#have literally been thinking abt this all morning. god i hope my afternoon isnt garbage bc i REALLY want to have art energy when i get home

[stuck-in-the-ghost-zone]

you can't just give me "the trickster has a Ghostface mask" and "the trickster saw traps people" because I WILL make him do both of these things and it WILL be so fun the whole time . god. yeah he's so fucking fun to think abt bc it's so easy to justify why he'd do stuff that doesn't make a whole lot of tactical sense. HES NOT TACTICAL. he's not manipulative!!! it was EXTREMELY HARD for him to be patient enough to get Ashe to even trust him in the first place, and the only reason THAT even worked in such a comparatively short amount of time was bc ashe has been so completely isolated for such a huge chunk of his life he didn't understand that's what was happening !!!!!!! GOD they make me insane. anyway pointing back to tags I made on the original muse fic "hey mac why would the trickster literally invite the city's most powerful child soldiers directly to where he's hiding with their best friend isn't that a bad idea" YES. OF COURSE IT IS. BUT HE WANTS TO GLOAT HE WANTS TO BE PETULANT AND CHILDISH AND BE LIKE..FINDERS KEEPERS !!!!!!! ohhh the crux of his character to me is that he's so. silly and childish and unserious and lax in responsibility and those things combined with his powers are EXACTLY what make him so fucking scary ‼️‼️‼️

anyway yeah muse holy shit every direct interaction they have is so completely coated in The Ick and it's so fucking good. thank u for making the sleepover comparison that's EXACTLY what I've been imagining. fuckign. the parallel to Ashe's Real Friends. ashe would sit on the floor while dakota sat behind him on the couch playing with his hair. muse sits in a chair while trickster stands behind him putting his hair in all these fancy braids and just. giggling meaningless gossip like they're teenage girls. AND HE DOESNT EVEN HAVE TOOOOOO. GOD. HE COULD JUST MAKE MUSE DO IT HIMSELF. THERES NO REASON FOR HIM TO EVEN BE IN THE ROOM OTHER THAN FOR HIS OWN . AMUSEMENT I GUESS. EEUGHGH I hate his ass .

I've been. as scary as this is. I've been imagining tricksters powers working almost like Taylor's in the sense that he can multitask to a wild level and also sometimes see/experience things through his puppets. I think he'd be WAYYY more limited than taylor- he can only consciously directly control a smallish number at a time; he can create as many puppets as he wants but it mostly becomes a "give an order to a crowd and they'll carry it out" and he only has a select few that he DIREXTLY controls. and he can choose to kind of experience things through one at a time . I don't know where I was going with this I just wanted to talk abt his powers a little bit I think.

ok I need to fucking talk about your tags now because oh my GOD somehow I've only ever imagined ashe having his lucid moments like. on the battlefield or in the middle of a really dramatic moment or whatever. but holy shit this is so much worse. he has them when it's quiet. do you think he ever has one while he's being used as like.. a silent bodyguard or whatever for trickster while he's..idk making a show of power or meeting with another villain or whatever. and all muse has to do is stand there and look pretty and be. part of the show of power until trickster tells him to do something . and in the middle of that ashe kind of wakes up and has this moment of panic like "oh god oh fuck I can't be here im so fucking scared but I can't move I can't let him know I'm any different" and it's just this terrifying scene of "oh no what if he knows" before trickster eventually like. snaps his fingers or whatever and his power snaps back on . nothing comes of it but it's one of those things ashe Remembers bc I do think he remembers most of his lucid moments. aaaouugjhhb fuck oh fuck oh shit. nightmare nightmare nightmare!!!!!! don't even get me fuckign started on post-muse ashe and his trauma responses to basically every shred of comfort he could possibly receive. god. I can't even add anything to that it's just so good. once again virion sol is everyone's rock!!!!!!!

oh you wanna think about muse and trickster? yeah? it's been a while since I put a heartbreaking nhw post in your inbox <3 I know u love the prime dehumanization loss of bodily autonomy defenders. << im not even remotely trying to keep the acronym the same anymore. I've lost the plot. ANYWAY

briefly mentioned this before but because I loooove the aesthetic so much I think at least one important muse confrontation should happen in the tricksters city, specifically in the amusement park. make it like a fuckign scooby door episode everything is all abandoned and run down but as the wards are walking down a boardwalk or something all the lights flicker on and some distorted fuckign. carnival music starts playing and they find muse sitting in like. the rebar scaffolding or whatever in the ferris wheel. just like grinning chin in hands kicking his feet watching them. this image is so clear in my mind. some creep shit !!!! also its like when they first go to the spirit world to get tide back from.mal and end up in the amusement park. except ashe isn't with them this time

uhhhhhh also thinking about. downtime. when muse isn't out being destructive and causing chaos for funsies. like... does he have a bedroom????? does he eat does he sleep??? idfk !!!! I would assume he has to or else he'd fucking die but !!!! man the trickster is so far gone I don't think he even realizes his puppets are real people anymore. that's a fun little doll for him to play dressup with. literally never going 2 get the image of him braiding muses hair and like. putting makeup on him and dressing him in fancy little outfits out of my mind. making myself ILL. smile! good evening I'm gently placing the knife box in your in. << as I was going to type inbox I accidentally typed out inventory. yknow what I'm keeping it. knife box directly into your inventory. watch out they're RUSTY

GOD. THANKS FOR THE KNIFE BOX MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! knife box directly in my inventory!!! u know what this means is that now i can use them :3 <- has been drawing wards stuff abt this for the past two hours ^_^

this is so fucking good though yeahhh.... i love creepy carnival shit so much. he trickster probably Knows it's very over the top and horror movie creepy and just a little absurd. he's so fucking fun 2 think abt since he's literally always doing shit simply because it is funny to him. we can swing a trickster justification for anything probably. i bet he fucking saw traps people!! anyway. ashe isn't with them this time. except..... well. he kind of is. :(

I HAVE ALSO BEEN THINKING ABT DOWNTIME. FREQUENTLY. i guess. the answer to this is he lives however the trickster&co does. the image of him coming back in his fancy intricate little outfits to some disgusting nasty bloody industrial warehouse where they're posted up & always being this very jarring contrast to the gore and violence is really good. the image of him having a perfect doll bedroom and going through a fancy little routine half the nights when the trickster is in a good mood or feeling it & just. getting thrown on the bed & the door locked to pass out for a couple hours whenever he forgets or is busy is also really good. literally anything we do to muse makes me feel some kind of way man. i also have had the extremely vivid image of the trickster braiding his hair & chatting about all kinds of horrific things excited sleepover style to muse who is just. Visibly Not There in my head for so long. not even like he has to touch him, he could be making him do all these things for himself! he's literally controlling him! he just does it for fun!!!

anyway i think post-muse ashe should get to freak out very badly in a multitude of ways whenever anybody touches his hair. like i think he's touch-adverse in general (& miserable about it because he's also so touchstarved & his brain simply whites out in distress anytime anyone touches him because. literally the only person doing that was the trickster!!!!) but i think specifically his hair being messed with is a bad trigger for him. makes him freeze up n go nonverbal for hours. dakota knows that he's jumpy about touch but he still wants to do something for him & before the everything he loved them playing with his hair (its so long!! wibby & dakota think its so pretty!! virion's the only one who knows how to braid it because of his mom!! ashe melts into a puddle over it every time because nobody's ever done that for him before!) so he goes to just run fingers through it & ashe just. fullbody locks up and goes weird and still and silent & doesn't protest or fight back when dakota shakes his shoulder or smth and his eyes are distant and sort of dark and empty like virion's were most of the time when they first met him... maybe he wants to cut it a little bit just because he hates that it's been covered in The Ooze and he can't do anything with it without thinking about how the trickster would do the same thing but also he hates the idea of getting rid of the one thing abt himself that he really likes & is a little connection with both of his parents because of the trickster also, when he's already taken so much from him. (it does have to get gross and tangled and matted because he refuses to put it back or do anything to it for a while though. maybe virion helps him sort it out & it's slow and painstaking and miserable for both of them and they both feel better at the end of it.)