#and you can lose a little friendship based on preferences like sebastian asking about what books you like

[firestorm09890]

Penny stardewvalley makes me so sad because she's SO sensitive to, like, basically everything you tell her (telling her that you can't stand children while two children are nearby is a pretty lousy move but -1500 friendship?? being a jerk to other characters' faces typically loses you about 50 points, and if you choose the option labeled "creepy" and ask Leah for a kiss in her 2 heart event she physically hits you and kicks you out of her house but that's only -100 friendship…) and so if you want to befriend her it's a whole lot of lying and tiptoeing around her feelings (2 hearts: George was right but saying that makes her feel bad. 6 hearts: her food sucks but even if you try to be polite about it she feels like a failure; only a bald-faced lie pleases her. 8 hearts: saying you don't want to be tied down with a family loses you a little bit of friendship and she's only happy if you say you want kids) and I can't help but think she's a product of her environment. She lives in a trailer with only her mother, who gets drunk every night and has something of a temper. Penny's like a skittish rescue animal who won’t even come out from hiding under something unless you leave her lots of treats

[cautelous]

Julian has issues. That’s the post.

Just kidding. This post is about exactly why Julian - C - is so absolutely obsessed with Caitlyn, because it’s a foundational part of his character that I haven’t written a full meta on before. It also serves as an overview of his history, which is why it’s very long. The last few paragraphs cut to the meat of the issue, if you’d prefer to skip the backstory recap.

The start of all of this is relatively simple: Julian’s always been starved for affection and attention. During his time in the Marchand household (a time he’d like to wipe from his memory) he received little to no positive attention from any of his family. Quite the opposite. His skills and interests were generally belittled, and it was clear to him from a young age that no one in his family really wanted him to be around. But it’s not as if a rich and public family can just disappear a kid, so Julian ended up playing the role of a happy and quiet son in order to not make his situation even worse. Better to be left alone than hated further.

Then he ran away at 14 and spent the next few years living as a runaway, which meant that any acquaintances he had were at arms-length at best. (While he may have occasionally introduced himself as Julian during those years, a lot of it was spent relatively nameless or under various pseudonyms.) Of course, he eventually got more established as a criminal person with a set of in-demand skills (pickpocketing, gaining the trust/friendship/confidence of strangers, etc.) and had a stable place to live and more contacts... but with that came its own issues, because now he was doing a lot more than just stealing for his daily survival and/or a few niceties. As a con man in a corrupt Piltover, Julian found himself in a life that rewarded the exact sort of behavior that his former family displayed: being manipulative, callous, and, in the case of his brother Sebastian, a gambler and drinker.

Julian was not a good person during his years as a con man. (Part of this is probably because he was very much a young adult at the time, albeit one who had to grow up pretty fast due to being a runaway. He was passing himself off as several years older than he actually was, as well.) He had no compunction about conning people out of large sums of money, or about generally being a bit self-absorbed and rude. Bleeding hearts don’t make it in that sort of career, so he shoved away a lot of his natural empathy in favor of looking out for himself and himself alone. Not to say that he was heartless, but... again, he wasn’t a good person.

In summary, he became the exact sort of person that his 14-year-old self had ran away from. He would have continued on this path, living a life of fraud and vice, if not for Caitlyn.

Caitlyn and her one-woman quest to clean up Piltover and right the wrongs of the city. No one really believed she could do it at first - what, it’s not as if she was the first young officer with dreams of cleaning up corruption - but then she started making actual change. Most people still wrote her off, but Julian had enough foresight to see that what she was doing was working. Add that to the fact that he didn’t particularly like the people he worked under (it’s not as if he could have worked solo, after all) and a gut feeling that something was wrong with what he was doing... and you end up with a man trying to go on the straight and narrow.

It worked, for a bit. He left the grift, watched as a good deal of his old associates ended up caught (thanks in part to him - he wouldn’t want to be recognized in his new life, after all), and tried his hand at a university education. Art was still his passion, even if it had been forced to take a backseat to con artistry, and now he had the chance to pursue it. But he didn’t make much in the way of anything beyond surface-level acquaintances, because they might start asking questions that he can’t answer. He certainly didn’t seriously date - he had enough morals to know that an honest person doesn’t deserve a dishonest partner, and it’s not as if he could tell anyone about his past. So he tried to live a normal, upstanding life. He really did.

The issue was that a normal, upstanding life is painfully boring one to someone like Julian. He’d been stealing for years, in one way or another, and stopping - even for the sake of self-preservation - started to eat at him. And then there was Caitlyn, the woman who’d given him some of his conscience back. She’d been promoted to Sheriff and whipped Piltover into a state that seemed impossible just a few years before, and whenever her photograph showed up in the morning paper...

Well, he saw the same sort of look in her eyes that he saw in the mirror. The look of someone who needed more to do. (Maybe it was really there. Maybe it was projection. He doesn’t know.) And that couldn’t be - she’d changed the city, she’d changed him, so she didn’t deserve to sit there just as listless as he was. Maybe there was some self-centeredness in his next decision, too, but it was for her as well.

Enter C and his cards. The “C” has always stood for Caitlyn, although at first maybe it also stood for “challenge” or something similar. Something for the both of them. Something for Julian to do to keep himself sane and appease the part of him that couldn’t let go of the thrill of stealing. Something for her to make sure that she didn’t stagnate. That’s why there’s never been a C heist in Piltover - not only would it be a crime against the city that they both hail from, it wouldn’t be a challenge or an escape.

Julian was so pleased when she put the pieces together and headed to Demacia. He wasn’t going to be boorish enough to directly invite her to chase him, to try to stop him, to play this game. But if she’d kept ignoring the cards, he might have had to. (He didn’t want to give away that this was for their city and for her, after all. The more mystery the better.)

Then she nearly caught him. That was probably the final nail in his coffin. The last push he needed to end up... like he is. Because that meant that they were equally matched, that all the effort he put in was finally worth it, that she was paying attention to him, that she was just as ready to chase as he was to  run. That he was something that she wanted, even if that want was to catch a criminal and nothing more.

And at home in Piltover, as Julian rather than C, he found himself changing too. He listened to the now-Sheriff’s ideas - her ideas about how everyone had a place in the world, her ideas about redemption, her ideas about how Piltover should be. He started to hang on to her words, to believe in them for himself. He couldn’t stop being a thief, because he’d tried that (and because Caitlyn now needed someone to chase), but he could be one with good intentions. He could be a person with good intentions. The art tutoring job that he’d been using mostly as a cover was now something that he poured his heart into, because he could make a difference with it. And he could make a difference as C, too - after all, a Piltover without Caitlyn at its helm would (in his opinion) quickly collapse back into what it had once been. (Later, he transitioned into being an art teacher for the same reason - the belief that he could do more good if he had more students.)

So, adding all of this together ends up with Julian hopelessly head-over-heels in love with Caitlyn. She represents something pretty close to pure goodness to him, due to the fact that she’s dedicated her life to improving Piltover and the lives of others. Add to that the fact that Julian’s convinced that he would have ended up dead or morally bankrupt if he’d stayed as a con man (so if she hadn’t, in his mind, intervened and changed his course - albeit without her knowing that she’d done that) and you end up with a man convinced that One Woman is not only the reason that he’s alive, but that he’s a good person. (Or at least trying to be one.) How could he not fall a bit in love with someone like that?

Add to that the fact that she pays attention to him - enough attention to chase him across the world for years - and you end up with a man taking any attention as something positive. It doesn’t really matter that her goal is to catch him. Julian never entered this game with the intention of “winning” it. His idea of a win is a draw, a never-ending chase that neither of them would ever tire from. Because he’s not supposed to win... after all, that would mean that Caitlyn would lose, and he and Piltover can’t have that. The fact that she also sees him as a worthy adversary (again, chasing him across the world) is something important to him, too. He feels truly valued, even if it’s as a foe rather than a friend, and that is something that he craves.

Add to that the fact that she is the one honest person who knew him as a criminal first. To her, C and his thievery isn’t the secret - his life as Julian is. She knows his character (part of it, at least) without knowing him. She’s the one person that he could theoretically be completely honest to, if he were caught. (Of course, being caught would mean an end to their chase. He doesn’t know if it would be a triumph or a tragedy.)

His love for Caitlyn - if one can call it that - is built mostly off of who he assumes her to be. Because it’s not as if he’d pry into her life, no, no, no - that wouldn’t be right, it would be an invasion of her privacy and she’s had enough of that from the press - in order to find out that she’s... well, that she’s a person with flaws. It’s an idealized sort of obsession. (Finding out that she has flaws wouldn’t stop him, though. He can wave away her nearly shooting him down in Demacia, after all.) It’s based off of putting her up on a pedestal and putting himself far, far below her.

Julian also is well-aware of the fact that she doesn’t love him back, but that doesn’t matter to him. It’s alright if he’s a challenge rather than a person, because chasing him keeps her busy and - he hopes - happy. The fact that she’s doing well is what matters to him. (Which is why he gets so reactive if he believes that something he did harmed her. Even if it’s unintentional or out of his control, he can’t stand the thought of hurting her in some way. Shame that he knows so little about her as a person, then...)

It’s very bad and sad is what I’m saying here. Julian’s devoted so much of himself to someone because she indirectly showed him kindness. Because she indirectly inspired him to do better. (He has a hard time crediting himself with his own moral development.) He’s devoted his life to someone that he’s convinced that he can never get close to, because if he did then he wouldn’t be a mystery anymore. He wouldn’t be someone to chase after anymore. His “purpose”, as he sees it, would be no more.

He’s been convinced by his past that he is fundamentally unlovable - if not for his general nature, thanks to the Marchand family, then for the fact that he has to keep so much of his history a secret. (A fact made only worse by him becoming C. That, in his mind, boxes him into Caitlyn being the only possibility - which, again, he’s convinced would never happen.) So... he’s stuck. Pining after someone he can’t have. Devoting most of his life to that person because he considers it repayment for what she’s done for the city and indirectly done for him.

Julian would do almost anything for Caitlyn. She doesn’t even know his name.