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Got into ULTRAKILL, having a relative blast. All is fine and dandy. Until I encounter the Mannequin.

I HATE THEM. TO MY VERY CORE. THEY SKITTER LIKE SPIDERS. THEY ARE MADE OF ARMS AND HANDS. THEY'RE ALSO SO DAMN FAST. EUGUHGHGH, I HATE THEM I HATE THEM I HATE THEM :[

[im-being-a-homosexual-on-main]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY IVRIG

I genuinely thought it was canon he was trans the first time I experienced his chapter. I thought thats just what they were telling us, shocked it wasn’t

Bonus Miki because I don’t know when her birthday is.

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I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO THOUGHT IVRIG WAS TRANS!???

Also, nice art OP ^^

[sharpenededges]

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Lesbian flag Batter. Need I say more?

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Oh to be one of those well-articulated analysis fellows. Instead all I do is rotate the thing in my mind like a particularly tasty apple.

[thatleafdogwithapan]

that’s it. PARABLES YOUR SPAMTENNA💥

this is what happens when your brain is running on 4 hours of sleep and runs on both strong tea and coffee

not sure if Spamton gets turned into a puppet because yk. Og Stanley in tsp is already a sort of puppet vessel for the player. At least that’s how I perceive it. DOODLES UNDER THE CUT!

cough cough @britishbiscuits look. the cringe au I was talking about. I drew it literally day before I saw your tsp x deltarune drawings

Hopefully later I’ll post another lil thing I did for this au but oh my god my hand hurts from drawing AGAIN

MORE YAPPINGS IN TAGS!

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HOLY MOTHER OF GLITCHES, IT'S A CROSSOVER!!!!! EEEEP!!

[aromanticyaoi]

i think it's normal to play mindhack and come out thinking "man, they need proper therapy in that world, not mindhacks".

but as of recent, i've had fun thinking about mindhacks as a metaphor for therapy. because aren't mindhacks essentially what people in our world want therapy to be like, an instantaneous cure to any "errors" in your personality?

people who tell you to "go to therapy" because they feel uncomfortable seeing unpalatable symptoms of mental illness, such as violent impulses, essentially want you to get mindhacked. they don't want to think about what causes you to act that way, they don't extend sympathy; all they care about is that you are a danger and a nuisance. even if you haven't done anything yet, the fact that you have destructive thoughts marks you as a bad person.

and just like real life therapy, mindhacks CAN help people! ...but we've also seen them hurt people. therapists are not saints and therapy is not a cure-all. there's also the theory that in the mindhacker route of chapter 6, shogo's mindhack did not work, that he is simply pretending that it did (since he seemed unaffected by it and then started to repeat unid's words). and well, maybe he wants to believe it worked too, how could it not have worked? what is there to do if even therapy a mindhack couldn't help? are you too far gone?

...that said, quite obviously mindhacks are a more direct parallel to lobotomies, which were seen as a quick procedure that could completely cure patients. plus, when the lobotomy craze happened, the other options for "curing" mental illness were torture or incarceration, which is true in the world of mindhack as well (source: this blog post).

[axl-awesome]

i think doctor is such a medical anomaly. guy who’s only eaten slices of bread for every meal for 20 years and walks around perfectly fine. no mention of constipation or digestive issues at all. the only sunlight they get is in their muggy greenhouse of a room. medical staff cannot tell if their lack of vitamin D is a chronic deficiency or a lifestyle choice. i think if they ever got out of the mindhack facility and lived domestically they’d have to wear an IV drip for the first little while to wean them into some actual Vitamins and Nutrients in meals that aren’t just Bread with maybe a topping or two. also some vitamin supplements every morning too. i wanna put them on some vitamin gummies

[axl-awesome]

my extended list of doctor ailment headcanons:

• prosopagnosia - Doctor has trouble remembering peoples faces both because they do not care much to remember, but also it’s very hard for them to remember ppls appearances from facial features alone. they rely on the HOTFIX guard’s voices and unique uniforms to distinguish them from each other. thankfully captain has a very distinct voice And appearance so they can always recognize her (fun fact: she’s the only one who’s face theyre able to recognize as confirmed in a Q&A)

• anemia - Doctor is described as being a bit lazy as they have a frequent habit of sleeping in, relying on FORMAT to wake them up in the morning. on top of Captain pointing out Doctor having bags under their eyes in chapter 5, Unid also comments in chapter 3 that Doctor looks like they “don’t get much sun at all”. i think theyre always tired which contributes to others thinking that doctor always looks disinterested when speaking to them.

their skin is very pale, almost sickly, which only adds to the stress of Doctor being put in dangerous situations. doctor is very physically weak too, as in one episode of SUKIMA TALK, theyre unable to lift a box of papers even with Newbie’s help. they also tend to faint when placed in life threatening situations as a fear response (seen in the intro and in chapter 6)

•i also think this guy is steadily developing a form of PTSD but would refuse to believe anyone if they told them that. from chapters 1-3, doctor frequently has flashbacks to the Class 1 BUG incident seen in the beginning, having abt 4-5 flashbacks in total depending on the players choices iirc. on top of this, trying to stay behind and rest at the start of chapter 1 makes Doctor have a flashback when Captain tries to leave, snapping out of it when Captain comments that Doctor started screaming. (LIKE!! THEY JUST STOOD THERE AND ZONED OUT AND THEN SCREAMED!! THAT GUY IS TRAUMATIZED!!)

of course, BUGs being caused by intense trauma and Doctor becoming a BUG holder also adds to this. i also think it’s awesome that Doctor’s innate fear response is freezing in place. in the intro, Doctor doesn’t run when urged to by Captain , instead freezing in place and watching as she kills the reformation target before they black out.

in chapter 5, Doctor needs to be urged repeatedly by Captain and FORMAT to leave the room when Hugo starts attacking the HOTFIX guards, seeming to snap out of a trance when FORMAT asks them to leave again.

in chapter 6 in the FATAL ERROR route, Doctor doesn’t back away from the glass when shogo’s BUG begins manifesting, blacking out Once Again after Captain kills him….this guy talks sooooo much abt being a super ultra important precious mindhacker but has absolutely zero self preservation skills (hell i think they value their talents more than their own life. remember in chapter 5 how they reassure FORMAT not by saying smth like “i’m safe, i’m uninjured” but rather “I won’t let you down” yeah. Yeah)

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I think this guy wants to study Doctor like a specimen and that's honestly very fair.

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Shoutout to all my fellas who liked Shogo and got punched 19 times by Case 06.

For those who felt called out, how's that low self-esteem and impostor syndrome treatin ya?

[house-of-ligma]

i was talking about this with a friend earlier because of a character recently introduced in limbus company (ivrig would make an amazing index messenger/proxy) and raven encouraged me to make an informal essay out of it, so. 

my thoughts on ivrig, a.k.a. “why do i relate to so many characters whose whole thing is that they’re in cults”: 

this is just context but when i first played mindhack, i was at an extremely low point mentally. i’d just fucked up something very important to me, my self esteem was in the negatives and i was really, really, really lonely. i was also adjusting to my first semester at college during this, which made me feel that much more lost. funny enough, i have mindhack to thank for bringing me and raven closer, which was a great step towards getting out of that pit.

tl;dr it sucked. anyway. ivrig very quickly endeared himself to me on my first playthrough. he ticked off a lot of my boxes for what i like in a character: he was cute, he was silly, he was a man with long hair, he made me want to comfort him. that kind of character. i already liked him a lot at a glance, but the moment i discovered his bug route dialogue sticks with me as some of the most seen i have ever felt while playing a video game. 

the feelings of isolation, the “no matter how hard i try it never gets better”, the self-hatred, the longing for someone to understand him and tell him he’s doing a good job, all interspersed with everyday college student worries, hit me like a brick at mach 2. i felt like i was reading my own thoughts from when i’d wander around campus between classes. i think this was the moment where i really saw through the facade he puts up and realized that, underneath all that bravado, he’s just a guy. a sad and scared and lonely and hurting guy. 

and that’s what i think is the best thing about ivrig’s character: everyone has felt that way before. 

ivrig is not special. he comes from an average family in a rural area. he doesn’t have any particular skills that make him stand out; in fact, he’s said to be rather clumsy. his upbringing is relatable to many, many people. his craving for validation, his desire to be “cooler”, his feelings of insufficiency and frustration with himself for it, are all things that just about everyone on earth has felt. ivrig is a character that everyone playing the game can relate to in some way, shape or form. he could be your friend you talk to on discord. he could be a guy in your class. he could be your neighbor. he could be you. 

of course, i’m not in a cult, and i’m assuming that you, the person reading this, also aren’t. but personally, looking at ivrig makes me think “that could’ve been me in a worse timeline”. statistically speaking, people like me are at a high risk for being manipulated, and it’s something i have to be mindful of; i’m really lucky that even at my worst, i had a stable foundation that kept me safe while i got back on my feet. a lot of people don’t. ivrig didn’t, and because he couldn’t get his emotional needs met by his family or peers, he ended up getting it from people who sought to exploit him, over and over. the tragedy of his character is that he is a vulnerable person who never got the help he needed, and the poor choices he made are the direct result of that lifelong neglect. if even one person had stepped in to help him, maybe he would have never set foot in the mindhack facility. 

so i see ivrig as two things: a reminder to take care of yourself and watch out for patterns of abuse in your relationships—something i’m not qualified to give advice on—and a reminder that kindness makes a difference. i was going to say “if any of us can be ivrig, any of us can be the hypothetical guy who reaches out”… but also, it’s not your responsibility to save anyone. ivrig did plenty of fucked up things to end up in the mindhack chair, and it’s pretty unfair to ask someone to shoulder that weight. but also!! sometimes a 15 minute conversation with someone is the highlight of that person’s week. sometimes the best thing you can do for a person in a position like that is to model a healthy relationship, and hope they realize their other relationships should look like that too. 

but of course, that’s just my interpretation based on my own life experiences. the REAL moral lesson of this post is that ivrig is very cute and fluffy and deserves a lot of hugs. 

[interestroulette]

[ Content warning for brief mentions of potential delusion triggers, stay safe! ]

Thanks Mariella for the subtle commentary on people and how they think about those of us who are less stable and the archetype you're always told you have to fit. Because obviously crazy people are very vocal about their hallucinations and delusions and audibly talk to the voices they hear or false people they see!! [ ignore how "crazy" is specifically things in the family of schizophrenia and general delusional disorders here. ] And that's what EVERYONE that's seriously mentally ill looks like!

If you don't do that, you're "normal." Because again, obviously unstable people are super vocal! They fully believe what the voices tell them and will share that with the world! THERE'S BUGS IN YOUR SKIN, TAKE OFF YOUR SKIN, I'M IN YOUR HOUSE AND SO IS SOMETHING ELSE haha funny right??

Anyways, crazy people don't know that they're crazy!! And there's no such thing as quiet crazies!

Yes, I've recently come to actually kinda despise how we treat hallucinatory disorders and people with them. And the archetype you're expected to fit. It's exhausting and irritating to deal with, especially when trying to navigate possibly having one.