#anyways i feel like people undersell the fact that he's a weird inexperienced young man

[sarcophagid]

Do you have any relationship hcs for Ithaqua?

i don't rlly do relationship stuff but i'll try and take a crack at it 🤔

i think ithaqua has a bit of an internal conflict between love (life) and apathy (death). to be human is to love, but after the attack, this was deadened, both for him and his mother. his memory issues are an extension of this theme, he loses the memories from when he was loved. in the manor, ithaqua doesn't play the primarily love-motivated role that he did in the forest, it's an aimless force.

anyways. it's probably easier to be friends than lovers although neither feat is really easy (i think it's mostly bc what kind of expectations are in a romantic relationship that make it different for him). by the time he gets to the manor he's anywhere from jaded to depressed to paranoid. also i like him as a character but as a person? i gotta take the rose tinted glasses off - he's not very likeable, at least not as nightwatch. and the catch 22 is if you don't like each other then you aren't getting anything but nightwatch anyways.

capital letters Night Watch is a persona and a means to an end. he doesn't believe everything he says or does under that label, as long as it keeps people out of his business. but lets assume the stars aligned etc. and he actually is close with people, platonic or otherwise. in that case he's comfortable enough to unmask (haha. not literally though. you need 30 points to unlock that 😔).

^ when he's relaxed he's significantly less serious. i think he tries to have a sarcastic sense of humour (keyword 'tries'). he's also the type of person tell an obvious untruth and wait for someone to go 'wait really?' so he can say that he made it up. it's incredibly annoying but robbie thinks hes hilarious (time honoured older brother tradition of recreational lying).

^ he doesn't really know how to comfort people and it eats him up so bad because guess what this feeling of helplessness in the face of a loved ones pain reminds him of? he tries to make up for that with the magnitude of his aimless effort and often fruitless attempts to enact retribution on the problem itself.

ithaqua's not the type of person to fall in love at first sight. he doesn't hang out with people with the express intent to form a romantic relationship either. if he likes someone, they'll usually have to be close friends first. that being said, i think he has trouble discerning between 'do i like like them or is our friendship just reaching a new level'.

improbability aside, theoretically if ithaqua really did have a crush on someone, i think he would want to be nice and romantic etc because this is some of the first non-hateful human contact he's had in years and he's scared something will happen Again and he'll go back to being Alone.

and while he's not completely clueless on how romance works, i feel like what he knows is pretty limited to social stereotype (chocolate and roses?? where do you even find that in oletus manor.) and fairytale kinda stuff he gleans from books he read as a kid. so he's a little lost. this is where i think he's kind of awkward and weird because he's not sure how he's supposed to act. he knows how to act to be the night watch, and he mostly forgot how he used to act when he was 'human'; but neither of those are how he 'really' is in the present. lets work on ourselves first maybe...