#murky lore

[meirimerens]

Heyo! I can't believe I'd never seen your 5+ years posts before but I absolutely love them, I spent all last night scrolling through your tags for all the Termites and I was smiling the whole time.

Do you have any headcanons about specific relationships that you'd be willing to share? I particularly love Grace&Peter, Khan&Notkin, and Sticky&Murky, but honestly I'm just a sucker for any of the Termites being friends and hanging out

Smiles hiii welcome to #myblog. and oh my god it did just make it 4 years of pathoposting (got into it late 2021 when i was Funnily Enough working on bachelor's degree... bachelor meets bachelor. working on getting my second one rn so i'll be bachelor² and he'll just be bachelor. common meiri W over this guy. common lesbian victory). time flies when you're having fun.

and ☝ i do have plenty to say about those relationships. indeed i have already said a lot. and i will not lie to you my brain is currently full of cotton and working on autopilot for basic functions so if you get back to me in 6 months once i'll have digested the event (#myevent) i might have more to say. but for now there is what there is. what i'm going to do for you is dump all the relevant links and eventually repost some images in this for easy access so you have your answer. okay put your seatbelt on. is it on.

Grace & Peter

so since you're new here. clasps hands Basically i peterstakhe. this is the ship i did not made the fuck up because when i started posting it people were already cheering me on so i knew someone else thought it before But i'm a stable and permanent resident of peterstakhtown. i say this because i have a whole tag of for the grace & peter + peter's scary boyfriend relationship i call #loft family (from the loft. la mansarde for the ones who know) in which you will find everything i can currently think about saying for grace and peter. (and rubin is here too. but you can go through the information). i also have some stuff in my #grace lore tag but if you checked out my termites tag you might already have seen this. <- okay. now you read. (there's french in there. sorry jumpscare)

Sticky & Murky

indeed already have stuff. here's the essential i could find (again, you might've seen if you've gone through it already). #murky lore #sticky lore those already. murky has attachment issues. obviously. they come as latching onto (burakh), but can also be distance-based. i think she recognizes sticky as a Brother but in a very abstract way. she's not very affectionate towards him, and he not very towards her, but it's fine, there is love, they don't need to do family Other People's Way. especially considering the family they already have. la famille homoparentale de gorkhonsk. (well there's another one.) as far as siblings go, gorkhonsk only has nutcases. you got the twins, so codependent had they been born conjoined or one eaten the other in the womb they feel like they would probably have lived better lives. i like to personally me for myself read rubin as desperate for isidor's recognition as A Son (a mix of yearning for recognition/terrible and unrecognized self-sacrifice of P2 lore + foster/adopted son of P1 lore), so burakh his pseudobrother, and they got some Cain and Abel shit going on. and brother? rubin wishes he was Abel so bad. but if he's pushed he might just start Caining it up if you get what i mean. other siblings are tangled in the strings of political alliances and obligations, giving a terrible self-effacing and self-sacrificial and upon-the-self-misery-bringing-for-political-safety vibe to the party which do not apply to sticky & murky. as developed in the lore tags, they make two halves of a menkhu. they inherit from papa as a team, as a cristallisation of recognition of the value of community and the inherent cruelty of pushing fate onto one child's shoulders (something which the ruling families do with their respective youngest). only kids who end up well-adjusted & with balance in their life in the whole town are the orphans adopted by a PTSD-ridden organs-harvester in a homosexual relationship. and that's on that. cristallisation of the value of gay people as social pillars when the children born of heterosexual marriages (even apparently loving ones) are tangled in reproducing domestic contracts they should not be thinking of at their age.

Khan & Notkin

the people know i think they make a good pair(ing). the in-parentheses does not apply nor matter age 15 that comes later. but the people know i'm a fan of an aesthete and an earthy. a blue-eyed and a brown-eyed. a blue and a red. a black-haired and one who is not. friend to enemies to "he's a decent guy"[YOU ARE DYING] oh loves it. the fact that if you ask, notkin will say they're enemies, but if you call them friends upfront, none will correct you. loves it. fact that notkin at death's door extends a reconciling hand to khan and khan asks if the girl who would share the unpleasant loveless future in the cards for them is fine, for she is a mistress as his sister is, and the whole thing of the marriage is so the oldest siblings, including the most powerful mistress whom a marriage would tame and dull (as it did her mother) are spared the terrible task of mending the broken (blood)shed that was hacked as they grew up. loves it also. patho's thing is that the children mirror the behaviors of adults, with their hurts, their social and domestic miseries, their wars, their affiliations. they're very burakh & dankovsky mirrors in that way. i love a mirror regardless (hence why i like an opposites thing, as stated above). and the people know what i think of burakh & dankovsky. also as someone who came out at 14 and fell in love something stupid age 15 (we did not pull knives on each other. aww missed out) of someone who never learned about it i can't say i've fully been there. but i've been adjacent to there.

some #loreposts you might or might not have seen:

it all started from here

khan capella lavender wedding and marriage posts (relevant to notkin as well)

same piece new puzzle comic post

5 years later peace offering post (joke but true)

you've seen this one i think. political alliance but he's your buddy too lowkey

here are images i have in the tags which i think are relevant.

^ load-bearing screenshot of sorcha richardson's MV for we don't talk about it. that's it that's the whole relationship.

^ get acquainted with catnip and dandy i have whole lore for them to #mylore #makingitthefuckup

long. sorrey. but yeah that's pretty much it. feel free to ask other stuff can't promise i'll be functional enough to give you answers that make sense but i can try. thank you for visiting my blog #myblog enjoy your stay... thank you for the sweets(sic) message 🫶

[meirimerens]

slightly on the topic of the last ask slightly/alot not but: in general how do you think sticky, and especially murky interact with dankovsky? like sticky seeing him as a doctor/role model in that way seems quite natural. how do you think sticky sees rubin? do they bond.. they have a lot of similarities in my mind: both under isidor but NOT the heir. obviously applies more to rubin as hes the same age as artemy but lieke.. yeah. also, sticky also has that My Only Interest Is Medicine/ very studious in a way that artemy is not implied to have been to the same extent [as rubin at least, or not at first at home] . okay this ask started off with me wanting to ask about murky and dankovsky and i got distracted.. anyway: thoughts on murky and daniil? do u like the common hc that they bond over beetles? does he see his younger self in her standoffish autistic swag. would she paint him in the family portrait. etc. sorry for the essay in yr askbox

sticky considers dankovsky a Medical Role Model in the way he only half does burakh, not as a values thing but as a percentage thing. burakh's practice hinges in both his Capital knowledge and the steppe ways of his father and his communities whereas dankovsky is pure unfiltered Capital (and westbound) knowledge. dankovsky brings last year's Medical Knowledge Treatise (not the current year's, people need those) to sticky who's obsessed with the slightly gross anatomical lithographs in it (i know this because i've written it). i think he doesn't like. think much. of rubin. beyond "under/after a burakh but not the heir", they have very little in common. rubin has a whole airport worth of baggage wrt heritage and heirness, it's particularly more visible in P2 since he and burakh have actually very few interactions in P1; whereas in p1 he was put forward to be formally adopted as a foster son, that is not a thing in p2, it's actually way funnier (as in painful and cruel), instead he says of isidor [to artemy] "your father", "your father", until he stops and says "father", "father", putting himself as a burakh heir. it's less about being on a same plane as artemy, a brother to him, it's about being him. when the game dev docs call him "artemy's doppeldanger", that's very much this. Anyways i don't think Sticky cares much about him. they have little in common, sticky doesn't have a tenth of the Heritage bagage Rubin has, and while rubin shoulders burakh in his practice and sticky can be #inspired, he neither has the novelty of dankovsky's Capital Endeavors nor the utmost respect sticky owes burakh for literally saving his life. he's also over 2m tall (6'9"), generally grumpy, and vaguely scary. and still sneers and barks at burakh even years after The Event because he still has the heritage en travers de la gorge + grieving and coping. bad.

as far as murky goes i don't think she cares much about dankovsky at first either. she can get sick in p1 bachelor route, but for the endeavor of us making a story with a certain linearity and mashing all of the routes into one, she does not, and only gets sick from the obligatory p2 All Children Sick event. same as sticky wrt rubin, she doesn't owe dankovsky her life (does not realize it. in the event of a linear story, dankovsky did very much help this guy greatly. tons, in fact. but it is not dankovsky who visited her when ill and promise to save her from the illness. these two, too, i don't think have much in common to start off. she is not stand-offish in the way that he is, i don't personally hc dankovsky as autistic so that would not be in my instance something that they find a mirror between each other over, his grief as an adult man over failure (or feeling of it) is completely unlike her own childhood grief of losing both parents and having the man who (she considers) is their murderer walk around the community, be relied upon and loved. grief rewires a person (real #grievingheads rise up) but it did not rewire them the same and they do not exteriorize it the same at all. she does come around to him, from 1) having seen him around already and he's not that bad 2) that's Old Man's Man and if old man Good and Loving then by extension... etc. she Does draw a family portrait i know it for a fact. she does it and never mentions anything of it. that's just her silent way of saying "you cool so we cool👍" i do fw the beetle bonding heavy though i do. i don't think dankovsky brings his collection to ToG (incl. because some of it is at his dad's) but during a visit to the town his Old Ways catch up to him and he gets enthusiastic bout some beetle crawling around and catches it. starts telling everyone about it. murky fw his collecting ways (she collects plant specimens [including hers] and rocks) so she trails him around and starts asking him about other bugs that are Not Beetles because she thinks it makes sense they be grouped together and he has to be like i'm so sorry i have no idea what this thing is. (eventually he gets himself an entomology book and they start bugwatching together. love prevails etc)

[meirimerens]

hii i know you're in the torture labyrinth (dankovsky fic) but i have been having thoughts about the kids again and went through your tag again and what are your thoughts on murky.. mishka (crowd cheers) what would she do when shes an adult? ik some ppl hc her as taking over the menkhu role, but youve said you think she has too much trauma related to blood and illness which i can see, but shes still drawn to the lines, the earth and so on. would she become some form of emshen/oynon role, even if she wasn't a menkhu? is she friends with the herb brides/maidens (LOVE that concept btw..). does she get along with taya, now that their age gap has become almost nonexistent. what's her favourite kin holiday... and so on. does she enjoy spending holidays/religious days with family/friends (burakh(+ovsky), sticky, other kids?) or alone contemplating. how would her dynamic with sticky change as they/she grows into teens and later adulthood. i cant see her moving to the capital or wanting to study like sticky but i could see her taking a year or so following people of the kin who still have a semi-nomadic lifestyle with the bulls. if you have any thoughts, so to speak

unrelated to your answer i just woke up (or rather got on my computer after waking up) and in the notifications bar your ask showed "hii i know you're in the torture labyrinth..." and i was like wughuh?

but indeed i am. not only am i in the dankovsky fic torture labyrinth i also have midterms coming this week sisters i'm afraid i might not make it. but i must.

okay re:murky for those not up to date on the #lore anon is making mention of [this one] true and real.

she never really "gets over" her visceral repulsion wrt blood, but as i've mentioned she goes Hard on the herbalism/herbology/tincture-making of the menkhu's role, i think in this, and only in this, is she able to overcome a hint of repulsion when she has to use blood or organs in the tinctures: i think what horrifies here is the blood on/in/of a warm body (trauma of the death of her parents). and vice-versa, i think Sticky is a huge gross organs and blood and operations fan (comic i'll make one day: dandy catnip stiky [and khan but it's not about him rn] hanging out at notkin's worker-flat as a adults, to cut the tension sticky who brought his medicine book goes "anyone wants to go see a diagram of a tracheostomy" and catnip and dandy are like ewwww don't show me this shit!!!!!! and notkin who's been trying to rest yells Can you all shut up on my day off. anyways that's his deal) but sticky's not like The Best at tinctures. indeed murky is better. so they become a two in one deal. they work together (even if sticky is "easier" to deal with as a person because murky loves going away into the steppe when she doesn't want to socialize. very much like my father and me in this regard which tells you something about us more than about her) and will work together until the end, where the next generation's menkhu (and in my head, even if they're of the same age with murky, it'll be Taya, or a youth of Taya's circle) comes around. Murky is Essential to Burakh's & Sticky's practice as they grow up because She's The One who can pick the herbs. Burakh is also very good at it, but as time goes he can't go out in the steppe and wander off for hours because his legs hurt, and Sticky no matter how hard he tries he struggles a bit. Murky Is Here Murky Has It In For You. both sticky and murky are emshen more than they are fully fledged Menkhu because both do not fully master the intertwineness of things, but they both do enough + work under Burakh so socially they're let to (if they want) do the Menkhu things such as cutting up bodies (which Murky doesn't want to. but she's socially allowed).

she is still really close to the herb brides and to the maidens she once knew who've now become brides because as stated -> Goes There In The Steppe. they're also murky's informers on the state of the herbs this time of year, she can go to them and be like Do you think you could grow us blood twyre. i kinda need blood twyre for a thing. and the herb brides will dance the dance that coaxes blood twyre out of the bloodground.

she grows really close to Taya (in no small parts because Taya, or someone from Taya's circle, will take up the menkhu torch after them) and they see and speak of each other as equals. taya studies under Burakh like the rest of Burakh's bond did (or kinda-did) under Isidor. "getting along" and "being close" are two different things, murky again is not really a Sociable person but she and taya find each other so often (-> the steppe) that they link up and bond.

murky's favorite holiday is the end-of-winter one (which in the steppe corresponds with the spring equinox because the snow stays that long (even longer)) where there is a lot of eating as you within rites eat what of the winter's reserves is still left to celebrate Making It Through the winter and as a way to intice warmth to come quicker (in Murky's time this is less of a Huge Deal because even the Kin [those who live in the town, but still of course participate] have access to stuff like. flour and sugar so it's Technically harder to starve if the temperatures drop again after the spring equinox). she's not found of the noise and the crowds but she fw the dancing so she. say it with me. goes out into the steppe. and someone brings her food eventually. it's a big Herb Bride Day too because they're thanked for last year's harvest which allowed the people to live through the winter and are asked to do good again this time and make the plants grow quickly quickly. murky mostly prefers keeping to herself Due To Noise And Crowd but the household typically holds a smaller gathering after the main party so she can celebrate.

indeed she does Not go study in the Capital, i think she visits a few times but crowd & noise etc. annoying. i like the idea of following the seasonal migrations of the semi-nomadic members of the tribe who come back to the town come fall but also i think one day she just packs a huge bag and goes "i'm going to spend six months out in the steppe alone to study some new herbs" and Burakh is like 😨 but like what can he do. so he gives her a gun in case she needs to defend herself. she comes back alive, unharmed, with a bunch of dried hare meat in her pack she killed and skinned and processed herself and enough dry herbs to pack a Capital pharmacy. pathologic 5 (4 is for clara) of murky's periple in the steppe. survival not-horror (or maybe a little bit horror but it's just isolation and mindgames) where you gotta handle your water and food supply and have a book of all the herbs you need to find and identify. ok.

[meirimerens]

thinking about the burakh mishka spichka family developing their own sign language spurred on by mishka for when she goes nonverbal just figuring shit on as she goes...

[meirimerens]

so i finally watched the grace relocation quest (the one where she ends up living with peter) and its so silly. those two are crazy in their own way. peterstakh adopting grace vs burakhovsky adopting mishka and spichka. they are meeting for a parents club and argue about how to raise their kids correctly

the Peter Becomes Dad quest is so fucking funny to me. what do you MEAN you put the daughter of alcoholics who likely suffers from some kind of FASD from it and is likely predisposed to addiction with the town's notorious alcoholic!!!! but i do think her and peter make a betiful family... i've spoken about it on here already i think rubin Struggles with being a father figure because 1) orphan behavior 2) he spent the past few years of his life fighting for recognition in the eyes of someone he saw as a father [and who saw him as a foster son from P1 canon] so he's quite uncomfortable being Grace's Dad because he has no good association with fatherhood... so for now he is Grace's Dad's Boyfriend. and they all fuck with it 👍 they're comfortable with it

i know grace is SPOILED in the peterstakh e grace household. both peter and rubin come from Not Only Child households [peter. literally has his twin & rubin has artemy to fight against As The Other Son] so they spoil her. she's like their little princess. i think they both begin to spend a lot of time and energy caring for her bc it helps them keep their minds off The Darkness (and peter keep his hands off the booze). they all kinda. imprint on each other like baby birds.

it's a bit different in the burakhovsky e spichka e mishka household because even if the kids are as independent as Grace / Raised Themselves, they do really like their freedoms still... Murky is still spoiled & cared for more than Sticky because she's younger + needs more support while sticky does whatever the fuck he does but i think this family unit doesn't have the. Fusionality of whatever the fuck peter and grace have even if they love each other very very much... of course they do.

(still holding your leg so you don't try to escape)

peter's mom adores grace btw. everyone goes to her for a holiday & she has been sent a letter that one of her sons has a kid now and she's like. Oh My Fucking God. she fully expects like. a baby. an infant. like one of her sons had one like participated in the making of one. like how babies are made. so she kept some baby clothes for her son's child but instead she meets 15yo Grace. & since andrey would rather khs than have to care for a child that did not already raised themself + peter is like. not making any it's a bit complicated now with the. boyfriend. the baby clothes are useless...... so Grace adopts a bunny & the baby clothes go on it. you know what i mean?

dankovsky's mom adores her grandkids. she does. she always wanted grandkids & when her son came out as Not Doable Sorry she was like "but you can still adopt... right? 🥺 you'll adopt..." so when he comes home with his man and 2 kids gotten for free in the boyfriend package she is so happy. she adores murky because with her dark hair and thick brows she looks just like dankovsky and mom's like omg... it's like she's really your own 👀 and he has to be like YEAH BUT SHE'S NOT. I DIDN'T HAVE ANY HAND IN THE MAKING OF HER. etc... mama dankovskaya wants to take her granddaughter in her arms soooo much but murky doesn't like being touched by strangers too much so dankovsky has to like. brief his mom on how to interact with his autistic daughter. beautiful family.

that was long. sorry. many thoughts.

[meirimerens]

do you have any headcanons for pathologic characters having mental disorders and/or neurodivergency? from what i can tell from your ATA fanfic, Burakh probably has posttraumatic stress disorder. (as well as, well, Mishka being canonically stated to be autistic.) so what are your thoughts?

boy do i. throwing in other stuff that's not necessarily a mental health condition or neurodivergency but that i think affects them like brain-wise + for me to rember lol.

In general basically Most people in this town from an atmosphere of social misery have a little Something Something. most are grieving and some are Poorly Coping with a shit past, whether it is because of abandonment, loss, grief, so on and so forth. the plague adds More Grief and hands out PTSD like corn to the hens. some who have like. Syndromes that could be brought to a psychiatrist i can think of

Burakh: PTSD (war medic lore + The Plague Bro) + might lend him some Prolonged Grief Disorder if i feel like it

Dankovsky: i don't think how he is pre-Events comes from pathologies i think he's just a closeted gay male in academia, that plays a number with your mind (the self-aggrandizing and prideful behavior of being a know-it-all man in academia + the fear, restlessness and paranoia that comes with having to keep your homosexuality secret -> combo of evil). develops PTSD thorough the game, mostly becomes Twitchy, reckless behaviors, intrusive thoughts, and then it settles in post-events like nightmares flashbacks the usual

Rubin: PTSD (soldier/mercenary p1 lore) like shell-shock PTSD which in my mind's eye translates into obsessions/intrusive thoughts. he also has a lil Something Something from having had Not The Best parental figure and having to fight for recognition until he burned himself but i'm not sure what Diagnosis that is. it's just Shit's Fucked Diagnosis. self-esteem in the dumps.

Petr: i go back and forth between bipolar, bipolar schizophrenic, schizoaffective, like i haven't settled on something yet, but bipolar (or bipolar-like, like the "mood disorder" of schizoaffective) is a given (mixed episode in P1 and depressive episode in P2 if you care). obviously addiction. i go back and forth if i see the hallucinations/delusions he has as something from the bipolar disorder, from the addiction, from something else entirely... very hefty and powerful game so all if fair. + The Guilt. (might become paranoid from that)

Andrey: i don't know if i want him to Just Be Like This or for whatever his problem is to be pathological. someone infused in me an ADHD diagnosis for him and while i go back and forth he strikes me as the kind of guy who behaves better on Ritalin. but is it because of a neurodivergency or because he just loves drugs. much to think about. + The Guilt (might become paranoid from that too but ykno. "motor activity eliminates mental activity"...)

Anna: Girl's Scared Disorder. i'd say paranoia but is it paranoia if they're really after you... ykwim. Obdurate/insular paranoid, but is it truly pathological if walls having eyes is like not out of the reach of possibilities... etc

Katerina: canon addiction and what that brings. i think hers pushes her mostly to depressive episodes instead of aggressive/exteriorizing ones.

all of the orphans, by virtue of being orphans, have some kind of Issue, because not being socialized properly/cared for/living in social and psychological neglect like Does A Number on your brain regardless. most of them kids got that SLS (Shit Life Syndrome)

Mishka: her canon autism + methinks an attachment disorder because it fits with the timeline of her losing her parents around 3 of age. Prolonged Grief Disorder too perhaps? much to think about

Notkin: Tourette's, mostly motor tics. + a dys, i was shared the hc of dyslexia and i think i'll espouse it. i also think his family life was kinda shit + living in the streets is Actively Dangerous so like. (C)PTSD? i think it's The Least Of His Problems but it mostly makes him twitchy, doesn't dare get much sleep, needs to never have anyone or anything behind his back, stuff like that

Grace: some kind of FASD (fetal alcohol syndrome disorder) since her mother canonically drank while pregnant with her, i think hers mostly manifests as memory problems and learning/speech disabilities (also doesn't help that. orphan), poor reasoning and judgment skills & vision problems. all of those are also wrapped in the package of like. not having been properly socialized as a child

^ shit life syndromes

[meirimerens]

do you have any hcs about the kids/termites and their lives before the game? if so... please share (i love all your hcs dearly!)

thank uuu 🫂 and while i mostly have hcs for the kids after the game i have a few for some of the kids before

Grace: her mother used to pour twyrine on the graves, dance near them and sweep the stones with her hair, and Grace has been trying to recreate that in some ways. she cannot dance very well so she mostly does little steps around. she is in contact with herb fledglings a lot as she's just right by the steppe and sees them dancing often so she's like. hmmm. could take inspiration from that [and then she doesn't because they dance like crazies]. since she sings songs and tells poems to the dead, I think she has a stack of papers where she writes them down; she never learned how to write so they're written in a language only she understands. she used to steal twyrine from andrey's bar to pour on the graves but now he leaves some by the door so she doesn't have to come in, or leaves them by her Lodge when he goes to the cemetery. he also of the people who leave her some food.

Murky: tracer of lines on the ground enjoyer. i think she spent (still spends) a lot of her days wandering around just making paths on the ground with a little stick. people at first were freaked out bc they had no idea what these lines were/where they came from but soon realized. oh it's just her. she always makes a point to fill the earth back in at night and comes to it again when morning comes. etc etc. she collects anthropomorphic & zoomorphic rocks and pieces of bark those are her dolls.

Khan: he was supposed to be sent away to study, at least for a while, at the Capital; it ended not panning out. he has brought many books to the polyhedron, which he doesn't read often, and more has them here as a keepsake. an interest in astronomy blossomed when he started hanging out in the Tower because you can see the night sky from it.

Notkin: i know his jacket belonged to someone else. I'm still deciding if he has stolen it or it was a hand-me-down. i think it might have been his father's, that he took after he died as a keepsake, or an older brother's who didn't survive the first outbreak. not necessarily about His Life Before The Game but I think he has face tics to me, that are more prominent when he's stressed. he has helped many a stray cat deliver her kittens.

Sticky: i know for a FACT this little thief has a huge stack of matches somewhere. and I know for a fact he makes little towers out of them. and he thinks of peter's polyhedron "I could do that too [with matchsticks]. i also think he hoards gasoline cans and smells a bit of it.

all i gaht for now ! :3