it's easy to imagine that someone without wisdom would include a penchant for violence as part of that desire.

Dynamite, on the other hand, seems to initially actively reject being a carnivore. It is something he seems to have wanted to hide for all of his life. It's also implied that the other kids in Middle Ring have made these feelings even worse.

I'm also aware that the panels with him eating rocks were intended to be kind of an in-joke, but it's hard not to look at them and imagine that Dynamite has a form of pica (an eating disorder that causes cravings for non-food items) as both a manifestation of him wanting to hide that he needs to eat meats and a potential sign that he has deficiencies as a result of potentially not eating in front of others.

Thankfully, of course, the razor pack is successfully managing to start teaching him the 'right way' to be a carnivore without being able to buy food, a way that he doesn't regret every move of. In finally succeeding to hunt an animal for food purposes, this seems to be the beginning of accepting who he is as a person. He is gaining his sense of identity as an individual and embracing this, and this is near entirely portrayed through his consumption.

However, upon the killing and eating of Drum and others, Dynamite remains haunted. Over time, he tries as hard as possible to justify his actions, but the trauma stays. He can't imagine how others might see him if things ever go back to normal, and has been increasingly unstable and anxious over the course of the comic as a result. The guilt lives within him, despite just doing what he needs to to survive. In this way, he shares a little bit of overlap with our next subject…

3- CITRUS and the guilt of staying alive

The act of eating, as we know it, is inherently greedy. Both humans and animals alike eat for the sole purpose of keeping themselves alive in favor of others, and this perceptive greed is exaggerated further when things like the underpaid work put into tending fields or the mass slaughter of animals is put into consideration.

This concept is kind of put into overdrive when we look at Citrus.

The first real victim Citrus had, as we know, was his (unknowingly) adoptive mother, Calamondin. This is directly tied to the fact that his birth mother, Morrigan, created him as essentially cattle to be slaughtered. Although he tries not to show it, these two facts are things that would proceed to haunt him for the rest of his life. They seem to live within him practically every waking moment, and he will often see signs of and subconsciously reference both things throughout the comic.

Citrus has dedicated his entire life to holding people at arms length at closest as a direct result of this. As far as he's concerned, anyone getting in any sort of relationship with him is completely out of the realm of possibility, due to his relationship with eating. After all, he dared to feel a connection to Cal, and.. Well, we saw what happened there.

However, as we see him throughout the comic, despite his best efforts, Citrus falls for Spool, and immediately he begins to tie this to his traumas. His angelic vision of Spool has black wings to represent fear stemming from what was instilled in him from Morrigan, and once they have time together, all he can think of is how he took Cal's life away piece by piece.

Living for Citrus is something he actively feels the need to repent for. He doesn't show it as visibly as Dynamite, but this is only due to his lack of emotional connection. Once emotions come into view, he crumbles. Some part of him knows how greedy he is for the very act of existing, and he feels strongly about it.

And yet, whether it's out of obligation or emotion, Spool either ensures he is fed or willingly gives parts of himself to Citrus. Although Spool doesn't really have his own relationship to consumption, it's clear he sees it as important to some degree, and keeping Citrus fed is a priority to him one way or another, and this desire only grows stronger as the two get closer (whether that's due to starsheet or otherwise).

4- MINTY, BRANDY, and food as love

Minty and Brandy are a unique pairing of characters for objectified in that their relationships with food come up very little throughout the comic so far. To most casual eyes, we know that Minty's dietary restrictions mean he has mostly been eating dry crunchies ever since his world began to end, and that's about it. It's rarely brought up if ever, and isn't even given as a reason for them to leave the apartment, for short or long term.

This is something that has admittedly stumped me for a while, so I reached out to our resident Minty expert @mintyobjectified. Thanks, Minty! It was able to point some things out for me.

Although food isn't of extreme concern for them just yet, it was something that had a focus on it earlier in the comic. Once things start going to hell, Minty brings up the specific fact that he will starve in the outskirts. Brandy shortly goes out and gathers food for the group, but specifically, especially Minty. Later, we get a sequence of Minty and Brandy eating dinner together. Minty sees this as a romantic scene, close and gentle, with vague hopes that all of the problems between them could go away, while Brandy only sees Minty as colder and farther away than ever before. The sight of him seems to disgust Brandy.

After this, food is never brought up again between them. It's easy, therefore, to come to the conclusion that food and the act of eating between them is an act of love. One could even argue that their lack of focus on food is a direct parallel to their relationship. In the beginning, Brandy still harbored some feeling for Minty, a softness. There was still the ghost of their love looming over their heads. Brandy didn't have the heart to kick Minty out on the street, and he certainly didn't have the heart to let Minty starve.

But not anymore.

The lack of focus on food between them is in direct parallel to the lack of focus on themselves and each other. They are hiding their relationship woes from Sugarcube as best as they can, just as they hide their hunger.

And then, y'know, Minty dies, just as Sugarcube begins to question how strained things are getting, and she is soon to be forced to face the reality of everything, despite her fathers' best efforts.

SIDE TANGENT: DRAGONSCALE AND GUM

Dragonscale distinctly does not have much of a relationship with food, but I do think she belongs here in some fashion for similar reasons. Dragonscale notably was surrounded by food objects in the Burning Aisles, especially with her parent, and we rarely see her eating. I do believe this has something to do with her lack of care and potential lack of affection in her upbringing, as we see her eat quite a lot with Ghost Pepper by her side and little otherwise.

Gum has a closer relationship with food, as she actively tries to keep herself and her teammates fed and this is what brings her closer to Razor. This is where the obvious food/love parallel comes into play, but I also believe there's something to be said about her being a living food object and the majority of her targets/exes taking physical bites at her. In this way, "food" (Gum herself) represents love when it is abused or otherwise taken for granted by others.

5- MUSHROOM, COMET, otherness, and the dead

I'm a little bit weaker with Comet, as she suffers from not having a buuunch of screen time like the other main cast do, but I do want to make note of her before I move on to Mushroom. Most notably, Comet hunts her own food, and she is dedicated to using every part of the bodies that she creates and comes across.

This, I believe, is inspired by Native American practices in meta context, but here in the world of Objectified I am going to attempt to analyze this from the perspective of Comet as a character. A lot of this is heavy speculation.

From what I can understand, Comet, to some extent, sympathizes and feels connection with the dead. Her cloak, her dagger, everything she does is steeped in death. To live in the land known for killing nearly all who enter is not an easy task, and Comet is far more comfortable surrounded by corpses than living beings.

Comet is also an outcast by choice. She actively thinks about how much she dislikes the Rings, and how terrified she is to get any closer. It's no surprise that the parasite that tormented her is shaped like a person for an exceedingly long time. I believe her isolation, in a way, makes her a proverbial 'corpse' to the world at large, and this is where she's most comfortable. I think this is a concept brought even further with her hallucinations and the state we see her in in Gemini.

Swiftly moving on.

Mushroom is, as we know, a decomposer. She feasts upon the dead and decaying. This is played off as her being picky, but considering how characters with other diet types have specific requirements, this is likely something she seems to need to do for her own well being.

This is something built into her, much in the same way that Dynamite's carnivore diet is built into him. For Mushroom, this isn't something that effects her immensely horribly, and is something she's simply used to and comfortable with despite it often being seen as odd by others. Otherness is a theme that's impossible to ignore in Objectified. In Dynamite's case, it's explored by fear, but in Mushroom's case, it's explored by connection. Without Mushroom, Dynamite would be incredibly alone (and probably long assimilated by now). Mushroom's abilities naturally caused by her existence also bring her closer to the razor pack, even if it's only because she can be deemed useful.

She is also the only character we know of that can eat parasites, and actively does so with fervor. Between her and the spores created by her, it's possible she may be seen as a sort of cure to the parasitic outbreak.

So… Mushroom kind of ties into all of the above, here. She is able to (quite literally) gain control due to being her specific type of decomposer, eating is tied directly to her identity, she seems to have a growing guilt for her lifespan that seems is going to be much longer than Dynamite's, and, notably, she insists upon keeping herself and her best friend fed out of love for him.

As far as I'm concerned, she is the personification of Objectified's core when it's all taken into consideration. And frankly, I welcome our spore overlords!

--

Characters in Objectified eat as a language, and it seems to mean a little bit of something to everyone. We eat what we love and what we fear. We yearn and grieve and fight and consume. I don't really have a grand thesis, I just think it's all very neat and wanted to compile my observations.

Hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for getting through all of this if you did. Feel free to let me know if you have anything that sticks out in your mind regarding all of this, I'd love to chat!

Thank you to Center Ring for helping me fact check everything and once again to @mintyobjectified for the assist on Minty's portion, and to my friends and partner for hyping me up enough to do all this. Thank you also to Chester and company for this awesome comic. Here's to me making 80 million more posts about it.

[leederpfucker]

This is a very good analysis and I wanna add to it, specifically the Dragonscale portion. And it's the fact that all of the most important people in her life are food objects

Grilldorah, her abusive parent and a hamburger, Ghost Pepper, her dear wife and a pepper, and PB, her closest friend right now and a jar of peanut butter.

A thing of note is that while Grilldorah and Ghost Pepper have large impacts of Dragonscale's life, but when it comes to her and PB, PB is the one getting affected heavily by Dragonscale.

And we're even seeing this unfold in real time with her and Wagyu

It looks like these two will become important to each other's arc going forward.

Food has had both a very positive and very negative impact in her life via the people who wind up in it and further ties into the food themeing the comic has

[egstrom]

Taste of Blood: The Act of Eating in Objectified

"What is grief, if not a constant craving?"

The act of eating and the struggles surrounding it are persistent throughout Objectified. Nearly half the cast have something that causes eating to be a struggle, whether that's Minty and Dynamite being carnivores or Citrus and Mushroom's particular diets, or even further beyond. This is something I've been thinking about for a while and just want to prattle off a sort-of overview regarding it, going over each character who has a unique relationship to consumption. Don't expect it to be anything super professional, just stuff I've observed!

Content Warnings: Major Objectified spoilers, cannibalism, gore and body horror, child abuse, animal death, bug imagery, and eating disorders. This is also just a Lot of text. All good? Let's go!

1- A5 WAGYU and eating as control

Wagyu is a character surrounded by the act of consumption. He had grown up in a home that was actively abusing and using him for his flesh, in an area of the Rings that would rather jump through endless logical hoops to justify eating the corpses of Wagyu and his siblings than consider his well-being. Wagyu, naive as he is with this upbringing being his only experience with life, struggles to see the problem. In fact, he prides himself on this persistent lack of control that he doesn't realize he's missing, and that mindset never leaves him. He's been successfully groomed into believing he is meant to be eaten, and little else is allowed of him. One could argue that Wagyu has thrown himself into the same logical leaps as his abusers. Still, this gives him a false sense of control, and he is able to indulge himself in the luxuries that this life affords him, notably food-- One of the things he laments about missing often.

When the apocalypse hits and Wagyu is forced away from his family, he eats. He eats so much that his teammates hate him because he is starving them. He associates food with control so much that it is all he can think to do in a world that is ripping it away from him so quickly. However, as the assimilation begins to seep into him, Wagyu loses his hunger more and more. His control is ripped away from him once more, piece by piece, both metaphorically and literally as he begins to do the bidding of what is presumably the Symbiote and parasite hivemind at large, and with it his hunger fades. This loss of control seems to be something that he almost takes pride in. It's comfortable, when he doesn't think about it too much. Most that are traumatized will often find a loss of control comforting, as part of a self-harm driven desire to return back to their restrictive shell.

One could also argue that this in itself is also consumption, as more and more people are 'fed' into the parasite hivemind as a result of his actions, though it's not to Wagyu's knowledge and is more in relation to the parasites themselves. On this note, are the parasites not also actively consuming Wagyu over and over, just as others did in his normal life? It's just a bit more.. Visceral, this time.

2- RAZOR, DYNAMITE, and identity

Razor takes pride in being a carnivore. She is, in fact, an omnivore, but she seems to want to hide this fact in an effort to be more intimidating (and enact violence, likely as an early sign of delirium).

It's easy to imagine this is related to her pride regarding her pack and Fuzzball. Razor packs aren't necessarily any more vicious than any other Outer Ring bestial, but nearly every member of the pack hasn't been afraid to bare their teeth and throw a threat or two to whoever gets in their way. It's part of the identity of being a razor, to our Razor, as it's what she's grown up with. Razor also successfully killed an object and got away with it at a young age, which may be a point of pride for her ego.

I also believe this is tied to Razor's relationship with her father, Warhammer. All of Packmother's children seem to take pride in also being Warhammer's kids, and this is no different for Razor.

This is, unquestionably, a part of her identity. Warhammer is a man of great prestige in Outer Ring, and other bestials in the ring seem to heavily covet his very presence and yearn to follow in his footsteps.

I was instead quickly distracted by the finer details of the dead tree. Embedded within Warhammers claw marks were smaller claw marks of other monsters. I am still unsure what to make of it.

He is also someone who seems to be revered as strong and intimidating, despite his seemingly practical approach to things. Warhammer casts a heavy shadow on the pack, and especially Razor, who feels even closer to him as she wears Fuzzball's corpse much like Warhammer wears Faux's. Razor's desires to be someone of power and respect likely have seed here, and it's easy to imagine that someone without wisdom would include a penchant for violence as part of that desire.

Dynamite, on the other hand, seems to initially actively reject being a carnivore. It is something he seems to have wanted to hide for all of his life. It's also implied that the other kids in Middle Ring have made these feelings even worse.

I'm also aware that the panels with him eating rocks were intended to be kind of an in-joke, but it's hard not to look at them and imagine that Dynamite has a form of pica (an eating disorder that causes cravings for non-food items) as both a manifestation of him wanting to hide that he needs to eat meats and a potential sign that he has deficiencies as a result of potentially not eating in front of others.

Thankfully, of course, the razor pack is successfully managing to start teaching him the 'right way' to be a carnivore without being able to buy food, a way that he doesn't regret every move of. In finally succeeding to hunt an animal for food purposes, this seems to be the beginning of accepting who he is as a person. He is gaining his sense of identity as an individual and embracing this, and this is near entirely portrayed through his consumption.

However, upon the killing and eating of Drum and others, Dynamite remains haunted. Over time, he tries as hard as possible to justify his actions, but the trauma stays. He can't imagine how others might see him if things ever go back to normal, and has been increasingly unstable and anxious over the course of the comic as a result. The guilt lives within him, despite just doing what he needs to to survive. In this way, he shares a little bit of overlap with our next subject…

3- CITRUS and the guilt of staying alive

The act of eating, as we know it, is inherently greedy. Both humans and animals alike eat for the sole purpose of keeping themselves alive in favor of others, and this perceptive greed is exaggerated further when things like the underpaid work put into tending fields or the mass slaughter of animals is put into consideration.

This concept is kind of put into overdrive when we look at Citrus.

The first real victim Citrus had, as we know, was his (unknowingly) adoptive mother, Calamondin. This is directly tied to the fact that his birth mother, Morrigan, created him as essentially cattle to be slaughtered. Although he tries not to show it, these two facts are things that would proceed to haunt him for the rest of his life. They seem to live within him practically every waking moment, and he will often see signs of and subconsciously reference both things throughout the comic.

Citrus has dedicated his entire life to holding people at arms length at closest as a direct result of this. As far as he's concerned, anyone getting in any sort of relationship with him is completely out of the realm of possibility, due to his relationship with eating. After all, he dared to feel a connection to Cal, and.. Well, we saw what happened there.

However, as we see him throughout the comic, despite his best efforts, Citrus falls for Spool, and immediately he begins to tie this to his traumas. His angelic vision of Spool has black wings to represent fear stemming from what was instilled in him from Morrigan, and once they have time together, all he can think of is how he took Cal's life away piece by piece.

Living for Citrus is something he actively feels the need to repent for. He doesn't show it as visibly as Dynamite, but this is only due to his lack of emotional connection. Once emotions come into view, he crumbles. Some part of him knows how greedy he is for the very act of existing, and he feels strongly about it.

And yet, whether it's out of obligation or emotion, Spool either ensures he is fed or willingly gives parts of himself to Citrus. Although Spool doesn't really have his own relationship to consumption, it's clear he sees it as important to some degree, and keeping Citrus fed is a priority to him one way or another, and this desire only grows stronger as the two get closer (whether that's due to starsheet or otherwise).

4- MINTY, BRANDY, and food as love

Minty and Brandy are a unique pairing of characters for objectified in that their relationships with food come up very little throughout the comic so far. To most casual eyes, we know that Minty's dietary restrictions mean he has mostly been eating dry crunchies ever since his world began to end, and that's about it. It's rarely brought up if ever, and isn't even given as a reason for them to leave the apartment, for short or long term.

This is something that has admittedly stumped me for a while, so I reached out to our resident Minty expert @mintyobjectified. Thanks, Minty! It was able to point some things out for me.

Although food isn't of extreme concern for them just yet, it was something that had a focus on it earlier in the comic. Once things start going to hell, Minty brings up the specific fact that he will starve in the outskirts. Brandy shortly goes out and gathers food for the group, but specifically, especially Minty. Later, we get a sequence of Minty and Brandy eating dinner together. Minty sees this as a romantic scene, close and gentle, with vague hopes that all of the problems between them could go away, while Brandy only sees Minty as colder and farther away than ever before. The sight of him seems to disgust Brandy.

After this, food is never brought up again between them. It's easy, therefore, to come to the conclusion that food and the act of eating between them is an act of love. One could even argue that their lack of focus on food is a direct parallel to their relationship. In the beginning, Brandy still harbored some feeling for Minty, a softness. There was still the ghost of their love looming over their heads. Brandy didn't have the heart to kick Minty out on the street, and he certainly didn't have the heart to let Minty starve.

But not anymore.

The lack of focus on food between them is in direct parallel to the lack of focus on themselves and each other. They are hiding their relationship woes from Sugarcube as best as they can, just as they hide their hunger.

And then, y'know, Minty dies, just as Sugarcube begins to question how strained things are getting, and she is soon to be forced to face the reality of everything, despite her fathers' best efforts.

SIDE TANGENT: DRAGONSCALE AND GUM

Dragonscale distinctly does not have much of a relationship with food, but I do think she belongs here in some fashion for similar reasons. Dragonscale notably was surrounded by food objects in the Burning Aisles, especially with her parent, and we rarely see her eating. I do believe this has something to do with her lack of care and potential lack of affection in her upbringing, as we see her eat quite a lot with Ghost Pepper by her side and little otherwise.

Gum has a closer relationship with food, as she actively tries to keep herself and her teammates fed and this is what brings her closer to Razor. This is where the obvious food/love parallel comes into play, but I also believe there's something to be said about her being a living food object and the majority of her targets/exes taking physical bites at her. In this way, "food" (Gum herself) represents love when it is abused or otherwise taken for granted by others.

5- MUSHROOM, COMET, otherness, and the dead

I'm a little bit weaker with Comet, as she suffers from not having a buuunch of screen time like the other main cast do, but I do want to make note of her before I move on to Mushroom. Most notably, Comet hunts her own food, and she is dedicated to using every part of the bodies that she creates and comes across.

This, I believe, is inspired by Native American practices in meta context, but here in the world of Objectified I am going to attempt to analyze this from the perspective of Comet as a character. A lot of this is heavy speculation.

From what I can understand, Comet, to some extent, sympathizes and feels connection with the dead. Her cloak, her dagger, everything she does is steeped in death. To live in the land known for killing nearly all who enter is not an easy task, and Comet is far more comfortable surrounded by corpses than living beings.

Comet is also an outcast by choice. She actively thinks about how much she dislikes the Rings, and how terrified she is to get any closer. It's no surprise that the parasite that tormented her is shaped like a person for an exceedingly long time. I believe her isolation, in a way, makes her a proverbial 'corpse' to the world at large, and this is where she's most comfortable. I think this is a concept brought even further with her hallucinations and the state we see her in in Gemini.

Swiftly moving on.

Mushroom is, as we know, a decomposer. She feasts upon the dead and decaying. This is played off as her being picky, but considering how characters with other diet types have specific requirements, this is likely something she seems to need to do for her own well being.

This is something built into her, much in the same way that Dynamite's carnivore diet is built into him. For Mushroom, this isn't something that effects her immensely horribly, and is something she's simply used to and comfortable with despite it often being seen as odd by others. Otherness is a theme that's impossible to ignore in Objectified. In Dynamite's case, it's explored by fear, but in Mushroom's case, it's explored by connection. Without Mushroom, Dynamite would be incredibly alone (and probably long assimilated by now). Mushroom's abilities naturally caused by her existence also bring her closer to the razor pack, even if it's only because she can be deemed useful.

She is also the only character we know of that can eat parasites, and actively does so with fervor. Between her and the spores created by her, it's possible she may be seen as a sort of cure to the parasitic outbreak.

So… Mushroom kind of ties into all of the above, here. She is able to (quite literally) gain control due to being her specific type of decomposer, eating is tied directly to her identity, she seems to have a growing guilt for her lifespan that seems is going to be much longer than Dynamite's, and, notably, she insists upon keeping herself and her best friend fed out of love for him.

As far as I'm concerned, she is the personification of Objectified's core when it's all taken into consideration. And frankly, I welcome our spore overlords!

--

Characters in Objectified eat as a language, and it seems to mean a little bit of something to everyone. We eat what we love and what we fear. We yearn and grieve and fight and consume. I don't really have a grand thesis, I just think it's all very neat and wanted to compile my observations.

Hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for getting through all of this if you did. Feel free to let me know if you have anything that sticks out in your mind regarding all of this, I'd love to chat!

Thank you to Center Ring for helping me fact check everything and once again to @mintyobjectified for the assist on Minty's portion, and to my friends and partner for hyping me up enough to do all this. Thank you also to Chester and company for this awesome comic. Here's to me making 80 million more posts about it.

[egstrom]

(asker asked to be anon)

i thiiink that really depends on what a fully assimilated wagyu would look like. the problem is that he seems to be doing a really, really good job of fighting it, and if it waxes and wanes to a similar degree as it is now then i think PK could easily still want to try and fix him.. but if he was just totally fully assimilated and this was post-carrot killing then pk would probably want to kill him but fossil would bite their face off if they tried, similar to the thank you bag. he'd probably just be another test subject at that point. pre-carrot fully-assimilated wagyu might run the exact same route as carrot, but i'm not particularly interested in thinking about that route personally.

as for motivation.. it's hard to tell. i think the idea of them being in a more romantic relationship (and them actually being able to talk and interact) would have painkillers motivation through the roof. It's hard to give up on someone like that once you've gained an attachment to them, and i don't think wagyu would necessarily be, like, a burden to pk that they would resent needing to work with. pk is very dedicated to their job and this kind of thing is what their whole life has led up to, more or less, so i'm pretty positive it wouldn't halt any time soon.

i don't have an EXTREMELY tight grasp on fossils character but i think they would just kind of roll their eyes at all the romantic stuff going on between the two and just try to keep things professional. they'd probably actually be the one to be willing to both push wagyu to his limits and potentially find better methods of containment/protection for both him and painkiller. they help immensely in the science aspects! the whole romantic aspect is probably something they and pk have had an argument over, or at least a snide comment or two. i think that realizing wagyu can kill other parasites in the name of their collective protection would make her warm up to the guy a little, too...

[egstrom]

wagyukiller posting now as a dedicated tag conveniently and creatively named wagyukiller posting. [SPEECH 100] send me asks about wagyukiller so i can put more things in that tag.

[egstrom]

baby morrigan and her ugly as sin baby birds