#i can't believe i don't have a tag for this guy or his hive yet. one of these days i'll go back and fix that for older posts

[south-sea]

Gimme Aruna's love language. You can't just say "And if you really want to make my day ask about Aruna" in the tags of your nov 18th post and leave me hanging.

i had to go digging for it but anon is referring to an old ask game post

that tag was more of a general anything-goes for aruna asks but rolling up sleeves alright let's tackle arguably one of the most difficult (delighted)

it's tricky because as a mobian, this guy is ~15+ years out of context, and 13 of those years were spent under circumstances that left him empty and just trying to survive (again, but worse). even in a kinder setting now with a new community and support system, he doesn't really act out of love so much as habitual responsibility.

he cares for the settlement he's taken up residence in and the people in it, and certainly some of that care is more personal on an individual level than others, but he doesn't view it as "love". he does those things because that's just what you're supposed to do? it's the same as how he'd act in his capacity as black doom way back when with his hive, just with slightly more emotional distance. a lot of what he does is ultimately still self-serving.

he helps build up this settlement and the people in it not because he wants to see it specifically succeed, or see them thrive, but because he lives there. but he's also not doing it just because he lives there and wants a safe place to live/for the people to feel compelled to treat him well. and while that's definitely how it started--he had to learn new etiquette rules and such to fit in and be more generally likeable enough for them to accept him--he still lacks a certain emotional investment in them.

like, yeah, it's love in the most basic sense, but it's hard to articulate why it's also not? they're his people now, in a sense, and he knows he belongs there, and recognizes when they show him love, but for his part he's just operating normally. he can't just be a freeloader or treat them like he's their leader instead. that's not how things work here. and besides, he'd go crazy without anything to do anyway. so like i said; most of what he does is still self-serving at its core. he just balances that and acts in such a way that it benefits more than just himself.

he lacks empathy and is selfish, but not in a way that damages others--and ensuring he keeps that balance is deliberate for the sake of staying in people's good graces. it is the literal definition of manipulative, but he's not doing it out of malice (anymore). he just wants to raise his chance of survival. he has nothing to live for but himself and the memory of his people.

in the present, if you shove all of that aside, and squint really hard past his barrier of invulnerability and neutrality, he shows it to specific individuals the most in what he lets them get away with. he hates being touched. is not very gentle or soft or kind in how he speaks. but he can be patient, and affords people close to him (especially children) some of his learned softness. he lets these chosen people hold his hand (even if he doesn't understand why) or hug him for their own sake (even if he's not particularly keen on the idea) or talks them down from anxiety or an upset (even if he is so, so bad at empathy and lacks the type of experiences that would help him navigate delicate situations).

back when he was still just regular black doom with a hive is different, though. i should preface this with the fact i write the black arms, especially in the context of aruna's hive, very differently from canon; they were all individuals with their own culture, and the hivemind was more of a shared telepathy ability rather than ant-like.

he was not overly-affectionate or outwardly sentimental, but he loved them all dearly in his own way, and it showed in subtleties. he was their leader, yes but they were everything to him. he would forego meals if it meant feeding a youngling instead. wore rings of the fallen and cycled them out with the most recently-lost to honor their memory. allowed younglings to get a bit clingy even though he hated being touched even back then. helped raise a lot of them, mourned the loss of the adults with the culture-appropriate equivalent of funeral, never forgot a single one of them, kept their stories alive until he no longer could.

all he has left are scraps and a monument the present-day settlement helped build. but he respects the settlement and acknowledges himself as one of theirs enough to integrate some of their funeral rites with his own due to being unable to put what remains of his kind to rest in the way he normally would.