Phogon58

:3c

[phogon58]

Pangi actually popping off in the spearsteal lobby makes me so happy, highest heart count by the end and such a funny pov of the event

Jojo pov: could find no one the whole time, spying on people in groups, trying to find where everything was happening and vibing

I'm going to be watching jumpers investigation trying to find sb/trying to stop them pov and zams hunting pangi pov next :)

[phogon58]

Seeing everyone talking about the stream on twitter but no vod... I missed out big time ;-;

[phogon58]

Spepticle was doing the parkour at spawn, learned inventory jam and how to triple neo from no previous knowledge just chat advice. Did the triple neo twice in a row at end of stream. Very fun stream

[phogon58]

Yungy immediately jumping into the void the second it was opened reminds me of house cats immediately trying to get outside the second the front door is open. Like damn you wanna get into the most dangerous situation so bad

[phogon58]

Watching SB these last two streams has been very fustrating. Chat suddenly panics for no reason telling him to hide and he does. I look to other streamers and they are close to finding him which is why chat panicked... that's just stream sniping without saying your stream sniping in chat... it's really disappointing. Plus the fact it happened two streams in a row kinda solidifys it in chats mind that it's okay to do it as long as they are vague enough and just backseating instead of telling him why

[lsblrconfessions]

Gonna be a bit of a hater here I really fucking hate orbital canons and rail guns on lifesteal, I find them so boring at this point. Like I think Partykillers S5 railgun was cool and the S5 nuke was novel when it happened, but past that I can’t think of a single instance of them that I’ve really enjoyed. The grind to make them in survival has long lost it’s luster for me and like. Especially with the schematics mod there’s really nothing else impressive about the lifestealers making them. They didn’t design these machines (which isnt a bad thing in and of itself considering they generally give good credit), they aren’t really innovating on the design, and they don’t even have to worry too much about replicating them because they can download a schematic and use easy place. What about that is interesting outside of the spectacle of a big explosion or an instant death? This has only gotten worse as the machines gave gotten more advanced and powerful, like Squiddo and Wemmbu had to get people in a straight line on a specific block and they had to time it right to set it off which made for a fun, interesting plan to set up the circumstances to get the kills they did. Minute’s latest arrow canon being more powerful took away that interesting set up and as did sb’s activating remotely to kill Mane imo. I’m way more interested in a more risky trap idea that the players had to test themself. Planet’s S4 innovations with the tab glitch were cool even if half their boat tours failed. Squiddo’s plans with the S6 image2map exploits were interesting despite not always working how she wanted because she had to find them and test how best to weaponize them. Kab’s chorus bombs didnt work on Mane, but they were cool as fuck because of how she developed them around Mane’s playstyle. Zam’s void traps aren’t new on their own but the way she sets up the scene to lead players in with things like fakeout traps and just being conscious of how fights typically go and where she could best utilize a trap is really cool. The Sticklers hiding the end portals and Team Awesome destroying the end island were cool and creative because they gave other players options to react that wasn’t just death, blowing up the end portals with a canon that can shoot anywhere, if that is apocalypse’s plan, feels dull by comparison. Subz’s wardens were impressive because the whole system was developed and tested by Subz and Willerhide based on things they had done on the public server, Bacon’s, by comparison, was less interesting because of how much of his methods were taken directly from Subz. Hannah’s hoplite traps are, again, fun because of how she has to create the right circumstances to use them and honestly even when she doesn’t, the fact that they’re weaker and simpler makes success with them feel better because it’s not an instant death or instant massive destruction. The server isn’t devoid of interesting traps now that they exist, like I don’t think they’ve ruined anything by being possible but I just don’t give a fuck about them! I wish I cared more about what’s going on with S7 right now, but Pili and Hannah’s cunning and determination in thwarting Apocalypse are wasted on boring opponents making another stupid canon. I will also fully admit that there’s bias here because Minute likes to use them a lot and he’s my least favorite player on the server, so everything he does annoys me a little and that doesnt help with my opinions on them, but. I don’t know. The interesting things about stories surrounding orbitals or railguns is never the machine itself. Can we do something else. Can we have an original thought. Subz literally proved that it’s extremely possible to develop a unique big, deadly, destructive idea fully legitimately and on his own with friends last season, like I know we can do it. We don’t need more nukes like i love you Pili But We Don’t Need More Nukes I promise you can do something better than more nukes. Maybe I’m just hateful though, I don’t know. I just don’t like them. Why did my beautiful daughter ender pearl stasis chamber have to die

.

[phogon58]

I think pili dtowncat with a nuke could be so funny if he did it small scale. Imagine building the nuke but only ever sending one tnt. It could be so funny and terrifying knowing he has the power and knows where someone is but will only ever sent one tnt at a time...

[phogon58]

This end fight result is so good and I'm so excited about this season of LS. New loadouts and more resource conservation fightstyles. Fights will go quicker with less opportunities to restock safely. Less flight happening to keep elytras safe so maybe horses and dolphin stations. An economy of end resources which can be sold and gatekept. The potential for different ways of doing ls and the opening for unique content surrounding it makes me so happy.

Plus if the border gets expanded later in the season that will open up the end again for a end fight part 2 respawning the dragon and reopening end items for everyone.

Resource related conflict can be interesting and this does have an end point so ccs can change the situation if it gets boring.

I'm mad that stream sniping and chat hoppers are such an issue that it had to be a complete secret from viewers but that is the unfortunate reality when ls ccs can use that info and act on that info...

[phogon58]

The carpet mod is a server side mod that is used to test redstone contraptions (can be found on modrinth and all commands are in the wiki). The older versions of the mod gave the '/info entity' command. Basically this mod could have been added to test the osc or have been on as a base mod for the server but the commands werent properly configured allowing for derap and pangi to use it to find players and the osc. Apparently derap has used this mod before so would know what commands to test of he saw minute add the mod to the server. The exact command used was removed from recent additions of the mod so it was easier to miss compared to other commands in the mod.

(If it was added to test the osc I think it's so cool that something added to test it was it's own downfall.) It def needs patching but if it was added exclusively to get the osc to work then I'd say it was a fair game dox of the osc.

More info/interpretations are appreciated :D

[phogon58]

Another thing to add is that because it was found on stream it was immediately spread to other streamers and immediately fixed and spoken about. Is stream sniping a valid way to get rule breakers? If that's so then all ccs on the server who have been using prot 4 or putting hearts in echest bundles should also be getting done. If stream sniping and console use are valid ways to find rulebreakers then it should be all rules not just the ones chat finds moral wrong. Also duping, rule breaking and exploits are core parts of many ls cc's content, by allowing admins to use all meta knowledge it ruins a large section of ls content and pushes ccs away from streaming because your immediately stream sniped the second you try to do rule break content YouTube ls ccs have gotten away with because they haven't posted the video yet so noone knows or they did the action weeks/months ago so can't be fixed as easily.

[phogon58]

The carpet mod is a server side mod that is used to test redstone contraptions (can be found on modrinth and all commands are in the wiki). The older versions of the mod gave the '/info entity' command. Basically this mod could have been added to test the osc or have been on as a base mod for the server but the commands werent properly configured allowing for derap and pangi to use it to find players and the osc. Apparently derap has used this mod before so would know what commands to test of he saw minute add the mod to the server. The exact command used was removed from recent additions of the mod so it was easier to miss compared to other commands in the mod.

(If it was added to test the osc I think it's so cool that something added to test it was it's own downfall.) It def needs patching but if it was added exclusively to get the osc to work then I'd say it was a fair game dox of the osc.

More info/interpretations are appreciated :D

[realmrooikat]

yap post about the parallels between tr!pangi's experience on the realm and my own immigrant experience — note that this is quite a large post (1.2k words), hence the cut, so be warned lmao

The first thing that really strikes me as familiar as someone who's technically a first generation immigrant but had no choice in the matter, as I was a child when my parents decided we should immigrate, is that a lot of Pangi's frustrations are in part born out of the lack of autonomy allowed to him in coming to the Realm. He came not out of his own choice, or will, but she was taken from her homeland at the whim of authority figures with total power over her, which personally strikes me as very similar to my own experience.

His deep want to return home is also painfully familiar to me — as a first generation immigrant, I often feel that my heart is buried in the soil of my homeland, and I feel like Pangi has a similar mentality. This also comes hand in hand with the alienation that comes with being a first generation immigrant. Although my parents were very intent on us assimilating as first, I clung to our culture, and I still do (especially now that my parents feel less fear in me exploring it), and that created a fundamental rift between me and my peers. I come from a country in the global south, and the British people I spend my time with have very little understanding of my culture, and they often find it quite grating — "too much", "too harsh" — rough around the corners in a way that makes them feel "above" it. I feel like Pangi often experiences something similar — the culture of Lifesteal differs significantly from that on the Realm, notably in it's casual violence, the paranoia it creates, etc (again, very familiar 2 me as someone who comes from a country famed for it's crime levels, particularity violent crime), and Pangi has shown frustration in how the other characters on the Realm seem to be fundamentally unable to understand the culture of Lifesteal, and the way they seem to view it as "lesser" or as some exotic thing that's interesting only in a conceptual manner* that dehumanises the lived reality of Lifestealers.

Also, the alienation he experiences upon returning to Lifesteal is very familiar to me. Although he loves Lifesteal and has a deep need to return there, when she did return — for example for the finale — she's met with mockery from fellow Lifestealers who haven't left, accusations that the Realm has "softened" her, made him "washed". He is too assimilated for Lifesteal, not assimilated enough for the Realm. This reminds me in particular of a concept from my home country — those that leave for the UK (or, worse, those who go there from the UK) are called "soutpiels", "salt dicks" in english, mocking how they have one foot in the UK, one foot in my home country, and thus their dicks dangle in the sea and become salty. This vitriol is reflected in how the Lifestealers approach Pangi's return from the Realm — him leaving has made him lesser in their eyes, and thus she is caught in the immigrant's catch 22. Never enough for either culture, either "home". Both change her in ways that make him unacceptable to the other.

Additionally, the way the Realm, although she was brought there against her will and does not intend to stay there, gave him a more comfortable environment to explore his queerness is very familiar 2 me. Although my home country is one of the most progressive in Africa in terms of it's pro-queer laws, culturally it's still very bigoted, and thus I only had the place to explore my queerness when we immigrated back to the UK for a second time (my immigration also was not a one-and-done thing, which I expect will likely be the same for Pangi, if he comes back for season 2). Lifesteal seems to be much the same, as on the face of it, it appears to be someone queer accepting, there is still an undercurrent of disapproval towards queerness, particularity displays of femininity — it still sticks in my mind how corrupted!Pangi reacted with shock and almost-disgust upon hearing that Zam was wearing a dress. Thereby, being on the Realm allows Pangi access to a peaceful environment that gives her time and space to explore who he is, and realize things about herself that she may never have been able to realize had he stayed on Lifesteal. And thus rises another dilemma that's very familiar to me as an immigrant — is it worth staying in this place that makes you fundamentally unhappy in some ways, represses you in some ways, when it allows you to flourish and become more yourself in other ways?

Finally, I've mentioned this earlier but I would like to elaborate on it further: the way being an immigrant in the way I am, and in my view in the way Pangi is, divorces you from your home culture often feels to me like I've been separated from a fundamental part of myself, like I have somehow misplaced an organ along my journey and it's left a gaping hole that cannot be filled. I think Pangi feels the same, but I think what makes his character so tragic to me is that he does not have the ability to fill that hole with his culture like I do. The school system and my parents may have beaten my home language out of me, but I have the ability to regain it, to reconnect with it. Pangi doesn't have this, he doesn't have the luxury of some clear marker of his culture, no such solid anchor to it. She doesn't have a 'Lifesteal language' that she can slip into, feel her mouth's comfort around it's vowels. He has no traditional dish (aside from maybe arguably golden apples), no bobotie to cook and use to fill her kitchen with the smell of childhood and home, no rooibos to make to remind himself of his ouma. All he has in the ache, and no substantial way to fill it. So, she turns to other things that remind her of home — violence. If others will have this view of Lifesteal as the 'deadliest minecraft server', why not embrace it? It reminds me of my subconscious ways of coping on my worst days — hiding away food in my room, refusing to shower or drink more than a few glasses of water because I'm still wired to accommodate for drought, the comfort I find in dark rooms with no sign of electricity, similar to the forced darkness loadshedding brings. And maybe it's odd for both of us to find comfort in some of the arguably worst parts of our homes — for her, comfort in the violence that surrounded him, and for me, comfort in the signs of my government's failure, our lack of resources that the imperial core sees as fundamentally necessary. Maybe for both of us it's our own little attempt at rebellion, clawing at the restraints and disfamiliarity of the societies that now surround us.

Anyway. I hope he finds the happiness he seeks when he returns home. I hope he is not stuck in the cycle of constantly longing for the other home, displaced no matter where he is.

(* note, I think characters like Lukey are also interested in it in a sexual manner, which isn't necessarily bad, but it does remind me of how the global north and the imperial core only views the global south as something either sexual or lesser, often both)

[anonymous-dentist]

Guys please, it’s not really anybody’s fault that trPili still isn’t cured of the Corruption

1) trLukey and trAimsey physically couldn’t cure him because trPangi had the dragon egg

2) Lukey has been saying for months that he’s planning on forcing a cure on Pili, he was just lying to Corrupted Bad about it because he thought he’d die if he said he was going to

3) Pangi was following what Pili asked of him. He valued the choice given to him when he was corrupted, and he wanted to offer Pili the same choice. It isn’t out of a want for him to stay corrupted, it’s because he thinks it’s genuinely what Pili wants

4) I have to reiterate: Lukey And Aimsey Couldn’t Make The Cure Because They Were Missing The Dragon Egg

5) Aimsey’s priority was actually trying to cure trSneeg because of their own connection with the Skulk sort of still tying him to them. And the Sneeg Cure was supposed to be a sort of test run for the cure arrows so an actual cure could be injected into Pili at a later date

6) Pangi does sort of want Pili cured on a personal level, he just also doesn’t know the exact recipe because he was corrupted himself while it was being created

7) It’s genuinely impossible to cure someone without being able to experiment on them first. Aimsey and Pangi have discussed testing on Pili since MARCH so they could try and cure him, it’s just harder to do so now that Ace is so openly against the cure and openly against getting cured.

8) No one even knows if it’s possible to cure Pili. He’s the Harbinger, he might be too far gone. This is something that Lukey and Aimsey have discussed at length already and that they have been planning on working around

9) Lukey just today discussed plans with Newt for the other Keepers to get involved in potentially curing the Corrupted on the server

10) He has also expressed interest in hooking the cure up to the Fog to spread it throughout the whole server when the bombs go off. A great cleansing.

This is all information that anyone watching their POVs would know, so I don’t expect anyone who doesn’t to know it all. This includes trBad, whose desperation to see His Pili- Mocha- back and healthy again led to an effective suicide via Corruption. He doesn’t know any of this stuff because he’s been kept out of the loop through sheer coincidence, mostly his time zone being so opposing to Pangi’s. Lukey keeps his cards to his chest, and Aimsey has been preoccupied with their own stuff.

It isn’t from a lack of care or concern that Pili hasn’t been cured yet, but Bad/Malo wouldn’t get that. He doesn’t know what we know, and it’s a cruel form of irony that his dying wish may never be realized

[phogon58]

A complete collection of the cure was only done soon after pangi got fully corrupted. The cure is so temperamental in vial form and basically near impossible to cure an unwilling participant as they will dodge half and run away from the other half.

The arrows were only completed on the day of lukeys death, the use was completely experimental on bad and failed. A more complete variety was used the next day for sneeg but still failed.

There's only a few characters that know when each cure varient was made and only a few characters that understand how difficult getting the cure into people is.

It's so understandable for bads character and others to believe people aren't trying but theres so many factors involved in the cure/making varients/cc and tr consent/timezones/planning

[phogon58]

The corruption destroyed multiple civilisations before and would have destroyed the realm if they didn't kill the dragon. The more recent passivity of the corruption is just it focusing on the outer realms with the other races like where the dwarves came from. It's waiting until it can completely surround and consume quickly. It knows about the cure and is waiting for the perfect opportunity to get everyone so no one can use the cure in time. It needs to present itself as a non issue and needs to allow it's victims a sense of identity so the uncorrupted people don't cure them to soon, it's never pretended before so of course it's bad at it. The second everyone is corrupted it will consume their minds as quickly as it can, it's not a hivemind, it's destruction. The only reason it doesn't seem like that right now is that it had to adapt because of the cure, it's never attempted to cooperate or understand its victims before and the second it doesn't need to, it won't.

Most of the keepers can't see, speak, move, think, understand or learn to various degrees. Complete stasis was the only option for most of them.

If the corruption wins, everyone dies because at some point they won't be able to function anymore, especially if the keepers don't interfer. Even the immortals will be negatively effected, the corruption will infinitely harvest their mind as it regenerates, more a battery for the corruption than a life with it.

The corruption will destroy everyones minds, bodies and builds. If sacrificing the builds saves the mind and body of as many people as possible then they see it as necessary.

But if they are unable to cure everyone before getting the root of the corruption/skulking the land, the bunker won't work. Luckily water has pointed that out so hopefully everyone will be getting cured before the destruction. I really need the one rational person here, water, to start pushing to cure everyone because aimsey and pangi are pessimistic, lukey is depressed/dead, sneeg was consumed and everyone else doesn't know enough/doesn't want to help.

[anonymous-dentist]

Tbh I don’t quite understand trDerap’s villain arc because like. Okay, he’s pissed because everyone made fun of him when he was a snail.

But them being rude was actually mostly them trying to get him to leave when they were having a private conversation he had nothing to do with, or him using creative/spectator to get into private areas he wasn’t welcome in. He would pick people up and take them into dangerous situations and laugh when they were scared. If someone made fun of him for being a snail, that’s whatever, I get him being pissed about that, but when said snail butts into conversations and insults everyone there, spends most of his time talking shit about people to their faces, and canonically attempts conversion therapy, it’s like, yeah, dude, of course nobody actually wants to team with you.

Yellow wouldn’t let Derap in because he spent a solid 99% of his time with Foolish as a snail insulting him and the kingdom. Green didn’t want him because numbers one and two targets of his hatred are Lukey and Pangi. Blue didn’t want him because… well, they never said they didn’t, he just never bothered asking to join

Derap’s sheer lack of self awareness has led him to become a villain when, really, if he’d at least tried to be chill with people and work with them to become human again, no one would have made fun of him or excluded him. He’s isolated by his own past actions, and he refuses to acknowledge the fact that it’s his own fault that his only two allies right now are the server’s least wanted- Ace and Corrupted Bad

He chooses to focus strictly on the bad while ignoring the good, such as Pangi and Pili 2 building him a house while he was still a snail for him to move into when he would become human, or Pangi and Zam and Glip Glorp helping him with his attempt at a pig prank in the Cathedral. Because there was a good few weeks before people started distancing himself from them, and it can’t be ignored that he chose to work for Nirvana by himself.

He’s spiteful because of his own mistakes, and now he’s helping destroy the server because he doesn’t feel it deserves to stand after what everyone on it has done to him. And it’s confusing from an outside perspective because it just seems like an extreme overreaction to something that could have been talked out a million times if he’d actually expressed his upset by doing literally anything but doing so while torturing and harassing the people he was trying to get apologies from

[anonymous-dentist]

“trLukey should come back corrupted!!!”

“trSneeg should die and stay in the ancient city and lose his humanity!!!”

“trRos should go back to her empty castle dimension!!!”

“trLukey should team up with Bad and Pili to kill Pangi and punish him for leaving!!”

I’m so glad none of you fuckers are actually writing the Realm’s lore because goddamn no one in this fandom understands the concept of ‘narrative cohesion’

[anonymous-dentist]

Fandom and ccs both have this issue called “The Only Good Story Is An Angsty One” and it’s starting to get really annoying how people will do mental backflips to try and get the saddest outcome possible at all times as if a sad ending is the only good kind of ending. Narrative power doesn’t diminish just because a story is happy, it’s just a different kind of story being told. A lack of positive stories in the mcyt scene really makes all the smps’ plots run together, yk? If every ending is sad, what’s the point of watching? Every ending is the same

[phogon58]

Tr!derap is pretty interesting but so deeply flawed. He is extremely selfcentered and can't fathom the fact that his issues stem from the actions he took.

While as a snail he consistently interrupted and intruded on peoples private moments at any time and any place, inserted himself into the conversation and got annoyed when people tried to ask him to leave. He was a snail with god like abilities but noway to function/lvl like a human. This godhood might be why he felt he had the right to invade others privacy and any convo he felt like because there was nothing else he could do with his time but talk. People were rightfully annoyed by the continued intrusions and when they expressed it he took it personally and instead of understanding he turned to wanting others to understand he was not okay with being excluded, pushed aside and made fun of. It was the consequences of his own actions but he doesn't understand that. After becoming human he still clings to abilities that give him godlike action including the items from snailhood, exploits and creative items.

He intends to punish those who just wanted privacy from him and the ability to have secrets from him. But why would a godlike being understand that, they are supposed to be omnipotent and you aren't supposed to be able to have secrets from a god.

(I also think alot of the snail comments from those around him were sometimes unfair to him but were not unprovoked, and often were involved in general banter where he was shit talking back too.)(it's been a bit since he's been on so i might be a bit wrong/misremembering stuff)

[phogon58]

Over the pangi ace convo he consistently pointed out how weird it seemed, how much of an ego ace had now/how ace was looking down on him/telling him who he should or shouldnt talk to. He was annoyed and weirded out by it but put up with it, trying to figue out what changed. It's only when ace questions pangi and bad friendship and closeness that pangi decides this is too much. He decides ace has gone to far and ends the convo. After he talks about how he wishes to go back to the 3 of them and how they were before all this. Before pili left him.

Pili did tell him he was ending his emotions for his sake but I really doubt pangi understood what he was saying. If he remembers, he will realise the pili he knew and wanted to be close to removed himself from the situation again, in an act he convinced himself was for pangi...

[hardsellingit]

trLukey and the psychological effects of long-term sensory deprivation

I wrote a short post on this yesterday but since you all seemed interested, here's a more comprehensive analysis of my thoughts on trLukey's interest in pain and how it relates to his time in the Null, and how long-term TSD (total sensory deprivation) may have affected him!

Prior to starting: All references to Lukey are referring to trLukey. I have studied this but it was a few years ago so please point out if I have any out of date info. Also, sorry if I go into Academic Language Mode lol. I'm happy to clarify my language or provide further sources!

ccLukey doesn't really play into this all too much, so it's more of an analysis of the concept rather than a more direct character analysis.

A large majority of studies about this topic reference torture, animal cruelty, self-harm and suicidal behaviours etc. I will not go into these, but be aware if you wish to read the sources and go further into this topic that it's a very common factor.

Also this post is just over 2300 words long erm. get comfy

So:

Let's look at long-term sensory deprivation. Of course, studies and research we have on this is significantly shorter term than what Lukey experienced, but it would be literally impossible to study that haha.

What we know about Lukey's Null experience is that he was shut in a small space (test tube), for an extremely long period of time (possibly years into the millions, we don't have a specific time frame). The only sensory inputs we are sure he had was experimentation done on him by the Keepers (Snail experimentation particularly) and what sounds like fairly rare occasions on which Newt would take him for walks. The Null itself is a dark, drab space. Structurally, it appears to be entirely constructed of obsidian and/or black concrete, with only what others have added to it being different from that. The Keepers are unable to talk out loud, and aside from teleportation seem to move in silence. They also all look the same. So Lukey was in the darkness and silence, generally entirely alone, in a tiny, confined space, and slowly losing his memory bit by bit. Let's examine the effects of this:

Memory

So the first point is, they wouldn't've needed the Snails to remove Lukey's memory. When deprived of external sensory cues and social interaction for extended periods, memory encoding and retrieval mechanisms begin to deteriorate, particularly episodic memory (autobiographical, time-anchored data). Without new experiences to anchor itself and it's cognition, the brain may lose connection from time, self, and continuity, seen in extreme solitary confinement [study], Antarctic isolation studies, and simulated Mars missions (eg Mars500, HI-SEAS). Over millennia, this would create near-total identity fragmentation.

Lukey would likely have ongoing trouble with recall, particularly linear recall, and a very distorted sense of time.

Social Hypervigilance

Long-term social isolation impairs the brain’s default mode network (DMN), which is responsible for self-referential thinking, empathy, and internal narrative. The DMN is especially sensitive to the absence of interpersonal engagement and verbal interaction. Lukey would likely lose the ability to internally rehearse social scripts or anticipate others intentions, leading to flattened social cognition, hypervigilance, or a skewed sense of trust. It's interesting if we see Lukey act as a 'social manipulator', and instead read it as social hypervigilance. The amygdala and anterior insula (tied to threat detection) become more reactive after social exclusion [study]. This leads to chronic scanning of the environment for social threats (real or imagined), aka social hypervigilance.

Social interaction is biologically necessary for humans. The brain treats social isolation similarly to physical hunger. Tomova et al found that after just ten hours of isolation, the midbrain reward centres (especially the substantia nigra and ventral tegmental area) lit up in response to social images the same way they light up for food after fasting.

We often see Lukey overanalyze social interaction. On one side is that he uses every opportunity to study someone (see recently, during the conversation when Water told him she's a dragon, he was literally taking notes on it) and to pick apart conversations to find what he can use against people. Interestingly, he also does so with positive thought. Watch him and Pangi simultaneously while they talk to each other in chat, and you can see that Lukey will INCREDIBLY overanalyze Pangi's chat messages (reading Pangi as more bothered by Lukey making a joke, for example, when Pangi's actual reaction is very neutral). I feel I'm explaining this badly but it's something I've noticed. In another word, he assumes he's ragebaiting Pangi more than he actually is.

He also really wants reassurance from others, most notably recently during the trial chambers with Pangi when he was directly asking for reassurance and praise. Also, he can be not necessarily confrontational but definitely testing, pushing people (particularly Pangi) in various manners to see how they react, utilising lying and gaslighting to test people.

These can all be tied to social hypervigilance, with the absence of social feedback leading to overcompensation in social interaction and boundary testing and reassurance seeking to recalibrate one's understanding of social scripts.

[study]

Thalamo-Cortical Dysregulation (Hallucinatory Reactions)

This is sort of minor as we don't exactly see this, but the thalamus acts as a relay for sensory information. When incoming stimuli are absent, the cortex begins generating spontaneous activity, leading to hallucinations, confusion, and sometimes catatonia or emotional blunting. It's likely Lukey would've had hallucinatory experiences in the Null, which looking back at the streams with the doors/memories... there's something there for sure lol. But I'll leave this point since it's fairly short.

Touch Deprivation and Pain-Seeking

Now this is the big point. Everyone's pointed out Lukey's pain-seeking behaviour. We all know it, we've all seen it. This was the central point of my original post lol. So lets talk about it.

Prolonged absence of physical contact (aka touch starvation) often produces dysregulated sensory thresholds. Individuals become either hypersensitive or hyposensitive to input. In some, this results in pain-seeking behaviours (including self-injury or deriving comfort from harm), due to a release of endorphins and dopamine when the body is finally stimulated.

If Lukey experienced experimentation as his only tactile contact, he may have developed a neurochemical dependence on pain as a substitute for interaction. This would be especially likely in someone with a fragmented or deteriorating sense of body ownership, which would likely be the result of memory loss combined with TSD and lack of physical contact points. He may seek intense stimulus just to confirm that he exists. Newt’s walks would likely be the point that anchors Lukey’s entire social framework, so even painful interactions from the Keepers might be processed as attention instead of harm, especially if they broke the monotony or confirmed he still existed. Lukey might seek punishment, damage, or contact as a proxy for affection or attention.

I'm going to go ahead assuming you're at least generally familiar with dopamine and its role. Dopamine is generally called the 'happy chemical', but more than that it also regulates motivation, reward learning, pain, and withdrawal. When dopamine spikes, the brain adapts by reducing receptor sensitivity, which leads to stronger cravings and possible addiction.

Over time, this creates a dopaminergic deficit state. The brain’s baseline dopamine tone dips, and normal stimuli no longer register as motivating or rewarding. In Lukey’s case, this likely began during his time in the Null, where sensory input was minimal and inconsistent. Deprived of the sensory and social events that normally trigger dopamine release, his brain may have downregulated not only dopamine receptors, but also its ability to anticipate reward at all.

When Lukey now asks Pangi to hit him, attack him, etc, this may not be (exclusively) masochism in the traditional sense. It may be an attempt to stimulate systems that have been dormant, through the crash and surge of dopamine. And, Pangi is someone he trusts. In Lukey’s internal logic, being hurt by someone safe is likely categorically different from being hurt by someone cold or uncaring. A substitute for connection when more gentle forms of contact might feel deeply alien to him, considering for how long he completely didn't receive it.

Additionally, the predictability of being hurt by a trusted person matters. The Keepers, though consistent in appearance, were mute, expressionless, and unreadable. Pangi, by contrast, Lukey can read his reactions, even if imperfectly. This adds a layer of social feedback to the physical input, something his brain may crave even more than sensation itself. Lukey knows he can push Pangi into hurting him, understands Pangi's buttons and which he can and can't push, and he also knows that he's /safe/ being hurt by Pangi. He is so deeply assured that Pangi wont kill him, he's said it so many times (do it, you wont). He knows he can get that stimulation from him in a safe manner.

And just like in cases of non-suicidal self-injury, the behaviour may reinforce itself. Endorphins and dopamine are released not only in response to pain, but also in anticipation of it, so the cycle loops. Each time he’s struck or injured, his brain may offer a brief window of relief. Which then fades, leaving him back in the void, until the next jolt is needed. At which point he knows he can just push Pangi again, which means Pangi is likely associated with particularly positive 'rush' reactions in him :).

There can be positive, even stabilising, effects when someone like Lukey receives safe, consensual, predictable pain from a trusted person like Pangi.

Pain activates the sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight), but when it’s followed or provided by soothing or presence from someone safe, the parasympathetic 'rest and digest' system kicks in. This shift is thought to reset the stress response, helping the body cycle out of chronic freeze or shutdown states.

Weighted blankets, compression, or strong hugs work similarly, because they give clear consistent somatosensory input. The underlying mechanism is proprioceptive stimulation, which can calm the nervous system and help a person locate themselves in space, something Lukey likely struggles with post-Null.

Intense sensation also triggers beta-endorphins (I'm not getting the symbol lol) which blunt pain and create feelings of euphoria, calm, or even emotional warmth. Especially if Lukey anticipates pain from Pangi, his brain may spike dopamine in the mesolimbic pathway (specifically the nucleus accumbens). That means pain, when trusted and expected, can feel rewarding, because the neurochemical afterglow offers temporary relief from his otherwise blunted or dysregulated state.

Regular stimulation, particularly on different body areas, helps maintain the somatosensory homunculus in the brain (aka, the brain's 'map' of the body based on sensory input). In long-term deprivation, those maps degrade. Pain could act as an effective way to rebuild them.

Pain from someone else, especially someone emotionally significant, might also help Lukey distinguish where he ends and the other begins. After so long with no mirrored social feedback, even negative contact becomes a way to restore a boundary that otherwise feels undefined.

Safe pain from a safe person can retrain Lukey’s brain to associate sensation with care. In trauma theory, this is called 'corrective emotional experience': getting the opposite of what you expect (eg hurt followed by rejection and isolation -> instead, hurt followed by calm and staying and familiar reaction).

Lukey might also experience surges of oxytocin, the bonding hormone. That means even harmful-seeming interactions can build trust, if they’re safe, repeatable, and under Lukey’s control.

(I could go into a whole different thing about his control stuff but not here lol. Perhaps most relevantly, Lukey's pain-seeking behaviour represents a reclamation of agency that was absent during his Null experience. In the test tube, pain and sensation were imposed upon him without consent, warning, or ability to stop the experience. He was a passive recipient of whatever the Keepers chose to inflict. Now when he provokes Pangi, he's orchestrating the entire interaction. He chooses the timing, the method of provocation, the intensity of response he's seeking. He maintains the power to stop, escalate, or redirect the encounter. The psychological safety of this arrangement cannot be overstated.)

In a real world context, this is not a safe long-term solution. The nervous system may eventually adapt, requiring increasing intensity to get the same result. And if Pangi ever withdraws or refuses, Lukey might experience distress, confusion, or interpret it as rejection, especially if no other regulatory tools are in place. However, this isn't the real world, so it's probably fine <3

Attachment Dysregulation

Lukey's anxious-resistant attachment style, as mentioned by the CC, creates a particularly complex relationship with physical contact and pain. In attachment theory, touch serves as a primary regulatory mechanism: infants learn emotional regulation through caregiver contact, and adults continue to use physical connection for co-regulation.

For someone who experienced touch starvation during critical identity formation (even if that formation was rebuilding rather than initial development), the nervous system may struggle to distinguish between different types of physical contact. The brain, desperate for any form of attachment cue, might process even painful touch as preferable to no touch at all.

This manifests in Lukey's simultaneous craving for and testing of Pangi's boundaries. He seeks reassurance through physical contact, but his dysregulated attachment system doesn't trust that the contact will continue or remain safe. By provoking Pangi into striking him, he's essentially forcing attachment through sensation - creating a scenario where Pangi must respond to him physically, guaranteeing that momentary connection.

Thoughts

There's more I could talk about but this is getting very long lol. I was originally going to bring in my audhd interpretation of trLukey but decided to focus more on the general effects of TSD. The overall thought there is that in an audhd context, dopamine is already heavily restricted and dysregulated, which would exacerbate these effects, though honestly at this scale it wouldn't be that much different lol.

I'd love so bad for trLukey to talk further about how the Null affected him, but I'm not sure he will, so instead, I hope this gives you some insight into the effects of TSD and also the things that affect my personal interpretation of Lukey!

If you have any questions or thoughts on this PLEASE feel free to tell me. I, obviously, love this stuff deeply. Let's all play with our toys together <3