#i mean i'd watch an entire show about these trauma pups

[kdramaxoxo]

its a little weird to go from a gritty and emotional story about two abused children to Park Eun Bin thriving on a deserted island (I mean did you see her hair? Lost at Sea looks amazing on her) but here we are.

[its-the-sa]

I'd love to hear your interpretations on those dreams at the end of artificer's campaign, the ones where you're trapped in a hallway with a scav and you have to kill them.

Personally, it's very interesting to me that in some of them, the player is the one controlling the scavenger (imagine a dream where you're someone else and it's you that's the killer, that's fucked up). I like to imagine that they began as basically arti's bloodlust carrying over to her dreams, but over time they got more complex, more detailed. Less of a violent fantasy and more of a reoccurring nightmare, maybe a symbol of her regret or a general disgust for senseless violence.

I have a headcanon where the dreams eventually make arti so sick to the stomach at the idea of violence she decides to give it up entirely, only fighting to kill something to eat. It's how I felt after finishing her campaign- I was so exhausted from the fight with the chieftain that once I won, I didn't have it in me to go around killing any more scavengers. I just felt bad for them and watched them run away from me. I couldn't do it anymore.

THIS THIS THIS!!! seriously, so many people seem to think that arti just genuinely enjoys murdering scavs, and... i mean i kinda get where theyre coming from, but to me it seems pretty clear that she is just constantly re-traumatizing herself.

like yes, she is consumed by rage, and im sure she does get satisfaction from killing them in the heat of the moment. but afterwards, i think it definitely haunts her. i imagine she tries to tell herself that 'they're all the same' and 'they deserve it', but she knows deep down that isn't true. she just keeps choosing violence because it's easier than accepting her loss. just like some people try to drown their sorrows in drugs or alcohol, arti tries to drown hers in blood. it's a self-destructive coping mechanism. as long as she is out there fighting for her life, finding enemies to hate and kill, she doesnt have to sit with her pain. but, once she goes to sleep, she cant run from her demons anymore. she has to relive her trauma and her grief, and she has to face the twisted monster she's allowed it to turn her into. theyre called 'nightmares' for a reason, after all-- they aren't fantasies about something she enjoys doing. even in the ones where she is still 'herself', she is trapped as surely as the scavenger is. theres no going back at that point. she has already dug herself into a hole where there is no choice but to keep killing.

and the ones where she is dreaming from the scav's point of view? that is like... the most perfectly brutal representation of repressed guilt i have ever seen. it shows that she on some level sympathizes and identifies with the scavengers she kills, that she's horrified at what she has become, and that she is inevitably destroying herself. all just by simply changing who the player is controlling. its freaking brilliant tbh.

anyway, i think that ultimately arti just feels guilty. she blames herself for not protecting her pups. she didnt watch them closely enough, she dropped them when she was running away, she didnt realize the blue pup got left behind at first, and she couldn't dive in the water to save the green pup. she feels like she failed them. so i think that once she took revenge on those toll scavs, the only person she had left to punish was herself. and she did it by going on to project her guilt onto every scavenger she saw. she chose to become a monster because thats what she felt she deserved to be treated like