#📖 [ caleb headcanons ]

[acourtcfmuses]

tag drop 4/4

[edoro]

📖🗡 and [trans flag] for Belos.

📖 AU i'd like to see them in - ooooouuugh my brain generates AUs at the speed of light. this is so hard. i'd love for someone else to just flawlessly execute Every Single Idea I've Ever Had.

okay, here's one that recently popped into my head: Philip made a deal with the Collector for some form of immortality, and the Collector was like "yeah sure" and showed him a cool spell, and then giggled behind their hand like "oh man in 50 years this is gonna be SO funny"

because how it works is that he's basically a phoenix. he lives an ordinary human lifespan - it's variable and things other than old age/illness can kill him, but he usually lasts a solid 75-80some years - and then he dies. when he dies, whether it's age or illness or injury or whatever, he simply reverts back to being an infant and starts aging all over again.

he keeps all his previous memories, but they take a little while to start coming back. this usually starts happening around 4-6, and by the time he reaches 8-10 he generally remembers everything about his previous lives. that's always kind of a rough period, to say the least.

the first time this happened was a hell of a surprise. luckily, he had a grimwalker on hand who was old enough to keep him alive, but there was much wailing and gnashing of tiny baby teeth and rending of oversized hand-me-down baby garments and ranting at the Collector while he laughed himself sick over it.

being a scientific type of man, Philip's spent a long time taking notes, and by the time canon comes around, he's developed a pretty streamlined process here.

so one day, when he's six or so, Hunter is summoned to his very elderly uncle's chambers, where Belos tells him that he's going to die soon, but don't worry! he'll get better shortly. but Hunter is going to have some new duties and responsibilities...

and so Hunter's uncle-dad becomes his little brother/son, and Luz ends up getting to deal with the extremely spooky child emperor who is in fact a 400 year old man in the body of 10 year old, and it's just very weird for everyone all around.

🗡Badass headcanon - ymmv on where this falls along the spectrum of 'badass' to 'recklessly stupid' but i think that he really isn't afraid to experiment on himself.

this is the man who carved glyphs onto his own skin and then started eating animal souls to make sure he had enough internal magic reserves to deal with it, after all - while we also know he loves doing unethical experiments of all sorts on others, i think he's also the kind of person who would just leap feet-first into whatever bizarre idea he has, and if it hurts him or twists him into some kind of hideous abomination unto god, then that's simply the price of scientific advancement.

[Trans flag] Gender headcanon - cisn't. i like all kinds of Philip gender stuff but my very specific personal default is that he's transmasc but specifically in a femboy kind of way. his ideal gender presentation is 'haunted Victorian doll'. he wants to be seen as a man, but, like, a fancy pretty man who keeps his hair long and likes wearing long flowing robes and getting all glammed up. he's a sleazy evil fem at heart.

the filthy bearded murderhobo period of time was a very low point for him - getting all rough and hairy like that makes him dysphoric. he wants to be a pretty, dainty man, and he wishes he weren't so tall and solidly built. he was just so deeply grieving and sunk into trying to cope with Caleb's death by planning his genocide that he completely neglected himself for a while there, and it wasn't until he had a solid plan to cling to that he was able to start presenting in a way that felt more in line with what he actually wants.

(as eager as he was to go home, putting on those old clothes felt a bit like shutting himself into a very small, dark room. he's always pushed the limits as much as he could, but that was so much less back home than here in the Boiling Isles. and yes, this was all an act, and yes, this is a godless place and he's glad to leave it behind, but...)