#abyssal feel free to add stuff! I feel we both like the relatively normal youth hc

[fairyhagmother]

(in response to the reply on the felixravinstills blog) In my defense, you both are doing a lot of legwork keeping her tag alive most of the time. Sometimes a fandom/community really do be two blogs, lmaooo.

(missed going through these blogs too!)

Hope it's not too early to start asking about her. I don't know if you or your friend ever went into detail into it, I missed a lot, but i vaguely remember there being talk about Gaul's backstory. How do you think her parents were like? Do you have any hcs as to how her relationship with them was?

(I sent this here but if your friend wants to give their two cents/their own hcs that'd be lovely. Two cakes situation.)

-Gaulnon

HI GAULNON! We missed you! I’m considering this ask my first Xmas present as it is four am here 😌 happy holidays / happy Christmas if you celebrate!

Personally I was sort of inspired by the fact that her name is taken from one of the territories annexed by imperial Rome to have her be from a plebeian and non-patrician background. Abyssal has her meet Maximinius ravinstill at the academy, I usually set their meeting later bc although I imagine her parents being firmly middle class, they can’t afford the tuition of a school on scholars row.

I imagine both her parents working at the university. For thematic reasons, Her father was a botanist (also bc then it gives gaul something to talk about with the grandmaam LMAO yay for the political aspects of the garden! Order can only be achieved through violence this is a thing all good rulers and gardeners know etx) and her mother worked at the head of a typing pool when those were still a thing in panem. I think they are both very smart but also remarkably normal and gaul resents their lack of ambition a little. Her inherited social status is probably the one thing she is ‘touchy’ about throughout her life and political opponents will bring it up to humiliate her (even tho I hc that plebeians rose in status post dark days due to their loyalty to the Capitol).

I think a lot about the misinterpretation of Hobbes, and how Hobbes was a mathematician and grew up surrounded by violence and fear and how he thought freedom should be readily sacrificed in the name of order. Did you know he was born premature? His mother was traumatised by the invasion of the Spanish forces and went into premature labour. Hobbes called fear his twin and I think abt it a lot. I mention this bc one does not internalise his type of politics (although he wasn’t actually an authoritarian in the way we would now define the term but. I’m getting carried away) without having been exposed to some violence of some kind. I’m not sure yet.

Only thing I know is that volumnia refuses to develop class consciousness. come on girl you can do it! Once I jokingly imagined Mrs gaul unionising the typing pool and volumnia being like my mother is so stupid.

Ok what was I talking about again? I think as a single child she was close to her parents, that they were perhaps both admiring and scared of her, and actually encourage a lot of her. scientific pursuits? I imagine she would dissect a dead pigeon on the kitchen table and her parents would just be like. Volumnia not in the food prep zone!!!!