#hope you enjoy my ramblings about my murderous crystal hippie headcanons for fiona

[embalmerandphotographer]

Do you have any hcs on Fiona Gilman and her interactions with the other survivors?

Ghost here! Oh I absolutely do. Fiona is the survivor I play most often after Aesop and I love her! Not just her skill, I also find her backstory very intriguing and have spent a lot of time talking to Greed about it, as is our way.

Okay so... First a warning or two:

1. This contains some spoilers for her deduction lines and birthday letter, so skip this one if you don't want to see that.

2. I'll freely admit that I love to push everything in a horror direction and this does of course also apply to the mega-evolved kiter herself.

Getting that out of the way...

I think it's clear that Fiona knew about and implied to have been drawn to Lakeside Village, where there was a cult religion worshiping a lake deity that was probably Hasur. We know the villagers sacrificed "livestock" to the their god by throwing them into the lake in exchange for their prayers being answered. We know Fiona was drawn to seek out occult mysteries, and that she has a philosophy of following where her gods lead her, taking the actions she believes they call on her to take. We also know the village is now abandoned, and letters later sent to villagers (see the Dancer's recent birthday letter) weren't answered. We also know that Fiona gained some pretty impressive magical powers at some point, ones she didn't have growing up.

So, Fiona went to the village, either believing herself drawn there or because of what she'd heard about the lake cult, or both. I think she, a very attractive and definitely driven if not also somewhat cunning young woman, was able to join the cult and become close to or even join its secretive inner circle, the one in charge of the actual summoning and sacrifices. 

And Ms. Fiona Gilman had a very big wish she wanted granted, a deep prayer she had no doubt been holding close most of her life.

I think Fiona wanted to be special. Powerful. Part of the magical world. And she wanted to be follow the call of her gods, to be able to pass through the solid reality of this world into the spiritual one she always wanted but never had access to as a child. 

And I think she that she got her wish. And that she sacrificed the entire population of Lakeside Village to the lake and to Hasur to get it. Consider that the villagers were asking for small things, and paying in blood sacrifice and the slaughter of livestock for even that. And who and what Fiona became is very much not the anxious, unhappy, and apparently seeming unexceptional person she was implied to have been before breaking away from her mother.

If you consider the survivor's abilities separate from how they're balanced by the game mechanics, Fiona is one of the most powerful of the survivors, if not the most powerful. Along with Patricia and Eli, she had actual magical abilities before coming to the manor*. And because of my take on her, I think that like Aesop, she'd killed enough people that she could have been (and might still one day be) a hunter instead of a survivor... but that’s a post for another day.

So! That's my HC for her backstory. You also asked about her interactions with the others.

First off, while I obviously think she's a sort of amoral-evil person on a grand scale, I think Fiona is probably perfectly nice and even quite charismatic on an individual basis. Kind of weird still, because she's the priestess of a cult, but charming and easy to get along with in spite of this. And while I do think Fiona is capable of being manipulative to get what she wants, I also think she doesn't think of her actions as evil or intentionally do harm. Even her drowning a whole village of people in a lake could have been framed, for her, as following her god's commands. Maybe she thought that after so many sacrifices, Hastur wouldn't be bound to the lake anymore, and she might even have been right about that.

(Btw this, in my mind, is one of the most dangerous types of person when they're amoral. Someone so very likable is also so much harder to criticize, to question, or even to think ill of.)

So, I think the survivors get along with her fine for the most part. I don't think any of them know about what she did (with maybe one exception), and that they take her at face value as another member of their strange, unwilling team.

Now... She's casually friendly with pretty much all the survivors, with a few exceptions, but that she might not have any very close connections at the manor. I think she has a mean-girls style friendship with Vera, and that’s her closest friend. Also she and Patricia have long, technical conversations about magic from time to time, but Patricia is deeply uninterested in getting cursed more/again and steers clear of whatever it is the Priestess is up to spiritually. Any of the survivors who are attracted to pretty ladies and susceptible to getting crushes probably do have mild to moderate crushes on her (Kevin, Vera, Freddy, Martha, Emily, William, Emma, and certainly others although I haven't thought through it too much). Also, for some reason I headcanon that Luca specifically Just Thinks She's Neat, because she has a fascinating ability that challenges his view of a scientific reality, and because they're both feral and he can vibe with that.

Aesop is completely, almost hilariously immune to her charisma and views her neutrally- a competent coworker with a hang up on one of the hunters that's really not his place to comment on. 

On the other hand, I think Emily and Martha don't think much of her intelligence due to her spirituality/gods, and Emma just quietly doesn't get closely involved with Fiona outside of matches because she while she may be unhinged she has good instincts. Poor Andrew is absolutely terrified of her like the good Catholic boy he is. And she does unnerve a few of the other survivors but not in a way that they can quite put their finger on, so they dismiss it. 

And then there's Eli. I've understood Eli's backstory to imply that he's from the Roman Empire, so way further back in the timeline than most of the others, who were take from eras closer to the World Wars. And Eli is linked to Fiona, but we don't know how. They have similar eye themes (Fiona's keys/portals have eyes on them and Eli's blindfold/owl are related to sight), but they can't have know each other when they were alive, and we don't hear anything about the lake cult being involved in Eli’s life or his future seeing. Fiona is implied to have served and still be following Hastur, but the same can't be said for Eli as far as I know.

I don't think Eli dislikes Fiona. They might even be friends in a way, or sort of colleagues. Certainly there aren't many other people they can talk to about magic, and they do share some kind of connection from outside the manor. But I think Eli has very mixed feeling about her, partly because he knows that mystical powers come with costs.

And I have a specific, wildly extrapolated headcanon about them. I don't think Eli was part of a cult dedicated to Hastur that existed long before Fiona was ever born. I think his own powers were given to him, in part, to stop things like what Fiona did in Lakeside Village from ever happening. To contain gods of chaos and protect the balance of the world. He might even have had visions of what happened, either with the Lakeside cult or with the manor games or both, and if so he just wasn't able to stop it, being too far away in time until he was pulled into the timeless pocket dimension the manor apparently exists in. (How interesting then for him to become trapped with living proof that what he saw and would have tired to prevent had already come to pass?)

Anyway! Those are my headcanons for Fiona, or what I have time to write down tonight. 

Closing thoughts:

-I did also find another little bit of interesting trivia: part of Eli's Chinese name originally translated to Gilman. We also know reincarnation is a theme for him. Who knows what the manor game is about, after all?

-I also think it's EXTREMELY funny that Fiona claims to have not come to the manor after being called by a letter, but instead to have followed "a spirit" or one of her gods to the manor. Because if it's at all true, Ms. Gilman *broke into the manor*, either at the behest of her god (Hastur) or because she was following him. She broke in. Can she get out out? Does she just not want to? I have questions!!! Ms. Gilman what is your deal!!)

*(Servais, honey, I appreciate you, but we don't know if you had real magic or just excellent illusionism skills before the manor; I also think it's safe to say that Mike's juggling wasn't magical until the manor got ahold of him either, and so on with Vera, Aesop, etc.)