#IM SUPPOSED TO BE RESEARCHING OTHER THINGS NOT VICTORIAN GENTRY

[pianostarinwonderland]

skully who r u [fae skully + a ramble on his possible background]

we have less than a day before we get the ending for this event and IM. NOT READY. im not ready to hear about how skully is a person from the past (and we're thinking 200 years or so), nor am i ready to go back to twst to hear that he's dead in our time and he's really the founder of modern halloween that nrc celebrates

... that's assuming he's human tho

and fortunately or unfortunately, there's hints that twst has been dropping that leads us to think otherwise

firstly: ears WHERE

in his live2D, you dont get to see his ears At All. not even a hint of an ear lobe. we know twst to be very detailed and deliberate with their designs so why did they choose to hide his ears

in his illustration, u can see a hint of an earlobe, but it's still very much covered

and as we know, when we look at malleus and lilia ears, we Know that they have pointy ears marking their pure fae ancestry. soooo skully..????? 🤨 fae skully real?????

i partly market the fae skully agenda bc PLS. WHAT IF... MEET . . .. .. IN OUR TIME. .. .. .. .... . PLS... . ... . .. . ..... 🥺 WE SEE HIM ALIVE BUT A LIL OLDER AND WAUGHHHHHHHHHHHHH pls i cant handle this yall

secondly: there is still that part in Episode 1-4 of skully saying to us "moshi... ne, moshi" instead of "moshimoshi", and a lot of ppl shared that the belief of supernatural beings not being able to address someone more than once is at play here. which would at least indicate to us that skully is at least not ur regular human being. and that is one thing about skully that we Can be sure about

on what skully may be, myonmyon put out a thread about how skully may be at least inspired by the Fear Gorta, a fae whose folklore was created from the irish famine. it's characterized by a skeletal appearance who wears tatters and rags. it can be benevolent or malevolent, but if u treat it kindly, it will bestow good blessings upon you. Fear Gorta also refers to Hungry Grass, which, if one steps on a cursed patch of grass (which i assume the fae created), they will always be hungry, no matter how much they eat, and will eventually die from starvation

ok why the irish famine? myonmyon and a few other theorists on twitter have speculated on skully possibly being inspired by (or maybe even being the twst equivalent of) the irish immigrants who moved to america, and from there, the tradition of halloween spread, resulting in the modern halloween that we know of today. it makes sense too given skully's character of spreading halloween to his fellow peers, who don't know what halloween is

oh but i don't mean to end this post here, no not yet. because there's a really interesting thread that i also found by Y_wwwsomething about how skully even got his viewpoint of halloween. i do like this thread because they kinda argue against skully's halloween being based on samhain, which a lot of people initially thought that that was his halloween. but samhain, even if it does have its scary side, is still a festival with feasting and noise, still very unlike skully's halloween. if anything, they suggested that the briar valley halloween is much closer to samhain.

my personal conclusion was that skully's halloween is based on all hallow's eve, and he's from a catholic family who celebrates halloween in a solemn manner. however, this thread is suggesting that skully idolizes the victorian british gentlemen and consequently the victorian halloween

let's look into the victorian halloween first. we note that the victorian halloween that was celebrated was often done by the upper class. several online sources will tell you that their halloween parties is, funnily enough, purposed for matchmaking. many halloween games involved girls looking into their futures, whether it's eating apples at midnight while looking at the mirror or looking at whatever object is in their apple or cake to see if they'll marry or die alone. halloween for them is less focused on fright and more on lover's passion.

however! their halloween parties are also dramatic in that they turn off the lights and only leave candles on, and when they greet guests, it's either by putting their own hand on the guest's shoulder or a glove filled with sawdust.

so we could have a situation here where skully, just like jack with christmas, may have observed one (1) party and misunderstood the victorian halloween, taking from it only the scary aspect and mixing it with any prior beliefs he may have had. it doesn't yet explain why he spent halloween alone, and tbh the catholic halloween celebration alone is already a near exact match of skully's definition of halloween, so im not very on board with this. could be that they are also loose enough to be festive? but im not sure

but im very interested about skully's possible reverence for the british gentlemen, which inspired his love for jack skellington! in the victorian era, they were defined by their birth (so if they were born to aristocratic parents), but men could also make themselves into gentlemen by growing their wealth and influence. some men have occupations that are respected enough to call them gentlemen (i.e. army members, members of the parliament). eventually the definition of a gentleman is one who received education from certain elite universities, but this is towards the end of the victorian era, so when trying to become a gentleman back then, it was much harder. so of course men tried to climb to become gentlemen. charles dickens actually wished to be recognized as a gentleman and so he wrote about it in great expectations.

and this is what interests me: during the irish famine, it's noted that british rule still stood on ireland, and if anything, the british elite even worsened the irish famine as they controlled trade between them. irish goods were exported out to britain and other countries while the people had nearly nothing, which either killed them off or pushed them to migrate. interestingly, british penal laws had it that irish catholics especially were suppressed—among their laws included that their land and home were confiscated by the british parliamentary officials in ireland

so what am i trying to get at here? it's that there's probably a nonzero chance that skully looked up to the gentlemen of britain... or if we're thinking in twst terms, the gentlemen of the queendom of roses. and this may be influenced by whatever was going on in his hometown, whether it's something akin to the irish famine and colonization or something else. a desire to be free? a desire to be more than what he is right now? it would very much be similar to sally and jack: sally, in how she wanted to be free from dr. finkelstein's controlling parenting, and jack in how he wanted to not just be the pumpkin king and tried to take over christmas. it also sort of mirrors leona's and jamil's desires for themselves too, how they want to be free to do the things they want to do and make an impact around them

what's even yummier is considering that if skully is a fae, or at least a nonhuman creature that has a distinctive ear shape, then he might take shame in his fae nature as he may perceive that the ideal gentleman is a human, which is similar to how sebek takes shame in his human nature. hence, his ears would be covered by his hair in order to hide this and mingle among the gentlemen.

anyway. idk how i went from "skully is a fae" to "skully is probably an irish catholic suppressed by the british colonial rule and wants to social climb hence he looks up to the ideal british gentleman, sees jack skellington in that image, and aims to be like that so that he can make something out of himself" but we ball ig

anyway, im cooked for tomorrow, im not ready yall :(