#💘 The Redemption I Seek is with You

[malewifehenrycooldown]

haveyoueverseenanunhingedmansodamnattractive.mp4

[video ID: a cutscene from NMH3, in which the side character, Henry Cooldown confronts the player character/protagonist, Travis Touchdown, who is also his brother. They are standing in the parking lot of the No More Heroes Motel, but the surrounding area is seemingly covered in a fog or orange tinted haze.

The dialogue between Henry and Travis goes as follows:

Henry: “How many times must I say this? I saw a movie about God, and it just flowed through me like electricity. I realised the anguish of having such a good for nothing-for-nothing little brother, and came to the conclusion that I have to stop you.”

Travis: “Yeah, no thanks. Quit getting in my way with your personal bullshit.”

Henry: “Hey, do you remember?”

Travis: “Nope.”

Henry, while approaching Travis: “Listen, little brother. It was a snowy day. We three siblings made our escape from our serial killer father.”

The video ends abruptly. End of video ID].

[sheyshocked]

Ship that is unpopular but you still like: 💘

I think Daniel/Leo is kinda cute. I like the idea of them seeking redemption together, getting over their pasts and traumas as they go (and ngl, I find it funny that both Manfred boys would be dating the same android model 😂). Shame people don’t like this ship as much. I think it has a lot of potential.

Controversial Shipping Asks

[malewifehenrycooldown]

sometimes i forget Henry is an incredibly scary man.mp4

video id below

[video id: nmh3 gameplay footage on easy mode. the battle setting is the no more heroes car-park lot, and the boss character is Henry Cooldown. Henry is imbued in this green light colouring, indicating he is in a much more powerful state, which is communicated through his attack patterns, that range from projectile energy spheres, projectile slashes, a multi-slashing move and using himself and his powers to create a wheel of energy to lunge and attack the player. throughout the video he is also consistently teleporting. the player character Travis, is doing their best to avoid these attacks, and make their own strikes when there is an opening/pause in Henry's attack patterns. end of video ID].

[malewifehenrycooldown]

[video ID: a cut-sene from nmh1, where the protagonist, Travis Touchdown (the one in red) and his twin-brother Henry Cooldown (the one in grey/silver), are dueling in the No More Heroes Motel parking lot. Henry says the following: "But Travis, my brother... We're similar in many ways." End of video ID].

[malewifehenrycooldown]

thishasawakenedsomethinginmethaticantexplain.mp4

[malewifehenrycooldown]

TW for slight mentions of henry’s emotionally abusive parents + big warnings for those with tokophobia as this post is a decently indepth discussion of fankids.

HHHHH OKAY. So. I’ve been sitting on this idea since April, and only now I’ve felt a little comfortable talking about it since I’ve mentioned it to @eris-ships. But also the developments that occur in TSA/NMH3ms narratives have def made me a bit more confident in my decision to talk about having fankids with Henry. Like look. I don’t want to have kids myself (it’s a whole can of worms that’s basically just: ‘I can barely take care of myself, how do you expect me to raise a whole human being from scratch?!’).

Anyways what kinda spurred this was from NMH3’s peculiar ending + these images [one, two and three] and the third one particularly made me want to throw my phone because it triggered my baby fever BIG TIME but also just the thought of Henry being a good dad made me so happy 😭😭

But also at the same time it’s so sad too especially With knowing the implications of his backstory and how his own childhood was taken from him, and so that’s what makes the thought of him being a dad SOO appealing to me. To me, he’d do anything to make sure his own kids don’t experience the same horrors and trauma he did as a kid. It’s like. Him making up for lost time that he never got and. GAH THAT MAKES ME SO EMOTIONAL?! [I’ve made an entire post about this here if you’re interested]

OKAY ON TO THE ACTUAL FANKIDS IN QUESTION:

Amelie (on the left) and Rhys (on the right). Before you ask, yes Amelie is named after the film ‘Amelie’ and it’s important because that film was like a special date night for Henry and Shallow.

The reason that they pop up in NMH3 is that they’ve time travelled back into Shallow’s present bc. Henry has gone on a destructive path and that if he ends up permanently dead, it would result in their own existence being erased by the universe and they don’t want that to happen.

Oh yeah, I should mention they’re on their tenth try to make sure that their parents and future selves are saved. Which is at odds of the (known) time-space rules put in place to keep abilities like this in check. If Rhys keeps resetting the timeline, the more imbalanced and fragile the fabric of space-time becomes - and that could just jeopardise the entire fabric of the universe itself. So yeah. The two are kinda at the end of their rope in regards to options, and honestly causing timeline paradoxes is the least of their worries at the moment.

Amelie is a bit of an odd one out in her family as her personality is a lot more sociable and outgoing. While she does wear a similar fashion aesthetic to her mother, but specifically takes a liking to ‘yami-kawaii’ subculture. her abilities as an assassin are more so from her father. She particularly has her own version of Henry’s ‘barrage mode’ and additionally a beam katana that’s similar to Henry’s Vosmir.

Rhys, is more so the quiet, reserved one much like her parents. They are more comfortable wearing suits, and more masculine attire, but xyr abilities are more so from their mother. Rhys is… kinda responsible for their current journey of doing time travel to secure their future existences + correcting the main course of the timeline in general. Much like their mother, they wield a dual set of beam katanas, but it should be noted that they also use military grade knives + can pack a surprising punch when in close combat.

Before anyone asks, no they’re not twins. Amelie is born first, and she’s about 2-3 years older than Rhys, who is the younger sibling - although they are both younger than Jeane Cooldown. I should stress that they aren’t assassins either but have been trained by parents, but even then their appearance in NMH3 is just two university students trying to save their parents, and this is while the fabric of space-time hangs in the balance and it’s not made any better when your dad was the one to bring aliens into the equation [which has kinda fucked with the main timeline that was put in place to begin with.]

Amelie uses she/they, Rhys uses xe/they/it pronouns.

Picrew one (LINK) and Picrew two (LINK)

[malewifehenrycooldown]

Having very normal thoughts about Henry <- desperately wants to be in his arms and kissing them

[malewifehenrycooldown]

Me rambling about my ship with Henry + being emotional about a specific song from my self ship playlist with him.

click the keep reading if you’re interested looking over my incoherent ramblings!!!

GOD. Listening to Sleep Token’s Jaws really strikes a specific emotional chord with me that’s hard to explain other than THAT CRESCENDO of instruments is so powerful.

ALSO THE LYRICS. CRYING SCREAMING LOOK AT THE LYRICS!!!

JUST THE PASSAGE OF “show me those pretty white jaws / show me what you’ve lost / show me what wounds you’ve got / show me love” IT MAKES ME ALLL FERAL INSIDE JUST AHRRRGGGH!!!!!.

IT SHOULD be mentioned that again, this is just one of (MANY) songs that perfectly encapsulates my ship with Henry, esp. in context of NMH3 + Henry’s whole character arc (that’s running around in my head) is of him slowly recognising that he is more than an assassin, that he more than a weapon to be used by his family, and that with this new found freedom he can potentially carve out his own individual path without having to listen to the order’s of other people.

And yet after all this time in his life, it’s someone like Shallow Candy, who is the one of the few people he meets that takes the time to see him as a flawed, traumatised human being that is more than an assassin. She cares about him, she worries about him because she’s one of the few people who knows the true extent of his upbringing. She loves him regardless of his flaws, and that even after his disappearance in between nmh2 and TSA, she is still devoted and in love with him. She doesn’t give up on him, even if people in the assassin world keep telling her that he’s not coming back.

And when he does come back in TSA, she desperately wants answers from him, she loves him but god it almost broke her when he left; and when she finally gets the answers she needs and the he’s been doing this to protect her (and jeane) from the Cooldown Family’s grasp. She’s emotionally torn because she knows Henry is a man capable of anything but that she wants him to know that he doesn’t have to do it alone. Henry knows that deep down he doesn't have to take on his adopted family alone, but there's a part of him that wants to keep his personal and professional life separate. Plus in his mind, this is his problem to deal with (even if its not the most healthy decision).

When the Flesh and Blood episode in NMH3 happens, it utterly pains her to see Henry in such an emotional state but god her heart still aches for him. And although she isn’t the same naive 20 year old lady in NMH1, she does insist on showing Henry that there are ALWAYS other options, other choices that Henry can make that aren’t self destructive. Shallow wants him to know that he doesn’t have to go through such mental and emotional torment like this alone, that there are people who would be happy to share a part of the so called ‘burden’ and help him get back on more healthier path compared to the one he’s going down.

Her unconditional devotion and love for him, is what keeps bringing him back to her even if he fears that returning to her could potentially put her in danger. He doesn’t want to risk losing someone like Shallow, because for most of his life he’s never really had any semblance of proper control of his life, and now that he does have that freedom, he doesn’t want to risk having those things ripped away from him again. That’s why he’s so distant in TSA and NMH3, it’s his messed up coping mechanism that makes him believe that he’s doing the right thing when really it’s as the major cost of his own mental well-being. He does want to come back but again that fear of placing those he cares about in danger haunts him day and night, to the point of genuine exhaustion.

And so when Shallow accept him back into her life, he almost wants to fall part because so much of his assassin training has made him internalise toxic and harmful rhetoric. Its to a point where Henry kind of has a hard time comprehending as to why Shallow would still love him after all these years and would wait for him for SO LONG until he came back. And honestly she just believes the fact that people are complicated, that even if you’re an assassin, you are a human being with their own life, personal problems and it still comes as a complete shock to him that Shallow is still so deeply in love with him, despite the fact he's left her and the people he cares about for SO LONG. But honestly a more simple reason for her to wait for Henry for SO LONG, is that she wants to do is to help him. She wants to be a shoulder that ze can lean on and just… spill out his emotions. That he doesn’t have to maintain this cold stoic facade around Shallow, or anyone else. he doesn’t need to listen to orders of other people anymore, he finally has the power to take his life back and be control of his own destiny. He can finally just REST for once and be in company of people who care about him genuinely.

LIKE IDK HOW TO SAY THIS, but like. Paradise isn’t a place or a feeling. It’s a person. A person you want to spend your days with, through the good, the bad, the ugly and everything else in between.

Anyways. I’m just going to sit in a corner and cry and scream about this (internally) because goddamn I have SOOO MANH EMOTIONS ABOUT THEM . JUST ARRRRGGGGHHHH

[malewifehenrycooldown]

A disadvantage of marrying Henry is that other assassins in the industry would constantly refer to Shallow as ‘the second wife’, which would then be immediately followed up by ‘you’re much better/more nicer than Sylvia’, and they obviously are well intentioned and mean it in a more… positive way. But also… Shallow is just standing there like “Hey, I have a name. Please use it, it’s not that hard!!!”

[malewifehenrycooldown]

UMMM UMMMM UHHHHHHH UMMMMM does... does he... does he know that I would do anything for them..... 😳👉👈

[malewifehenrycooldown]

a while ago (read: two months ago) I conversed with @voidselfshipp about a silly idea. It was about the reason why Henry’s coat is absent in NMH2, and it’s because he gave it to Shallow Candy as a gift to remember him by (also because she kept stealing it especially during winter). <- two years before NMH2, they became an actual couple*.

She does make slight alterations for it to properly fit her, but they also add small personal touches to it like sewing patches and enamel pins to it. Although it still retains indicators that the coat was originally Henry’s. Extra important note is that she does wear this coat in NMH3 design, because obviously she desperately wants him to come back home and she’ll do whatever it takes to bring him back. She's hoping that perhaps seeing one of his original coats might be able to jog his memory of her, the memories of them as a couple, and she hopes whatever feelings these memories instilled in him, return and essentially persuade Henry to come back home.

[malewifehenrycooldown]

Paradise isn’t a place. It’s a person that you want to spend your days and nights with, all the while being held in their warm embrace.

[malewifehenrycooldown]

does.... henry's forehead symbol... glow when you touch it?? just... asking for science reasons*!

[malewifehenrycooldown]

oh, what I would do to be called ‘darling’ by henry cooldown…

[malewifehenrycooldown]

If you haven’t seen your partner for x amount of years and they reappear with a real glow up, and also have gone through their villain arc, you have every right to engage with them in combat and tell them they’re hot.

[malewifehenrycooldown]

Hi. Because I keep replaying the Henry v Mimmy fight in death match mode, it got my brain thinking + I’m nearly up to that fight in my second playthrough. It got my brain thinking about how it affects my ship lore but the it turned into me recontextualising Mimmy’s Character.

- important to note before diving into this silly rewrite is that the Henry v Mimmy fight. Isn’t real. It’s happening when Henry is in a Coma after being freed from Dr. letz shake and he’s been uncabronised. The thing is that in NMH2, Henry ends up in Travis’s care, who may I remind people has a house NOT FIT for an incapacitated person. And so, for the sake of this version, Henry after the fight with Letz Shake is in Shallow’s care (her apartment has a guest bedroom. And vastly a more comfortable environment for Henry to be in compared to a claustrophobic motel room covered in anime merchandise.)

- OKAY MAYHAPS I SHOULD ADD SOME PREV CONTEXT ON TO WHY HENRY IS IN A COMA: there was a battle royal set up by the UAA, and Henry was involved. There was also another assassin by the name of Doctor Letz Shake, and he’s a. Machine that was hellbent on getting revenge on Henry. And he succeeds by encasing Henry in Carbon (Han Solo style).

- SLIGHT Alteration, is that Shallow was also involved in the battle Royale, but that she is able to get out of Letz Shake’s laser beams via her ability to make portals and pocket dimensions. unfortunately due to reasons, Henry insisted that she protect herself as a means to survive the Battle Royale and that he could take care of it himself (not realising his over confidence is what gets him encased in carbon + he directly falls into Letz Shake’s trap).

- the whole Letz Shake fight is explored into more detail here (it’s better explained in that post), but Obvs the outcome has Shallow feels really guilty about this but thankfully Travis comes up to fight Letz shake and basically the two work together to take him down.

- with a carbonised Henry free, it means someone needs to take care of him, initially Sylvia insisted Travis did so (much to his annoyance) but Shallow steps in and basically says: “HAVE YOU SEEN TRAVIS’S APARTMENT?! There is literally no room there!! Henry would be better off in my care because I at least have a spare guest bedroom!”

- Sylvia takes a moment to consider and then realises ‘yeah actually you’re right on this one’

- when Henry is un-carbonised, he is basically in a coma and having horrendous nightmares. And the main thing ‘haunting’ him is this entity known as Mimmy who is the literal embodiment of Henry’s anxieties of becoming like Travis. And it doesn’t help that Mimmy is like. A cute anime girl with mech arms and stuff.

- Mimmy in this version slightly different in her charactersation, in that she playfully taunts/messes with his mind by placing Henry in scenarios that he has previously thought of in his mind, and surprise! Most of them involve Shallow Candy, and honestly most of them go the way he initially imagined.

- Mimmy uses these scenarios to persuade Henry to stay in this mind palace/to not wake up back to reality, making the fake promise of making all of his hopes, dreams and wishes can come true here if he stayed. Mimmy even insists that “you can be with her in endless bliss and not have to worry about the real world’. And the thing is, he’s almost 100% convinced by it, yet he’s torn between the voice that in his head telling him to wake up, But yet part of him wants to stay.

- Henry is further convinced to stay when Mimmy when she shows him the future NMH3 version of himself going mad and causing destruction.

- there are two explanations why Mimmy shows this. She uses this as a means to show Henry a ‘What if’ version of himself in which he never met Shallow. Alternatively, she shows him this and says that fate will eventually come for Shallow and that her death will result in him losing himself to his own grief, and makes the irrational decision to take that grief and anger onto the world.

- the latter VERY much frightens him. It’s a horrifying thought and it almost convinces him to stay. Almost…

- Mimmy, believing that she has Henry full convinced, says: “We can stay here forever and ever and ever like a happy family!” It should be noted that part of her warning sort of come true but just not in the way she initially described them + she innocently and naively believes that she can help prevent Henry from going through more emotional pain, especially since she has seen his past and sympathises with him. She is well-intentioned but misguided in believing she can stop him from experiencing more emotional pain that he has already been through. The problem is that Mimmy is missing the nuances, of it.

- when Mimmy says this, she’s made a huge error. She has tried to supplant herself to be a substitute of Jeane, Henry’s daughter. it actively alarms him, directly snapping him back to the reality of the situation.

- Henry does care about his daughter, Jeane. He’s done his best to raise her in a world that is very cynical, and has done his best to (mostly) shield her away from the world of assassins and organised crime. He doesn’t want her to follow the same path he has gone down, and has actively used as much political power in his family to make sure they (the cooldown family) does not take her and raise her to become yet another soldier to do their bidding. He wants her to have a normal childhood that he never got to experience, he wants to ensure that she is supported in a positive environment, a luxury he was never given by his adopted family. He uses this motivation as a way to challenge Mimmy’s authority.

- When Henry defeats Mimmy, she pleads for forgiveness, saying that ‘she only wanted some form of company and never really intended to harm him.’ Henry does take some pity on her, before he can ‘kill/disintegrate her’ she does warn him that there are some truths to his future but is unable to specify what happens. And the thing is Henry simply accepts them as possibilities that could happen, but that he’d take responsibility for them when/even before he gets to those points.

- when Henry wakes up in his Coma, he realises he’s in Shallow’s Guest Room. Shallow is alerted by this because she hears him wake up (because honestly it was not a super pleasant experience being in a coma and if you’d wake up from one you’d probably make a ruckus and ask the empty space ‘where am I’ hoping for someone to respond and inform you what has happened lol). She comes to his aid and basically tries to offer some comfort + explain what happened to Dr. Letz Shake. Henry is a little bit disoriented but he’s mostly glad to see Shallow is okay.

- they both have a slightly awkward exchange with each other, but mostly Henry apologies for being too over confident during the battle royale + placing himself in unnecessary danger and shallow apologies for not being smart enough when it came to their strategy in the battle Royale, and that they should have been a little more subtle in how they protect/cover for each other in ranking fights. They just. Kinda have a quiet moment together in each other’s presence really.

- this quiet moment with each other is interrupted by phone call from the UAA letting Henry know that Travis is ranked 7, and that Sylvia has given him the green light to take out ranks 6,5 and 4 for his brother to progress. Which wow. Thanks Sylvia, you really know how to ruin an intimate moment huh /sarcasm.