#he was always a bit unstable about his self-perception after he became a Watcher

[definitelynotshouting]

i literally can't stop rotating hunger au worldbuilding and lore in my head. forgive me if you've ever touched on this in an ask before, but... re: the existential horror of being a parasite that has the sense of self of the host it ate. if one of grian's friends ever did get taken and used as a watcher larva host. how do you think he would feel about the watcher that came out the other side? would he want to see them as still the same person as his friend, or...?

Ive been staring at this ask since i got it with like. I need you to picture the most comically heartbroken expression right now okay. like this is me reading that and thinking about it in great and terrible detail:

Gods he would be devastated if this ever happened. He knows what thats like. He knows just how much it hurts-- and that its not a hurt that can be quantified, because its just that intense, that scalding, that encompassing of an experience to go through. I think, genuinely, Grian would be so utterly horrified and grief-stricken for whichever friend went through the Watcherification process that it would trump every other potential feeling on the list

But i think, ultimately, he would still view them as his friend, and treat them in the same way. There's a little bit of hypocrisy in Grian's character that i enjoy engaging with while writing him, and a good part of that in hunger au is centered around how he's firmly designated himself as the monster, and everybody else is the victim, and theres no room for nuance because he sucks and theyre the only people who are valid. When in reality, yes he hurt them, yes he did terrible and invasive things, but he did them out of pure survival rather than maliciousness, and that does make a subtle difference. And... hes not the only one who has fucked up, either!! The entire point of hunger au is how everyone has fumbled the bag in various ways and now they're all trying to clean it up together. Its just, yknow, Grian is so wrapped up in his own pain that he cant see those grey areas yet

And the thing is, if one of his friends got Watchered™, so to speak, and was standing in front of him, i think he would treat them with SO much compassion. Theyve been through possibly the worst thing anyone can experience and come out the other side-- at his core, Grian is i think a character who wants to do good, and do good by other people, and in this hypothetical that would translate into a lot of kindness he doesnt usually afford for himself. Honestly i think he'd spend the time trying to show them the ropes, get them set up in a better position than he found himself in, and provide his own fumbling emotional support as best he could, just out of sheer solidarity. Like, he gets it. He's been there. He may as well help out.

And i think he wouldnt even realize how hypocritical he's being until someone else pointed it out to him, about how he treats this friend with so much care but is simultaneously cruel to himself. I dont think he'd know how to handle that-- he's sort of dug himself a rut in the road with the way he thinks about and treats himself, and the cognitive dissonance would be really uncomfortable for him. Ultimately a good thing!!! Growth is often very uncomfortable. But imo Grian has a tendency to run from things like feelings of discomfort, so i think it'd take him a while to reconcile his previous ways of thinking with whats being presented in front of him essentially in the form of a mirror.

So uh. tl;dr: he'd be a little hypocrite about it and would feel a lot more compassionately inclined towards the friend than he does himself, and would try to help them out as best he could. Thank you for the incredible question that has given me the opportunity to rotate this worm at even higher speeds than usual inside my brainpan DKNFEKNDSKDJKDKD