#𝐋𝐀 𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐀 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐈 ; headcanons.

[s-essha]

[ × ] ◐ & ☾

MY MUSE & SLEEP.

...   The short is that,  in general,  Idia wasn’t exactly blessed with the most conventional sleep schedule.   In younger years,  his hours were more often than not filled with early-developing video games and their predecessors,  the conventional board and tabletop games,  the facilities security was much more finicky than it was before he dedicated time into fixing it for his family ——   the first steps of being a prodigy,  no doubt,  but it also meant that in the living quarters,  announcements in the dead of night —   breaches,  emergency practices,  among others —   were an absolute necessity and often riled him out of bed soon enough,  aided awake and walking by the families staff to a safer area while helping his own little brother stay awake at his side too.

Back then,  they’d sleep wherever,  drowsy and lacking proper sleep.   The emergencies died down eventually, and Ortho one day failed to sleep ever again, which led Idia on his own.

AFTER CERTAIN EVENTS,  the kind he only vaguely hints and speaks about through trepid mumbles,  metaphorical nails hammered into his own bad habits.   Through various efforts,  tinkering and working non-stop until he physically wasn’t able to and managed to make himself ill from lacking it.   Flame flicked low and was often accompanied too by unsuspected  ( but not so shocking )  fever not long after,  working himself —   essentially —   to death.

That being said,  sleep is pointless if he’s failed to achieve ‘success’ in various days ——   days that can range from 5 hours to 48,  both too eager to go back to bed  ( sometimes due to his own curse,  admittedly )  and too apprehensive to sleep until clearing out his mission log of dailies and work,  a bad habit that stems from childhood post security being tightened back home.   There’s no good count of how many times he’s dozed off in places that he shouldn’t due to this,  ranging age 8 or so to the present;   when he does,  normally Ortho doesn’t wake him up despite rampant insistence that he absolutely must be up by X time to do Y thing.   Moreover,  there was no help in the sense that his parents only saw him and Ortho sporadically and didn’t do too much to control when and how he operated, past and present.   The most important part was making sure that he finished whatever he needed to get done.

In most cases at present,  Ortho does his part in rushing Idia back to bed.   Otherwise,  there’s no telling when he’ll achieve his sleep achievement.

[s-essha]

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@espritdediamant & @silverknightpiece SENT: MY MUSE & ANIMALS.

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BOOK 6 SPOILERS BELOW CUT.

Talk about one of the best parts of being alive!   Needless to say,  S.T.Y.X. was always a sterile facility,  a home so cold pictures of the tundra made you feel more at home,  and it was easier to escape in vast layers of early-developing internet rather than admit the fact that,  at the end of the day,  they were raised in an experimental facility with a bad rep. ( Of course,  it wasn’t as if Idia nor Ortho knew the full extent so early in youth.   Eventually they came to know,  though. )   Essentially,  pets were  ( for a long,  long time )  a total no-go;   no amount of childish persuasion or psychological studies placed into iron fists could’ve ever convinced his & Ortho’s parents that they,  in fact,  needed an animal or else they might just die.   Very convincing. 

First,  the excuse was that Mom had an allergen,  one so devastatingly brutal,  she’d break into hives with sneezing fits, her throat closing as Hades would escort her to the Underworld,  but that was a lie.   After that,  it was that they didn’t have the money,  or the time,  to care for an animal —   as a kid,  this was plausible enough,  relatively ignorant to family fortune and just how much things did cost in the real world,  but that was also a lie.   Fool Idia once,  shame on him.   Fool him twice,  and he’s more than likely going to cry at age 8,  haunted by his greatest curse of shattered dreaming;   life-long dreams of owning way too many cute companions to count.

WHEN GRANDMOTHER WAS STILL AROUND,  there was the family dog —   a snarling powerhouse of houndish rancor,  latched to the hip of her as if the big bad evil guys would show up at any moment,  coming to reclaim Medusa’s head.   There was little way to understand at his young age, much like the financials, that one wrong move and that threat became real,  and said-dog did tend to ward off contention,  and if spiritualism was left on the table,  maybe part of it had to do with how eerily similar his tag looked to ancient talismans.   With every bark resounding down halls came his hair lifting from his skin,  and with every stray tuft of fur,  Idia struggled to deny how disturbingly inky the mutt looked.   When he reached age 10,  he stopped interacting with the dog altogether.   Not out of distaste,  but rather out of unexplainable,  nauseating compunction.

It didn’t really change his mind on other dogs,  though,  or any animal for that matter.   ( Barely,  the experience did leave him with favoritism for smaller,  softer animals,  especially felines. )   If anything,  continuing to have eyes glued to a plethora of screens really only furthered his desperation way farther down the line as consequence from the mindless scrolling through publicized home videos of pets across the entire internet.   It was a dire need even as an adult; especially for one that didn’t bite back maliciously and one who was content with fingers threading through fur,  taken care of by someone who hardly took care of himself.   ( And that was the main reason it was forbidden at age 20,  partially from self awareness,  and partially from his parents’ own 'discretions'.   A lot of the time,  they scared him right back out of it the moment he got confident. )

Regardless,  Night Raven provided him with a lucky break from his pitiful prays to the Gods for the greatest gift of them all:   BEAST TAMER SKILL,  granting an endless pampering of animals until the end of time. Lucius a prime example,  ( though, his efforts to touch that fluffy fur has been strained. Thanks, Professor Trein. )   and if Ramshackle,  or anyone for that matter,  is lucky,  they might catch a glimpse of flame,  gathered in spots where campus strays tend to group,  extending food and treats,  cloaked both by hood and the evening skies, more eager to approach random domesticated animals more solitary, comfortable conditions.

[s-essha]

@howlighte & @gyaryuyu SENT: MY MUSE & ART.

light spoiler warning.

The final answer isn’t as clear cut —   in lieu,  many factors merge to present the simplest answer:   he does,  in fact,  draw anime fan art.  Part stems subconsciously,  producing senseless doodles that tend to appear in the margins of any physical paper he receives,  rare as physical copies tend to get discarded post-scanning them from his phone and clicking  ‘Save as a PDF’.   Immediate isolation as a child surely didn’t help either,  sheltered from the outside  ( family business always comes first, irrespective to age )  within walls obscuring anything but screen after screen. 

Work smarter,  not harder.   Said screens became a go-to if not primary source for early development,  maturing unrefined scribbles into acute observational sketches,  both fiction and reality preceding stylistic development.  Of course,  his dad wasn’t really a fan of any of it,  chalking it up to youth’s wish,  the cruel truth known by both him,  his mother,  and Idia.   Ortho could,  and would,  be excluded from those conversations.

BUT! ———   Mindless scratches of lead and hissing at the snap of the tip  ( another omen of never-ending bad-luck,  probably! ) drift him from one world to another,  much to his own pleasure.   Even better,  losing himself with the outside surroundings additionally muffled by trusty,  signature headphones,  blaring only the BEST  —   and often underground —   music picks,  old and new!   Ritual that trails gracelessly into Night Raven,  occasionally appearing as sketches that resemble the likenesses of other peers if not sourced from a horde of varying interests.   RPGS,  ‘80s anime and manga,  campy movies,  and that barely scratched the surface for all there was to inspire.

Observation was key after all,  circling the core understandings ripped apart piece by piece to identify every single moving part.   Dissectible information that led to deepened understanding along the same lines of understanding the human form through the sketching of his body only to be ( accidentally ) depicted a stalker when caught by other student(s).   Definitely not one of his best  ( or proudest )  moments ——   it formed a decent enough topic line for a mid-term paper;   Effects of passion in depictable media,  so swallows it up regardless with unchanged admiration.   

It made sense as a topic, anyway. Passion builds coveted material,  both indie and popularized.   Lack of it strips tales of old and new both would be half of what they were in the present,  and the future’s would be any less enticing;   a dime a dozen,  in short.   Hard effort melting into bursts of creativity to build from zero to hero,  enticing any / all refined eyes in the image of pure,  unbridled devotion to craft.   The construct,  the execution,  the effort.   It all rolls itself into a PERFECT COMBO:   artistry,  passion,  understanding!    If offered the choice,  time / focus would be placed on that rather real life,  flurries of Shroud-patented rambles accessible to any who could, and would, comfortably tune in.   Gatekeeping is no fun anyway.   AFTER ALL,  anyone can replicate anything,  but it takes something by someone,  a someone who could be anyone,  to create something unforgettable.   In another life,  Idia could only hope he’d be that anyone.