Grimleal Scholar

Welcome! Call me Robot. it/they. Miscellany and meta-analysis. Currently on a Fire Emblem: Awakening kick.

[st-hedge]

Whenever the sekiro brainrot comes back I can’t help but get fixated on the shura ending

[avatarofwar]

If it is for the sake of preserving Ashina, I will seize any manner of heretical strength.

[ro-botany]

Terra, Lingering Will, & Emotional Regulation

So. A while back I noticed something I thought was odd about Lingering Will, and I figure now's a good time to share with the class.

In its idle animation, Lingering Will looks like it's breathing. It's taking deep, slow, deliberate breaths.

Which is a strange thing for a completely empty suit of armour to do, eh? A haunted suit of armour can't and doesn't need to breathe. At first I thought maybe it was doing that out of habit from being alive, or that maybe it's as simple as the animators either not knowing it's an empty armour at the time of KH2FM or just not thinking that deeply about it.

But. As a friend pointed out to me...

...One of Terra's most consistently shown techniques to calm himself down and control his emotions is deep breathing. So if Lingering Will is doing the same thing, there's a good chance it's for the same reasons. It's using a self-soothing technique.

Remember, though: emotions aren't confined to the mind. They're experienced physically. When you're afraid, your heart rate goes up; when you're calm, your muscles relax; etc, etc.

And the reason that deep breathing is such a good self-soothing technique is that it regulates the involuntary physical processes that are part of emotions. Slow breathing lowers heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature. It triggers changes in the central nervous system that effectively slow your brain down and improve your ability to think. It also encourages you to be aware of how you're feeling physically, which makes it easier to take other physical steps to regulate your emotions, such as consciously releasing tense muscles.

What this all comes together into is:

Lingering Will is trying to control it's emotions by mimicking the motions involved in deep breathing. But because it doesn't have a body, the mimicked breathing can't produce the biological changes that actually help calm you down. It's trying to soothe its rage and anxiety but its primary coping mechanism is giving it nothing.

Can you even imagine that? Your worst flash of anger, the most scared you've ever felt, sustained at full volume for ten years and there isn't a damn thing you can do to help yourself. But you keep trying anyway. No matter how futile it is you keep trying.

It just... makes the whole situation even sadder, for me.

[ro-botany]

I'm taking this as an excuse to ramble about my opinions on that! >:)

You sound like you might be working on pre-KH3 knowledge though so I'm putting it under the cut in case of spoilers!

In KH, emotions are very much in the domain of the Heart. Lingering Will is in possession of a lot of Terra's rage and willpower and desire to protect. If Lingering Will has all that, it's reasonable to assume Terra's Heart does not have access to all that.

With that framework it makes sense why Terra's Heart, confined to the Dark Figure, wasn't able to escape or put up much resistance all these years. All the emotions that would be his impetus to act are absent, haunting the graveyard he died in.

I also think that pieces of a Heart generally want to come back together, if they can. So, when Lingering Will died, I think that all those emotions went back not necessarily to Terranort, but to Terra's trapped Heart. And that is why all of the sudden Terra's Heart fights back, why he's capable of rattling the bars of his cage and ripping off his muzzle and saying "I'm in here and you are NOT going to hurt my friends."

The heaps of symbolism on Lingering Will's shoulders are such that narratively, he could never have succeeded. Once he was made, Terra was never, ever going to be able to put himself back together on his own. I really like that Lingering Will's destruction happens prior to Terra being restored, because it supports my read that that was very much a necessary step in the process. It ties several themes present in Terra's story and death together in a way I really like.

Also, for some angst on top, since this post is built on a very sad theory already: If Lingering Will's essence gets reintegrated into Terra at the end of the day, it's not a stretch to think his memories do to. What does having 12 years of disjoint memories of hollow rage and utter helplessness added to his already unpleasant set of memories about the past decade do to Terra? What's that like to process?

[avatarofwar]

Hesitation is defeat.

[catcryptid]

absolute wet dog of a man

[joh-a-umeko]

[st-hedge]

Starting a sekiro replay was a good choice

[ro-botany]

i am about to queue as many posts about hit video game Sekiro as I can find, followers block the tag now if you want to live

[ro-botany]

youtubers stop putting text on screen in the exact same location the closed captions are by default challenge (impossible)

[yeyinde]

Collins is gone.

Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.

Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.

All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.

After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.

It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.

And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.

The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.

Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.

ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.

Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.

*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.

If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.

items needed are: food, diapers, medical masks, men’s and women’s joggers (all sizes), children’s clothing (newborn to size 14), children’s shoes, summer clothing, men’s clothing, toiletries (lotion, Vaseline, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, etc.), strollers, adult depends-all sizes, dog & cat food

wīya ispīh iyiniw-kiskīyihtamowin pasikōpayiki kāwi askiy ta-iyihyīmakan

[candycoatedrox]

getting characters into world-endingly intense codependent queerplatonic relationships is literally what life is all about. it is literally what we were put here on this earth to do

[toastyglow]

the backrooms are simply not as scary conceptually if there is Something In Them

[toastyglow]

the whole reason why they're so unnerving is BECAUSE there's nothing in them!! because they're unrelentingly liminal and lonely and uncomforting. there shouldn't be a monster guy in there chasing you. you should glimpse other humans (?) from a distance but they walk away before you can close the gap and then they're gone. things should run away from YOU. do u get it

[evil-enby-osoka]

i hate that nonbinary people can't be, like, nonbinary.

whatever we do, we can't win. we can't be seen as actually nonbinary. people binarize us and often mock us or get aggressive or dismiss and ignore our nonbinaryhood or something else.

if we don't medically transition, we are "just cis trenders."

if we do medically transition, we are "just [binary trans] eggs."

we are "technically transmasc or transfem anyways" if we don't use these terms.

we are lumped together with binary trans men and trans women if we do use these terms. our nonbinaryhood is ignored or seen as some kind of "gender-lite."

we are aggressively pressured to disclose if we're AFAB or AMAB, TMA or TME, transmasc or transfem, "boy nonbinary" or "girl nonbinary." and if we refuse to answer, people get double mad at us and pick something for us anyways.

if we show the slightest hint of something that could be interpreted as binary gendered, we are immediately binarised.

if we put a lot of effort into looking the most ambiguous or androgynous or neutral, people still try to find something. and they become aggressive. people often EXPLODE [PT: explode] when they can't gender someone by glance.

our ways of expression are constantly mocked and ignored (like neopronouns, nonbinary-centering labels for gender and orientation, basically all things that are associated with nonbinary people).

but if we choose more typical ways of expression (for example, use "he/him" or "she/her" pronouns), people use it to ignore and dismiss our nonbinaryhood.

we just can't win, and it's upsetting.

[podcastwizard]

LIKES TO CHARGE REBLOGS TO CAST

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

you people aren't CASTING

[the-goddess-of-annoying]

NO

[theslowesthnery]

when someone is completely fucking wrong about your blorbo but you don't want to argue about what basically boils down to opinions about shit that doesn't matter so you just sit there like

"that guy's wrong tho"

[theslowesthnery]

you get it

[halfwyrm]

Here's some more pics of this thing.

[wizardarchetypes]

deeply obsessed with the salmon edit by _olive_ridley on TikTok