#edit I went back and tagged all of my ruin essays with Quirky headcanons just because of this

[quirkyfries]

Huzzah, a user of quality! I raise you:

Ruin had different objectives during those times. Different priorities. He’d progressed through half a character arc by the time og!Puppet brought that up.

During the nexus arc, he had nothing, but BEFORE that he was perfectly okay with letting (new) moon kill him right after he’d destroyed those dimensions, it’s why he let himself be imprisoned. Then his body got tampered with by Dark Sun, and then killing him became very much not in anyone’s best interests due to something very bad possibly happening as a direct result. For a time, it was all he could do to prevent any MORE misfortune befalling the family because of him—he didn’t want to hurt anyone else after the dimensions were taken care of.

During the nexus arc, being alive became his punishment. Maybe he believed that he deserved the treatment from Nexus for awhile, after all, Nexus was one of those that suffered the most because of Ruin. (I’ve talked about this before but Nexus goes above and beyond simply getting back at ruin for what he did but anywho) This was Ruin’s survival mode, playing the long game—the one he used under Sven, doing whatever needed to be done as long as he saw another day, never mind his own feelings on the matter. I’m half sure he continued because if he were to be on the inside, he could somehow help the Celestials in a way, and that’s A reason to keep on going compared to his lack of one previously

Then, a little bit later, he finds a reason to want to live. He finds out about a dimension he inadvertently created. He created something good. After destroying everything he touched for so, so long, all the way back to Sven.

Of course he’d swear to guide it along its path, start befriending people there. At this point he wouldn’t want to leave that! So actually yes I agree with him having a singular backup that was made sometime between Ruin arriving to the EAPS dimension and sometime after befriending Ballora mayhaps, a “just in case” thing, Ruin’s the type to do that. OG!puppet was INSTRUMENTAL in his development (which is not done yet by the way,) giving him some semblance of a chance to be better, something Eclipses are not often afforded, and he took it. She offered him that because she was once in the same boat, albeit with slightly different circumstances, and she would’ve wanted someone to look at her and say “it’s not okay, but we can work on this, for however long it takes” when she was at her lowest moments.

By the time Ruin asks about his fate along with puppet’s, yes it was a safety thing, he might’ve launched right into making sure he would survive a severance like that, but I like to think the reason is that because he has so much to live for now that he has something to protect and friends that like him, frenemies of the past be damned! By that point, he’d had the chance to help out (accidentally causing a civil war in the process oops) and steer Lefty away from some extremes right after. He made friends who accepted him as he is, again not something very common in Ruin’s long life. He was able to be a key player in the initial Mimic situation by knowing how to play the long game and keep up appearances and weed out the drones and shove the kids somewhere safe for awhile. He’s making progress! Maybe a little bit of his self worth was restored by that, enough to be a little selfish and have a backup of himself stashed somewhere. He won’t let go of the first good thing to happen to him in however many years unless you ripped it from his dead body, or however that saying goes

I was re-watching the episode Earth meets the new Puppet (im not sure how to do it but it said charlie in small letters above puppet in the title)

and i realized

Everyone else's backups are set up in the way of like if they get irreparably damaged that someone else, presumably the person who's making their new body, goes and gets the backup and uploads it.

Eclipse's back ups are set up in such a way that he doesn't have to rely on anyone else repairing him to get back online.

The man just /cannot/ bring himself to depend on anyone.