saw a still of two actors in a play taken by michael ochs and thought it'd be a great image to recreate with harry and kim. electrochemistry go brr
(click for better quality)
[image description: a paintover of a photo by michael ochs, depicting harrier du bois and kim kitsuragi from disco elysium. the two of them are holding cigarettes being lit by the match in harry's fingers. there is a small ring above harry's head with a red orb indicating a PHYS thought. the first image is a close-up frame of harry and kim's faces, the second is the full piece. /end image description]
I think the most fundamental thing I see people get wrong about nielan and their relationship in canon is that either they're treated like an emotionally blank canvas for Jin Guangyao to inject drama into, or if they are allowed to keep any of their emotional issues for themselves, it's often about Xichen pulling away and trusting other people more than Mingjue. (oh look this is secretly also just about jgy again) And what you need to understand about canon nielan is that the person who is pulling away and putting boundaries between them is mostly Nie Mingjue.
All I'm saying is that only one of these guys went "Work goes above saving your sworn brother's life" and it wasn't Xichen!
And it isn't because Mingjue doesn't like Xichen. That is his best friend, the person second only to his literal baby brother in terms of trust and closeness. But you can't really understand Nie Mingjue without understanding that he's not only doomed but committed to being doomed, and thereby comitted to his own depersonalization, and that that will come at the expense of his interpersonal relationships, because there are certain things he can't allow people to do for him because "what's right" must always come above his own wants and needs.
Xichen reaching out to other people never really comes at the expense of him reaching out to Mingjue as well, it's part of the constant balancing act he does. For as much time as he spends defending jgy to nmj we see him also spend an equally signifcant amount of time talking up nmj to jgy. It doesn't work but that's because of his methods, not for lack of effort. This isn't really about blame, both of them have deeply personal reasons to act as they do and both of their ways are... less than ideal, in the end. It's about understanding. There is a boundary of duty and position between nielan that recquires them to never truly be each other's priority and Nie Mingjue is the one most invested in enforcing it.
was I imagining things or as the letter went on did Jekyll start to gradually distance himself from being Jekyll and instead take on an in- between state where he couldn’t identify or connect himself with either Jekyll or Hyde, matching the loss of self he was writing about
still thinking about the way john byrne went so hard on clark being the ONLY survivor of krypton that he even got rid of krypto. sir that is literally just a pumby dog who hurt you