#did I stay up until 1am making a stupid meme? maybe

[sams-fourth-runner-five]

Surrounded by Dedlocks, help arrived in a rather unwelcome form

this mission was wild and I was here for all of it

[forestwater87]

Are you still doing the ship meme? Well, I have a challenge for you: (evil grin) DAVID, DANIEL AND GWEN IN A POLY RELATIONSHIP! :D

Oh, sweet Moses. I normally do these from oldest received to newest out of fairness, but … Christ.

Let’s do it, then:

hell no | how about no | eh | kinda cute i guess | that’s adorable | omg omg yes | otp | you’re fucking kidding right i’m dying because of these two

So here’s the thing: if it includes dan//vid, I tend to be in the “hell no” category. If it has any Gwen whatsoever, the lowest I can possibly give it is “eh” because I love her beyond all reason. So I’m splitting the difference on this one.

and i’ll also tell you who:

proposes

Fucking … how would any of this even happen, though? There is no universe where I can get these three together that makes literally any sense. Fuck. Fucking. Goddamn it.

I mean, obviously it’s David, right? Who else would it be? Gwen isn’t gonna propose to Daniel and risk being humiliated – seriously, the closest I can see between them is some sort of kismeses kinda thing, where they both can’t stand each other but keep falling into bed (at least in part for that very reason). David is the glue that holds them together, if anything could. His heart is very full of love and it can sorta spackle over some of the rougher patches (maybe. Maaaaybe).

shops for groceries

Daniel’s presumably at least in part wanted by the cops, and not even Davey can be trusting enough to let Dan anywhere near food. And Gwen … she probably actually ends up doing it the most, even though I initially assumed it’d be David because he’s such a go-getter. But the thing is, David’s a real go-getter when it comes to things he’s actually interested in, but a lot of the times he leaves the grown-up stuff to Gwen to take care of, and I imagine this would be one of them.

kills the spiders

Daniel, hands-down. Gwen would, absolutely, but Dan gets there first and honestly … he probably wanted it more … Gwen just sorta retreats and thinks for a long, long time about why she’s in this goddamn nightmare of a relationship again.

And then David comes to her room and asks if she’ll say a few words about the dead spider, not really because he has any strong feelings about a dead bug but because it gives him a chance to compliment her talents with words and get her mind off their weird boyfriend-roommate-thing, and she remembers.

comes home drunk at 3am

That’s all of them, undoubtedly. Gwen, because she insists she has to be drunk to make Daniel’s presence bearable; Daniel, because he won’t be outdrunk by Gwen of all people (and if you think they’re gonna have sloppy blackout sex in the bar’s bathroom you’re wrong, but only because David will find them and herd them back to decency); and David, because he’s convinced he has a better tolerance than he does, and always gets distracted by the fruitiness of the drinks he favors and forgets how much alcohol they actually have.

makes breakfast

David. Gwen is still asleep, and while Daniel is awake, he’s probably off skulking around doing something cult-y and doesn’t remember to eat most of the time, anyway, so David has to cajole them both into getting some food in them before they stagger out to do their bullshit camp bullshit. (Dan and Gwen’s words, not David’s. Obviously.) 

remembers to feed the fish

David is meticulous about feeding the fish – in theory. He does keep getting swept away by other things, so while he made a very careful and colorful feeding chart, he also usually doesn’t remember until late in the evening, at which point he panics and rushes back to the cabin. Where he finds out that Gwen’s already fed the fish, because she’s the goddamn grownup in this relationship and at the camp and just deserves the world (okay, got off track there, sorry). 

I could actually kinda see Daniel picking up the slack with the fish, if Gwen was busy and David was off doing his David things. Very reluctantly, and only because he doesn’t want to have to deal with the guilt-grief David would collapse into if he let the fish die, but I also think Dan’s strict adherence to rules could lend a kinda OCD compulsion to it; like once he starts doing something, he keeps doing it because … well, that’s now a Thing he Does. (Gwen//vid could probably get him into a decent number of good – or at least less-bad – habits in that way, come to think of it.)

decorates the apartment

Oh, David. Gwen has a few items she will not part with, so they become part of the decor (if you think the Werewolf of the Month calendar is going anywhere you got another think coming), and Daniel probably would as well, but those things are cult things and are under no circumstances being displayed anywhere in the homestead. He probably has, like, a shed where he keeps his weird cult shit and David and Gwen try not to think about it.

Their place would be adorable and woodsy and absolutely only suit David’s tastes, but somehow the other two don’t mind. It’s … nice, being surrounded by David-ness all the time. It’s cozy.

initiates duets

Oh god, David and Daniel sing all the time. I refuse to think of it as anything too mushy because that makes me a tiny bit ill, but I feel like any duets would either start out or end up as lowkey competitions, because neither of them has any chill and both want to be the best at everything, ever, all the time.

As much as I love the idea of Daniel and Gwen having some sort of “Better Than You”-style song rivalry, I can’t see Gwen ever being up to singing in public and that makes me sadder than anything in the entire world. Because it’d be so fucking great and I want it so bad.

falls asleep first

Do David or Daniel sleep? Probably not, let’s be real. So Gwen falls asleep first by default, even though she often stays up til like 1am, because she’s the only one who really sleeps. David is too much of an insomniac, and Daniel is powered by cult juices that no longer require him to sleep or something. 

(Or he’s a crazy fuck. Also a possibility.)

sends the most selfies

Oh, that’s a close call. Gwen takes selfies when she feels cute, David takes them when he remembers to actually be in the frame of whatever he’s taking a picture of/with, and Daniel avoids the camera at all costs because the last picture taken of him was a mug shot and he doesn’t need any updated documentation of his appearance, thank you. 

So basically Gwen//vid are a normal couple and also Daniel’s there, Gollum-ing around in the background.

Kinda a good summary of how I see this poly ship working out, actually.

makes the first move

There are a couple interesting ways this could go – because I’m still stuck on the “how the fuck did we get here?” side of things. Gonna toss out some ideas as they occur to me, in no particular order. Pick your favorite:

David and Gwen were already a couple when Dan showed up, and David was having some Complicated Feelings™ about being attracted to their coworker (and some panic; I don’t feel like David would normally feel conflicted about his sexuality, but if he was already in a relationship it’d absolutely feel like cheating). He finally talks to Gwen – especially if Daniel’s flirting with him, which Daniel would because Daniel’s a dick – and she’s okay with letting him explore that side of himself (though she kinda wishes he’d picked someone who’s less the Absolute Fucking Worst; is he a cult serial killer in this version of events? I don’t know; I’m deliberately not thinking very hard about it because no Daniel-centric ship really works if you think about it). So it becomes something of a V with David in the middle, until at some point I imagine Gwen and Daniel get hammered, into a screaming argument, or both, and then do something they both regret and suddenly they’re kinda all a thing and neither Dan or Gwen are quite sure how to feel about it.

Gwen//vid aren’t together, but one or both of them has had feelings for a while; Daniel swans his way into camp and is all charming and a douchebag and a murdering piece of shit, like he is, and … I think David would be more easily won over, because he’s just so sweet and trusting, and so the two of them start something … I imagine David would keep it secret from Gwen, because he knows she’d disapprove, and it turns out she does but whoops she’s also kinda totally jealous as well because she knew him for way longer and he just … swooped in … And then it all comes out and they realize they’re in Love but hey, Daniel, and again I think the V makes the most sense until something triggers Gwen and Daniel to hook up, at which point it kinda closes into something resembling a triangle.

None of them are in a relationship, someone does something stupid and they end up in a weird “friends/frenemies with benefits” situation but David is too soft for that life so Dan//wen just kinda grit their teeth and get along because they both love David too much to let this go, even though they’d really prefer their current relationship of “hating each other (with occasional and regretted benefits,” which was much more their speed.

I half want to find a version of all this that is happier and fluffier but … I just can’t get there from here. David is maybe sweet enough to forgive Daniel for all the child-murdering stuff (again, don’t think too hard about it or it falls apart), but I think Gwen would see right through Dan’s crap and never reach a point of liking or trusting him, and Daniel would feel the same distaste because he really prefers people who fall for his shenanigans and feels unsafe around someone who so clearly isn’t buying any of what he’s selling.

plans spontaneous trips

Where the fuck are they going to go? Who is going to be in charge of that? How on earth do we get there from here?

Seriously, this ship makes no goddamn sense and I do not know what to do with any of this noise. How dare you, Anon. 

How so very dare you?