#darkest musing

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hello darkest dungeoneers. thanks to unpopular opinion i have decided i will start posting my dreadful tierlists to tumblr . all opinions are objectively correct and i will not be accepting sugestions or criticisms. (joke)

today's tierlist atrocity victim: singing

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Something I'm a bit upset about is how they seem to have removed any and all mention of Reynauld's religious trauma in DD2 in favour of focusing exclusively on his role and fearsomeness as a crusader

In DD1 there's a lot of barks (mostly when he's irrational) where he outwardly rejects his own religion among other things

The self damage line feels especially striking to me, not to mention the line where he begs for mercy on a child's behalf. Even outside of his irrational lines, there is a very harsh focus on purity and cleanliness, which can be read as OCD esq compulsions.

I feel like ignoring these barks is a grave mischaracterization of Reynauld because while it is true that he participated in the crusades, I believe there should also be conversation about how it is implied that Reynauld was severely physically abused into his religion as a child and was even trying to actively protest against what I assume was one of his colleagues during the crusades. (Before someone pancake-waffles me, no I don't think he should be excused for his actions during the crusade because of his bad childhood)

In a kinder life I think Reynauld wouldn't have even entertained the idea of joining the crusades with how much he doesn't want to be who he is now when he's vulnerable... Hell, it's actively stated and shown in both the DD1 comic and DD2 shrines that participating in the crusades woke up his lust for blood, implying he would've never turned out this way were it not for how much religious indoctrination had influenced(and honestly ruined) his life

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Exploration of Reynauld through a handful of cluster B disorders and OCD

Specifically through BPD with heavy ASPD tendencies.

Disclaimer: A lot of this is based on my own experiences and struggles with cluster B disorders and OCD, I just thought it'd be interesting to view Reynauld through this lens. as you read through this it will sound a LOT like the demonization of ASPD and cluster B and OCD but i swear to you this is literally only because Reynauld is a terrible person. also ft the debut of the "darkest musing" tag that i will use for personally sorting my darkest dungeon exploration (feel free to use it though)

Disclaimer #2: This post is cut short like halfway through and a lot of stuff is left out because i got really sick of writing sorry

Reynauld is such a fascinating guy to me because you can read him in so many ways but for today i will be reading him through clusterfuck B disorders and specifically OCD.

We will start with the ASPD tendencies because that is the easiest for me to write about but prepare for this to get rambly and interconnected very quickly.

Part 1: the disorders affecting the guy himself

I think Reynauld has trouble truly "caring" for people in a genuine sense, seeing people as precious objects/ useful tools rather than "people". He treats most people with an internal apathy and has a tendency to discard those he finds to be not capable of providing anymore. On the outside he appears cordial and well put together but internally he honestly doesn't really feel any obligation to be kind to others. In fact, his main motivation for following the Light isn't because he wants to help other people but rather because it earns him supposed "good person" points in his mind. He doesn't care whether someone is helped or not, but he knows on a surface level that people will like you if you do something for them. It is very easy for him to turn a blind eye to suffering as a result.

In essence, Reynauld likes the validation that being zealous and devout gets him and the sense of community with other closed (yet like) minded individuals. He likes being right and a lot of the actions he does "out of the kindness of his own heart" is backed with some sort of internal desire for validation from the people within his community. It is for this reason that it was so easy for him to fall into bloodlust. A lot of individuals with ASPD tendencies(especially coupled with BPD) tend to angle towards committing bad acts because of the thrill of being in power and being in control. Combine that with the fact that he was actively being rewarded for doing something "wrong" was essentially heroin for the cluster B brain. He essentially constantly felt the thrill of being in control of other people's lives while being allowed to feel the thrill of getting away with something as abhorrent as genocide.

Don't get me wrong, Reynauld is a bad person for giving into these impulses and letting them control him rather than recognizing them but the issue is that he is (on some level) aware that he is doing bad things; he just doesn't care that he is because doing these "bad things" gets him validation and community.

It would be very easy for Reynauld if cluster B was the only disorder he was suffering from.

OCD makes this carelessness a living nightmare, especially because I think it is a mix of moral OCD among other things, hence the whole "God fearing" thing. He flip flops between moral perfectionism with genuinely trying to be kind/helpful to others, and complete apathy for the wellbeing of other people. Compulsive thought spirals convince him that people will find out he's doing shit insincerely, so he tries to quell those thought spirals by doing "good things" for supposedly nothing in return (but he doesn't realize he is inadvertently asking for something in return in the form of validation)

Hence, Reynauld is trapped in a very nasty flip flop of apathy and self flagellating because of this apathy yet being too apathetic to really do anything to change that.

I need to clarify that Reynauld is capable of FEELING guilt. ASPD/sociopathy does not mean the lack of feelings rather moreso a pathological lack of empathy. Reynauld is capable of feeling guilt, anger, sadness, and all that nasty stuff, but he is too apathetic and uncaring to do anything about it except to look like he is making progress to other people so he can be rewarded with praise/validation.

It is very hard to properly explain the full scope of sociopathy/ASPD through a tumblr post. i heavily recommend reading "sociopath" by Patric Gagne for more information on it!

Part 2: The disorders affecting his interpersonal relationships

Hello borderline personality disorder.....

BPD makes it so that Reynauld suffers extensively from feelings of emptiness, exacerbated by the apathy from ASPD, which messes with his impulse control that is already pretty fucking shit from OCD, which bubbles and boils over into his extensive kleptomania. It's a viscious cycle for him: emptiness -> impulse control fails + thrill seeking behaviours start -> steal something-> MORAL OCD GUILT -> rage at his own apathy -> hollow/emptiness -> repeat

This obviously makes people offput with him, not even mentioning his discriminatory behaviours and his zealousness and his preaching and everything in between. But that is beside the point of BPD.

The way BPD REALLY rears its head for Reynauld is through splitting, most notably known as black and white thinking. It is...impossibly difficult for Reynauld to see people in nuanced grey areas as opposed to simply seeing them as pure angels or pure demons.

oh my god. im going to cut this post short because it is 3 in the morning and im too tired to continue

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Takes a huge puff of my cigarette

You know, in the context of reading Dismas as a transgender man the event of murdering a mother and daughter in his backstory can be metaphorically reinterpreted as transition and essentially "killing" who he's expected to be as a woman (a daughter and a mother), permanently changing the direction of his life the same way it does in both the dd1 comic and the dd2 interactable memory

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Trans Audrey explorations

(I have a 2.5k word long note in my notes app of nothing but darkest dungeon hcs that is just steadily growing . sweats. 3/4 of it is probably exploring characters being trans)

This exploration is mostly going to have to do with Audreys life before the hamlet! I think viewing a lot of the DD characters' backstories through the lens of transgenderism adds a lot of depth to them.

CW(content warning): Abuse, Transphobia, Rich People Being Assholes, Audrey's Husband Being Alive, Poisoning

CW (celebration warning): Audrey's Husband Dying Validates Her Identity As A Woman

I think Audrey transitioned quite early on in her life without telling anyone, assuming the identity of just some noble people just assume they've never heard of. She managed to keep it hidden so well that the man she used to be became a missing person's case that simply went cold. It wasn't unheard of for rich people to turn up in rivers after all, brigands being common and the whatnot. Auds had the money and smarts to shut the right people up after all.

She was probably celibate for most of her life and due to the pervasiveness of the religion that is the devotion towards the Light, premarital sex was probably one of those faux-pas that the higher class ("attempted" to) abide by. Some people probably lauded her for doing so ("Audrey is so chaste!" "What a wonderful Light blessed lady") but I don't doubt people were nasty about it too ("I bet Lady Audrey's a whore with money to shut people up" etc) but the truth was that she simply could not afford to have her secret out lest she put her life in danger, so she simply abstained until she met her husband.

Bottom surgery was probably unheard of for Audrey until she met Paracelsus in the hamlet, though I do believe they did meet previously while Paracelsus was deep in her studies, seeing each other as kindred spirits because they were both trans. They weren't close to each other but I feel Para was more tolerant to Audrey than she was towards most nobles (especially because Audrey to me reads as a well read woman who's rather curious and willing to learn, though not quite enough to invest her life into studies the same way Paracelsus or Alhazred might. However, if they were to approach her with the intent to teach or to educate her Audrey would be more than willing to lend her time to listen)

I don't doubt her husband was "kind" at first. Pretended to be understanding about her "condition" and promised to keep it a secret. But over time he would use it as a way to keep her quiet about the abuse. Misogyny already meant women were expected to put up with nasty husbands but since Audrey was part of a marginalized group he most definitely used that against her to further force her to stay in the relationship. He was able to abuse her for so long because of this fact tbh ("if you leave i will tell everyone about your shame and make sure you lose EVERYTHING"). Her transness was most definitely used against her while he was verbally abusing her too, referring to her with all sorts of nasty transphobic insults in order to degrade and dehumanize her. A part of her was willing to put up with it for so long as well because of internalized transphobia and the need to be validated through a negative social dynamic (If she cannot be a real woman like her husband says then she can at least be abused like one.)

And that's why one day she decides she has enough and poisons him 😌 . I imagine she gets the idea from the small cliques of noblewomen that naturally form from gossip and whatnot. Though they were probably nasty people in other regards, Audrey's group probably learned of her abuse while Audrey was venting her rage about her husband (though aptly keeping her transness a secret simply out of safety) and her friends jokingly suggested poisoning him like any other wife would ("Oh Audrey darling why don't you poison him like any other maiden would? Arsenic does the trick without any smell I've heard. Get a new one and kick the old rag to the bin" and then they'd laugh and talk about some poor person they scammed)

I will attempt to explain why the act of poisoning her husband was positively validating to her identity as a woman. All this time she learned from observation that women are meant to be helpless pretty things who should put up with abuse because that is how a "proper" woman should be. In essentially being "granted permission" to fight back her first act of fighting back was given to her by people who she considered "real women" and in doing so successfully she acted like a "real woman" which validates her identity as a woman by doing so and flips the entire negative social dynamic on its head. Through poisoning her husband and standing on her own two feet she breaks the self imposed expectation of not fighting back if she wants to be seen as feminine, hence planting the seed for the more combat oriented femme fatale character we see today in the hamlet. 🙂‍↕️

I will probably write more on Audrey because I LOVE writing her as a very messy woman. Girl . Absinthe is basically 74% alcohol and you are just shotgunning it out on the battlefield and then swinging your pickaxe at the nearest thing that moves arw u ok 😭😭😭😭

Thanx for taking the time to read this all have some Audrey shitposts i drew on my phone