#and now im gripping THE THEMES tightly for firewatch au too

[quaranmine]

For the ask game, 36 & 27! :D

36.  Last sentence you wrote

already answered! <3

27.  Favourite line/scene

ough. ask me the hard questions why dont you???? so i thought about doing a firewatch au scene but i actually think the genuine answer is a combination of two separate scenes in How to Be a Human Being that i personally have never emotionally recovered from. these two scenes are also the ones i think of first when i think about the narrative themes of the fanfic. the first would be chapter six, aka the scene that set the theme for the entire fanfic and the one i wrote months ahead of time until i caught up to where it is. it's this part:

"I think we're human," Mumbo said suddenly. "Despite it all, we're humans. I know it’s important to you. You told me on the very first night I came to your house, that before you explained anything to me that I should know you used to be human. And I’ve always remembered that. Because I was the same. I only ate your soul because I wanted to be human again so desperately, and that clearly didn’t work out, but what you said stuck in my mind because I got it.” Mumbo met Grian’s gaze. “I don't think it's like a badge you can lose or some pedigree papers. Maybe we're not biologically humans anymore, but what else are we? Are we Watchers if we reject everything about them? If you could teach Pearl how to be human, then maybe being human isn't defined by any quantitative standard. Maybe it's just a way of living. I think we're human." Grian let the thought settle into his brain and seep into all the cracks. The idea of it just not even mattering what he looked like, or what powers he had, or what he’d done in the past was unfathomable. Like he’d been chasing something this whole time that was right under his nose. "The Watchers always told me I was too human,” Grian said after a moment. “It's why I could never do things right for them. I couldn't look at players without seeing a mirror and I couldn't learn how to accept my supposed superiority to them. The shoe never fit. But now that I’m here, it feels like I’m too much of a Watcher." "I think you're human," Mumbo said. "You don't have to be Them anymore, if you don't want to. They're not here right now, but we are." "I want to be human again," whispered Grian. "It's been too long."

ASUFHKSGHSLGJA???????

but it's also this other sister scene in chapter 8, where grian is struggling in general with the concept of having a soul and how it defines him (and mumbo) against his will. as in, how can he be in control of his own actions but not his own soul? what actually defines who you are? i drew part of this scene last year for hermitober:

it also contains one of my favorite lines in the whole fic, which i sort of feel like is a culmination of a lot of the emotional conflict grian experiences:

“Grian,” Mumbo said, voice unusually clear and confident. “You’re not the sum of every bad thing that has happened to you. Someone needs to tell you that.”

aaaaaaand now i want to reread my own fic !